Why are so many high profile mods not in /idgames?

[Hell Theatre]

As I was looking for some info I surprisingly discovered that several 'big' mods of recent years cannot be found in the /idgames archive but only on alternative download sites.

A few examples:
Back To Saturn X Ep 1
Back To Saturn X Ep 1
Winter's Fury
Gene Tech


Does anyone know why?

[Voros]

BTSX uses modified Doom sprites (DOOM MONSTERS AND WEAPONS). And Doom aint free.
I dont know the other two mods you said.

[Keyboard_Doomer]

BTSX E1 and E2 are still in development and will only be completed after the release of E3.

The other 2 WADs are for (G)ZDoom and while I don't know why the authors haven't submitted them to idgames I seem to have noticed that quite a few relatively popular (G)ZDoom WADs are not available on idgames. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, might be it only applies to WADs that are in continuous development which is somewhat common for (G)ZDoom WADs.

[Graf Zahl]

'In development' is definitely a thing here.

Where one has to ask the question why this often finds no end with some people who constantly need to tinker with their work, toss out some old stuff, bring in some new stuff without any end in sight and then lose interest and abandon it all.

I think the most extreme example of this is Demon Eclipse where I have lost count of how much stuff got changed endlessly but the only thing we never saw was a final release. At least there's some stuff in /idgames here.

And while I can understand why BTSX is on hold, the other two mods being mentioned here are another matter. Fortunately for both the creators keep the download links active but who knows what will happen if they either lose interest or are simply unable to keep the download site maintained?

It's definitely not a good thing that these mods are kept off the archive - and the ZDoom project forum is probably the worst place to keep this stuff - it's very hard to find anything in there, especially if it gets named a lot by other mods, which has the ironic result that the more popular ones are often the hardest ones to find...

[Doomkid]

Voros said:

BTSX uses modified Doom sprites (DOOM MONSTERS AND WEAPONS). And Doom aint free.

There are many wads out that that use plenty of edited Doom resources. As a rule of thumb, as long as you're not copying huge chunks of unedited iwad graphics into your pwad, you're fine.

[Keyboard_Doomer]

Doomkid said:

As a rule of thumb, as long as you're not copying huge chunks of unedited iwad graphics into your pwad, you're fine.

I don't know what is the official exception/justification that allows this but WADs like Sunlust and Ancient Aliens contain literally (almost) all of IWAD sprites so that they have the proper colors in the custom palette.

[Tristan]

Keyboard_Doomer said:

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, might be it only applies to WADs that are in continuous development which is somewhat common for (G)ZDoom WADs.

I thought Winter's Fury was not only finished, but Pyroscourge was even working on a sequel.
Now I wonder what happened to S.U.P.E.R. Natural...

[Jaxxoon R]

Keyboard_Doomer said:

I don't know what is the official exception/justification that allows this but WADs like Sunlust and Ancient Aliens contain literally (almost) all of IWAD sprites so that they have the proper colors in the custom palette.

I guess the idea is they've been blonic'd into working with a different pallet, so they've been suitably modified.

[Graf Zahl]

Not to mention that this use case is covered by the original commercial license.


Interestingly, the text files of both BTSX and Winter's Fury say:

You MAY distribute this file, provided you include this text file, with no
modifications. You may distribute this file in any electronic format (BBS,
Diskette, CD, etc) as long as you include this file intact. I have
received permission from the original authors of any modified or included
content in this file to allow further distribution.

so uploading them to /idgames should theoretically be fine.

Gene Tech does not come with a standard text file, so probably not.

[scifista42]

Jaxxoon R said:

I guess the idea is they've been blonic'd into working with a different pallet, so they've been suitably modified.

I don't think it's a proper justification, more like an excuse: "We WANTED to use original sprites in our maps AND make them look OK with our custom palette, so we NEEDED to reinclude the sprites in the wad. Hopefully nobody would mind it."

[Spectre01]

What ever happened to Sunder? Did Gazebo go crazy and quit working on it?

[Hell Theatre]

Graf Zahl said:

It's definitely not a good thing that these mods are kept off the archive - and the ZDoom project forum is probably the worst place to keep this stuff - it's very hard to find anything in there, especially if it gets named a lot by other mods, which has the ironic result that the more popular ones are often the hardest ones to find...

This is precisely the reason why I was asking. The /idgames search function normally finds what I am looking for, even if those files have been weirdly placed in the archive - such as many old Skulltag single player WADs that went into /deathmatch without giving a thought - but searching for something specific in the ZDoom forums can be quite a hassle - aren't these developers seeing the problems they create?

The good thing about /idgames is not just that everything is in one place - the Doomworld frontend to search in there is even more a reason to make use of it!

[Jon]

I think the (G)Zdoom sub-community just isn't in the habit of using /idgames as much as other groups.

[rehelekretep]

rileymartin said:

What ever happened to Sunder? Did Gazebo go crazy and quit working on it?

its crazy that a wad with that much influence (and demos recorded) is still not on idgames. thankfully DSDA is keeping it online but new players are unlikely to find it as easily

[Graf Zahl]

Jon said:

I think the (G)Zdoom sub-community just isn't in the habit of using /idgames as much as other groups.

That may be, but the four mods that were listed are all by authors who already have other stuff in /idgames, this is not like the weapon mod people who endlessly tinker with their stuff until they lose interest and let it disappear. Two aren't even for ZDoom.

[Revenant100]

Keyboard_Doomer said:

I don't know what is the official exception/justification that allows this but WADs like Sunlust and Ancient Aliens contain literally (almost) all of IWAD sprites so that they have the proper colors in the custom palette.

There is no consistent rationale on the archive as to why some WADs can include some sprites and why others cannot. As you mentioned, Sunlust and Ancient Aliens, both relatively recent high profile releases, each contain well over a thousand virtually unmodified IWAD graphics lumps, and they were accepted without issue. However, my own sprite fixes WAD, which amounts to roughly half the sprites of what the aforementioned two megawads include and are modified to an even further degree, was rejected due to "unmodified id Software resources". This reasoning is patently false since, like Sunlust and Ancient Aliens, every included graphic lump has an express technical purpose that cannot be reduced in any way, but I was told that my edits are not "substantial enough." This explanation is difficult to reconcile with the acceptance of Sunlust and Ancient Aliens which both possess sprites that are, quite literally, visually identical to their IWAD counterparts, the only difference in most cases being the invisible palette conversion.

And of course, while my sprite fixes were rejected, there's the relatively recently added Beautiful Doom on the archive which actually does openly include my same rejected sprite fixes, but this submission was not rejected for some reason. While it's still unfortunate for me, I am glad Beautiful Doom made it through since this at least means projects that make use of the sprite fixes, an open community resource meant to be utilized by all, doesn't immediately jeopardize their fitness for the archive. Nonetheless, there's an obvious arbitrary discrepancy in the judgment by the archive maintainers being applied here.

I have explicitly brought up this issue to Bloodshedder and TheGreenHerring in email, specifically bringing up BTSX as this matter threatens its as well as future projects' eligibility for archive inclusion, but they have not responded.

[Grain of Salt]

Fun fact

Replacing sprites using a PWAD file presents certain problems in the original Doom engine, as all sprites must be in a single continuum between S_START and S_END; and any lump that does not respect the sprite naming convention found between these markers will make Doom abort on startup with an error message. This means that the PWAD must contain all IWAD sprites, even if they are not modified, or they will be invisible. Starting with Boom, source ports started allowing several sprite ranges each between their own S_START (or SS_START) and S_END (or SS_END) markers. - http://doomwiki.org/wiki/Sprite

You guys don't map for chocolate doom much, I guess.

[Tarnsman]

Voros said:

BTSX uses modified Doom sprites (DOOM MONSTERS AND WEAPONS).

So does a ton of other shit on idgames.

[40oz]

Grain of Salt said:

You guys don't map for chocolate doom much, I guess.

Neither do you!

(ive been dying to play this for a long time :))

[Grain of Salt]

I've actually been doing a lot of mapping for that recently! You're welcome to try it out as soon as all the maps have exits, but as usual I'm not sure when that'll be. I did actually bump it down (up?) from chocolate doom to prboom-plus cl2 recently though, because I couldn't deal with the visplane limit. I am not hardcore.

[Koros]

rehelekretep said:

its crazy that a wad with that much influence (and demos recorded) is still not on idgames. thankfully DSDA is keeping it online but new players are unlikely to find it as easily

Is this not the same "Sunder" that you all are talking about? Because the sendspace link from 2010 still actually works surprisingly.

https://www.doomworld.com/vb/wads-mods/46002-sunder-updated-with-new-maps-huzzah/

*edit* nevermind, the file is corrupt.

[Mordeth]

Grain of Salt said:

Fun fact

That's why in that ancient venerated past before source ports, people had to "install" wads with modified sprites with tools such as deusf, which created a full modified copy of Doom by merging the wad with the iwad.

[Impie]

I could never get anything to upload to idgames, so it's possible some of those authors have the same issue. Or they just don't wanna have to update their stuff on multiple sites, which is a pain in the ass.

[Death Egg]

I think more authors would upload their projects if the upload method wasn't so time consuming. To people not used to it, like I used to be, it seems like (and kinda is) a hassle. If the upload method ever was updated to be more modern we might see more uploads.

[Xaser]

Since nobody from the team has said anything authoritative yet, allow me to officially state that the BTSX episodes aren't on /idgames because they aren't finished yet. That is all. :P

Really though, this sort of thing often tends to boil down to one big pair of issues: /idgames is not work-in-progress friendly, and 'final' is an imaginary construct*. Heck, the official /idgames rules explicitly discourage WIPs, although the language is somewhat aimed towards mapping ("No demos or partially completed megawads.").

What this inevitably means is that mappers/modders will hold off on the /idgames release until everything is "perfect", since that's implicitly the expectation. Even in the "idgaf" or "i'm cool with uploading a v1.1" cases, the update process is still lengthy** and there's still probably gonna be bugs after the hotfix.

Thing is, I don't know what can be reasonably done about this. /idgames is an archive, not a VCS provider, and the only ways to "improve" the state would involve a lot of time and effort from people to design and code up some sort of super-/idgames. Step zero is finding some volunteers crazy enough to try and erect such a monument.

On the flip-side, though, Winter's Fury and Genetech really ought to get /idgames'd at this point.


[*in context, of course. yes, death and whatnot exists. :P ]

[**it's much better in recent years though. TGH and BS are doing a kickass job. It's a case of "only so much they can do," not "blaaah why can't they magically write some software?" or anything. :P]

[Pieruskwurje]

The reason I haven't uploaded Winter's Fury to the archive is because I have updated it occasionally since the release, and I don't know when I intend to stop updating it. As I learn more techniques, I like going back and improving aspects of the mod that were much rougher in their initial versions, and while it has always been in a solid, up-loadable state, there may come a time in the future where I disagree with that.

But, as many have pointed out in this thread, it's problematic that it doesn't have a permanent place to reside if I was no longer around to maintain it. The text file says others can distribute it, so maybe if I stop replying to PM's or every single Winter's Fury related topic, someone can go and upload it for me!

Jokes aside, I remember being hesitant about it back in 2012 due to the mod breaking some of the upload rules, and I believe it still technically does. The FAQ states that wads that have MP3/OGG files that were not originally created for them will be rejected, but I've seen tons of mods on the archive that break this rule, so I guess this one isn't a major concern? It's also over 50mb, so I think I'd need to get permission from the archive maintainer?

Of course, I haven't uploaded something to the archive since 2009, so I'd have to figure out how to do it again as well...