Zandronum 2.0 released

[SyntherAugustus]

Zandronum 2.0 released recently (looks like yesterday). The main features being it is now up to date with Zdoom 2.5.0 among other things.

http://zandronum.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=5818

Not sure if duplicate post. Didn't see a thread anywhere regarding it.

[Athel]

I have a feeling of deja vu...

On topic, its about god damn time! So, uh, when is the 2.7.1 update coming along for zandro?

[SamVision]

Zandronum 2.0 released recently (looks like yesterday).

YAY!

The main features being it is now up to date with Zdoom 2.5.0 among other things.

Boo!

[Dark-Assassin]

So, uh, when is the 2.7.1 update coming along for zandro?

Zandronum 4.0, assuming 3.0 doesn't skip straight past 2.6.1
And we all know how long 2.0 took to come out... Don't expect these any time soon, but 3.0 is already under way according to the bug tracker's roadmap.

[Graf Zahl]

And even if they go straight to 2.7.1 it's still two years behind current ZDoom development.
This is not going to work out if they ever wanted to catch up. For that they'd have to update completely and maintain that branch actively.

Wa already have seen the problems from being so much behind, with people blaming ZDoom for the abuses some mappers did for Zandronum's outdated code base.

[Blzut3]

The chances of Zandronum skipping straight to 2.8 are pretty slim. Mostly since the ZDoom code base has become unstable due to certain features. It has yet to really be seen how the code performs now with the recent fixes and there probably won't be enough to go off of whenever it comes times to start on 3.0. In addition to all of this, the amount of work to required to get from 2.5.0->2.7.1 itself is already about twice as much work as going to 2.5.0 as far as feature coverage goes.

but 3.0 is already under way according to the bug tracker's roadmap.

We haven't really had any discussions on 3.0 yet. Right now as far as ticket tagging goes 2.1 is "short term," 3.0 is "long term."

[Clownman]

They didn't fix the stupid bug where it deletes what you type in a chat message after hitting enter.

And it never happened until recent Zan revisions I think. Ugh.

[Blzut3]

They didn't fix the stupid bug where it deletes what you type in a chat message after hitting enter.

Ticket number? I'm not sure what you're talking about since hitting enter sends the message.

[NeuralStunner]

The main features being it is now up to date with Zdoom 2.5.0 among other things.

Boo!

You're going to have to live with it. Getting "up to date" with ZDoom implies rushing development of networking features, which will end up broken. And those features are kind of important to a multiplayer engine.

This is not going to work out if they ever wanted to catch up. For that they'd have to update completely and maintain that branch actively.

Essentially, they'd have to re-fork the current GZDoom trunk and rebuild the netcode from scratch. By the time that's working, ZDoom will be multiple versions ahead again. In the meantime, players have to live with an actually feature-frozen old version or a heavily buggy newer version.

If you want version updates faster, you can always sign up to the bug tracker and contribute. I know I wouldn't be very compelled to spend my free time on something that people will be unhappy with, because I already have to do that at work. (I wonder how many potential Zandronum developers/contributors feel the same way?)

[Blzut3]

Essentially, they'd have to re-fork the current GZDoom trunk and rebuild the netcode from scratch. By the time that's working, ZDoom will be multiple versions ahead again. In the meantime, players have to live with an actually feature-frozen old version or a heavily buggy newer version.

This. If you want up to date ZDoom multiplayer, it exists, it's part of ZDoom. For those who find the P2P net code unusable for whatever reason, keep in mind that Zandronum style CS netcode requires far more maintenance than ZDoom's. Features don't just magically work when pulled in.

If you want version updates faster, you can always sign up to the bug tracker and contribute. I know I wouldn't be very compelled to spend my free time on something that people will be unhappy with, because I already have to do that at work. (I wonder how many potential Zandronum developers/contributors feel the same way?)

The lack of testing was a major contributing factor to the slow release of 2.0. The feature porting was done fairly quickly (I think it took two months to get up to 2.5.0). However, getting people to test and make sure those features were working in the the betas was pretty much impossible. Torr is very conservative when it comes to releasing desiring every ticket be confirmed resolved. People apparently say they want these features but don't want to do anything to get them released faster.

[Graf Zahl]

This. If you want up to date ZDoom multiplayer, it exists, it's part of ZDoom. For those who find the P2P net code unusable for whatever reason, keep in mind that Zandronum style CS netcode requires far more maintenance than ZDoom's. Features don't just magically work when pulled in.

... but a large portion of that is due to a lot of network related code being in the wrong place. Skulltag never was the most smartly written C/S code with networking calls littered throughout the play code requiring very careful maintenance.

I think a bit of cooperation so that ZDoom's code could be refactored to be more C/S friendly to start with would have gone a long way to ease maintenance.
Of course now it's too late for that unless you are willing to do another rewrite from scratch...

But the main issue still stands: The backlog is so huge that it will forever be an uphill battle that cannot be won unless you try at least once to actually catch up. Then just regularly adding the new stuff would be a lot easier and less maintenance intensive.

[leileilol]

because "hopelessly out of date and cant support new cool overpowered weapons mod " is productive for everybody


nevermind the fact the most popular source port still frankensteins on top of 1.23 iirc

also reminder - you're playing a 1993 video game

[Onar4241]

Zandronum will never catch up with ZDoom, forget it.

[Blzut3]

But the main issue still stands: The backlog is so huge that it will forever be an uphill battle that cannot be won unless you try at least once to actually catch up. Then just regularly adding the new stuff would be a lot easier and less maintenance intensive.

Unlike (G)ZDoom where what version a user uses doesn't particularly matter, with C/S it does (users must use the same version the server is using). As a result, breakage on the scale of say CAUSEPAIN/ALLOWPAIN would probably kill the competitive scene. (The competitive scene is weird and requires features such as the old rng and ZDoom 1.23 physics since they pretty much only play old maps. They're very particular and they don't even know what they actually want considering how often they confuse ZDoom 1.23 behavior with "vanilla.")

For Zandronum there's far more to consider than just modding features.

nevermind the fact the most popular source port still frankensteins on top of 1.23 iirc

I can't objectively measure this since ZDaemon doesn't want me querying their servers and I don't want to go to Windows just to find out, but I'm told that Zandronum is now the most popular by far.

[Athel]

Zandronum will never catch up with ZDoom, forget it.

I swear, if time machines are invented this year, I will go to 2038 and return with a copy of Zandronum 5.99X