ZDaemon turns 109 today

After decades of excruciating anticipation, ZDaemon 1.09 is now available as a public beta. Besides a plethora of bugfixes and netcode improvements, the port now sports an enticing new set of features that both oldschool and newschool players should enjoy:

• New "Picture-In-Picture" feature when spectating duels.
  
• Playback controls while watching demos (like rewind and fast forward).
  
• New "double domination" mode.
  
• Team radar that shows the position of teammates.
  
• Built-in railgun, zooming, and an instagib mode.
  
• Customizable font system, offering improved readability of in-game messages.
  
• Improved unlagged.
  
• Much smoother movement for higher ping players.
  
• Clients can customize the number of incoming packets.
  
• Tons of coop fixes that will make the mode much more enjoyable!
  
• Greatly improved Heretic support.
  
• Increased playerlimit from 16 to 50.
  
• Working polyobjects.
  
• Much improved wine support (linux) for the launcher and ZRC.
  
• Several new DMFLAGS for improved fidelity to doom2.exe.
  
• Improved team balancing (yay).
  
• A new update mechanism in the launcher.

The development team suspects that several more beta releases will still be needed before the permanent transition from 1.08 to 1.09 can occur, but at least players can finally take 1.09 for a test drive. You can download and discuss it here, report bugs here, or take a peek at the changelog if you're curious about everything that's been implemented.

Finally. :) Thanks for the news, and thanks ZDaemon team!

Fifty players on one map? Holy shit, that would be a level beyond insane.

ohhhhhh wow. I want to see 50 players on a map from sunder.

50 players on Entryway... Damn...

I pretty much spent all day playing. I don't think I saw a server with more than 20 players in it at once, but we played some sizable games of Double Domination and Perdition's Gate on Coop, and it was a blast. Didn't notice any lag, bugs, or anything the whole day, which is awesome.

I remember how nice Zdaemon was on dial-up and I hope that hasn't changed... going to try this soon.

Csonicgo said:

I remember how nice Zdaemon was on dial-up and I hope that hasn't changed... going to try this soon.

you might want to lower your update rate in player setup

Is the source code available, or a Linux binary?

might be worth trying out :)

ducon said:

Is the source code available, or a Linux binary?

No and no.

Gotta say, picture in picture is a pretty cool feature that I'm glad to finally see in an engine.

ducon said:

Is the source code available, or a Linux binary?

I always do a real-life trollface when I see this because such a thing will never happen. Pretty much the same with Skulltag.

The ST devs are at least considering going open source after some issues are addressed, and a somewhat not-too-antiquated version was opened some times ago.

I don't expect ZDaemon doing the same.

Marnetmar said:

Fifty players on one map? Holy shit, that would be a level beyond insane.

Wouldn't it be, well, congested? Both by network throughput and by how players will feel: always someone stepping on the ammo you want to take, always someone going to shoot you, always a target in front.

Double Domination mode is a welcome addition.

It depends on how spacious and stocked the maps are, printz. Small maps will choke on that many players but there are huge maps out which could accommodate such a number.

TheCupboard said:

It depends on how spacious and stocked the maps are, printz. Small maps will choke on that many players but there are huge maps out which could accommodate such a number.

What you are talking about is a new generation of dooming. Map styles may be changed or expanded and Doom will once again have its glory day!

Or maybe you're just nuts.

For people who tried both, how is the netcode in ZDaemon compared to Skulltag?

Wow, there are more than 50 people who play ZD??!

Thank you. I'll be here all week.

j/k. Great news, can't wait to try it out!

Ralphis said:

No and no.

OK thanks bye.
Even if I try to compile it for ZD?

ducon said:

OK thanks bye.
Even if I try to compile it for ZD?

As in, will they give you the source to put together a package? I highly doubt that is going to happen judging from their response to these requests on their forums over the past few years. Besides, it isn't like they don't have in-house guys who could build such packages.

I have heard that new features in ZD 1.09 will make it very difficult or impossible for native OSX/Linux clients anyway, but I forget where I read it and also don't know if there is any truth behind it

50 player cooperative on Scythe 2. Let's make this happen.

And yet and yet and yet it's still based on a decade-old ZDoom build.

So is ZDoom.

That doesn't really make sense.

The ports had a split a decade ago. Doesn't make any difference. They still being worked on but in different directions. Zdoom itself is if I am not mistaken based on a 13 year old Dosdoom build.

Trasher][ said:
And yet and yet and yet it's still based on a decade-old ZDoom build.

following zdoom development means giving up on backwards compatability, one of the major differences between zdaemon and skulltag.

kristus said:

Zdoom itself is if I am not mistaken based on a 13 year old Dosdoom build.

You are mistaken, actually. It's based on NTDOOM and ATB Doom.

That's a shame. Had it been Dosdoom, it would've driven home my point a lot better. :p