Doom Frontend - Anyone?

[Tormentor667]

Well, guys, I know there is ZDL and it is doing a fine job. Though, it isn't the best thing to organize and play our whole collection of wads in a nice, solid way with a beautiful GUI so I came up with an idea: What about a nice Windows/OS Frontend for your complete collection, that makes playing wads and original maps with various sourceports easy as hell and also displays various information about the project within the frontend?

Two very similar programs come to my mind here:
Emulation Control Center (for roms and emus)
D-Fend Reloaded (for DOS games and DOSBOX)

The idea behind this is that people can keep track of their wads and addons for Doom, rate them, have some kind of preview for them (e.g. showing the TITLEPIC if there is one, recording movies and screenshots which where displayed in the Frontend as well, showing all the info from the text file and stuff like that) and making it easy to play it with predefined sourceports and stuff.

Feature ideas are as follows

• Complete list of all wads/addons with various columns to sort them (year, type, author, personal rating, etc)
• Autoloading information directly from the text file (shouldn't be easy to code)
• Displaying the TITLEPIC lump if presend (other than that, no image will be display)
• Recording videos and making screenshots for the frontend (check D-Fend Reloaded for this)
• A search function (search by various tags)
• Some kind of interchanging format (so people can share their database content, check ECC datfiles for this)
• Configuration for sourceports, IWADs and stuff just like in ZDL3

These are ideas I am throwing out and for all this stuff you need at least a good programmer, but I guess this might be very useful - especially if it is OpenSource so the development is quick and aiming.

Well, I'd find this kinda useful, maybe other people as well Just share your thoughts!

[YukiHerz]

I have an idea of how could this be done, using a program that shows a webpage with all these options and things, just like steam does, what i don't know is "how would an offline mode work?".
I've done one of these programs before (for a spanish forum) but it was abandoned, i think that since the doom community is bigger it shouldn't be forgotten (or at least not so soon).

[Enjay]

There used to be a few frontends with at least some of these features. Personally, I'm not a fan and I find them really annoying (which is why I found the simple approach of ZDL such a godsend). However, if you can track down the source for one of them, it might serve as a good base to work from.

[Tormentor667]

After trying 100 different frontends, I am sure that none of them does what I would like to have So I really hope for a coder or programmer who can do this. I am even willed to spend some money, some kind of "startup" to have the chance that people are more motivated

[SyntherAugustus]

I typically use ZDL as my launcher. However I'd love to have something similar to Steam Big Picture's launcher or even XMBC for loading up combination of Zdoom wads specifically. What I might do in the long run is have one of those load up ZDL files directly as a graphic media launcher.

Edit: As an example, ZDL files that can be launched in Big Picture Mode (Heretic, hexen, etc)
http://imgur.com/AVFyEsz

[darbyjack]

Nice concept, but has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like? I'll try and get a screenshot when I can.

[Gez]

I randomly found this: http://edwinjones.me.uk/rants/introducing-ezdoom.aspx

(It was linked from http://sc55.duke4.net/index.php where it was presented as a source port derived from GZDoom, so I was curious. Turns out it's not a source port, just a fancy launcher bundled with GZDoom.)

[kmxexii]

I'd love to see something like iTunes for Doom WADs, but I'm a horrible person

[NightFright]

qZDL is quite OK, I couldn't find any better launcher than that.

I tried the C#4rp Doom Launcher since it has something which I am still missing in qZDL: Checkboxes for PWADs. However, it seems it doesn't recognize all available IWADs properly by now (e.g. no Hacx, Harmony or Chex Quest 3 support), so it's not so useful to me after all. And development for it stopped after 2009, it seems.

Basically, any new frontend would need to be able to do everything that ZDL/qZDL is currently able to do - PLUS this checkbox feature. Then you would have my attention.

[Tormentor667]

@blackfish - Something like that would be awesome indeed!

@Nightfright - qZDL? What's the difference?

The main thing that I am missing is something that organizes my whole Doom database, wads, iwads, ports with a fancy look and a information database, that automatically scrapes from the TXT files (and is also able to manually eat info from me). A list that can be sorted by author, release date, player count, port, etc.

[Jimmy]

There was something posted on Doomworld awhile back. I think it was called DoomLauncher or DoomWizard or something - it had a neat graphical interface and worked like a treat. I don't know what happened to the creator since, though - he released a couple of versions and then I heard nothing from that thread ever again. I'll go see if I can dig it up.

EDIT: DoomRunner! That was it.
http://www.doomworld.com/vb/doom-editin ... uys-think/

There's also this which looks neat:
http://www.doomworld.com/vb/doom-genera ... r-windows/

[NightFright]

I have stopped using the original ZDL for a while, but I think the main new feature in qZDL right now is that you can resize the interface. That and maybe the fact it is still developed, at least so it seems. ^^

[NeuralStunner]

Unfortunately QBasicer has ended development of qZDL, and ZDL4 is unlikely because Biohazard has once again vanished without warning.

I wonder if we can still convince Q to finish up the Issues list. (There are 4 things left, though one is a very minor feature request.) And unfortunately it seems I never remembered to post an issue for replacement maps in PWads getting sorted to the top of the map dropdown. Oh well.

[NightFright]

Actually, having the IWAD selector on the right also confused me. As it is the first thing to choose from, it should be on the left IMHO. Same with exit/launch buttons (the latter could be bigger than the rest, btw). Those are small things which are probably easy to implement, but someone has to actually DO it...

[Enjay]

But for me, the PWAD list is the one that changes most often so having it on the left makes more sense.

I have no particular preference for the exit/launch buttons but I'm sure if they changed now I'd drive myself insane accidentally pressing the wrong one from force of habit.