97 Bottles of Beer on the Wall

Holy crap that sounds like a major overhaul. It looks like Doom, plays like Doom, Sounds Like Doom... but underneath there is no Doom left.

What does this floating point new jazz do for it?

unification. Why, well...... we're not exactly sure.

wait... so zdoom is no longer going to be using a different engine?so... wtf?
why do this? i agree. this seems like a major overhaul.
let the zdoomgl boys have all thier pizzaz with the engine.

Scuba Steve said:

What does this floating point new jazz do for it?

From what I am seeing..by simplifying a code. Also makes it more difficult to understand..

Eh, it's still Doom, though I suppose it depends on your definition of what Doom is, but it's not really any less Doom than jDoom or ZDoomGL is. Those don't use the original rendering engine either. You wont really notice any changes with polymost except you'll be able to look up and down without any gross y-shearing. Movement, monster behavior, and so on will remain the same.

The floating point thing, as explained in Randy's update, is more useful from a programming perspective. Players, or even wad editors, won't notice any changes, but if you regularly look at the source code or make additions, they'll be easier to put in now. The code is also a lot easier to read simply because you don't have to wade through five lines of calculations or write five lines of calculations before, as in the example, making a Lost Soul fly towards its target.

This is awesome.

Actually ZDoom is just as much "not Doom" as other ports you mentioned but for totally different reasons. Even a cursory look under the hood of Zdoom reveals that it's internals bare only a passing resemblance to the original Doom code (not a bad thing IMO).

Scuba Steve said:

It looks like Doom, plays like Doom, Sounds Like Doom... but underneath there is no Doom left.

I think the engines for which this is closest to the truth are EDGE and Vavoom. Especially with Vavoom it is hard to find any of the stuff that really defines Doom's engine.
Just by converting all the math to floating point doesn't chance the underlying algorithms and the renderer itself is just a means to display the data.

Oh yeah yeah! I'm the man, I'm superbad!

Can't wait for Polymost, but really, I was looking forward to the Strife-esque ceonversation system. I know this can be done with ACS, but a more comfortable one would be easier to use.

Wow. I don't know... the thought of looking around in Doom software mode with mlook and feeling like you're in a True 3D (TM) environment... omg!

I believe the Polymost renderer will make use of 3d acceleration, but won't require it. The cool thing is it shouldn't interfere with any of the other aspects of the engine (so editing tricks will still work), and it won't require the creation of glnodes or any other additional processing (beyond what happens in the renderer).

A Doom port that took advantage of Video Hardware and looked like Regular Doom would be the greatest breakthrough.

Will this new rendering engine make room over room easier to implement?

The change to floats and vector abstractions is excellent news.

insertwackynamehere said:

Will this new rendering engine make room over room easier to implement?

Only if it uses a z-buffer for rendering. The only real problem is that clipping these 3D-floors without one is not very robust.

Jonathan said:

The cool thing is it shouldn't interfere with any of the other aspects of the engine (so editing tricks will still work)

I wouldn't be so sure, the editing tricks (deep water, etc..) are usually the first thing to go when switching to a new 3D-friendly renderer, requiring lots of hacks in the code to emulate them. That was my experience with EDGE, and the Risen3D guys could also tell you about emulating these old tricks - it ain't fun.

The point of Polymost is to create the geometry in mostly the same way as the software renderer does but then render it as normal 3D. It's a completely different approach than polygonization with GL nodes or similar methods.

Fredrik said:

The change to floats and vector abstractions is excellent news.

No, it isnt. Now I'll have to upgrade to a 486DX! Damn you, Randy Heit!!!!

Yeah, but the floors and ceilings will still stretch
tward my position when staring at the level from the
outside, in software mode, right? :-O