Talk:Version history

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Well it seems that a lot has changed in Zdoom recently and I admit I'm a bit confused about exactly what, given that none of it (except the license, which is irrelevant to me) is documented on the wiki. I think there should be some way to find out exactly what's going on.

Technically, the truecolor renderer is the most important advance, but I have hardly the faintest idea of what was done. I know that translucency and colored lighting were already computed in truecolor, then remapped back to the palette (inelegant); I don't know why the truecolor software renderer took this long to appear - I remember GZ saying it was impossible that it would ever happen - but I do understand the physics, and know that those should be computed in linear-light space, not in RGB space as suggested by the use of 'truecolor'. Perhaps that's why ZDoom's implementation has always looked worse than Quake 2's? Without looking painfully through the source (and I really shouldn't have to for that question), I would not know.

But other than that the big things (and the ones GZ seemed to care about) are the change to GPL and the developement of ZScript. The former means no more to level designers than it does to players, as they don't generally do anything to the source code, and indeed the point of ZDoom's modding capabilities is that they don't have to. That's the way a game engine should be - to designers and players, it may as well be closed source. GPL technically allows for 'commercial use', but the original Doom resources are still not allowed for such, and I've never been sure of exactly how that works because the GPL is complicated. As far as ZScript, I can't believe it will make much difference either, especially before it's properly documented - most maps even today don't use any non-vanilla features on purpose, or rarely do so, and it's hard to believe many designers will even want to tackle things that couldn't be done before.

If anyone remembers my previous argument, the type of 'commercial use' I care about is the ability to sell mods/levels directly, and it's not clear that the GPL should permit that - of course, you're allowed to charge money, but if you can't enforce copyright, as is true on the program itself, it's a nullity - even if they're entirely new content (and how many things in the Doom community are going to be entirely new content?). I again use the unsurpassed KDiZD as an example; it was worth to me more the the great majority of commercial games would be, and the team had a sufficient reputation that they should have been able to sell it, and if so (importantly to me) we may have seen it completed to a full three episodes, as Doom was always meant to be.

Finally the truecolor doesn't actually seem to work on my system (no warnings are given, but various effects' appearance shows the palette is still being used), the only differences I can see (regardless of TC on/off) are that the game now slows seemingly at random - Zdoom has always had this problem that the framerate, instead of smoothly falling off, instead abruptly goes to 'slideshow', and this is why Planisphere 2 is unplayable on it though it's fine (but slow) in PrBoom+ (both software rendered) - and I can now look up so far the sky tiles (or just stops, if so set) instead of stretching like it used to (horrible!). This latter is also not documented.

Andrew Usher

  • You might want to read this forum announcement for an explanation of why you can't access your account. https://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?f=48&t=55791 Because editing a major page doesn't really strike me as the appropriate way to contact administration. --WildWeasel (talk) 19:02, 28 May 2017 (CDT)
    • Well, that's absurd, aside from the fact that the forum didn't tell me what was going on. I have never heard of any public forum such as ours having any issue with 'inactivity' of non-admin accounts, and can't imagine how it could be. I certainly never classed myself as 'inactive' - are we really expected to be posting just to be 'active'? Less than _3 months_ of 'inactivity' and one has to beg for one's account back? It won't let me just re-activate through normal methods, nor create a new account, even though my IP has a good history for this purpose. I just can't believe it!
And if the new version of Zdoom doesn't work right on my computer, even though it should (according to all I can find out) that's something that you should want reported, not blocked because of some silly 'security' measure. Koverhbarc (talk) 21:36, 28 May 2017 (CDT)

No, "inactive" in this case means "haven't logged in since January 1, 2017" - not "hasn't posted in 4 years." I've activated your account again (you should have gotten an email prompting you to reset your password, or something to that effect), but please understand that your attitude almost made me not want to. Just tread lightly, is all I ask. --WildWeasel (talk) 22:00, 28 May 2017 (CDT)

  • OK, but I never would log in except to post; I've been there to read frequently. Will I have to log in regularly now to avoid my account being nuked again? Koverhbarc (talk) 14:10, 29 May 2017 (CDT)
Other issues resolved for now, and deleted here.