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Compwhiz128

No Macs Allowed...

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ZDoom is very much only for Windows.*

* or for Linux as well, but don't expect sound to work, thanks FMOD!

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MikeRS said:

* or for Linux as well, but don't expect sound to work, thanks FMOD!


Er, sound kind of works on linux if I am right. I think they use SDL for linux but I could be wrong.

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http://www.fmod.org/index.php/download#FMODExProgrammersAPI
FMOD exists for Linux. It also exists for Mac. It doesn't exist for BSD, though; so some of the people who think BSD and Linux are the same thing since they're both Unices might have been responsible for the legend ZDoom's sound doesn't work on Linux.

ZDoom uses SDL for Linux, yes, but that's for keyboard and mouse input. (Fortunately, it doesn't use SDL for input on Windows. SDL is crap as far as Windows needs are concerned.)

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MikeRS said:

or for Linux as well, but don't expect sound to work, thanks FMOD!

I have never had a problem with ZDoom using FMOD on Linux.

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MikeRS said:

ZDoom is very much only for Windows.*

* or for Linux as well, but don't expect sound to work, thanks FMOD!


Yeah, it's sooo easy to blame some software for the shortcomings of ypour hardware or drivers!

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Graf Zahl said:

Yeah, it's sooo easy to blame some software for the shortcomings of ypour hardware or drivers!


I think you know what My response to this will be...

In all seriousness, that's quite a many cards now that are "broken" under FMOD. The entire AC'97 line, now? because it's broken and hardlocked with me on each card following that standard.

Is this FMOD's fault? YES, because dozens of other audio libraries follow along just fine on my soundcard. 1 out of so many hardlock my computer, and you say it's my hardware? And before you say FMOD uses my "soundcard" fully or unlike other libraries, I'm gonna call bullshit on that too. Don't even try to play that card.

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Csonicgo said:

Is this FMOD's fault? YES, because dozens of other audio libraries follow along just fine on my soundcard. 1 out of so many hardlock my computer, and you say it's my hardware? And before you say FMOD uses my "soundcard" fully or unlike other libraries, I'm gonna call bullshit on that too. Don't even try to play that card.


All I'm saying is that FMOD can't do more than querying the driver and act upon that information. It never accesses the hardware directly. So yes, I blame the drivers of these cards for the problem. It may well be that many programs never run into such problems because they never try to use the broken part of the feature set - but that alone is no indicator that the drivers are fine.

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Sound under Linux is generally a massive clusterfuck. FMOD-friendlyness with drivers probably does lag, mainly due to the fact fewer Linux developers are inclined not to use FMOD due to licensing encumbrance. As Linus says, "given enough eyes, all bugs are shallow", this is probably just a case of too few eyes.

SDL is a far better choice for cross-platform media support, but saying "Oh I'll just rewrite ZDoom with all SDL libs instead" is not exactly realistic.

To the observer, the main development focus of ZDoom and GZDoom does seem to be Windows. That's nothing really new, and GZDoom runs great on Wine under Linux, so that's fine by me. You can install Wine on OSX so maybe give that a go?

If you just want an engine that does 3D acceleration and perspective correction properly, check out Doomsday.

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Super Jamie said:

SDL is a far better choice for cross-platform media support, but saying "Oh I'll just rewrite ZDoom with all SDL libs instead" is not exactly realistic.


Actually, ZDoom can be configured to run FMod sound through SDL. And if that is done FMOD will never directly interact with the sound driver at all. But since SDL sound is utterly primitive many users don't like being restricted to simple stereo sound when their hardware supports 5.1.


To the observer, the main development focus of ZDoom and GZDoom does seem to be Windows. That's nothing really new, and GZDoom runs great on Wine under Linux, so that's fine by me. You can install Wine on OSX so maybe give that a go?


Honestly, I think it would be stupid not to put 90% of development effort where 90% of the users are. But that's the same with FMod. Of course they concentrate on the systems that bring them the most profit. The apparently pathetic state of some Linux sound drivers really doesn't help. A software developer can't deal with every program breaking driver bug. In this regard I only can refer to the long standing ATI OpenGL bug that fog doesn't work properly. The bug exists and programs requiring this functionality are stuck with it. The feature is broken so I really can't do much to address the issue directly. The only chance I had was to use a completely different method to render fog (shaders in this case.)

And just in case: If you have a reproducable problem with FMod on Linux the proper way to deal with it is not shout out to the world 'FMod is teh shit' as Linux users seem to do but report the problem to the people who may be able to do something about it. If you are lucky it's fixable in FMod. If not they will tell you - then you can report to the people who write the drivers. They also need to learn responsibility.

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ZDoom can output 5.1 surround sound? That's quite impressive!

I agree totally with what you say, and "coping" with the prevalence of primarily-Windows development is something any minority OS user should be prepared to deal with. Of course, this experience also makes me eternally thankful that working build scripts and precompiled Linux packages are available for things like PrBoom, Chocolate Doom and Doomsday.

Unfortunately, the people who can often fix errors like poor drivers are manufacturers, who have closed source, closed specs, and adhere to the "90%" rule so will often tell you to get stuffed (rudely in nVidia's case) if you request features or fixes for minor or non-Windows things. At least ATI have opened alot of their specs, and Novell are working on a good Free Software 3D driver for their hardware.

Even with a good bug-reporting framework, idiotic user reports and unhelpful developers still have their effects. I have a few Ubuntu Launchpad bugs myself which will either never be fixed because they're just not common enough, or to which I have already found and shared a solution to yet still people come and post "my lunix iz broke help plz".

But at the end of the day, I find bitching and pointing blame tiresome, and would rather just help someone find a solution to a problem with all available tools and knowledge.

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Super Jamie said:

ZDoom can output 5.1 surround sound? That's quite impressive!


Now take a good guess why FMOD is being used. ;)


I agree totally with what you say, and "coping" with the prevalence of primarily-Windows development is something any minority OS user should be prepared to deal with. Of course, this experience also makes me eternally thankful that working build scripts and precompiled Linux packages are available for things like PrBoom, Chocolate Doom and Doomsday.


Randy and I are trying - but since I don't use Linux I need to depend on others. And here lies a small problem. Although many of the Linux users are trying to help a few of them do it in a way that does not really help. The rule here is: I can't test so I need a pre-tested fix to make sure something works.

The thing is, unlike most of the simpler source ports which don't bother to go much beyond SDL (puke) have a much easier task to keep operational Linux builds, at the expense of an inferior Windows version. ZDoom on the other hand implements dedicated Windows interface code to avoid the shortcomings of SDL on this platform and this is probably the biggest complication in keeping Linux operational because it uses completely different low level code than Windows. Then again, are ZDoom's build scripts really that bad?

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I wish I could help. Getting a GZDoom build to error under cmake is easy enough, but I'm afraid I don't know enough about compiler troubleshooting or programming to be of much use making fixes. Posting such output on the dev forum seems like it would just be annoying spam?

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Super Jamie said:

Posting such output on the dev forum seems like it would just be annoying spam?


Clearly not! If we don't get reports we can't fix things.

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Graf Zahl said:

Now take a good guess why FMOD is being used. ;)




Randy and I are trying - but since I don't use Linux I need to depend on others. And here lies a small problem. Although many of the Linux users are trying to help a few of them do it in a way that does not really help. The rule here is: I can't test so I need a pre-tested fix to make sure something works.

The thing is, unlike most of the simpler source ports which don't bother to go much beyond SDL (puke) have a much easier task to keep operational Linux builds, at the expense of an inferior Windows version. ZDoom on the other hand implements dedicated Windows interface code to avoid the shortcomings of SDL on this platform and this is probably the biggest complication in keeping Linux operational because it uses completely different low level code than Windows. Then again, are ZDoom's build scripts really that bad?

SDL is crap on windows.. hm. What's wrong with it? Doesn't PrBoom-plus use it? It seems to work well enough. The only issue I remember hearing was the mixer locking up on multi core systems (Though a somewhat questionable fix was made for this some time ago..) Then again I'm just an observer not a programmer so I don't know what kind of crap the devs have to deal with.

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Mike.Reiner said:

SDL is crap on windows.. hm. What's wrong with it? Doesn't PrBoom-plus use it? It seems to work well enough.



Have you ever tried to use an SDL application with a non-English keyboard?

Have you ever tried to selectively disable specific SDL features - in particular its utterly shitty input handling?

Both won't work, SDL hijacks the entire system and gives you no chance to work around it in a decent fashion.

English speaking users most likely won't notice most of SDL's problems. As Randy once said, 'there's a good reason why ZDoom does not use SDL under Windows.'

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Graf Zahl said:

Have you ever tried to use an SDL application with a non-English keyboard?

Have you ever tried to selectively disable specific SDL features - in particular its utterly shitty input handling?

Both won't work, SDL hijacks the entire system and gives you no chance to work around it in a decent fashion.

English speaking users most likely won't notice most of SDL's problems. As Randy once said, 'there's a good reason why ZDoom does not use SDL under Windows.'


And that good reason has been made apparent.

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Honestly, I think it would be stupid not to put 90% of development effort where 90% of the users are.


And honestly graf, next time somebody trots out "theres no reason not to use zdoom for x" I'm liking this thread with an attached giant "fuck you pic." Works both ways yo.

EDIT: In fact, I use OS X, Windows 7, and Ubuntu 9.04. All 64-bit versions. GZDoom works on none at all, due to various Windows 7 and OpenGL fun time things (stuff that most software just disables if it doesn't work, instead of gzdoom which just crashes), and the fact that it just plain doesn't work on OSs other than Windows. ZDoom works in OS X but its an older version, and sort of works in 7 before it decides to crash. In Linux it neither has sound nor a functional keyboard.

Honestly, like, I have tried to use both these ports, and like, enjoy using them, but forcing me into using, like, a specific OS or configuration of hardware or both is like, totally not the best way to keep a userbase, like, you know?

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John Smith said:

EDIT: In fact, I use OS X, Windows 7, and Ubuntu 9.04. All 64-bit versions. GZDoom works on none at all, due to various Windows 7 and OpenGL fun time things (stuff that most software just disables if it doesn't work, instead of gzdoom which just crashes), and the fact that it just plain doesn't work on OSs other than Windows. ZDoom works in OS X but its an older version, and sort of works in 7 before it decides to crash. In Linux it neither has sound nor a functional keyboard.


Such 'bug reports' are useless and won't help getting these problems fixed. For the record:

- I don't have Windows 7, I never had any bug report for it and absolutely no feedback about problems.
- If ZDoom crashes, care to post a crash log? Just saying 'it crashes' is useless
- If ZDoom under Linux doesn't have working sound, I again have to ask: Have you tried all options - including SDL?
- Concerning the keyboard on Linux, it's clearly a system related problem as none of the regular ZDoom Linux users seem to have any problems. Besides, why don't you blame SDL which is used as interface here? ZDoom doesn't perform any magic. It just reads the SDL messages and passes them on.

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GZDoom runs fine for me in windows 7. Also the latest svn version compiles and runs fine in linux too. Only problem I have with it in linux so far is that the mouse cursor doesn't get hidden in fullscreen mode (when it's set to the native resolution)

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For the mouse cursor thing I got a patch today that's supposed to fix it. You can try with the latest SVN r354.

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John Smith said:

And honestly graf, next time somebody trots out "theres no reason not to use zdoom for x" I'm liking this thread with an attached giant "fuck you pic." Works both ways yo.

EDIT: In fact, I use OS X, Windows 7, and Ubuntu 9.04. All 64-bit versions. GZDoom works on none at all, due to various Windows 7 and OpenGL fun time things (stuff that most software just disables if it doesn't work, instead of gzdoom which just crashes), and the fact that it just plain doesn't work on OSs other than Windows. ZDoom works in OS X but its an older version, and sort of works in 7 before it decides to crash. In Linux it neither has sound nor a functional keyboard.

Honestly, like, I have tried to use both these ports, and like, enjoy using them, but forcing me into using, like, a specific OS or configuration of hardware or both is like, totally not the best way to keep a userbase, like, you know?


GZDoom works fine on Windows 7 for me.

Windows is the lion share. Until that changes, there is really no compelling reason for a developer to care about other platforms unless they themselves want to use the software on that platform. Graf is a Windows user, as are most other people here.

Maybe you could just lighten up and be glad he even listens to people who complain about Linux related problems, because honestly he could just tell you to fuck off and be done with it.

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32-bit is also the lion share, which is more the point for John Smith.

As I said above, any minority OS user should be prepared to deal with compatibility issues. Bitching on forums and being a jerk to developers is not going to change that. Work around it, make your own contributions to the code, or stfu.

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