ZDoom ceases development

[Lvangundy]

Can you expand on this, like, without going too crazy with programming lingo? I'm an IT person by trade so I can likely follow along, but I'm curious about the mystery of why the MMX set is like, a long lost art or under-documented?

sheridan said:

QZDoom's lack of performance may have something to do with the fact that 32-bit blitting/blending has never been particularly well optimized by any C/C++ compiler. To unlock reasonable speed there you have to get back into inline assembly optimization with the MMX instruction set, which is obscure knowledge to say the least...

Going forward, I've always felt that GZDoom had the right idea by embracing OpenGL for the backend... though even that is in danger of falling out of fashion as OpenGL gets left behind for Vulkan by all the hardware vendors.

Somebody might want to start a Vulkan ZDoom port sometime, if they haven't already...

[MaxNostar]

printz said:

As of 7 January 2017, Randi has stepped down from development of the ZDoom source

The Mengele of doom is gone...

[Graf Zahl]

Lvangundy said:

Can you expand on this, like, without going too crazy with programming lingo? I'm an IT person by trade so I can likely follow along, but I'm curious about the mystery of why the MMX set is like, a long lost art or under-documented?

MMX is obsolete. It has long been superseded by better means for parallel computations. The entire post you quoted shows a profound lack of knowledge. QZDoom actually uses LLVM to create special SSE2-based drawers for true color, it never uses the C compiler for that because it's indeed to slow.

The first attempt was with SSE2 intrinsics but they were not optimal.

[LuciferSam86]

MaxNostar said:

The Mengele of doom is gone...

Well, actually, the "vision" of Carmack when he released the source code of Doom was:

Some project ideas:

Port it to your favorite operating system.

Add some rendering features -- transparency, look up / down, slopes,
etc.

Add some game features -- weapons, jumping, ducking, flying, etc.

Create a packet server based internet game.

Create a client / server based internet game.

Do a 3D accelerated version. On modern hardware (fast pentium + 3DFX)
you probably wouldn't even need to be clever -- you could just draw the
entire level and get reasonable speed. With a touch of effort, it should
easily lock at 60 fps (well, there are some issues with DOOM's 35 hz
timebase...). The biggest issues would probably be the non-power of two
texture sizes and the walls composed of multiple textures.

but the most interesting part is

Have fun.

So, where is the problem if someone have fun for expanding an old engine?
I mean, if you are a purist, you have other source ports which are closer to original...

Source: https://github.com/id-Software/DOOM

[VeeTHis]

I actually never used ZDoom or GZDoom before, but, I'm assuming it was a big part of the community. It's sad to see it go.

Well atleast I stil have Skulltag :D

[ENEMY!!!]

It's sad, but it was an impressive feat keeping a source port under active development for almost 20 years. I won't be surprised if someone else eventually takes over ZDoom.

GZDoom tends to be my port of choice these days, but of course if there had been no ZDoom there probably wouldn't have been GZDoom either.

[Graf Zahl]

ZDoom will live on in GZDoom and QZDoom. GZDoom does actually contain the entire software renderer.

And actually, nobody can 'take over' ZDoom because they do not own the rights to that name. It's not that easy. You need the consent of the original developer to continue a project under the same name.

[Jaws In Space]

Would there even be a point in continuing ZDoom. Does it actually have something that GZDoom or QZDoom doesn't?

[Graf Zahl]

No. GZDoom contains all of ZDoom, fully usable. The only 'issue' may be that it may require a bit more RAM because several data structures contain additional fields only useful for GL rendering so you maybe end up at 23 MB instead of 22MB, for example.

[Marcaek]

VeeTHis said:

I actually never used ZDoom or GZDoom before, but, I'm assuming it was a big part of the community. It's sad to see it go.

Well atleast I stil have Skulltag :D

Skulltag is dead, you should move over to Zandronum

If you need any of the Skulltag Content, load This before your other wads

[dew]

MaxNostar said:

The Mengele of doom is gone...

I hope you realize Zdaemon is also derived from Zdoom, genius.

[Reisal]

This is rather unfortunate news to hear.

[Master O]

Speaking of GZDoom, what happens if you run Doom 2 in hardware mode, but the weapons and enemies are invisible? Is that a graphics card issue?

[Lizardcommando]

That sounds like a graphics card issue. I remember having that issue a couple months ago when I was playing MetaDoom with one of the more recent (at the time) test builds of GZDoom.

[Combinebobnt]

Dunno why everybody thinks this is so negative. Sounds like with Randi never being around, Graf Zahl can now go full 100%. I'm thinking positive for the future. Also 32bit color is GOOD (cyan !!!).

[snapshot]

Hey GZ, Put 3D Polyobjects for your next GZDoom version :v.

[MaxNostar]

dew said:

I hope you realize Zdaemon is also derived from Zdoom, genius.

Ye pretty much everything is based on Zdoom. But you cant compare zdaemon based on old 1.23 with zdoom port version now.


edit. And i dont mind zdoom being so modern how it is now. There will always players which like it and some doesnt. Good example is csgo. (who play it, they will knows). Though zdoom its kinda funny. Adding some feature feels like assembling racing spoiler at car which worth less than the whole spoiler. But ye every1 has choice... Though zandronum is ruining everything... :D

[printz]

Combinebobnt said:

Dunno why everybody thinks this is so negative. Sounds like with Randi never being around, Graf Zahl can now go full 100%. I'm thinking positive for the future. Also 32bit color is GOOD (cyan !!!).

Yeah, this is my feeling. Sorry for making the thread title sound like a big loss (ZDOOM CEASES!), the original title also made reference that it's big time for GZDoom and QZDoom, in a more optimistic note, but was probably too long and was cut. A new era, dominated by Graf Zahl, is coming. I hope he doesn't burn out though.

[Graf Zahl]

Master O said:

Speaking of GZDoom, what happens if you run Doom 2 in hardware mode, but the weapons and enemies are invisible? Is that a graphics card issue?

Let me guess: You got an older ATI card, right? This is a known driver bug, but so far everybody affected by this was able to upgrade to a fixed version of the driver.

[printz]

SINCE the 8-bit renderer is a subtopic here: how problematic is it? Can ZDoom (not GZDoom) render all anchored portals that Eternity can? Or is GZDoom needed? Can QZDoom do it?

[Sayok6]

Goodbye, and thanks for all the code.

[sheridan]

Graf Zahl said:

MMX is obsolete. It has long been superseded by better means for parallel computations. The entire post you quoted shows a profound lack of knowledge. QZDoom actually uses LLVM to create special SSE2-based drawers for true color, it never uses the C compiler for that because it's indeed to slow.

The first attempt was with SSE2 intrinsics but they were not optimal.

I apologize for being misleading. I had no idea my information was so out of date. The last time I made serious attempts optimizing 32-bit software drawing, MMX was still the word of the day. Having since moved away from software rendering, it makes sense that my "knowledge" was obsoleted.

At any rate, your comment was enlightening. Thank you.

[Csonicgo]

MaxNostar said:

The Mengele of doom is gone...

I used to think like this, then I turned twelve.

Randi was one of the smartest source port coders we had, and the closest to Ken Silverman that we will ever have. I appreciate that. The fact that Randi cared enough to make this port work on ancient hardware under many configuration options such as video cards, Operating Systems, and sound setups, makes zdoom unlike any other port that will ever exist.

It still blazes on a Pentium 2, which I can't say the same for any other port out there, other than Eternity Engine, but it still uses sloowww SDL to do anything.

The sole reason you're even in the competitive scene today, and you trash the one who made it all possible?

MaxNostar said:

Ye pretty much everything is based on Zdoom. But you cant compare zdaemon based on old 1.23 with zdoom port version now.


edit. And i dont mind zdoom being so modern how it is now. There will always players which like it and some doesnt. Good example is csgo. (who play it, they will knows). Though zdoom its kinda funny. Adding some feature feels like assembling racing spoiler at car which worth less than the whole spoiler. But ye every1 has choice... Though zandronum is ruining everything... :D

Never mind.

[Graf Zahl]

printz said:

SINCE the 8-bit renderer is a subtopic here: how problematic is it? Can ZDoom (not GZDoom) render all anchored portals that Eternity can? Or is GZDoom needed? Can QZDoom do it?

The software renderer can handle wall portals fine, but it has serious issues with floor and ceiling portals because the seg clipping code was never properly finished.

The game physics part is all there because I saw little point to do one half in ZDoom and the other half in GZDoom only.

[MaxNostar]

Csonicgo said:

I used to think like this, then I turned twelve.

Ye and you are 13 now judging by your avatar... :p

[Graf Zahl]

Csonicgo said:

It still blazes on a Pentium 2,

I wonder how the more recent builds behave, since the assembly drawers have been removed in favor of using a multithreaded approach to drawing. We felt that 4K screen support was more important than such old systems.

[MaxNostar]

Ye guy talking about new features blazing on P II :o. Alright. Maps with 3D floors are pretty much unplayble in opengl even with low 4:3 resolutions on highend PCs. Though gl_texture_filter "0" in opengl is nice. :p

[Graf Zahl]

MaxNostar said:

Maps with 3D floors are pretty much unplayble in opengl even with low 4:3 resolutions on highend PCs.

That must be a strange high end PC. Can it be that it came with a piece-of-crap graphics card? Such a thing can render the best CPU worthless for gaming.

[MaxNostar]

I played zandronum, maybe zdoom is different. Also we can also different opinions on what is smooth and what doesnt...

edit: i am just dumb the problem with low fps is probably only in software not opengl. What a great discussion... :(

[blod]

Thanks Randy for fantastic years of prolonged orgasm.