[Source port] Introducing Raze: ''That's one Duked up Space Marine!''

[Redneckerz]

 

Introduction:

Raze is a source port of EDuke32 implementing several systems as found in the GZDoom source port. It combines EDuke32, PCExhumed, NBlood, and RedNukem in a single package, amongst various stability and renderer improvements. It is primarily developed by Christoph Oelckers - @Graf Zahl - and Rachael Alexanderson -@Rachael - with inclusion of several other codebases, primarily those from Build and EDuke32.

 

Features:

• Polymost is used as the primary renderer, significantly rewritten and seperated from OpenGL, utilizing a new texture manager. Polymost is used in this capacity to generate polygons and sending them off to the backend, which is OpenGL 3.3 with the option to use OpenGL 4.5 features. This ensures that new renderer features can be added to the same backend, but where a different renderer other than Polymost can be used
• GZDoom's post-processing effects framework is incorporated, allowing effects such as bloom and faking increased color ranges with dithering to be possible
• A replaced and revamped file system, based on the WAD manager used in GZDoom
• ZMusic from GZDoom is used as music system
• The menu code from GZDoom is used as a generic system across all supported games
• Games are in in their own modules and do not interact with eachother. Renderer, sound system and input are used universally across the titles
• Controller support is included, using the existing ZDoom controller code
• Multiplayer and networking however have a different implementation per game, and thus this was left as-is
• OSD and configuration maintenance replaced with ZDoom's console and config code

Supported games:

• Duke Nukem 3D v1.3D and Atomic Edition (via eDuke32)
• One Whole Unit Blood and Cryptic Passage (via NBlood)
• NAM (via eDuke32)
• WW2GI (via eDuke32)
• Redneck Rampage and Suckin' Grits on Route 66 (via RedNukem)

Unsupported, but are semi-playable with bugs:

• Shadow Warrior (via VoidSW)
• Powerslave/Exhumed (via PCExhumed)
• Ion Fury (via eDuke32)

Videos:

 

 

Credits:

• Copyright (c) 1998-2020 ZDoom + GZDoom teams, and contributors
• Doom Source (c) 1997 id Software, Raven Software, and contributors
• EDuke32 Source (c) 2005-2020 EDuke32 teams, and contributors
• NBlood source (c) 2019 Nuke.YKT
• PCExhumed source (c) 2019 sirlemonhead, Nuke.YKT
• Duke Nukem 3D Source (c) 1996-2003 3D Realms
• Shadow Warrior Source (c) 1997-2005 3D Realms
• "Build Engine & Tools" Copyright (c) 1993-1997 Ken Silverman Ken Silverman's official web site: http://www.advsys.net/ken See the included license file "BUILDLIC.TXT" for license info.
• Please see license files for individual contributor licenses
• Non-Build code is licensed under the GPL v2

Links:

• Raze Github repository (Compile yourself for now. There are compiled builds on Discord, but its better to wait for Graf's stable build.)
• Latest release, at GitHub
• ZDoom forums announcement thread
• Entry at the ZDoomwiki (This will move to a dedicated wiki in due time)

Edited February 9, 2020 by Redneckerz : Changed release page to latest releases.

[seed]

Oh yes indeed, I'm hoping everyone will have a good time with it ;) .

 

I am going to say that it has the best of both worlds but there's still a long way to go.

[Redneckerz]

Update:

Added in supported and unsupported games list, thanks to Kinsie.

[hybridial]

Looks great, especially if it'll be the first time VoidSW is publicly playable in any form. And the controller support is out of the box, even better. That means the only other pet peeve I have would be the lack of fully 3D skyboxes, @Redneckerz, any idea if there will be something to address that eventually?

[seed]

4 minutes ago, hybridial said:

Looks great, especially if it'll be the first time VoidSW is publicly playable in any form. And the controller support is out of the box, even better. That means the only other pet peeve I have would be the lack of fully 3D skyboxes, @Redneckerz, any idea if there will be something to address that eventually?

 

Sky rendering will be improved in the future, whenever that may be remains unknown. We're thinking of maybe Building(TM) a new render.

[hybridial]

1 minute ago, seed said:

 

Sky rendering will be improved in the future, whenever that may be remains unknown. We're thinking of maybe Building(TM) a new render.

 

Nice, well I'm really looking forward to it, BloodGDX and Eduke32 cover things for me at the moment but I'm quite happy to jump to anything that offers comparative or even better experiences. 

[seed]

9 minutes ago, hybridial said:

Nice, well I'm really looking forward to it, BloodGDX and Eduke32 cover things for me at the moment but I'm quite happy to jump to anything that offers comparative or even better experiences. 

 

We have VSync that actually fucking works, and a better sound system just to name 2 key differences on the technical side of things :p.

[BBQgiraffe]

 

[ReaperAA]

Funny thing. I was just playing Blood's Episode 4 on Raze (using Nash's compiled build available on Discord). I really loved it. Build engine has never been this smooth.

[Graf Zahl]

3 hours ago, hybridial said:

Looks great, especially if it'll be the first time VoidSW is publicly playable in any form. And the controller support is out of the box, even better. That means the only other pet peeve I have would be the lack of fully 3D skyboxes, @Redneckerz, any idea if there will be something to address that eventually?

 

The sky code in Polymost is sadly one of the least nice parts of the entire renderer.

My plan was from the start to just ditch it and replace with GZDoom's sky dome renderer. That's absolutely doable but requires a bit of work. Once that's in, everything should work again - it's just that right now there's bigger fish to fry (i.e. ironing out all the little issues that have inevitably piled up while ripping out most of the backend code from these games and replacing it with GZDoom's.) The sky code fell victim to this, because it saw some fundamental changes on EDuke's side right around the time I made changes to this code myself, and as a result got broken somewhat.

 

 

[Angelloproduct]

Wow will this be the new gzdoom and eduke combined ports rather than their standalone?

[Spectre01]

Will Shadow Warrior finally get a better version than Redux? That's what I'm looking forward to the most! SW with a proper 3D-looking renderer without the y-shearing.

[ReaperAA]

The first public alpha of Raze is here.

[seed]

2 hours ago, Spectre01 said:

Will Shadow Warrior finally get a better version than Redux? That's what I'm looking forward to the most! SW with a proper 3D-looking renderer without the y-shearing.

 

In short, yes indeed, however, SW in its current state is pretty rough and proper 3D is not here currently in any game - up/down view limits are all the same, for now.

 

The base game is playable and works correctly from beginning til the end - I tested it arduously after all, with the rest of the team ❤️ - but it is unstable currently and prone to random crashes. Basically, "it works but the experience isn't ideal. Yet."

Edited February 4, 2020 by seed

[Redneckerz]

15 hours ago, hybridial said:

Looks great, especially if it'll be the first time VoidSW is publicly playable in any form. And the controller support is out of the box, even better. That means the only other pet peeve I have would be the lack of fully 3D skyboxes, @Redneckerz, any idea if there will be something to address that eventually?

Graf already answered you, so that will be fixed. There is actually a TODO file that highlights what's on Graf's mind.

 

Something that has been mentioned before release is that the dreaded Polymer renderer, with this new modular approach can return, but then significantly rewritten in the same fashion as the Polymost rework is. Because Graf seperated all OpenGL code off to the backend, new renderers can be added without the existing renderer (Polymost) being affected.

 

In essence, a plugin like system.

10 hours ago, Angelloproduct said:

Wow will this be the new gzdoom and eduke combined ports rather than their standalone?

No. This is not a port that aims to surpass EDuke32. EDuke32 has its own benefits that aren't in Raze.

 

Raze is however a stability project using EDuke32/Build code for the rendering and GZDoom for most of the other stuff, including some eyecandy :)

10 hours ago, Spectre01 said:

Will Shadow Warrior finally get a better version than Redux? That's what I'm looking forward to the most! SW with a proper 3D-looking renderer without the y-shearing.

Read the thread. Shadow Warrior technically works through the VoidSW module, but as of now is unsupported. That's on Graf, but i can imagine that this is a low priority for the reasons stated above.

 

With that said, since @ReaperAA mentioned it, here is a direct Dropbox download link to Nash's compiled build. Be advised that this is alpha code and thus unstable and may not work on your system. Watch the stable Graf build when that releases.

 

This is not needed anymore, thanks Reaper for sharing. Ill add it to the OP!

Edited February 5, 2020 by Redneckerz : Removed the Shadow Warrior part, i was thinking of Witchaven instead.

[Gez]

58 minutes ago, Redneckerz said:

Something that has been mentioned before release is that the dreaded Polymer renderer, with this new modular approach can return, but then significantly rewritten in the same fashion as the Polymost rework is. Because Graf seperated all OpenGL code off to the backend, new renderers can be added without the existing renderer (Polymost) being affected.

Polymer will not return. Its features will, but reimplemented from scratch.

 

59 minutes ago, Redneckerz said:

There is actually a TODO file that highlights what's on Graf's mind.

No. The TODO file in the build-doc folder is, as can be expected from its folder, part of the build documentation. It's from Ken Silverman, I suppose.

 

[Redneckerz]

5 minutes ago, Gez said:

Polymer will not return. Its features will, but reimplemented from scratch.

That's a better way of saying it than i did. You will have to excuse me for the voluntary PR work on Raze with this :)

5 minutes ago, Gez said:

No. The TODO file in the build-doc folder is, as can be expected from its folder, part of the build documentation. It's from Ken Silverman, I suppose.

 

It clearly has Graf's scratch that. Now that i read it again, that's definitely Ken's style of writing. The PolyTEX stuff should have given it away.

Apologies, i do not know why i thought that was Graf.

[Graf Zahl]

22 minutes ago, Gez said:

Polymer will not return. Its features will, but reimplemented from scratch.

 

  

 

Nearly everything Polymost can do is already available in GZDoom, courtesy of dpJudas. The task will be to create compatible input from Build maps.

Polymer may serve as a guideline but ultimately this is 10 year old code written for a very different generation of hardware with no API independent design - it sits directly on top of OpenGL - but that's not going to cut it anymore today - a renderer that cannot be made to support Vulkan is not future proof.

[seed]

And also, Polymer was incomplete.

 

According to what some EDuke devs said, it was actually never truly finished. It still lives and will probably continue to do so in mainline - while simultaneously being dead.

[High On Berserk]

24 minutes ago, seed said:

And also, Polymer was incomplete.

 

According to what some EDuke devs said, it was actually never truly finished. It still lives and will probably continue to do so in mainline - while simultaneously being dead.

Like Q1 zombies?

[Master O]

17 minutes ago, High On Berserk said:

Like Q1 zombies?

 

*takes out a Grenade Launcher and kills the zombies*.

[Master O]

@Graf Zahl How will CD Music be supported in Raze for Shadow Warrior (eventually), Blood, and Redneck Rampage?

[Gez]

It works like Quake ports: rip (but don't tear) the tracks to .ogg, and put them in a music folder. They should be named track02.ogg and so on, except for Powerslave/Exhumed where the file names used are exhumed02.ogg and so on instead.

 

[xvertigox]

Shit, this is very exciting. Having things unified for most build games will lower the barrier to entry considerably to new players. The improvements sound massive too, can't wait to try Raze out and see it progress.

[Komenja]

Fuckin'. Awesome.

[Gokuma]

Groovy!

[Cacodemon345]

4 hours ago, Redneckerz said:

Due to the legal limbo with Shadow Warrior, it will also an adventure of itself if that gets mainline support.

What's the legal limbo?

[Woolie Wool]

So is software rendering going to be included in any way? I understand the software rendering code is...eccentric, but even a Doom-like software renderer would be nice if it could look more or less like traditional Build to the player.

[seed]

1 hour ago, Woolie Wool said:

So is software rendering going to be included in any way? I understand the software rendering code is...eccentric, but even a Doom-like software renderer would be nice if it could look more or less like traditional Build to the player.

 

That's a story for another time, for now bringing it back is not a priority or bsing seriously considered.

[Spectre01]

Looks like the "palette emulation" option adds a more software look, similar to the palette tonemap in GZDoom. Unfortunately, it also has the side effect of disabling AF, which is no bueno.