Source port forking - why?

[ryaxnb]

Flood the Board Series Part II.
Why does doom code fork so much? I think have a few managed projects (say Risen3d, Prboom and GZDOOM) instead of so many eerily-similar variants would be good for the community.

What do I mean by variants?
Well there are several lines that are heavily fractured.
The most fractured is the boom line.
With PrBoom, Prboom+, Eternity, and Chocolate DOOM all BOOM-style ports that are in some way based on BOOM.
Why can't there just be one BOOM-based engine. I'm not asking for one Doom Engine, but nearly all the BOOM-engines (excepting Chocolate Doom) focus on wad-author features, demo-compatibility (except eternity) and lack some things like Hexen support. A perfect blend would be nice. And while you're at it, why can't they add support for DDF to eliminate once and for all the reason to use EDGE, an outdated port?
How about one ZDOOM based port? Instead, GZDOOM is generally superior to ZDOOM. Skulltag is better for multiplayer, and Zdaemon is popular for deathmatches. Why not just combine them all since all are almost the same, they all are really ZDOOM's unique hexen/doom blend inside.

Finally, why is Risen3d still a fork of Doomsday? Everyone seems to regard Risen3d as superior.

Overall, if the major players could be shrunk to Prboom, GZDOOM, and Risen3d, everyone would be happier. But without Fragglescript in Prboom, DDF in anything, or good multiplayer in GZDOOM, it's impossible to do that. Couldn't someone merge the forks?

[chungy]

There is a factual error in your text: Chocolate Doom is not based on Boom, and does not behave like Boom in any way. Instead it is based directly on the source release from id and focuses on preserving perfect compatibility with vanilla Doom 1.9 (as far as is possible), for more information see http://www.chocolate-doom.org/wiki/index.php/About

As for your general question: Each fork is created by an author's desire to design the engine in their own specific ways, which may or may not be compatible with other ports (or even Doom itself). It's the nature of free software, and you cannot prevent it, and it's really a good thing :-)

[GreyGhost]

ryaxnb said:

Why can't there just be one BOOM-based engine.
Overall, if the major players could be shrunk to Prboom, GZDOOM, and Risen3d, everyone would be happier.

Yes - why not? That begs the question - why do you want three of them, each with a different scripting language?

[Gez]

ryaxnb said:

[GZDoom and ZDaemon] are almost the same

lol

[<inactive>Player Lin]

ryaxnb said:

How about one ZDOOM based port? Instead, GZDOOM is generally superior to ZDOOM. Skulltag is better for multiplayer, and Zdaemon is popular for deathmatches. Why not just combine them all since all are almost the same, they all are really ZDOOM's unique hexen/doom blend inside.

Only ZDoom and GZDoom still update together.
Zdaemon's ZDoom base-code is old.(Based on ZDoom v1.23)
Skulltag have some problem about open/close source flamewar and it doesn't up-to-date with ZDoom/GZDoom AFAIK.


And...merging forked source ports is like MISSION IMPOSSIBLE. :p
If it's easy, why are there so many forked source ports?
Not every source port authors want to do.

But I agree if they merged I would happy...but it won't happens, ever.

:(

[myk]

Why can't we all live under the same flag?

Why can't we all be of the same color?

Why can't we all worship the same God?

playerlin said:
But I agree if they merged I would happy...but it won't happens, ever.

It's pretty irrelevant, as within each engine you'll still have differences based on settings. And when merging dilutes the possibility of putting distinct settings into wide (but group-based) use, things are only worse in general.

[esselfortium]

myk said:

Why can't we all live under the same flag?

Why can't we all be of the same color?

Why can't we all worship the same God?

WHY CAN'T PRESIDENTS FIGHT THE WAAAAAARRSSS

[fraggle]

This is a question that has already been asked a thousand times over. The people who ask it are usually not programmers and have only a naive understanding of how software is developed, and of the motivations of source port authors.

I've already given my own answer in a previous thread.