ZDoom vs ZDoomGL Progress.

I know this sounds like a newbish, self-centered question, but I was wondering how far along things are. As I remember, Randy said he'd have maybe one more serious version release. How does this affect ZDoomGL?

Are you waiting to make GL compatible with a newer version of ZDoom? Or is it that you've not tested GL with newer versions so you can get things stable?

Also - how will GL affect map making? Are there any special lighting/visual effects that we'll need to make special arrangements for? Or will everything pretty much translate into ZDoomGL?

Another thing - with the introduction of 3D models, will this make Doom effectively Quake2? Will we be able to use 3D models for static objects?

While I'm here...does anybody know if Randy is going to fix is so we can add new objects into the game? I'm sure it's not a priority for him.

Thanks in advance!

Actually, ZDoomGL 0.74 is based on the ZDoom 2.0.47 codebase, which is the latest public release so far and there are very few features that don't work in ZDoomGL: Line_Horizon (much more difficult to do in OpenGL) and the 3D lights (pretty new feature that I haven't really looked at yet).

As for the lighting, I tried to make the GL renderer as close to the software renderer as possible as far as darkness and whatnot goes (down to the depthqueued fog). I do plan on supporting placeable lights in the not-to-distant future, but that is a feature mappers can ignore if they want to maintain complete renderer compatibility.

With the 3D models, I do also plan on providing a way for mappers to associate static objects with a model, so, for instance, you would be able to define an object in the DECORATE lump, make the sprites for it and associate a model with it so in ZDoomGL you get the fancy model (if they're turned on) but in ZDoom you'd just get the sprite.

And I think the DECORATE lump is used for adding new objects, but I'm not entirely sure how it works (since I'm not a mapper).

Thanks for the info!

I'm trying to decided how feasable it would be to put in 3D models for my project - but I'm not a modeller. Will 3D models act the same way as in Quake2?

What we would try to pull off would basically be what the TRANSFORMERS mod for Quake2 did. Heh, we may even use some of Dan Bickel's quake2 models.

Yeah, I'm going to be starting with md2 support (Quake2 models) at first, then looking at other formats. But I'm doing the lighting first, then the models :)