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Cyberbaron2

Is zdaemon and doom3d still developed?

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I know I am already going to be accused of starting shit by the zdaemon lovers, but this is actually a serious question. Is Zdaemon still being developed on? I spent a little amount of time looking at the development history and well 1.09 was like announced in circa 2005 but still has yet to surface and its also been like a year since 1.08.08 was released. Both odamex and skulltag has had about 3 released revisions since that time. It appears that either zdaemon has stopped development as is the case with csdoom or well I guess the programmers are just too busy to work on it or something.

Anyone know anything about the development?



Same thing with doom3d. Have not seen a release in over 3 years but no comment from the author.

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Well, the good thing about infrequent releases is that they are typically pretty stable as much testing goes into them. That and people don't have to worry about version differences when trying to find a server. ZDaemon development has been pretty active in the past year and the bugfixes/feature additions keep piling on. Currently there are 220 some changelog entries sitting on the current beta.

So yeah, ZDaemon is currently under active development, it's just transparent for the most part.

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As of last October, ZDaemon 1.09 actually does exist, as it has been circulating around amongst the private beta testers. I have heard it described as being "in pretty good shape", but that doesn't actually say much about how feature complete it is.

EarthQuake said:

So yeah, ZDaemon is currently under active development, it's just transparent for the most part.

I think you meant to say "opaque". Skulltag has public beta releases quite often, and you can compile odamex directly from the latest SVN if you like.

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That is too bad about doom3d it was a pretty decent port back in the day. Probably would have been very good today if its development did not stop.

I do not understand it, if Zdaemon is still being actively developed in the past year then why has there not been any releases while odamex and skulltag have both made many releases since? It just sounds like it really isn't being worked on anymore. Alexmax what do you mean by 1.09 is in the hands of some private testers? Wouldn't that mean that it is finished?

I like the chart Ralphis, by the way.

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The ZDaemon team is way too paranoid to release public betas, I guess. And no, 1.09 isn't done, it's in development, but unlike skulltag or odamex, where development is pretty visible, the zd team chooses to bar everything off for everyone except select few testers. Their loss, I guess, common sense should tell you that the more people testing - the quicker bugs are found.

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Cyberbaron2 said:

I do not understand it, if Zdaemon is still being actively developed in the past year then why has there not been any releases while odamex and skulltag have both made many releases since? It just sounds like it really isn't being worked on anymore. Alexmax what do you mean by 1.09 is in the hands of some private testers? Wouldn't that mean that it is finished?


It's probably about quality control more than anything. Kilgore and the others involved are very careful to avoid introducing new bugs while fixing old bugs and adding new features.

Also, the beta is constantly being updated, so there is a sizable handful of beta testers to check things out as features are implemented and bugs are fixed. I'm a beta tester myself, so I can vouch for how awesome 1.09 is going to be.

A 32-player cooperative game on Deus Vult MAP05 with everyone pinging 300? Shit son, it's gonna be silky smooth like a baby's ass. : )

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Cyberbaron2 said:

I do not understand it, if Zdaemon is still being actively developed in the past year then why has there not been any releases while odamex and skulltag have both made many releases since?.


ZDoom usually only get's one release a year and there hasn't been a new release of Doomsday for almost a year.

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Vermil said:

ZDoom usually only get's one release a year

8 in 2006 (one major, seven minor), zero in 2007, one (major) in 2008, two (one major, one minor) in 2009, three in 2010 (two major, one minor) and none so far in 2011 but the year is still young. I think it averages to more than one a year. Not that it matters much since the core of its user base mostly rely on the SVN builds.

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Chocolate Doom, with its fixed purpose, is the one port that one might think could simply be completed, no longer requiring any updates. I am both surprised by and appreciative of Fraggle's continued efforts.

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Code needs to be maintained even when the feature set does not evolve anymore*. Even if all that's needed is adapting the project and platform-dependent files to the evolution of hardware and operating systems.


(* A status that Choco hasn't reached yet. Even if its mission statement may seem simplistic, "keeping the behavior of the original exe in all circumstances", it is to the contrary very difficult since so many of the tricks, exploits and weird bugs are caused by undefined behavior inherited from Doom's own bugs, or the DOS extender, or the Watcom compiler, or even MS-DOS itself. So full accuracy requires a lot of investigative work; which ports that focus instead on fixing bugs and adding stuff do not have to do.)

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Gez said:
Even if all that's needed is adapting the project and platform-dependent files to the evolution of hardware and operating systems.

Someday someone will write Chocolate Chocolate Doom for future operating systems, which will aim to reproduce the behavior of the original Chocolate Doom as closely as possible.

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CODOR said:

Someday someone will write Chocolate Chocolate Doom for future operating systems, which will aim to reproduce the behavior of the original Chocolate Doom as closely as possible.


That seems like a good idea, I'm going to checkout Chocolate Doom 1.0.0, rebrand it and release it. Prepare to see a news posting soon.

Creaphis said:

So is Strawberry Doom actually Neapolitan Doom?


"Neapolitan" Doom not have melted yet!

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There is no release date, although I do believe that development on it is being wrapped up. Could be tomorrow, next year, or May 6th.

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Well hey, EQ already covered some of what I was going to say.

Cyberbaron2 said:

Alexmax what do you mean by 1.09 is in the hands of some private testers? Wouldn't that mean that it is finished?

What part of 'private testers' did you not understand?

Cyberbaron2 said:

It just sounds like it really isn't being worked on anymore.

You only have to dig out the changelog or read the Zdaemon bug/request forums to see that this is hardly the case.

AlexMax said:

As of last October, ZDaemon 1.09 actually does exist

Probably more like since October 2009. There were certainly murmurs about a possible release this time last year.
The developers unfortunately have the exact same problem which George Broussard had with Duke Nukem Forever. They're never content with what they have and cannot stop moving the goal-line. It was joked about several times that 1.09 (or 1.08.09 or whatever-the-hell) would perhaps arrive at the same time as DNF. Ironically, since then, DNF has been removed from the vaporware list and is looking very likely to beat Zdaemon 1.09.

It would, however, be highly entertaining to see them both released on the same day.

tm512 said:

the zd team chooses to bar everything off for everyone except select few testers.

From the test servers I've seen then it doesn't seem to me that the testing group is all that small or selective anymore.

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Ralphis said:

I look forward to watching my children play it when it's released

Take your breeder fantasies elsewhere.

Cybershark said:

It would, however, be highly entertaining to see them both released on the same day.

I know which one I'd be playing (sry dewk)

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ZDaemon 1.08.09? Why, I remember that, it was one of the famous legends told in Greek Mythology.

I don't know why they don't just release it already, I mean, everyone has the beta... Well anyone that hangs around with [XXX] a lot, that is, I even have a beta for it and it seems to work well. Kilgore rather wants to play the product he has now instead of working on it more, he's lazy like that, like me!

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