Resigning from Blasphemer

[Stilgar]

For some time now I've been pretty much completely out of motivation for Blasphemer and I think it's best for all involved if I turn over maintainance to someone else. If the Freedoom folks would like to take the reins, I'll offer whatever help is needed to get it transferred over.

[gnudist]

Stilgar said:

For some time now I've been pretty much completely out of motivation for Blasphemer and I think it's best for all involved if I turn over maintainance to someone else. If the Freedoom folks would like to take the reins, I'll offer whatever help is needed to get it transferred over.

Oh goody, then we can have yet another mismached set of artwork for yet another incomplete FPS.

How many good mods are there for heretic anyway? The one really good thing about freedoom other than having a free as in freedom singleplayer retro FPS is the ability to play all the DOOM pwads without needing the DOOM iwads. I can't really see a reason for blasphemer's existance without the pwads if it isn't a game of much better quality then freedoom is.

I hope that if the freedoom project takes over that it's handled much better then freedoom itself is. The fine hampsters at http://opengameart.org would likely be willing to help do art for this.

[hex11]

It needs a bunch of good monster sprites mostly (hopefully darker and different than the ones in Heretic).

[andrewj]

Blasphemer was a valiant attempt to create a free Heretic, and a lot of good resources got made for it.

Shame it never really took off, though it's so hard to create a complete set of monster sprites (even FreeDoom isn't complete in that regard).

[fraggle]

I hate to be negative but it's been over a week and nobody's offered to take over the project.

Blasphemer is a nice idea and there is obviously some really good material that has been submitted to it. However, the number of potential contributors is always going to be much less than for Freedoom, which has been around for much longer and still isn't complete. As a simple measure, in the Heretic/Hexen sections on /idgames there really aren't that many levels that people have made.

With that in mind I wonder if it really might be a good idea to wrap up the project and end it. Put the final binaries and source on idgames for posterity of course - perhaps someone might be interested in picking up the reins in the future.

[Gez]

Isn't jute_gyte still on it, though?

[fraggle]

The webpage lists Jute as a "co-owner" but it looks like he hasn't contributed anything for over two years.

[Blastfrog]

I'm interested in taking over as a leader/maintainer. If I were running it, I would do my best to ensure that the art and sound maintains a consistent and high quality direction.

I have webspace that I could use for an SVN or Git archive.

[Stilgar]

Gez said:

Isn't jute_gyte still on it, though?

Jute's expertise is in sound effects/music which are areas that have been stalled because the music is more or less done and sound effects are waiting on the graphics for things that will make the sounds so they can match. The SVN and DeuTex stuff needed to keep the behind-the-scenes things running have always been my area.

Sodaholic said:

I'm interested in taking over as a leader/maintainer. If I were running it, I would do my best to ensure that the art and sound maintains a consistent and high quality direction.

OK, I've added Sodaholic to continue maintainance of the project.

[jute]

Yes, with my skillset there is not much I can contribute to the project at this point, and frankly the utility of the project is limited given the relative scarcity of Heretic PWADs. With that said, I think Blasphemer has a fine and consistent aesthetic, and would love to see it finished just to have another Doom-engine game in the world. If I had the funds I would commission someone to do the required sprites for at least a playable MP game (HUD weapons, player sprites, chicken/whatever sprites).

[Egregor]

If I can get the permission from the other mappers we could donate the HYMN Heretic Community Map Set to this project once its finished, to fill in the missing Blasphemer maps. Of course they would have to be re-textured, etc. Would this be helpful to the project?

[Blastfrog]

Egregor said:

If I can get the permission from the other mappers we could donate the HYMN Heretic Community Map Set to this project once its finished, to fill in the missing Blasphemer maps. Of course they would have to be re-textured, etc. Would this be helpful to the project?

Hmm, that would be pretty nice. Both projects are currently aiming at limit-removing ports, but if feasible, I would like it to be vanilla compatible, but that's not really needed.

I don't think that it would need to be retextured, though, since Blasphemer contains equivalent textures with the same names as Heretic's textures.

[hex11]

It looks like they're using an external texture pack (not just Heretic IWAD textures), including stuff from Gothic DM, Eternal Doom, etc. So those would have to be replaced with Blasphemer textures. It's still a whole lot less work than making brand new maps from scratch though.

And even if only some of the mappers agree to let Blasphemer use their levels, it will still help a lot. Right now there's only a few SP maps in the IWAD...

BTW, I posted some map bug report in the previous v0.15 release thread. Something about a linedef tag 0 that affects the entire level. Maybe other things too, can't remember...

[Blastfrog]

hex11 said:

BTW, I posted some map bug report in the previous v0.15 release thread. Something about a linedef tag 0 that affects the entire level. Maybe other things too, can't remember...

I'll look into that, thanks for letting me know about it.

[jute]

Incorporating maps from HYMN seems like a good idea, given how few maps Blasphemer has. "Find and replacing"-ing some textures is not a significant burden, especially if the result is a more complete set of maps.

[Jon]

If this is going to keep running, what about having it hosted using the same infrastructure as freedoom?

[fraggle]

Jon said:

If this is going to keep running, what about having it hosted using the same infrastructure as freedoom?

I'm not convinced it would be worth it. What infrastructure would it be reusing? There's little in terms of the build system that can be shared between the two projects. At most they could be hosted on the same website/Savannah page, but I don't really see what would be gained by that.

Sodaholic said:

I'm interested in taking over as a leader/maintainer. If I were running it, I would do my best to ensure that the art and sound maintains a consistent and high quality direction.

I have webspace that I could use for an SVN or Git archive.

Thanks for stepping up. What I will say is, please be prepared to put personal effort into the project - my experience on Freedoom was that the maintainer acts as a catalyst for the project, and the project tended to wither when I didn't give it my attention.

Egregor said:

If I can get the permission from the other mappers we could donate the HYMN Heretic Community Map Set to this project once its finished, to fill in the missing Blasphemer maps. Of course they would have to be re-textured, etc. Would this be helpful to the project?

This seems like an interesting idea, but looking at the thread it doesn't seem like a huge amount of progress has been made on this project.

[Jon]

fraggle said:

I'm not convinced it would be worth it. What infrastructure would it be reusing? There's little in terms of the build system that can be shared between the two projects. At most they could be hosted on the same website/Savannah page, but I don't really see what would be gained by that.

I suppose I meant the git repository, under an assumption that perhaps some resources could be in common. However I guess the differing base palettes would stop you using the exact same graphics, so there'd be very little to gain.

[Stilgar]

fraggle said:

Thanks for stepping up. What I will say is, please be prepared to put personal effort into the project - my experience on Freedoom was that the maintainer acts as a catalyst for the project, and the project tended to wither when I didn't give it my attention.

I can also vouch for this being the case.

[fraggle]

Jon said:

I suppose I meant the git repository, under an assumption that perhaps some resources could be in common. However I guess the differing base palettes would stop you using the exact same graphics, so there'd be very little to gain.

About the only thing I can think of is the GENMIDI lump, I don't think it's worth merging the two projects together just for that one thing :)

[Gez]

It also kinda requires the soundtrack to use the same instruments.

[Eregore]

The HYMN project is now officially willing to donate all our map submissions to this project (unless individual mappers say otherwise). The maps will be in standard Heretic format with lots of unfamiliar textures. These maps will need some work before they are compatible for this project, but I speak for the Doom/Heretic community when I say we want to see this project finished, and we can help by providing some varied, competent, fantasy themed levels.