Obligatory Legacy of Rust/ Nightdive Doom Port thread

[yum13241]

And DEHACKED is better?

I literally replied to you in agreement, but it seems the community (except *ZDoom source port users) by and large does not like DECORATE at all, because of a mod made by an infamous sergeant (Brutal Doom).

Absolutely not; DECORATE is not ZScript. In fact, you can use DECORATE in vanilla Doom nowadays!

This is tossing another hack atop what is already an ungodly pile of hacks layered on top of each other in a gargantuan jenga tower of jank.

ACE engine relies on hacks to even load, and it's not even Boom compatible (at least they don't say so) and ACE engine's DECORATE is going to bork itself the moment you load something like a smooth weapons mod.

A DECORATE support spec (let's call it REDECORATE) would be amazing but please give us anonymous functions, some way of variables (ACS doesn't count), and something like A_FireBullets/A_CustomBulletAttack.

[Dynamo]

I agree with the concerns expressed, but I figured it was worth asking this question sooner rather than later. We'll see what happens once the spec has matured further, I suppose

[yum13241]

Meanwhile, fraggle is sitting down, not worrying about implementation, and laughing at us because we can't figure out how we want to mod Doom.

[Graf Zahl]

That was some unpleasant surprise, having just come back from a one-week vacation.

For me the entire spec dies with its deep roots in Dehacked mess. It's like taking the worst parts of DSDHACKED and building some convoluted setup around them to allow new extensions. This will be a nightmare to support for virtually everybody and I find it very telling that aside from Kraflab no other developer has posted their opinion on the Doomworld thread yet.

Another thing that's just dumb for a supposedly forward looking spec is the dependency on some of Boom's worst features, namely COLORMAP and TRANMAP instead of going the extra route and implementing both features properly.

The remaining parts look fine, albeit far from groundbreaking. Nothing there that is impossible but also little there that's of any use, but it will require a lot of groundwork by any interested port to support the ancilliary features not directly related to actual mapping.

What I do see, though, is the risk that some ports may jump ship for good because they have no good means to implement this spec - just like K8Vavoom did with MBF21.

[dpJudas]

All things considered I don't think it is very likely anything will come out of it. Maybe some specific parts of the spec/proposal/whatever might get implemented but that's about it. What is your opinion on the intermission stuff and the animated skies? From what I've read those are the only parts of the expansion that is actually used.

[Graf Zahl]

I think the spec is way too complicated for what it tries to achieve. They should have kept it simple like what I did long ago for ZDoom's intermission scripts.

The main problem here is that the spec is extremely verbose and not particularly straightforward to implement.

[Rachael]

I think it's important to point out that Legacy of Rust is planned to use more ID24 features in the future, so just because the features are not in the spec now doesn't mean they won't be important.

At this point, GZDoom's biggest draw is the smoother input and expanded modding capabilities. And the ID24 spec will also be important by virtue that the new Doom has a community mod upload that other players of the game can download mods from. No matter what form it takes, ID24 is here to stay. If you want something in the spec to change you had best speak up now before it gets finalized. (Not to me, not in this thread, but to the maintainers of the current version of Doom)

Speaking for myself, I really wish they hadn't expanded DEHACKED. It would have been better to adopt ZDoom 2.7.0's DECORATE (whatever version before ZDoom picked up anonymous functions) or Eternity's EDF or Edge's DDF. Or even just make a new standard entirely for implementing actors from scratch. I don't like expanding DEHACKED at all - it's something that should have been abandoned and forgotten about the moment the original Linux Doom source code was released. There are viable and robust ways to define a complete actor without using DEHACKED and it's a shame that so many people seem to be stuck on old ways like it's a divine temple of some sort. That isn't how it has to be and 3 importantly historical ports have proven quite well that a more self-contained and newer standard works, and works well.

The linedefs though - I have no issue with expanding those.

My other concern about ID24 still being a moving target still stands. Once the standard solidifies (i.e. a spec v1.0 is released), I'll start working on it. Until then, not a line of code is going towards supporting it.

I think the spec is way too complicated for what it tries to achieve. They should have kept it simple like what I did long ago for ZDoom's intermission scripts.

The main problem here is that the spec is extremely verbose and not particularly straightforward to implement.

I think this is less of a problem if the goals of each provision are clearly laid out with the intentions and maybe even optionally a few ideas of how they could be implemented. It's more of a problem when things are way too open ended and left to interpretation - because no cohesive standard will ever come out of that. No two people ever think exactly alike and that is most certainly true of any two developers.

[dpJudas]

I think it's important to point out that Legacy of Rust is planned to use more ID24 features in the future, so just because the features are not in the spec now doesn't mean they won't be important.

Its some kind seasonal thing for Doom abomination they got going? If so, I'm beginning to understand the general concern.

[Rachael]

I've been hearing from multiple sources that LOR was released as-is due to time constraints, not for any actual desire to support the MBF21 standard.

By itself, that fact alone implies that there's a planned update for LOR, and the things I've been hearing suggest it's likely to take the form of the weapon replacements becoming separate weapons instead. I have no doubt that they'll take advantage of other new ID24 features also, depending on how much time they have before they have to go "gold" again with the next release.

[Graf Zahl]

At this point, GZDoom's biggest draw is the smoother input and expanded modding capabilities. And the ID24 spec will also be important by virtue that the new Doom has a community mod upload that other players of the game can download mods from. No matter what form it takes, ID24 is here to stay. If you want something in the spec to change you had best speak up now before it gets finalized. (Not to me, not in this thread, but to the maintainers of the current version of Doom)

It'd be pointless. My biggest gripe is Dehacked and they are never going to change that.

[Rachael]

You and I are not that far off on that opinion. I do not like expanding DEHACKED at all as I pointed out in my previous post.

[Tormentor667]

Tried the port yesterday and I have to say I instantly got my money back. This port is not worth the money, and the additional content is far from the quality of other packs around.

I wonder who decided to make Legacy of Rust kinda official and package it with the original games… it’s absolutely not worth a single coin.

[yum13241]

It should be obvious to any (professional) programmer that DEHACKED's name is a lie. I have no idea on why DEHACKED has lasted as long as it has. As a (small) GZDoom modder who screws around for fun, I've written literal ZScript but cannot wrap my head around DEHACKED at all, besides Boom string replacements lol.

If people want to use mods made for the Nightdive port, then they should use the Nightdive port. Plain and simple. (Unless you have old graphics hardware. Then it looks like a mess)

If I were a source port developer, I wouldn't even bother as of now. The whole negative index thing is just weird, like WHY? Someone can easily replace those, hell I'd probably learn to do it just out of spite. Reserved linedefs make some sense, a lot of other specs have reserved numbers.

I have an idea: If you don't like indices, let's just spawn/mod stuff in by name instead of by number. Surely a company as large as Bethesda can figure that out, right? (Let's get rid of DoomEdNums as well, it only makes sense and those were never infinite anyway)

Minecraft did something similar back in 2018 with the 1.13 update. Before that update, blocks like dirt had say, ID 1. Stone would have ID 2, and andesite would be 2:1, which was just dumb. When they made the update, dirt had an ID of minecraft:dirt, stone was minecraft:stone and andesite was minecraft:andesite. (Forget that in 1.12 they were in an inbetween state where /give accepted both named IDs and numeric ones). Why not doom:zombieman, doom2:supershotgun, and legacyofrust:incinerator?

Which leads me to the fact that I am a strong proponent of a modID system, where I'd have something like myweaponmod:autoshotgun and my modID would be myweaponmod. For GZDoom, this would mean that CVars get their own place for my mod in specific. For other ports, this means a potential DoomEdNum deletion.

Now if only there was some way to do this without:
1. Port authors having to turn their ports into ZDoom (or thinking they have to)
2. Drama.
3. Someone doing things so spec-incompliant that it becomes the new spec.
4. So many incompatibilities with the way Doom fundamentally works that it becomes impossible.

I know the things I mentioned will never become standards, so I suppose that if you want to play LOR in GZDoom, make a copy of your ID24 wads and modify LOR to use DECORATE instead AND DO NOT SHARE IT.

[Graf Zahl]

Tried the port yesterday and I have to say I instantly got my money back. This port is not worth the money, and the additional content is far from the quality of other packs around.

I wonder who decided to make Legacy of Rust kinda official and package it with the original games… it’s absolutely not worth a single coin.

Would you care to elaborate?
What issues do you have with the port and the new episode? Just saying 'it sucks' is not really helpful.

[Gez]

Tried the port yesterday and I have to say I instantly got my money back. This port is not worth the money, and the additional content is far from the quality of other packs around.

I wonder who decided to make Legacy of Rust kinda official and package it with the original games… it’s absolutely not worth a single coin.

It was a free update on Steam and GOG...