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Raider

Zdaemon Lives On

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Please allow me to introduce myself. I am known as Raider. NightFang, who is the creator of ZDaemon, has appointed me the as leader of the ZDaemon project.

It has been suggested to me by several people that I make my presence known to the users of this forum. I will try to make it a point to read through these forums occasionally and help answer questions whenever I can.

ZDaemon is far from dead. Recently there has been a renewed interest in getting bugs and enhancements implemented. We’ve picked up a couple of new people with software development skills. As time goes on, we will release new versions of the Launcher, Client and Server software.

Although ZDaemon has a forum of its own, I won’t attempt to promote that here. I want to let everyone know that the ZDaemon Team and I are always willing to offer help, which you can find in a number of ways. Our website http://www.zdaemon.org has many links to various information resources.

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I 'know' you already since DC's zdaemon support, but still I have to point this out in public; Nice to see ZDaemon living and being in good hands! I like what you all did to it, now better than before.
 

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Raider! Thanks for dropping in. I used to host the rarefiles zdaemon (0.99) servers but stopped for several reasons, including that there was some cheating going on and I got disgusted with it. Also, I got depressed and lost interest. Feeling better now and.....

How about fixing a few of these things, if they are not already?

1. Please, please, please restore zdoom's proper weapon aiming along with mouselook. OK, the BFG can stay horizontal, but not being able to aim rockets or bullets up and down takes a lot of the fun play away from some of my favorite wads. It makes my only successful dm wad (playpen6) just about worthless because there is a lot of use of height and firing up and down is a key element. Autoaim does not do the job. Perhaps there can be a server option to allow weapon aiming, in case some other people object to it somehow?

2. The other night I noticed (testing on my own LAN) that the rockets would shoot randomly right or left of the crosshair. Not good for long-range shots through windows. Zdaemon 0.99 never did this.

I'd like to start hosting again if these things can be fixed. Thanks for considering it.

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Better servers and bug fixes would draw more people to online dooming.
All we have to do now is wait...

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Bah mouselook, use old fashioned Doom auto(slightly)aim. It's cool that Raider finally joined!

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Use3D said:

Bah mouselook, use old fashioned Doom auto(slightly)aim. It's cool that Raider finally joined!


Actually mouselook could be eliminated altogether; skulltag already has that and needs it more. Differentiating both engines, one for "oldschool" play and the other for more modern style play may not be a bad idea.

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and what the fuck do you need mouse look for anyway?

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Torn said:

and what the fuck do you need mouse look for anyway?

I'd say I need it because I fucking like it. You don't, no problem. Being able to aim rockets up and down adds a lot to the fun of dm play in maps which make good use of height. Consider gothicdm map02 and map 27 as two examples among many. Yes, there are also many maps for which it matters little.

The people I used to play with tend to appreciate the enhancements which zdoom has brought. ZDaemon used to incorporate them all, except for BFG floor-slapping. That was fine. Now, zdaemon still has mouselook but the weapons don't aim with the crosshair. We want that feature back. Perhaps make it an option so those who don't want it don't have to offer it on their servers. If I put up servers again, they will have it enabled.

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I believe in options. I don't agree with eliminating a particular functionality simple because one group of people doesn't like it. At the same time, I wouldn't force anyone to accept a feature that alters game play. Being a server-side option, you can be sure that everyone can play using the style they prefer.

The aiming bug that you have described is being addressed right now. I've got a beta version that I'll probably release soon which has the mouse aiming working correctly. Thanks to the efforts of Duke4Ever for this fix.

As for the other bugs, please be patient! We're doing the best we can with limited resources.

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Raider said:

I believe in options. I don't agree with eliminating a particular functionality simple because one group of people doesn't like it.


As you wish, since you (not just you but also whoever is coding and testing) are doing this, although as I said above the option would not be lost, since there is another DOOM-based engine that specializes in more modern-type play. The choices the designers make as to what to include or what to leave out pretty much dictate what kind of people will play the game and what kind of play will become popular (among those who choose to play), so simply including all options is not always the best way to go unless you want to try to please everybody: something which is often impossible and sometimes a problem when there's already choices in what engine you can use to play (so you could aim for a cooperative form of development as opposed to having two competing engines with a lesser degree of differences between them.)

Here we are talking about options that are source engine specific, so they may very well be in question, since they are not key elements of the game.

I personally did notice an improvement in the kinds of servers available with the 1.0 version, and this may have to do with the lack of a functional mouselook option, among other things.

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The decision to include or exclude features is not driven by the designers as much as it is driven by the users. Changes are based on priority as well as demand. To put it bluntly: we try to make as many people happy as possible.

There's never any attempt to compete with the other engines out there. In fact, we work cooperativly with other engines sharing ideas with their developers.

More and more servers have been appearing lately. Some of them have been configured with flags that most Doomers would consider to be quite silly. Guess what? they are frequently full of players.

There will always be old school players as well as servers. If allowing a;ternative modes of game play attracts more users to our community, then I'm very much in support of that.

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Doomers choose to use mouselook is like Quakers choose to play Urban Terror with cs style.

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999cop said:

Doomers choose to use mouselook is like Quakers choose to play Urban Terror with cs style.


That doesn't mean it's wrong, just out of the ordinary.

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Raider said:

To put it bluntly: we try to make as many people happy as possible.


Personally, that's one of my least favorite design premises.

Raider said:

There's never any attempt to compete with the other engines out there. In fact, we work cooperativly with other engines sharing ideas with their developers.


That's a given due to the fact that the engines are under the GPL, but the mere fact that the engines basically offer the same things (or they can offer them, among other things) makes some of these features kind of redundant in one or the other (according to me, at least.)

Raider said:

There will always be old school players as well as servers.


Hopefully, we'll see (I'm not entirely sure the mouselook bug was really introduced as a bug, actually... ask NightFang, though his answers often vary like the stages of the moon.) Anyway, sometime back I gave you a list of things in zdaemon that do interfere with "old school" play; I'll plug it in, in case you lost it, since I first mentioned it on IRC, that flighty form of communication:

http://www.doom2.net/~mykdoom/misc/zcrap.htm

(According to your design perspective these should be options, of course.)

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