Brutal Doom maintaining a fork of Freedoom

I was watching this video on SGTMarkIV's channel because I was intrigued to see Brutal Doom including support for Freedoom:

I was surprised to see the second level in the video is my old E1M3 that was removed from Freedoom almost two years ago. Moreover there appears to have been work put into the level to extend and complete it (it got removed from Freedoom because it was unfinished).

The video description implies that the Brutal Doom folks are developing/maintaining their own fork of Freedoom:

This is a simple gameplay video showing the latest build of Brutal Doom running on a modified FreeDoom that will be released together at BDv20's release. In this video you can see some new gore effects, the extra rotation sprites for zombies that John Romero released on his Twitter, and the return of the shotgun's wooden grip.

I have completed almost everything required to record the official trailer and decide the release date. Expect big news soon.

BDv20 will also be compatible with an original and unedited Freedoom wad.

First of all: completely within their rights to do this as it's written into the license. But it kind of sucks to see the project forked without any apparent effort having been made to contact us and work with us to fold their changes back into the main project.

I've left a comment on the video (SGTMarkIV does appear to at least reply to comments) but if anyone has any contacts on the Brutal Doom team it may be useful.

i wonder if some of that work could be reincorporated to freedoom? they are aiming for gzdoom/zandronum only thoug, so maybe not

Eh. As strong as my distaste was (and still remains) for "Brutal" and some things surrounding it, I find it hard to give a shit anymore if it isn't truly antagonistic.

As long as the IWAD doesn't get mixed up with any copyrighted stuff and allows backporting to Freedoom (which it damn well should), I don't see any reason not to take advantage of any improvements.

SGTMarkIV replied to my comment:

+fragglet I am no longer editing the core file. Now the "starter pack map wad" is a pwad that contains 8 edited FreeDoom maps and 22 maps made by me (maps taken from my other project Extermination Day). On the Starter Pack bundle, all these maps will be put separately inside a skins folder, and an unmodified FreeDoom iwad will be used to run it.

Folding my changes into the main project would be pretty hard, since as you can see, my edited maps relies heavily on custom textures and custom objects (so they don't clash in style with ED maps), while the FreeDoom project seems to be aiming at something more vanilla-ish.

So it sounds like this is okay - they're just using a few modified Freedoom levels to flesh out their full set of maps. It would still be nice if we could take a look at the modified maps and see if we can get some of the changes folded back into Freedoom (won't be possible with E1M3 because it no longer exists).

fraggle said:

It would still be nice if we could take a look at the modified maps and see if we can get some of the changes folded back into Freedoom (won't be possible with E1M3 because it no longer exists).

Why wouldn't it be possible? Even if it's been removed, the level can be readded. If it makes use of ZDoom stuff, it can be edited back to Boom level compatibility.

The level was unfinished for years and to be honest even with the enhancements the Brutal Doom folks have made to clean up the level I don't think it's worth keeping.

maybe the other levels have salvagable stuff

It's odd freedoom is scrambling around for levels when most mappers will turn in for any half baked community project at the drop of a hat whereas freedoom is the closest thing the community is likely to get to an official product. For the record, Freedoom I or II are welcome to use anything I made or make either unchanged or modified if there is no issue with recycling maps from other releases. I would find it cool to map directly for Freedoom also but that would have to wait until my current project is done.

fraggle said:

I was surprised to see the second level in the video is my old E1M3 that was removed from Freedoom almost two years ago.

Ah, and I wondered where this was. It's sad to read this was removed, because I actually liked that level, but -- frankly -- the new replacement is even better. ;)

If you're still looking for maps, you can use my E1M3 from Undeath '94 (there's a thread in Wads & Mods forum, somwhere...) The map is basically finished and I haven't released it yet because I'm not sure what to do with voodoo doll problem. But anyway in Boom you can just use a real working conveyor belt instead of the static thing I made, and the "exploding machinery" can probably be simulated without a voodoo doll since there's more trigger types. Anyway, I don't have time to change it for you, because I got a lot on my plate right now, but you can port it over and do whatever you feel like to it...

hex11 said:

you can use my E1M3

Can you post a link? It sounds awesome.

Catoptromancy said:

Can you post a link? It sounds awesome.

http://www.doomworld.com/vb/wads-mods/57184-undeath-94-a-new-vanilla-doom-episode-alpha-stage/

Does anyone else see the problem with his plan for the starter pack?

Mods are already in a legal gray area, especially when they contain modified (or not) copies of resources from the game, but they're given a pass because they require having the original game in the first place.

I've played Brutal doom v20 on freedoom2, and all the enemies work properly. That means he has a full copy of every single enemy sprite, modified or not, in the pk3. This means that I don't have to have a copy of Doom (or Doom 2) to play what is essentially the original game with different textures and maps.

If he didn't advertise this, this might not be a problem. But now that he plans to distribute this "starter pack" with a copy of freedoom, that means he's essentially engaging in a form of piracy.

Doctor Nick said:

This means that I don't have to have a copy of Doom (or Doom 2) to play what is essentially the original game with different textures and maps.

uh, isn't that the point of freedoom?

It was quite nice to see fraggle's E1M3 again. Despite it being unfinished I was sad to see it removed from Freedoom at the time. I'd rather have seen it improved :)

Jon said:

It was quite nice to see fraggle's E1M3 again. Despite it being unfinished I was sad to see it removed from Freedoom at the time. I'd rather have seen it improved :)

if you want i can try something in e1m3 but i thing of episode 1 has no more slots avaliable except from e1m9.

Doctor Nick said:

I've played Brutal doom v20 on freedoom2, and all the enemies work properly. That means he has a full copy of every single enemy sprite, modified or not, in the pk3.
This means that I don't have to have a copy of Doom (or Doom 2) to play what is essentially the original game with different textures and maps.

If there's a discussion to be had about this subject, this isn't the place for it. Let's let the Brutal Doom project make its own decisions, and focus on making Freedoom better.