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Death Egg

More source port subforums?

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It's cool that Eternity has its own little subforum on this site, it opens a lot more discussion on potential features and contributions without having to stick to one topic at a time. Why not give some other source ports subforums too? Obviously not all of them need one, Q/GZDoom, Zandronum, Doomsday, etc. already have their own independent forums. But Legacy lost its own when New Doom shuttered it's doors, and Doom Retro, ReMood, and a few others could benefit from having dedicated subforums, with permission of port authors, of course.

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No offense to the port, but I'm not sure why Eternity has a subforum at this time. Considering it was created in 2002, as well as the Github page that exists now, I say it's worth discussing options there, too. I would suggest changing the hierarchy so that it's a subforum to Source Ports, as that might attract more attention to it.

 

In general I think stickied threads are enough. The port maintainer can start the thread and then keep the opening post up-to-date. If maintainers change, that's probably enough reason to start a new thread anyway.

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A subforum makes sense if there's enough traffic. But with all due respect to the ports being discussed here, there's just not enough to justify an entire subforum.


Even for Eternity, which got its own forum, just have a look at how freqently people post there  - and that is for a port that has advanced features and should normally attract people who have questions about it.

 

(OTOH, going into the Eternity forum and clicking the links in the "Eternity Links" topic gives a deadly impression on the port: Aside from the Wiki link, everything is dead. How on earth is it supposed to attract new users if the first thing people click on gives 404, and not just one link, but most of them. In my opinion Eternity would be better served by a dedicated and properly maintained web site with its own forum anyway to enhance visibility.)

 

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Moving the "special interests" to be subforum of their general purpose forums could make sense. While Eternity -> Source Ports and Freedoom -> WADs & Mods are easy enough; I'm not sure about the other two. Perhaps Speed Demos -> Multiplayer (I mean it's a form of competitive play) and Creative Works -> Everything Else? Or perhaps they could stay Special Interests.

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The wishlist for Eternity just keeps getting bigger - and even just any one of those could greatly enhance the port's popularity.

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1 hour ago, Rachael said:

The wishlist for Eternity just keeps getting bigger - and even just any one of those could greatly enhance the port's popularity.

While there are still some major features in waiting, the wishlist of major features is quite a bit smaller today than it had been in the past, what with the semi-recent completion of portal clipping, UDMF support, edge portals, and so on.

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Oh, I definitely won't disagree there, those are really some pretty cool features. But honestly it feels like a few of the key ones are hurting what could be a much greater popularity for that port - that, given the work that has been put into it, I think it really deserves.

 

Right now, if I wasn't more occupied as I am with G/QZDoom and 3DGE, I would probably put a little work into that port - perhaps at the very least, giving it a true-color renderer. I know some people would disagree with me that Eternity needs one - but, preferences. ;)

 

 

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On 2017-03-18 at 2:43 PM, Death Egg said:

It's cool that Eternity has its own little subforum on this site, it opens a lot more discussion on potential features and contributions without having to stick to one topic at a time. Why not give some other source ports subforums too? Obviously not all of them need one, Q/GZDoom, Zandronum, Doomsday, etc. already have their own independent forums. But Legacy lost its own when New Doom shuttered it's doors, and Doom Retro, ReMood, and a few others could benefit from having dedicated subforums, with permission of port authors, of course.

ReMood? Troll thread. Hardly anybody plays those ports, what's the point other than forum clutter?

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I think the source ports subforum moves slowly enough that splitting it up further would be detrimental.

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58 minutes ago, Rachael said:

Oh, I definitely won't disagree there, those are really some pretty cool features. But honestly it feels like a few of the key ones are hurting what could be a much greater popularity for that port - that, given the work that has been put into it, I think it really deserves.

 

Right now, if I wasn't more occupied as I am with G/QZDoom and 3DGE, I would probably put a little work into that port - perhaps at the very least, giving it a true-color renderer. I know some people would disagree with me that Eternity needs one - but, preferences. ;)

I can't disagree there! Though I tend to prefer 8-bit software mode for playing most Doom stuff, I'd definitely be interested in seeing true-color and GL rendering in EE for the potential it'd bring for modding and level design.

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I hate the trend of maintaining overly long threads like it happens with Chocolate-Doom, PrBoom+ and newer ports. I prefer having a full forum like the Eternity forum, where every single issue has its own topic. Easier to manage and ideas don't get lost in the pile. Alternatively, keep using a common "Ports" forum, but allow tagging each thread with the source port it talks about.

 

Part of the problem with EE's dead links is that I don't do everything on Eternity. I maintain only the technical part: I write code to implement to-do stuff, and document it in the wiki. I don't release new versions, I don't maintain home pages and I don't moderate the forum. Doing the first two would usurp what the port creator who came with the Eternity name (Quasar, not me) should do, and the third (managing a forum) is out of my interest.

48 minutes ago, Rachael said:

Right now, if I wasn't more occupied as I am with G/QZDoom and 3DGE, I would probably put a little work into that port - perhaps at the very least, giving it a true-color renderer. I know some people would disagree with me that Eternity needs one - but, preferences. ;)

Thanks. Preferably (as far as I'm concerned) such a renderer would work as an extension of the 256-colour renderer, similar to how uncapped framerate is a seamless extension of the vanilla 35-fps display.

 

3 hours ago, Gez said:

Perhaps Speed Demos -> Multiplayer

That makes little sense. Demos and multiplayer are orthogonal and shouldn't be subordinate to any of the other.

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10 minutes ago, printz said:

Thanks. Preferably (as far as I'm concerned) such a renderer would work as an extension of the 256-colour renderer, similar to how uncapped framerate is a seamless extension of the vanilla 35-fps display.

Yes - that's how it would be implemented. I would add in a cvar that swaps back and forth between it. How I actually go about it would really depend on how the framebuffer is implemented, though - and I have not even looked at that code, yet, so I have no idea how you guys have handled it.

 

It's on my to-do list - but I need to finish other stuff first and I have no idea if/when I will get to it. But I definitely have the desire to do it, and to hopefully see it through as well.

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40 minutes ago, printz said:

Preferably (as far as I'm concerned) such a renderer would work as an extension of the 256-colour renderer, similar to how uncapped framerate is a seamless extension of the vanilla 35-fps display.

The ability to force a certain renderer in a mod would be very OK (for an oppressive anti-freedom developer, ofc).

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I like the dedicated source port stickied threads. There isn't enough activity to justify a subforum IMO.

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Rather, for all of the forums that are separate (GZDoom, 3DGE, etc), set up a one-click redirect thread or category. That way, people can easily find them and it doesn't have to fall on the DW admins to maintain, since they would redirect to their own forum hosts.

 

Just an idea. =)

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I guess the reason other ports don't have their own sub forums is they haven't asked for them. Doom legacy is an interesting case since the new doom forums were quite busy; but that community probably no longer exists.

 

The EE subforum should be reparented under this one imho, I regularly forget that it exists.

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To be fair, I don't think there's enough Doomworld-specific interest in QZDoom to ask for my own subforum, anyways. Combine that with the fact that QZDoom has already been merged into GZDoom (devbuilds only, right now, though, not officially released) and, until QZDoom gets another major new feature that GZDoom doesn't have, I don't see much reason to maintain official releases beyond 1.3.x, so having my own subforum would be even more pointless.

 

Right now, the devbuilds of QZDoom only do three things that GZDoom does not do: Faster devbuild cycle, an experimental player flag that turns players into monsters (NPC's), and a menu blur that is customizable with mods. The latter two are already in pull requests for GZDoom but don't receive much attention.

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44 minutes ago, Rachael said:

Right now, the devbuilds of QZDoom only do three things that GZDoom does not do: Faster devbuild cycle, an experimental player flag that turns players into monsters (NPC's), and a menu blur that is customizable with mods. The latter two are already in pull requests for GZDoom but don't receive much attention.

Don't worry, I haven't forgotten about those. ;)

 

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That is nice to hear, but it's the lack of community involvement with those that worries me more. It's like there's no interest in those features at all. And if that's the case I'd rather not waste my time with them.

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2 hours ago, Rachael said:

Combine that with the fact that QZDoom has already been merged into GZDoom (devbuilds only, right now, though, not officially released) and, until QZDoom gets another major new feature that GZDoom doesn't have, I don't see much reason to maintain official releases beyond 1.3.x, so having my own subforum would be even more pointless.

Does this mean that GZDoom will support software rendering, or that software rendering will be disappearing from the *ZDoom world of source ports? I hope not... that would kinda force me to change over to prBoom.

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GZDoom already supports software rendering. In the next major feature release (post-2.4.x) it will be getting an upgrade by merging in QZDoom's.

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Well I figured QZDoom wouldn't because it already has both the ZDoom forums and DRDTeam forums. I was speaking more for obscure ports that don't have dedicated forums anywhere on the net.

Edited by Death Egg

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5 hours ago, Rachael said:

That is nice to hear, but it's the lack of community involvement with those that worries me more. It's like there's no interest in those features at all. And if that's the case I'd rather not waste my time with them.

 

What do you expect? They flew pretty much under the radar for people to see.

 

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Taking ideas from this thread so far, I think the best way to set things up would be to put Eternity under Source Ports, add links to other source port forums, and, possibly, make new subforums for any source port author who wishes for one and has enough reason to exist. I could easily see it looking like this:

 

Source Ports

  > Old Eternity subforum

  > New forums follow, however many there are if any

  > ZDoom Forums link

  > Zandronum Forums link

  > ZDaemon Forums link

  > Odamex Forums link

  > 3DGE Forums link

  > Doomsday Forums link

  > Any other forum I'm forgetting

 

Another idea: since at least one source port forum is a hub for multiple ports (ZDoom forums is for ZDoom, GZDoom, and QZDoom) maybe other new source port forums could do the same? I easily could see Chocolate Doom and Crispy Doom sharing a sub forum.

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On 19.3.2017 at 6:01 PM, Graf Zahl said:

In my opinion Eternity would be better served by a dedicated and properly maintained web site with its own forum anyway to enhance visibility.

 

I think this might actually hurt Eternity. As you said the forum has little traffic, and if it's on a different site people might not bother to read it, let alone registering to post there. I know I probably wouldn't (but then I rarely post on the DW forums nowadays, either).

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I totally understand Graf's point here, but find myself in agreement with boris. Maybe in future Eternity could have its own forum, but at the moment it doesn't have enough traction to justify it. Totally putting the forum out of view of those on Doomworld, and requiring new accounts to be created, would likely result in a totally dead forum.

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You have to start somewhere to get some traction. Yes, it may be painful at the start and it may be slow, but the current way is clearly not working - I don't think this point even needs to be discussed.

As it is now with a low (make that extremely low!) traffic sub-forum here Eternity got basically no visibility whatsoever. How many people are posting there? It might be around 10 - all the usual suspects (i.e. Eternity devs, some people involved in other ports plus Mordeth and Esselfortium.)

 

All things combined that can pretty much be summed up as 'you have no traffic', despite being on a supposedly high-traffic site as Doomworld.

 

As for the 'why', my suspicion is that this single forum really does not feel that inviting as the place to hang out for discussing Eternity matters.

It gives the impression of a developers' forum mainly so regular guys interested in your engine may immediately be put off.

 

 

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Eternity could certainly use a new website but running a separate forum would seem like a backwards step for two reasons: many people will not bother to register for Yet Another Forum; maintaining it would be a distraction from coding the port itself.

 

i think the placement of the sub forum under special interest effectively buries it and explains its low use.

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Doesn't Eternity have its forum hosted here simply because of historical reasons? It started as a Doomworld-hosted TC project, then just a Doomworld-hosted source port. It was fitting to have a Doomworld forum for its Doomworld homepage. Otherwise then I guess I wouldn't totally mind being able to post [ETERNITY]-tagged threads on "Source Ports". But I also like having a dedicated forum like now… both when I was a fan and now when I have developer access.

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The issue isn't whether you have a dedicated forum, it's the visibility of that forum. Would it fare better as a sub-forum of "Source Ports" rather than "Special Interest"?

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