Intellectual debts

6 hours ago, Altazimuth said:

Even beyond that, I'd call *ZDoom's grabbing of any an all features that make any other port unique, as well as the mods specifically targeted at those ports, at the least reckless and at the most disrespectful.

Oh for fuck's sake. Seriously?

 

At least your cards are finally on the table. This is what it's been all about from the very beginning. "BOO HOO ZDoom took a feature from us that was so special!"

 

I've been very supportive of Eternity and had a very strong desire for it to grow, but that does not give Eternity devs the right to dictate what other source ports can and can't do. That is at the very least, really fucked up.

 

Also, while we're at it: Dark Pulse does not represent the GZDoom team, and while I cannot deny bias in that I think most of what he is posting is right, he is not directly associated with us in the way that you so flagrantly (and without proof) accused him of. Are we going to have a witch hunt for GZDoom developers now that GZDoom didn't do EXACTLY what your spoiled precious ass wanted? Tie me up at the fucking stake then. Guilty as charged. I am one of said witches.

 

There was no need for any of this Altazimuth - YOU started this shit, because your precious little ego was hurt. Instead of investing time into features that make Eternity a real solid and attractive alternative for GZDoom (I'll have to note here that the software renderer is slow as shit on it, for complex maps), you're sitting here crying over 44-month old spilled milk. If it helps you any I'll give you a sympathy download for your latest release. Congrats numbers?

19 minutes ago, Rachael said:

At least your cards are finally on the table. This is what it's been all about from the very beginning. "BOO HOO ZDoom took a feature from us that was so special!"

 

This might be @Altazimuth's take (I'll let them clarify/rebut/defend/whatever themselves) but it's not everyone's take. So this is not what this has been about from the very beginning.

 

I like to think that in the Light Timeline things worked out very differently and SoM is a valued GZDoom contributor.

42 minutes ago, Jon said:

I like to think that in the Light Timeline things worked out very differently and SoM is a valued GZDoom contributor.

Unfortunately I don't participate in this idol worship that is extremely rampant in this section of the Doom community (seriously, could you guys suck up to a select few people ANY harder - including SoM? - makes me want to throw up how much some people here kiss people's asses) - so sad day for you.

 

If he wants that kind of credit maybe he should start making pull requests. Otherwise, he gets treated the same as any other contributor.

This thread is turning into a clusterfuck and I'm not a moderator to act upon it, and I'll probably sound to some like blaming the victim and excusing the attacker, but I'm really tired of these pointless scandals which only result in showing Eternity as a whiny port. Here's how I see it:

1. Eternity developers (of that time) spent awhile writing linked portals. But eventually they stalled A LOT. This gave GZDoom ample time to add them, at popular demand, combined with users' dissatisfaction that Eternity's linked portals became widely advertised WITHOUT being fully functional. The fact that ZDoom wasn't GPL at that time gave the Eternity fans ammo to blame GZDoom for being incorrect. But hey: now it's GPL3. You can copy away!
2. Any import of Eternity's innovations (like, say 3DMIDTEX or DynaSegs!) into ZDoom is equivalent to how commercial gadgets tend to look alike, except without patents to attempt to monopolize something, and all free to copy. If something's good, it's going to be adopted by everyone interested.
3. I'm pretty confident that GZDoom developers aren't eyeing everything we add to Eternity and copying it immediately, unless it makes sense for them. Equally if GZDoom adds something cool which can be reasonably added to Eternity, I'll add it as a proposed feature. In any case, it all depends on how prolific each of us are and how fast we can attract users. I see a bunch of mappers on Eternity's Discord reporting all sorts of difficult bugs (so it means we do have some active Eternity users), I hope I'll fix them :)
4. Not crediting someone may be a valid problem, but now since you're free to copy code, please at least mention the author(s) or the port itself if you add some feature you learned about from EE :)
5. I have a clear view what I want of Eternity: a vanilla-rooted feature port where I want to preserve details. I want to have it work both as a feature port and as a Choco/Doom+/PrBoom+ replacement. I'm pretty sure GZDoom does NOT want this kind of fidelity to legacy stuff. For example I'm really slow to release Heretic support because there are lots of vanilla kinks to emulate. And you can't stop me from seeking this (if other Eternity devs disagree, I'll fork off).

Have fun and keep developing cool stuff.

Eternity is a really cool and awesome port, and I love it to pieces. I have always felt this way, and I always will. It has WELL earned its place in the Doom stratosphere, and has done so for a very long time.

 

But I cannot abide SoM, Quasar, and Altazimuth's actions - which pretty much amount to diminishing the work that Graf put into implementing a "clean-room" version of the feature all for the sake of their own ego-stroking, trying to take undue credit for it, when it is not even the same as Eternity's by nature. In fact, an Eternity map with portals requires tweaks before it even works in GZDoom (such as building sectors behind the portal linedefs). Are some very basic concepts the same? Sure. But when you look at the forest past the trees, in the end Graf really just piggy-backed on the work that ZZYZX originally did, anyhow. He was the one who originally got portals into ZDoom in the first place. Fact is fact: A portal-laden map from Eternity just won't run on GZDoom - even if you use no custom monsters or EDF tweaks - even if you tweak GZDoom's translator enough to be able to read it in the first place.

 

It's a shame that it keeps getting dragged by its own authors into messes like this. Honestly - I think if the maintainers really cared about the port, they'd put in features like optional OpenGL rendering (which GLBoom+ already has - how behind the times are you??!!!) and easier console commands that don't feel so hacky - so that it stands as a viable opponent (and a good alternative) to GZDoom. Oh - and while we're at it - make it easier to contribute to by removing the SDL dependency (maybe others too?) - because I've wanted to write features for Eternity also, but I can't even compile the damn thing.

 

Again - I love Eternity itself - but this fuckery from certain members of their team is not doing it any justice.

Edited August 23, 2019 by Rachael

1 hour ago, Rachael said:

I am very disappointed with how this is being handled - especially by everyone involved in the later parts of it. You all should know better by now, and this constant rip-and-tearing at each other's necks is not doing anything productive.

Please, for the love of this game and the source port, DON'T hit the "Submit" button when you are upset!

https://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=56853&sid=7ca31b12c2efd09d05a7f9f73c7ed9b0&start=60#p1003874

I'd have figured the person who said the above would be above name-calling and direct insults. You tell me but to my eyes your post quoting me seems pretty upset.

7 minutes ago, Rachael said:

they'd put in features like optional OpenGL rendering (which GLBoom+ already has - how behind the times are you??!!!) 

And this is where you can't urge me what to do on Eternity. I don't even like how GLBoom looks like. I like more QZDoom's rendering. 

9 minutes ago, Altazimuth said:

I'd have figured the person who said the above would be above name-calling and direct insults. You tell me but to my eyes your post quoting me seems pretty upset.

You're god damn right I am upset.

 

And yes, I can and will make an exception: You have been attacking and haranguing Graf unfairly over this issue merely for your own personal interest and for spectacle. Just for nothing more than brownie points. Yes, I have seen how people who attack Graf are catapulted into instant popularity here. So, you just couldn't resist joining in on the fun - could you? Congratulations. Now you're popular. You've had your fun now.

 

So Graf solved it by doing exactly what you guys do in Eternity: stuffed a general attribution in a readme file that no one is going to read anyway. They say - be the change you want to be. You could start by putting "// This line was made by soandso." on every line of code so that we know exactly who did it. "git blame" is really helpful with that. Too much? You're right - that is unreasonable. Maybe it's better to just let sleeping dogs lie, instead.

18 minutes ago, Rachael said:

and easier console commands that don't feel so hacky - so that it stands as a viable opponent (and a good alternative) to GZDoom. Oh - and while we're at it - make it easier to contribute to by removing the SDL dependency (maybe others too?) - because I've wanted to write features for Eternity also, but I can't even compile the damn thing.

Just to answer your other points:

• The console is already for technical stuff. The first thing it needs is completing its documentation on the wiki, so that even I can learn its intricacies and find out where it's too hacky to be usable.
• Are you on Windows? Did you try the steps in the Readme to enable SDL linking to Visual Studio? Did they fail? Personally I'd rather have the project automatically download SDL if it's missing, rather than send the user in all directions to download and set it up... 

7 minutes ago, printz said:

And this is where you can't urge me what to do on Eternity. I don't even like how GLBoom looks like. I like more QZDoom's rendering. 

Fine. It's still better than having only one option for a paletted software renderer. But the reason why I think you guys need OpenGL is mostly because some maps run really slowly on Eternity. Could be my weak CPU, but having a little bit of extra speed would help things a lot.
 

2 minutes ago, printz said:

• Are you on Windows? Did you try the steps in the Readme to enable SDL linking to Visual Studio? Did they fail? Personally I'd rather have the project automatically download SDL if it's missing, rather than send the user in all directions to download and set it up... 

Yes - I am. As far as I remember I did try the steps, I don't remember what failed exactly, it's been a long time.

Portals have existed in video games for a long while. Let's not even talk about those who use them as a gimmick, like Prey or Portal: it's how the entire engine works in some games contemporary to Doom (Build engine (Duke Nukem 3D, Blood, Shadow Warrior, etc.) is a portal renderer, Jedi engine (Dark Forces, Outlaw) is a portal renderer, Marathon uses a portal renderer, etc. In such a system, every single two-sided line is a portal. The Doom engine is kind of the exception, really, what with its BSP, everyone else was using portals.

 

Portals in ZDoom have existed for a while, but limited to floors/ceilings. They were called "stacked sectors" and also used for skyboxes. There were also mirrors, which were a limited implementation of the same concept behind portals (render a scene, with correct persective, on a line), and were available on walls. True wall portals were brought by a third-party contribution. The whole thing matured for two years.

2 hours ago, Rachael said:

I've been very supportive of Eternity and had a very strong desire for it to grow, but that does not give Eternity devs the right to dictate what other source ports can and can't do. That is at the very least, really fucked up.

Same post:

2 hours ago, Rachael said:

I'll have to note here that the software renderer is slow as shit on it, for complex maps

Doesn't being supportive of a project usually require providing constructive criticism? This looks more like the words of a toxic fan to me.

29 minutes ago, Rachael said:

I think if the maintainers really cared about the port, they'd put in features like optional OpenGL rendering (which GLBoom+ already has - how behind the times are you??!!!)

So me asking for three lines of attribution—that I already supplied in a pull request—is dictating and "really fucked up," but you trying to use guilt to manipulate me into adding OpenGL by implying I don't care about the source port I've worked on for half a decade isn't?

Frankly I don't see how it's fair to bring up a port's (with only two developers, both of whom are very busy) of lagging behind when I'm primarily here to resolve a licencing issue. Honestly it's just plain direspectful to mention something that completely irrelevant to the topic, directly criticising the port in an unhelpful way whilst indirectly insulting myself, printz, and any other Team Eternity members past or present.

10 hours ago, Altazimuth said:

After much gnashing of teeth it's been addressed, and not the the extent I'd have liked. I question the massive resistance to this in the first place. "I didn't steal code and also what I did was legal" isn't a normal response.

You not liking how it's been addressed is meaningless though. Decisions are going to be full of things like that that some people simply don't like. When you contribute to a project, while you own the code itself, it's up to the project maintainer to decide how to use that code, how credit will be handed out, and so forth. This is something that usually gets negotiated between owner and contributor; if the contributer is not satisfied with the terms of credit/use/whatever, they are free to pull their code.

 

Graf's response in the code is also totally normal, IMO. Again, he knew that this would cause some people to get irritated, he headed it off in a code comment. Or at least, he thought he did, but it seems not as well as he thought, though the arguments of three years ago differ somewhat from the arguments you're doing now.

 

10 hours ago, Altazimuth said:

Even beyond that, I'd call *ZDoom's grabbing of any an all features that make any other port unique, as well as the mods specifically targeted at those ports, at the least reckless and at the most disrespectful.

Really now? So what next? Should the authors of Boom get pissed off when other source ports begin adopting its features? Did they string up Lee Killough when he began MBF? Did Lee in turn rip fraggle a new asshole when fraggle created SMMU? Should we go and destroy PrBoom because it was derived from Boom and LxDoom?

 

Adopting elements from source ports has been there since there's been source ports. Boom *ITSELF* was derived from a combination of the original source and DosDoom v0.2! Let's go find Chi Hoang and see what he thinks about those filthy thieves from TeamTNT!

 

Are you going to say those were all bad ideas too? That any source port ever made gets to "keep" its unique features and nobody else gets to touch them, and any who do to any sort of degree whatsoever has to say "I did this differently, but here's the source file and author of some other port who did the same stuff?"

 

Source ports, if they want to eventually forge a way forward, will find ways to do such (example: Skulltag, then later Zandronum). If source port authors don't want someone else looking over the code for ideas, they can close the source (which is generally frowned upon by the community). That said, that still doesn't protect you from someone taking the port, figuring out what is being done, and implementing the functionality - it's simply harder, but there's a common (and huge) attack surface in that all Doom source ports do have certain fundamentals that can be assumed.

 

ZDoom also originated a hell of a lot of features, so quit acting like all that it's ever been is a thieves' paradise.

 

10 hours ago, Altazimuth said:

Who is "we"? Are you a GZDoom developer, or merely acting as a proxy for them?

Neither. I don't code for GZDoom, I don't act as a proxy for them. I'm not affiliated with them in any way, shape, or form. I'm simply a guy seeing this situation and shaking his head a bit.

 

"We" in this sense was meant as the community-at-large. Nobody wins in these sorts of scenarios. And frankly, the people will use whatever port they want, unless the thing they want to run needs a specific port to run it in.

 

10 hours ago, Altazimuth said:

There's no way to prove this is the only way to do portals. This is disprovable by contradiction, but to contradict this would take a really long amount of time, so claiming this is the only way to do this is basically pointless.

I didn't say it was the only way to do portals, I said it seemed to be the only way to do it that used a specific way of implementing certain aspects of portals. I'm certain there's other ways to do portals - but then it'd have fundamentally different ways of making them work. And given the general popularity of ZDoom-derived ports, ironically the most likely result would've been people pissing and moaning that Eternity did them differently unless they're making their project exclusive to Eternity in the first place (at which point, yeah, you'd better re-learn it).

 

Or do you really think that if there wasn't another way to have identical functionality that Graf would've chosen the way that some people would see as infringing, as opposed to the way that nobody would've batted an eye over?

 

Give me a break.

 

10 hours ago, Altazimuth said:

"Lately" my left foot. Excluding BOOM features a small list: MBF helper dogs, 3D midtextures, fragglescript, 3D floors, MBF sky transfers? All of these were introduced to ZDoom yonks ago. What other engines adopt DECORATE? I'm genuinely confused by that one. As for UDMF that was intentionally created by Quasar with the specific intent of being a "Universal" cross-port standard.

Besides any *ZDoom ports, Zandronum and Vavoom support DECORATE, and I know that ketmar is adding more full-featured DECORATE support to his k8vavoom fork. I'd imagine the number of newer engines wanting to support DECORATE will go up, given that a certain mod requires it. If ZScript winds up taking off, same deal.

 

Now the question is if Eternity or other engines take those, will you complain about that too?

 

10 hours ago, Altazimuth said:

I disagree. ZDoom absorbing every single feature of other ports makes it seem a lot less worthwhile to work on ports that aren't ZDoom, and so everything ends up revolving around a single port in terms of where the vast majority of development goes. Even then the "universal implementation" bit is bunk, because ZDoom's portals and Eternity's aren't compatible, and Graf explicitly stated that certain things that differentiate Eternity's portals will never come to GZDoom. Along with that there's also the consideration that, last I checked, Eternity's portals intentionally had some restrictions in place for easier processing that ZDoom's didn't and that also makes them not compatible.

 

Also again you make things seem far simpler than they are. Doing portals by line/things/level structure alteration is not the issue here. The issue is the methodology used to construct the portals at runtime. Where all the data is that defines this doesn't matter in the slightest.

Oh, good. Then they're actually NOT clones of the code and we can all end this silly argument.

 

Graf saw that Eternity had a working implementation of portals, and did his own thing with them. This is gonna happen. Features will inspire some other active ports to also include similar features, especially if they're useful features. For example, GZDoom recently added Doom 64-style lighting; I wouldn't be surprised if other ports now begin to slowly add that as well. (Albeit it's slightly incomplete compared to the original game in terms of being able to do ACS-style stuff with it, but I digress.)

 

The thing is, that also extends to runtime code. The engines are both based on Doom to some greater or lesser extent; there's only going to be certain ways to do certain things.

 

There's no such thing as "This feature is mine and I'm the only one who gets to have it and anyone else who uses something similar is a thief." Sooner or later, if some other port author wants that feature badly enough, they'll find a way to do it.

 

10 hours ago, Altazimuth said:

I argued Graf stole the code and that was the copyright violation, not the idea of portals. As I said before it's a well-known fact that ZDoom and GZDoom will happily take unique and cool features from other ports, but I consider that a secondary issue, more tied into the morals and ethics that anotak mentioned which I'd be happy to discuss at-length.

But again... where's the stolen code? Stolen implies that Graf took the code and either reused it outright with no crediting, or minimally obfuscated it with no crediting. And while he's not mentioning SoM, he is definitely pointing to Eternity, and saying that Eternity generally credits only where it came from, not who specifically made the code (which, as I said in my earlier post with your various links, is inconsistent but GENERALLY true).

 

You've got fraggle himself saying that he doesn't see similarity in the code and that the algorithms looked entirely rewritten. At this point, it stops being code theft, because no code was stolen/reused. Instead it's simply the concept of portals themselves that's being reused.

 

At most there's some slightly lax crediting in terms of who came up with the original code behind the original implementation in another port, but at this point it's less about code theft and more about crediting standards. In my opinion, he's right on the money - there could be some better crediting, but I'm going to generally trust the opinions of people who know what the hell they're talking about when it comes to coding.

 

And again, you can't copyright an idea, only an implementation thereof. 

 

10 hours ago, Altazimuth said:

Users aren't going to research this. How many GZDoom users to you reckon talk about early 3D floor implementations, like Julian Aubourg's in RORDoom, SoM in Doom Legacy, or DOSDoom and EDGE's? Given that in videos on Youtube I can recall users claiming Brutal Doom is what added things like freelook and jumping to Doom I seriously doubt at least 99% of GZDoom users will even know that SoM is the pioneer of portals in Doom and responsible for techniques that GZDoom uses (and I believe the code too). SoM had to do all the hard work discovering the techniques that did and didn't work and ZDoom just used all that hard work without as much as a mention of SoM before I kicked up a stink.

The only way to combat misinformation is to provide information. I don't see Graf going everywhere and going "I invented portals in Doom." If anything Graf has explicitly (and publically!) denied that he invented them. Youtube is also hardly the paragon of intelligence, especially when "who invented portals" is only ever going to really matter to a small number of a relatively small community. Casuals don't care about who made it, casuals just care that they can walk into a wall and come out some other wall.

 

As for the techniques? Well, again, SoM did more of the gruntwork, but the guy who does it second always has an easier time than the guy who did it first, because he knows at the very least someone did it and has figured out the concepts. Graf himself said he took the concepts, but purposely avoided looking at the implementation. And if the code isn't the same, and the algorithms are rewritten... then that's got nothing to do with SoM. It basically at that point becomes two implementations of the same idea: SoM's vs. Graf's. They both had a way to do portals; SoM's came first (so he gets credit as having invented a way of doing it); Graf did it another way and likewise gets credit for whatever different ways he constructed it/features it has compared to SoM's/whatever. You did say there's features of both the other doesn't have, so essentially this means "both invented stuff regarding portals." You just feel pissed off because you think everyone is crediting Graf with it, but Graf himself explicitly denied inventing it. At that point it's down to... wait for it... accreditation.

 

Also, if we're being technical about it, Quasar raised the first issues regarding portals in general, then later said he felt he jumped the gun, not you. All the other posts around that time period acknowledged there's only one way to do linked portals (which means... any code implementing them is going to do basically the same thing), that it's not a copy-and-paste job, copyright does not prevent someone from using the same algorithm, etc.

 

Lastly, a lot of this arose because (at the time) Eternity was GPL, but ZDoom/GZDoom was BSD. Both are GPL now, so this is somewhat moot, but at this point it's down to pretty much an argument over how someone should be credited.

 

PS: You're completely ignoring a post from about two years earlier by yet another different contributor that shows functional portals. So if we go by who actually came up with working proof-of-concepts, then technically, he gets the credit for inventing "Portals are possible in Doom," SoM gets credit for the first functional implementation in a mainline port-supported Doom engine, and Graf gets credit for proper functional implementation of them in ZDoom.

 

10 hours ago, Altazimuth said:

It's not like ZDoom has an entire page on linked portals and then tells people the feature originated in EE. All there are's a fleeting mention in Line_SetPortal and a logo for EE in the xlat section. Sector_SetPortal doesn't even mention EE, instead just having the xlat section alone.

A wiki maintained by independent contributors as opposed to the main coders is an entirely different beast and has precious little to do with the actual issue at hand. Anyone can edit a wiki.

 

(Frankly though, I do wish the wiki were more up-to-date - it's loaded with old, obsolete, and outdated information. But short of a dedicated wiki team, I don't know if there's much that can be done about it.)

 

Also, again, there is that video up in that linked post just up above, so it's actually a very good question as to "who came up with it first." Nobody's going to contest SoM had the first mainline port-implemented functional version of it, but if you count stuff like that, ZZYZX/jewalky and Printz apparently have some claim to "I invented portals" as well.

 

10 hours ago, Altazimuth said:

I pointed at specific parts of code. You're asking me to prove a negative here. Asking me to spend just as long as SoM did on portals just to prove that there are other ways to implement portals in order to prove you wrong is highly unfair and you should be aware of that.

And others who have looked at the code have said they're not seeing what you're seeing. Only one of you can be right - which is it? The person who believes there's been code theft, or other coders who've looked at it and said "They are the same concept, but differ in implementation and algorithm?"

 

I'm going to bet on the coders being right.

 

Like I said, I'm very sure if there was literally ANY other way for Graf to achieve the same functionality without coming even remotely close to SoM's code, he would have. The problem is, he can't, because right now, that's the only known way to make a specific linked portal functionality work. That means similarity is unavoidable.

 

And yet he's not claiming he invented them, I've linked to a post where he explicitly denied claiming credit for them, there's other posts in this very thread that shows both he and SoM stood on the shoulders of ZZYZX/jewalky and Printz, etc.

 

Could it be credited better in GZDoom's code? Yeah, probably. But is Graf a filthy thief? I very, very much doubt that, and it's not fair to try to force him into claiming he used something he did not use. He used the concept of portals, he took someone else's work (ZZYZX/jewalky's in this case) and tuned it towards an implementation more in tune with Eternity's.

 

That's what Graf's done. To try to make it out like he did more than that simply because some aspects need to be done the same way is BS.

 

10 hours ago, Altazimuth said:

ZDoom from the early days has taken code, and apparently as recently as 2016 is no exception. Fiercely predatory competition may not have always been its primary tactic to stay on top, but it certainly ended up being a large part of it thanks to how it was developed.

 

ZDoom doesn't stand on the shoulders of giants, but instead on the corpses of other source ports.

Like I said, when you complain Boom stole from DosDoom, MBF stole from Boom, SMMU stole from MBF, and so on, then you've got an argument to make.

 

Also, frankly, I think you claiming that Eternity is dead is a massive slap in the face to everyone who's worked on that port. If the sky is falling simply because this port has similar features to some other port, then how the hell does a port survive?

 

Simple - they innovate. And sooner or later, if something is popular enough, it gets implemented by other ports in kind.

 

Interchange like this is good for all ports in the long term. Someone invents a feature. Someone else makes it better/improves upon it/whatever. Unless there is no source or the source forbids it in some way, nothing is stopping anyone from adding it or tweaking it for their own ports, and this is pretty much exactly what happened here.

 

About the only thing in this entire argument that even holds any water is "maybe there could have been better crediting." As was said earlier in this thread...

 

On 2/15/2016 at 9:33 AM, VGA said:

So the situation is cleared up, attribution will be given and both ports will have that feature. Crisis averted!

...and they all lived happily ever after.

Edited August 23, 2019 by Dark Pulse

On 8/21/2019 at 8:51 PM, Graf Zahl said:

Some people here really have no f*cking clue what they are doing with their reckless actions and in what kind of legal bind they are placing other people with this.

@Graf Zahl I'd been meaning to ask but got sidetracked. So who're "some people?"

22 minutes ago, Altazimuth said:

Doesn't being supportive of a project usually require providing constructive criticism? This looks more like the words of a toxic fan to me.

Wait... Did she mean that Eternity's renderer runs like shit on complex maps? I thought from the phrasing that she meant that GZDoom's software rendering (which is NOT the default option) is really unoptimized for those maps.

 

If you find any map which runs OK on PrBoom+ (not GL but software, let's compare apples with apples) but not on Eternity, talk about it on the Eternity forum or Github issue tracker, please.

10 hours ago, Altazimuth said:

Even beyond that, I'd call *ZDoom's grabbing of any an all features that make any other port unique, as well as the mods specifically targeted at those ports, at the least reckless and at the most disrespectful.

 

34 minutes ago, Altazimuth said:

So me asking for three lines of attribution—that I already supplied in a pull request—is dictating and "really fucked up," but you trying to use guilt to manipulate me into adding OpenGL by implying I don't care about the source port I've worked on for half a decade isn't? 

 

We're done here. I have nothing more to say to you.

 

20 minutes ago, printz said:

Wait... Did she mean that Eternity's renderer runs like shit on complex maps? I thought from the phrasing that she meant that GZDoom's software rendering (which is NOT the default option) is really unoptimized for those maps.

 

If you find any map which runs OK on PrBoom+ (not GL but software, let's compare apples with apples) but not on Eternity, talk about it on the Eternity forum or Github issue tracker, please.

Both do - but Eternity's is worse in some cases.

 

But as for the issue tracker, if I find it again, I'll keep that in mind. I think the worst offender was Frozen Time, which yes I know wasn't meant for Eternity, but compared to other software renderers, Eternity's really comes in dead last on this one. I remember being completely unable to even move, there. Like - my computer was almost frozen even trying it. Bear in mind, however, this was a long time ago that I tried it. If any efforts were made recently to optimize the renderer, then I have yet to try it again with the changes.

5 minutes ago, Rachael said:

 

 

We're done here. I have nothing more to say to you.

 

I'm not really seeing what the big offense in those posts are. Can you elaborate?

6 minutes ago, Sparktimus said:

I'm not really seeing what the big offense in those posts are. Can you elaborate?

He deliberately misinterpreted my post to ignore his own worst offense - in an effort to discredit me, if you really want to know.

 

12 minutes ago, Gez said:

Portals in ZDoom have existed for a while, but limited to floors/ceilings. They were called "stacked sectors" and also used for skyboxes. There were also mirrors, which were a limited implementation of the same concept behind portals (render a scene, with correct persective, on a line), and were available on walls. True wall portals were brought by a third-party contribution. The whole thing matured for two years.

 

The entire subsystem was even called 'portal system'. Also, the only reason why wall portals hadn't been done before is that without physics they had not that much use, technically they are the same as mirrors, just with a world matrix that doesn't invert the axes.

 

To make it clear, the visual part had been operational for a long time, it was merely the physics that were missing

 

And the entire ridiculous discussion here was not even about the physics implementation in GZDoom - no, all it was about is as single table that's being created as a prerequisite to do any meaningful portal checks efficiently - and the contents of this table are not even a special invention - they are a fundamental requirement to know how the map needs to be laid out. SoM should have patented the idea if it is so precious that it shouldn't be used elsewhere - that's what patents are there for, after all!

 

The actual portal physics implementation is an entirely different matter, the above took a few hours to implement, the rest took months.

 

 

25 minutes ago, Altazimuth said:

So me asking for three lines of attribution—that I already supplied in a pull request—is dictating and "really fucked up," but you trying to use guilt to manipulate me into adding OpenGL by implying I don't care about the source port I've worked on for half a decade isn't?

 

But not in the hamfisted manner you did it. My problem was not with attribution but with how you handled the request, that made it impossible for me to act on it.

Had I accepted your PR that would have been an implicit addmittance that the code wasn't mine - something I still stand by -, had I flat out refused the result would have been even worse. At the time dpJudas closed the PR I was still looking for a solution that would be acceptable to both sides (No, it's not that easy as you think!)

 

However, after you all blew the whole thing over, I really saw no reason to play this game any longer and tried to find a creative way around it. And thanks to Eternity's own copyright claims in the code it was surprisingly easy to do! Before deciding on how to deal with this I had an extensive look at Eternity's source and to my neverending surprise discovered that id's and TeamTNT's copyright notice had been removed from all files! Huh? Sure, the GPL allows doing that, but then please do not act surprised if others that are obligated to credit Team Eternity will do it the very same way - especially after this little episode.

 

1 hour ago, Rachael said:

It's a shame that it keeps getting dragged by its own authors into messes like this. Honestly - I think if the maintainers really cared about the port, they'd put in features like optional OpenGL rendering (which GLBoom+ already has - how behind the times are you??!!!) and easier console commands that don't feel so hacky - so that it stands as a viable opponent (and a good alternative) to GZDoom. Oh - and while we're at it - make it easier to contribute to by removing the SDL dependency (maybe others too?) - because I've wanted to write features for Eternity also, but I can't even compile the damn thing. 

 

The problem isn't SDL, but having native Visual Studio projects with some outlandish setup. I had my reasons why I ditched them in favor of CMake, even before ZDoom ceased development. CMake surely may be a bitch sometimes, once set up though it makes things so much easier, it's unbelievable. Setting up GZDoom to compile is nothing more than running CMake over it once, make a few adjustments to the defaults if needed, and then have something that 'just works'. I haven't made a native VS project in years, because it provides no advantage.

 

 

@printz: Thanks for making it clear that not all people here need to resort to this stuck-up defensive posturing. In the end this is all open source, by now even everything under the GPL so sharing code should no longer involve such messy workarounds - and TBH, had ZDoom been under the GPL in 2016 I could actually just have taken Eternity's code, stuck a proper copyright notice on top of it and save myself from thinking about an independent implementation. But unfortunately back then it was out of my hands because a certain person showed no incentive for using a friendlier license - the main credit for making that even possible goes to dpJudas who spent a lot of time ridding the renderer of the Build code in there, and of course to Chris for writing the OpenAL backend (which btw, that certain person mentioned above flat out refused to acknowledge), but after that the last remaining issue was the same messy thing as here - replacing some more or less trivial code with an independent implementation, which is easier said than done.

 

One last thing, I already said this in the past: My opinion of why Eternity has such a low user count has nothing to do with other engines reimplementing features from Eternity and thus remove potential users or modders. It's the simple fact that, all things considered, what's the point? There's all these features but no content. Modders know that there's not many users and as a result and do not target the engine. Even for users that may want to target ZDoom and Eternity in parallel, Eternity puts up a lot of obstacles to get these users in - all custom content has to be duplicated because the definition formats are incompatible.

If that gap could be bridged I am convinced that Eternity will see an uptick in users, which then may result in some custom content being made that actually uses Eternity's advanced features. But as long as things go as in the past - sorry, I have little hope that the situation will ever improve.

 

 

Oh, and for god's sake - eternity.youfailit.net is so very confidence-building... >) In the end with this the 'failure' is built right into the foundation - and will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. So yeah, get rid of that godforsaken link or host it somewhere better named if you have the option. At the very least hide the URL beween some nicer text.

 

 

 

6 minutes ago, Graf Zahl said:

Oh, and for god's sake - eternity.youfailit.net is so very confidence-building... >)

That's just the name of @Bloodshedder's domain :) Eternity's wiki just happens to be hosted on that domain. Maybe I should invest on making a website and move all EE stuff there? There's always something new worth learning... But I can't promise right now.

 

As for your other point in the previous paragraph, it looks like a chicken/egg problem which I'm afraid can only be solved with patience and hard work to fix what is broken from a UX point of view.

4 minutes ago, Rachael said:

We're done here. I have nothing more to say to you. 

You're kidding, right? You insult me directly and name-call, not even in retaliation since the worst language I used up until that point was accuse Graf of lying and call his original copyright notice "mealy-mouth ass-covering", and you're OK doing that but when I call you out on your own awful behaviour you suddenly just refuse to talk to me? I'm expected to put up with your hypocrisy, foul language, and manipulation but me calling you out on even a fraction of it's not OK?

 

1 minute ago, Rachael said:

He deliberately misinterpreted my post to ignore his own worst offense

The hell is my "own worst offense?" Also no I really didn't intentionally misinterpret your post in some effort to discredit you. Regadless of this you discredit yourself with your attempted deflection. Rachael, I'm still astounded by your attempt at dismissiveness by trying to paint me as a some bottom-feeding plebian attempting to become popular. I've been around for a while and being popular with all the users isn't my end-goal. If popularity is what I seeked then I would have just worked on GZDoom.

39 minutes ago, Graf Zahl said:

The problem isn't SDL, but having native Visual Studio projects with some outlandish setup. I had my reasons why I ditched them in favor of CMake, even before ZDoom ceased development. CMake surely may be a bitch sometimes, once set up though it makes things so much easier, it's unbelievable. Setting up GZDoom to compile is nothing more than running CMake over it once, make a few adjustments to the defaults if needed, and then have something that 'just works'. I haven't made a native VS project in years, because it provides no advantage.

Like I said - it's been so long that I don't even remember all the specific details of the problems that I had. This may very well have been it - but I can't confirm that, because I really don't remember.

 

28 minutes ago, printz said:

That's just the name of @Bloodshedder's domain :) Eternity's wiki just happens to be hosted on that domain. Maybe I should invest on making a website and move all EE stuff there? There's always something new worth learning... But I can't promise right now.

 

As for your other point in the previous paragraph, it looks like a chicken/egg problem which I'm afraid can only be solved with patience and hard work to fix what is broken from a UX point of view.

I'd imagine he got it from the name of a Skulltag medal that became popular for the way it mocked users for not being able to score a frag after being killed a certain number of times.

 

Nevertheless, I do have to agree with Graf - I have to take a double take every time I see the domain name and remember the meme and that it's not supposed to be as jarring as it is.

 

As for rehosting it - why would you do that? Unless you feel really constricted on that site and really feel the need to move, or something. You could probably just get a dedicated domain name (eternity-engine.org, or maybe something cheaper if it's available) and point it to the site, and ask the host to update the configuration files, if they're willing.

4 hours ago, Rachael said:

Oh for fuck's sake. Seriously?

 

At least your cards are finally on the table. This is what it's been all about from the very beginning. "BOO HOO ZDoom took a feature from us that was so special!"

 

I've been very supportive of Eternity and had a very strong desire for it to grow, but that does not give Eternity devs the right to dictate what other source ports can and can't do. That is at the very least, really fucked up.

 

Also, while we're at it: Dark Pulse does not represent the GZDoom team, and while I cannot deny bias in that I think most of what he is posting is right, he is not directly associated with us in the way that you so flagrantly (and without proof) accused him of. Are we going to have a witch hunt for GZDoom developers now that GZDoom didn't do EXACTLY what your spoiled precious ass wanted? Tie me up at the fucking stake then. Guilty as charged. I am one of said witches.

 

There was no need for any of this Altazimuth - YOU started this shit, because your precious little ego was hurt. Instead of investing time into features that make Eternity a real solid and attractive alternative for GZDoom (I'll have to note here that the software renderer is slow as shit on it, for complex maps), you're sitting here crying over 44-month old spilled milk. If it helps you any I'll give you a sympathy download for your latest release. Congrats numbers?

Okay, well, this is familiar. Yo Rachel, long time no talk.

 

I'm going to officially ask you to knock it off with the manipulative nonsense. The whole routine that you've pulled out repeatedly over your entire tenure in this community whenever someone has disagreed with you. The "can't you see I just want what's best for you, you [a bunch of namecalling and insults], don't you see how mean you're forcing me to be by speaking up for yourself in any way at all?" business. It's not a good look, and will not be tolerated further on this website. Please grow up and stop with the childish nonsense.

 

If you really honestly believe it's unreasonable to request a line of attribution for SoM's pioneering work on portals in Doom, you can be an adult and say so without going into the theatrics and underhanded (and overhanded) insulting comments.

1 hour ago, Graf Zahl said:

Oh, and for god's sake - eternity.youfailit.net is so very confidence-building... >) In the end with this the 'failure' is built right into the foundation - and will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. So yeah, get rid of that godforsaken link or host it somewhere better named if you have the option. At the very least hide the URL beween some nicer text.

This is such a weird thing to focus on.

Since people have insisted on dragging my name back into this argument I have one thing to say:

 

One person cannot "clean room" code. A clean room process is where one team documents the behavior of a system, and another team, never having seen the original implementation at all, implements that specification from scratch. So please don't use that word for whatever happened here, because it wasn't that.

7 minutes ago, Quasar said:

Since people have insisted on dragging my name back into this argument I have one thing to say:

 

One person cannot "clean room" code. A clean room process is where one team documents the behavior of a system, and another team, never having seen the original implementation at all, implements that specification from scratch. So please don't use that word for whatever happened here, because it wasn't that.

If you mean me mentioning it, yeah, it's impossible for a one-man clean-room implementation to exist, but it's the closest approximation to what he did, since he said he only looked at the concepts and not how they were implemented directly. It's technically a misnomer, but it gets the gist across.

 

Although as I'm also pointing out to Altazimuth, that's an entirely different argument from what he's trying to present here (that it's stolen/uncredited code) that seemingly got settled years ago, not to mention the licensing issues that existed at the time no longer do, etc.

 

So in short this basically boils down to credit, and at that point stuff gets a lot more subjective, especially when the code in question isn't being reused/tweaked/whatever from the original code and is an entirely self-rolled implementation of the same concepts that shares aspects of the original code simply because that's the only way to make certain things work.

2 hours ago, Graf Zahl said:

However, after you all blew the whole thing over, I really saw no reason to play this game any longer and tried to find a creative way around it. And thanks to Eternity's own copyright claims in the code it was surprisingly easy to do!

Odd usage of blow over but whatever; usually blow over is an idiomatic phrase meaning for something go go back to being calm after a proverbial storm.

Anyway that's besides the point—I said yesterday "It's worth noting the most major of instances where code is used, that being particles, does appropriately attribute Randi. Other examples of code are single lines or small snippets." We also have top-of-file credits all over the place. If TeamTNT and id were credited like that they'd be at the top of every damn file.

If you really wanted to follow coventions of Eternity you'd actively credit him in the source for such an important feature, the same way Randi is copyrighted at the top of some cam_ files, the same way you are credited in xl_umapinfo, and the same way functions like P_AdjustFloorClip for the important 3D clipping do. Eternity credits at the top of files all over the place, and a lot of the time in the code itself. You know as well as everybody else does that you're using this as an excuse to have a "gotcha!" moment of attempting to hoist me by my own petard and it looks really petty, especially for somebody who's been a part of the community for around two decades. It's a real stretch, Graf.

 

2 hours ago, Graf Zahl said:

The problem isn't SDL, but having native Visual Studio projects with some outlandish setup.

Eternity has CMake. It works for Visual Studio. Blzut3 uses this as his primary method for building Eternity.

 

2 hours ago, Graf Zahl said:

At the time dpJudas closed the PR I was still looking for a solution that would be acceptable to both sides (No, it's not that easy as you think!)

You could have at least communicated in the PR that you were working on it. It was two days between the PR being closed and me posting on the forums and in that time you weren't able to say anything?

28 minutes ago, Dark Pulse said:

If you mean me mentioning it, yeah, it's impossible for a one-man clean-room implementation to exist, but it's the closest approximation to what he did, since he said he only looked at the concepts and not how they were implemented directly. It's technically a misnomer, but it gets the gist across. 

 

Although as I'm also pointing out to Altazimuth, that's an entirely different argument from what he's trying to present here (that it's stolen/uncredited code) that seemingly got settled years ago, not to mention the licensing issues that existed at the time no longer do, etc.

OK I'll bite. Where did he get the ideas for this alleged clean-room implementation? Where'd he find out how to do this? When I asked him SoM stated he didn't recall ever explaining the concepts that allow portals to work on the forums, so you prove to me that he did that and did it enough that Graf could look at that post and extrapolate from there.

16 minutes ago, Altazimuth said:

OK I'll bite. Where did he get the ideas for this alleged clean-room implementation? Where'd he find out how to do this? When I asked him SoM stated he didn't recall ever explaining the concepts that allow portals to work on the forums, so you prove to me that he did that and did it enough that Graf could look at that post and extrapolate from there.

Well, again, ZZYZX/jewalky had Proof-of-Concept portal code up and running in ZDoom in 2014. There was even an associated pull request.

 

AFAIK, Graf cleaned up this code and tweaked it more towards how Eternity handles things.

 

Hence, my belief that he saw the overview of what SoM was doing, and utilized that knowledge with a combination of modifying this code and inserting his own where necessary to complete the implementation.