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Bloodshedder

An Ode To Mex

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The Odamex site has just been updated with the release of version 0.1a, which includes the new multiplayer port and a utilitarian launcher for finding games. The source code is available as well, or if you want the bleeding edge, check out the SVN. Also, please note that Odamex has nothing to do with Mexico.

EDIT: As a reminder, this is ALPHA GRADE software, meaning you can expect it to be buggy and have missing or incomplete features. The goal was to get it out to the public and to open the repository so that more developers might be able to help. For more information, e-mail Mike at odamex dot net or see the wiki post on providing patches.

EDIT 2:The launcher has been updated in the win32 release and can also be downloaded directly (self-extracting archive).

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Got to try this...

By the way, on IE there's a black block right after ODAMEX on the page title line, presumably due to the use of an unsupported character. Actually, it also shows up on FF (and I see the source says ™ ...which is oddly read properly by the forum software, heh).

¡VIVA MÉXICO, CABRONES!

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I saw this post when I were at school. But now I am home so I can download. :D

EDIT: well, bugs aside, it's running stable, and it's fun. :D

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Needs less resolution.

Maybe incorporating some Chocolate Doom code for DOOM-like resolutions, at least as an option, or else allowing low detail modes (these were already there in CSDoom; not sure if they were removed due to license reasons, or what).

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myk said:

Needs less resolution.

Maybe incorporating some Chocolate Doom code for DOOM-like resolutions, at least as an option, or else allowing low detail modes (these were already there in CSDoom; not sure if they were removed due to license reasons, or what).


I posted a request for this in the bug tracker a while ago. I'm sure the programmers will get to it after the more important things.

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myk said:

Needs less resolution.

Maybe incorporating some Chocolate Doom code for DOOM-like resolutions, at least as an option, or else allowing low detail modes (these were already there in CSDoom; not sure if they were removed due to license reasons, or what).


R_Detail is included but all it does is give you a scanline effect. maybe it's comin'.

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exp(x) said:
I posted a request for this in the bug tracker a while ago. I'm sure the programmers will get to it after the more important things.

Ah, cool, thanks for the request submission. I just wondered because there're always assholes and weirdos that would ditch things like low resolution for some reason.

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I stripped out the low detail mode options, so I guess I'm the asshole/weirdo. I didn't find it particularly necessary, and no one seemed to mind. If there are weirdos who want to get it looking like butt then we will have to consider putting it back.

As far as resolutions go, it's not that simple to just take chocolate doom code, as things are done quite differently in those respects.

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RandomMarine said:

Hurray for menus with no game play!

Also: fp.


If the launcher isn't working out for you, (which it doesn't particularly work for me), you can simply check this list of servers listed here. Then, load odamex and type in "connect <ip>" in the console.

Odamex will then connect to the server, automatically load the proper WAD (no need for -file, it looks in the local directory and also has support for $DOOMWADDIR$), and dump you into the game.

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Firstly the launcher kept trying to connect to just one server, and failing because I don't have ksutra.wad, no matter which server I selected. I restarted the launcher and got the game to start up, but then it didn't pass through the server to connect to, and it just sat on the console waiting for an IP address. I restarted the launcher again a couple of times and launched the game again, whereupon it cycled endlessly through 'connecting to...' messages without ever getting onto a server. Then I gave up.

Seriously, why bother 'releasing' alpha grade software? It's just a waste of everybody's time.

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Jonathan said:

Firstly the launcher kept trying to connect to just one server, and failing because I don't have ksutra.wad, no matter which server I selected. I restarted the launcher and got the game to start up, but then it didn't pass through the server to connect to, and it just sat on the console waiting for an IP address. I restarted the launcher again a couple of times and launched the game again, whereupon it cycled endlessly through 'connecting to...' messages without ever getting onto a server. Then I gave up.

Seriously, why bother 'releasing' alpha grade software? It's just a waste of everybody's time.


Yeah, the launcher is kind of borked at the moment. See my post above for a better solution for connectiong to servers.

Why release it at all, then? Well, opening up the subversion repository for all to see was a major milestone for us. However, we're not stupid, and we knew that there would be people who wanted to try out Odamex who couldn't figure out how to compile the source. So a precompiled version is avalable for people who are interested in the current state of Odamex. It's not inteneded as a real 'release', per se.

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Jonathan said:

Seriously, why bother 'releasing' alpha grade software? It's just a waste of everybody's time.

I disagree. There are people who are interested in testing for bugs and reporting them in order to improve Odamex for the general public.

This is one of the main downfalls of Skulltag: 97b (the last major version) had only four beta testers and as a result, people were giving Carn shit about it. He didn't promote 97b as an alpha or beta version, he promoted it as a new version.

By promoting the first release of Odamex as an alpha version, we are acknowledging that:

1) Bugs definitely exist
2) We ask anyone interested to report any bugs we wouldn't come across in our testing conditions

It's only been 16 hours so far and we've been receiving a lot of helpful bug reports that we would have most likely never came across until (at the very least) weeks later from now. By providing a public alpha release, we can test Odamex over a large variety of computer setups and when we announce a stable release, it will most likely be a lot more stable than Skulltag 97b, for instance. (not shitting on Carn or anything, but 97b was definitely buggy)

Not only that, but it also gives us an indication of what other client/server port staff think about us and whether we can work together in respecting each other. A fine example:

http://forums.zdaemon.org/viewtopic.php?p=159509&highlight=odamex#159509

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Jonathan said:

Seriously, why bother 'releasing' alpha grade software? It's just a waste of everybody's time.

Just like deathz0r I strongly disagree. It's only a waste if you choose to check it out knowing full well it's problematic. It's not yet ready for the casual gamer. It's more to say "here's what we got, and here's what needs to be done", and I say that it's helped tremendously in that respect. WE didn't waste YOUR time because YOU chose to check out an alpha build of our product.

It does us no good keeping things under wraps forever, we've already been in progress for the last year or so (with a big break between april-oct '06) working on it, and feel that now it's time to be more open.

And finally, most of everyone's problems stem from using the launcher. We realize it was not in a really useable state but did not want to exclude it. Just remember, unless you plan to check out the repository and consider contributing, it's really only at a "oh that's kinda neat" stage, we don't expect many people to be actually playing this yet on a regular basis.

I hope this clears up a few things for past and future posts in this thread.

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Look, I fully appreciate the work that you've put into this. I think it's a great sounding project, which is why I wanted to check it out in the first place. However, any public release of a piece of software, even an open source, for-fun project, should be justified and sensibly managed. You admit that the launcher is not in a usable state, but you didn't want to exclude it? How can you rationalise that decision? It is the first thing that people are going to see and use, before they ever get to the game.

I'm not criticising the project or the code, but I just think your communication has been a bit poor. It would have better to announce the opening of the repository and done this release as a snapshot build rather than a versioned one, either excluding the launcher or including an explicit caveat that it was not in a usable state.

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I think the disclaimer in the news post on the Odamex site is more than clear about this software's state.

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Mancubus II said:
I didn't find it particularly necessary, and no one seemed to mind. If there are weirdos who want to get it looking like butt then we will have to consider putting it back.

Like sexy butt. Anyway, yeah, I suspected it was worth mentioning, in case it really wasn't just a temporary omission. I'd certainly lose interest in the project if low res were missing.

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Why remove it? I actually kind of do like how it looks, at least for occasional nostalgia, and it's useful for everyone who wants to play on their old 16mhz systems.

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Jonathan said:

I'm not criticising the project or the code, but I just think your communication has been a bit poor. It would have better to announce the opening of the repository and done this release as a snapshot build rather than a versioned one, either excluding the launcher or including an explicit caveat that it was not in a usable state.


Snapshot builds will be available following this initial release. Perhaps you have a point, but I don't think it's as big of a deal as you are making it seem. The point of including the launcher was to at least show its current state. We've wrestled with it a bit and due to the nature of some of the issues cropping up we've put priority on this today and thankfully the the worst issues experienced have been resolved. We will be updating the repository along with the win32 release tonight.

And as graf mentioned, we tried to make it clear what to expect and for the most part it has worked.

EDIT: Oh, and we fully appreciate and thank you for the criticism. It will help us do better in the future.

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leileilol said:

too bad there's non-Free material in odamex.wad, there goes debian repositories and freedm bundling


Yeah we're working on that one too. It's tough.

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If you're talking about the font... just do an 8 bit conversion of my jdoom font? What else do you need?

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chilvence said:

If you're talking about the font... just do an 8 bit conversion of my jdoom font? What else do you need?

Hey that's not a bad idea, if it was in fact made from scratch and is available as truly free content. It's been a bit since I've gone into it, but if there's anything else I'll make mention of it.

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Well, I just used doom.ttf and gradually texture-ised it. There's even a seperate set specifically for low-resolution clarity.

Come to think of it, there's nothing really stopping you from creating an Odamex themed game font is there?

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Well, I just used doom.ttf and gradually texture-ised it.

That's based off of DOOM's font. What GPLed engines would be better off doing is either adding a custom font (maybe similar to the engine's logo font or something), or relying exclusively on the small font provided in the IWADs (which itself can be recolored like in Boom). To a large degree they already do the latter (look at Odamex's options section). The same issue came up in regard to PrBoom recently.

deathz0r said:
Not only that, but it also gives us an indication of what other client/server port staff think about us and whether we can work together in respecting each other. A fine example:

http://forums.zdaemon.org/viewtopic.php?p=159509&highlight=odamex#159509

Are you sure that's the post you meant to link? Odamex isn't even mentioned in that thread.

Stragely Skulltag is highlighted while the URL says Odamex should be highlighted.

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Which is why I mentioned exactly what it was. I dont actually see any problem using such a thing myself..

But, if you actually want a custom font, it is about 10 minutes work if you want to pick out a nice readable, gpl true type font. (I say that, but I have no idea how to replicate what I did with The Gimp, I used Corel with clipped layers to do the other one...)

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