Millennium Deadline Set

[Arioch]

Lüt has updated the Doom Millennium page with the news that he's set a deadline of October 15th for the release of Doom Millennium, which will be out on that date "no matter what". As of yesterday he's put together a next-to-final build of the entire project, and given the team some time to review the results.

[wavelength]

FINALLY :]

[NightFang]

I've heard THAT before!

[Dashiva]

You've said that before dude. :P

[kristus]

About fucking time.

[Lüt]

I meant it exactly as it's said:

If there's an engine bug that makes one map unplayable, it'll be released. If one map remains half incomplete, it'll be released. If the final boss's death scene still doesn't work, it'll be released. If they Z-Clipping problem doesn't get fixed, it'll be released. If the 5 backups I have scattered all over the place disappear and I'm back down to what we had 2 years ago, it'll be released. Period.

I don't have time for it anymore.

[kristus]

Where the hell is Cheif.

[Lüt]

Beats me.

The last time I talked to him about anything dealing with TI was like the beginning of the year. I caught him on AIM once or twice but not for very long, just enough to know he doesn't use the computer anymore.

[deathbringer]

AT LAAAAAASSSSSSSSSSSSTTTTTTTTTTTTTT!!!!!!!!!1 (The 1 always has to be in there)

[kristus]

Dammit.

[Swedish Fish]

I wonder what could have brought upon this ultimatum??

[kristus]

The plague

[Swedish Fish]

Ebola: No, I was thinking more along the lines of my interview on doomcenter. =)

[wavelength]

You've had enough damn time. There shouldn't BE a final-boss bug. There shouldn't BE a z-clipping error. There shouldn't BE an incomplete level.

[Doom]

whenever i stopped at the doom millenium site i'd say to myself "hmm, what these guys have to do is ditch all the engine modifications that cause problems." even the most "advanced" doom engines have z-clipping problems, so pretending to come up with that feature for a project engine is silly. just use an existing engine, or apply some backwards engineering and restrusture maps/items placement that required these features. i think i've said this before about millenium, a long time ago. and if you have no time for it, you can also always release the resources, code, etc, for someone else to use or even finish. but releasing a buggy thing for people to play on is.. weird.

[Lüt]

That was a theoretical list, just a bunch of examples.

Wavelength: Do you expect me to make the maps, arrange the music, do the graphics and textures, do the coding, do the storyline, do the website and have all this done in the snap of a finger? I DON'T KNOW HOW TO CODE! GRAPHICS ARE NOT MY SPECIALTY! Do you know how many active team member's we've had for about the last 8 or 9 months? ME! I only signed up to contribute a few levels and the entire project has fallen into my hands. I didn't expect that. So far I've worked on trying to make 20 other maps that aren't mine fit together into a coherent storyline, arrange their difficulty and playability, come up with intermission texts, do intermission graphics and screenshots, organize the music (half of which doesn't fit *any* of the maps), play through the game over and over again to track down all the engine bugs and level incompatibilities, come up with lists to fix that nobody pays attention to (or tells me to "shove my lighting tips up my ass"), make custom graphics for people's maps, design and arrange the entire website, story-screenshots-enemies and all, PLUS DO MY OWN MAPS! The last one would have been done if Doom didn't have some silly 32K segs limit, now I have to decide which 1/3 of the level to trash: to me, it's all necessary. The bottom line is that none of anything I'm doing is gonna be appreciated because I'm trying to fix shit that was made as early as 1997, so I just don't care anymore. I'm finishing off all the stuff I had going, ONLY my part of the game, and then it's out. Other people can take the blame if their contributions to the game don't fit, I'm through worrying about their parts anymore.

Fish: I've never read anything on DoomCenter until a few days ago when they posted the Chris Lutz interview. But I'll go read yours now.

Doom: Like I said, if I knew the very first thing about coding, I'd try it. I'm releasing the engine source along with the game, maybe it'll be assimilated into ZDoom or something. The thing is that we have a lot of new enemy AI, a lot of new weapons, new objects, etc. which I'm sure could be easily ported, but I don't have a clue how. We changed a few other things as well. It's based off MBF. That engine didn't have Z-Clipping. The Z-Clipping problem is that if you step on an object, you keep sliding until you are back on ground, no control. If you slide into a wall, you're stuck. Or if you land on top of an enemy, you're stuck. Or if you walk onto a small rock at a very slow speed, it could take you a minute to slide off. For all I know, if could have been fixed by now. But we've done enough changes that it would be fairly hard (says the guy who knows nothing) to implement support into other engines like ZDoom, some of the features would screw with it's ability to work other PWADs and even the original game. This engine has 25 game levels in it, after that the game ends. There's also intermissions between each level. The reason we're keeping it on MBF is because it's pretty pointless to fill it with ZDoom code if none of the maps use ZDoom-specific features. Not everybody can stand to waste so many resources running a port whose resource-hogging features don't even get used. MBF is all it needs to run and that's how it's staying. If you think I'm gonna retro-fit the whole project to run with ZDoom, guess again.

[Lüt]

Aha... found it :)

They'll never be complete and you know it! :P

[Enjay]

"Not everybody can stand to waste so many resources running a port whose resource-hogging features don't even get used."

But then again, MBF and all other BOOM type DOS based ports (fine ports though they are) that use the Allegro sound library, sound like cats having their knackers squeezed in a vice and rubbed with stinging nettles, on many modern sound cards. In my case an SB Live.

Not saying you should, or are even vaguely likely to change what you are doing as a result. Just putting in my £0:02 really.

I actually miss being able to run these ports with decent sound since my AWE32 gave up on me a while back. At least PRBOOM gives faithful, good sounding BOOM type play under Windows. Mind you, Zdoom is my first choice for anything, and I use the other ports if something very specific to them is required. Not often the case as Zdoom plays most BOOM type stuff just fine.

Sorry, wandering off the point. Time to stop.

[Dashiva]

1. I have an SB live, by fiddling with the config it's possible to make the sound come out right. albiet low volume, but ah well.

2. ZDOOM IS ASS. Why is this becoming my trademark?

[Guest Kinoshkana]

Any chance that you might hop onto Hellstorm once Millenium is released?

[Lüt]

You mean so I can delay their work even further? Or are you being serious? Either way, I dunno. Depends. Probably not.

[Guest Kinoshkana]

Actually, it was more so that we can leech useful bits of code off of you. :-)

[Lüt]

Oh. Well I'll be releasing the source along with the rest of the game anyways, so you'll be able to get it eventually.

[NiGHTMARE]

Hellstorm is still alive? Damn, I thought it was dead.

Guess I'll have to get back to working on my map. Once I get back home that is...

[Enjay]

What settings do you use?

I too have "fiddled" and tried as many combinations as I could, but still no joy.

Any help would be appreciated.

[Lüt]

The Hellstorm site still has that old banner "I Drive A Festiva, Click Here." I've always wondered; WTF is a Festiva??

(The first person that says "a car" is going to get a mixture of hydrochloric acid, cow dung, kitchen magnets and shredded Nintendo Power magazines shoved down their throat.)

[Guest Captain Napalm]

Isn´t this the project with colored lighting and the really cool pistol sprite? I heard about this when I first found Doomworld.
The guy in charge said it would be done christmas that year I think :P

[Swedish Fish]

Hmm, highly coincidental that interview and your update came around the same time. =) Good to see your finally setting the ultimatum. Time passes, and very little changes with no help + no motivation...

BTW, I can contribute some Nintendo Power magzines for shredding if you need to make that mixture., heh

[Guest Kinoshkana]

It's a Nissan, therefore it sucks. (Yes, it's a car. DUUUUUUUUH.)

[Lüt]

No it's not.