Did "The shores of ZDoom" authors lose interest?

[Gez]

I must be in a minority about that, but episode 2 is my favorite of the four. I loved its "corrupted base" atmosphere which has become even more of a staple than the "damaged base" aesthetic of episode 1.

[kb1]

On 8/3/2017 at 11:16 AM, esselfortium said:

KDiKDiZD isn't happening unless it gets restarted from scratch someday. It's old, old, old stuff, full of awkward and incomplete aspects that would take a lot of work to fix and finish, and my whole mindset for mapping is so different than it was a decade ago that I'd want to change nearly everything about it.

I get it, but I'm sad about that. I was real interested to see what you had come up with, even just the stuff you had already described. You had shown either completely new technology, or, at least, obscure techniques for vanilla, which is always fascinating. Hope you change your mind one day...

[Death Egg]

TBH I just want a proper KDIZD upgrade first,  it has so many issues that need addressing, not the least of which is broken multiplayer.

[Pirx]

23 hours ago, Gez said:

I must be in a minority about that, but episode 2 is my favorite of the four. I loved its "corrupted base" atmosphere which has become even more of a staple than the "damaged base" aesthetic of episode 1.

 

It seems we have several fans of this look.  It combines the aesthetics of ep.1 and ep.3 after all so there's a lot of variety. And suspense,if one didn't know already why there are those strange artifacts around  :)

Edited August 11, 2017 by Pirx
:)

[Xfing]

Well I personally have been looking forward to TSoZD. KDIZD had some really cool aspects to it. 

Also, while I do understand that ZDoom is dead, what more new features do newer source ports have that would discourage people for mapping for ZDoom? It's not like most megawads out there even have sloped surfaces, let alone all the other stuff that KDIZD had. For the most part it's just vanilla DOOM mechanics, only with some limit removal.

[Traysandor]

3 hours ago, Xfing said:

Well I personally have been looking forward to TSoZD. KDIZD had some really cool aspects to it. 

Also, while I do understand that ZDoom is dead, what more new features do newer source ports have that would discourage people for mapping for ZDoom? It's not like most megawads out there even have sloped surfaces, let alone all the other stuff that KDIZD had. For the most part it's just vanilla DOOM mechanics, only with some limit removal.

I'm guessing probably because of all the coding and scripting shenanigans, besides just banging out some maps using (Insert Doom map builder here). Plus the more people that work on a project, there's always potential for issues to arise in varous forms. Since Episode 1 was more than just putting a fresh coat of paint and calling it a day. IIRC, a lot of maps were rebuilt from the ground up... though I'd have to replay the original since it's been years.

 

I still think though if the project would probably need to shift to QZ/GZDoom to see any major new (re)development.

[NuclearPotato]

It's not as if the maps aren't suddenly going to break in ZDoom or anything; QZ/GZDoom are practically the same engine, just with more stuff.  At most, the maps would just need some adjustment to look better in GL settings; all the ACS/DECORATE code would work with little to no issues.

[Xfing]

I know what GZDoom is. It for example can run Doom Expanded and regular ZDoom can't. But on the other hand, GZDoom is also super poorly optimized and takes much more resources that it has any business taking. Maybe I should check out QZDoom then :D

[Gez]

11 minutes ago, Xfing said:

But on the other hand, GZDoom is also super poorly optimized and takes much more resources that it has any business taking.

Heh.

[Xfing]

1 minute ago, Gez said:

Heh.

Or at least it was back with the version I used last. That was a while ago, things might have changed.

Edited October 6, 2017 by Xfing

[KevvyLava]

For anyone interested, I am working on a GZDoom version of The Shores of Hell, but the goal is to keep it mostly like the original, but with some fun extra secrets and making use of custom linedefs and a few other ideas.  I recently made a remake of Knee-Deep In the Dead using some modern ZDoom features that attempted to keep most of the levels intact, but added monsters from Doom 2 (and the Super Shotgun) in addition to refining some of the levels to make it so you have to really explore the entire level in order to collect keys, throw switches, etc. in order to beat it.  Also, when backtracking, you will have to fight new monsters that sneak up on you.

 

"Knee-Deep In the Dead v2.0" garnered good-to-solid reviews from the people that played it.  But the reason that I'm posting in this thread is because I'm part of the way through The Shores of Hell and I think it's turning out well despite (in my opinion) the levels in TSOH being not quite as good as KDITD.  The purpose is to make it feel like the original with a few new additions...sort of like a DX version.

 

Here's a link to KDITD2 and to the sample level from TSOH2:

 

http://www.mediafire.com/file/65p3f33m4p8mt1n/KDITD2.zip [MAP01 - MAP08]

 

- GZDoom only (PrBoom+ will not work because of Legacy-style 3D floors]

- Add both wads

- Mouse look required to shoot a few switches, but generally not required overall...jury is still out on how I want that to go

 

Because I don't know how to add Doom1tex.wad textures into these wads, you have to load both when loading the game.  Here's a link to the Shores of Hell thread that has the download for everything so far.  For those that just want to try one level out to get a feel for what I did: http://www.mediafire.com/file/wqe55fv14ml9bg6/deimosanomaly.zip

 

 

[Bauul]

I slightly suspect that part of the motivation of KDiZD was simply to push ZDoom to it's limits.  It was as much a tech demo as a full episode.

 

But over the years the fascination with "OMG have you seen this cool new ZDoom feature??" has kind of died away.  We're all pretty use to what (G)ZDoom can do now.  In fact it's so powerful people can make releases that barely even look like Doom any more.

 

So there isn't really the motivation to add features for feature's sake, and without that, the whole premise of the WAD kind of loses it's appeal to spend hundreds of hours on.

[Xfing]

6 hours ago, Bauul said:

I slightly suspect that part of the motivation of KDiZD was simply to push ZDoom to it's limits.  It was as much a tech demo as a full episode.

 

But over the years the fascination with "OMG have you seen this cool new ZDoom feature??" has kind of died away.  We're all pretty use to what (G)ZDoom can do now.  In fact it's so powerful people can make releases that barely even look like Doom any more.

 

So there isn't really the motivation to add features for feature's sake, and without that, the whole premise of the WAD kind of loses it's appeal to spend hundreds of hours on.

That's definitely a good point. I did enjoy KDiZD because original Doom and Doom 2 have an atmosphere and plot gravity (a feeling of canonicity if you will) that I haven't been able to find with any other WAD. Not sure if nostalgia's at play, since I started playing Doom relatively late, but I definitely enjoy the shit outta the original designers' styles. But I'm probably even more stoked for UDTWiD than I'm for TSoZD, and the former isn't even a ZDoom specific WAD.