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Kev The Galaxybender

What's the general consensus on Freedoom?

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How many fucking people are going to say that the project needs a leader or a clear direction without volunteering themselves to do it?

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Voros said:

And those DOS editors like EdMap, DETH, etc are hard to use to make some good maps.


Those aren't really hard to use, although EdMap tends to crash in my experience.
There's also DCK.

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40oz said:

How many fucking people are going to say that the project needs a leader or a clear direction without volunteering themselves to do it?

Because nobody want to be the jackass that go in saying "you all did everything wrong" just to realize he can't really do anything but to throw everything out the window and start over from zero. Oh and you may need a lot of people to do so, dedicated artists and mappers that freedoom do not have. this whole new movement is risen due a couple of artists getting involved in the project in the fist place... if a leader must be chosen then he must be one of the artists that are currently working on it.

That said i think only a few could around here could be capable to be an "art director" for freedoom and even less willing to spend who know how much time organizing and omogenizing everything. It is a tremendous amount of work and will find a lot of resistance (just think on what happened to the "lizard planet" concept, i thought it was pretty cool, but apparently the community in general didn't liked it, so it was shut down).

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Freedoom is an example of too many cocks spoiling the broth. It's been on the back-burner for so long everyone forgot it's dinner time and has moved onto breakfast. Over two decades of of mixed, uneven resources and maps have understandably left a lot of people underwhelmed. Sorry.

Also, why would you want a free Doom game without everything that makes Doom Doom? When I play Mario I want the ascetics and elements unique to its universe. I just don't think Doom is a hard enough game to obtain to enjoy the vast amounts of user content.

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Cacowad said:

Because nobody want to be the jackass that go in saying "you all did everything wrong" just to realize he can't really do anything but to throw everything out the window and start over from zero.

I wouldn't say that. I would say its more because a project this large in scope requires a lot of attention and leadership and people capable of this kind of leadership is few and far between. Most of the leaders in the Doom community are involved in other, and in a few cases, multiple projects already.

FreeDoom is not terrible, I just don't see why I should bother replacing Doom with it. Now if I did not own Doom and do not have the $4 to cough up for it I would probably be using it on a more common basis if I somehow happened to stumble upon it.

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Vulture said:

Now if I did not own Doom and do not have the $4 to cough up for it I would probably be using it on a more common basis if I somehow happened to stumble upon it.

And this is kind of the point. We're no longer in a time when Doom could only be found in bargain bins and new old stock at Mom and Pop stores. Doom is so easily available through digital distribution and so cheap, the project doesn't have much use anymore.

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raymoohawk said:

... Or help me with the spriting, it may seem challenging, but i am a pretty unskilled artist myself and i've been able to put together a lot of sprites anyway

Unskilled? UNSKILLED? That leaves the realm of modesty and ventures towards "bullshit" territory! Your sprites kick ass, man!

Technician said:

And this is kind of the point. We're no longer in a time when Doom could only be found in bargain bins and new old stock at Mom and Pop stores. Doom is so easily available through digital distribution and so cheap, the project doesn't have much use anymore.

I was under the impression that a major point of FreeDoom was that it was a game that could be included in free software distributions. Which is one of the things that makes it so difficult to build.

For example, if you expect to be able to play pwads with it, all wall textures, for example, must be completely free and new, but they must also be able to seamlessly blend and tile with other similar textures, just like they do with Doom's resources. And, to make sense, things like torches need to be replaced with torches, preferably of the same color, size, etc. But be completely unique and free, not even derived from original content.

Aside from that, content should be built not to clash with other content. It's a daunting task.

I need to place my vote for nixing the vanilla rule. Why not leave the Boom maps? How does allowing Boom support affect the mission statement in any way? It can be distributed with PrBoom, or a slightly customized port, and still be free.

Can someone point me to the thread and the person who decided to drop Boom support, and force the reworking of all the maps? I want to research the rationale for such a controversial choice. What am I missing? Cause as far as I know, this was just a preference, not a showstopper.

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40oz said:

How many fucking people are going to say that the project needs a leader or a clear direction without volunteering themselves to do it?

Is it some kind of variation on "in order to criticize you need to be able to do better"?

You know, I'd totally lead Freedoom. Yeah. Except:

1. Who would let me?
2. I have my own projects that actually interest me.

Technician said:

We're no longer in a time when Doom could only be found in bargain bins and new old stock at Mom and Pop stores.

Probably the reason behind the decision to focus less on PWAD compatibility and more on the Freedoom's own identity. The game is still worth making, but with a goal of "let's make a cool new game" in addition to "let's have a free IWAD".

The decision to vanilla everything is especially weird in this context. It would've made sense if Freedoom was always vanilla, and then switched to Boom when ambitions grew, but it's the opposite.

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Thread turned into crying vaginas... damn...

I never wanted this...

Also if you want consensus I have one for you:

Just calm down, and look what is Freedoom now. Almost every stuff require total rework at all. And, yes, there were right words about "every one need to do its own job for not fail everything".

So if you have skill - we might to create a team with roles for everyone who have skill in something.

And ye vanillizing maps is shitty idea. C'mon, it's 2016, who would play (Free)Doom at DOSbox or Chocolate Doom anyway? If we know most of projects are PrBoom\zDoom\Zandronum\3DGE-oriented.

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Da Werecat said:

The game is still worth making, but with a goal of "let's make a cool new game" in addition to "let's have a free IWAD".


I feel this is one of the problems.

As long as you're aiming at a Free Doom IWAD, you can still have a clear target without need for strong leadership, because you know where you're going, you know what you need: a replacement of Doom stuff.

If the target is "a cool new game" using the doom engine, well things here start to be blurry, without a leadership and a shared vision of the target.

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Da Werecat said:

Probably the reason behind the decision to focus less on PWAD compatibility and more on the Freedoom's own identity. The game is still worth making, but with a goal of "let's make a cool new game" in addition to "let's have a free IWAD".

This is how I've been feeling about it for a long time, too. Potential interest in Freedoom from players and contributors alike is kneecapped by its own premise, which is to solve a problem that doesn't need solving.

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kb1 said:

Isn't a TC a reskin of an existing game? How is FreeDoom any different (except that FreeDoom replaces ALL resources). The PWAD compatibility thing is an issue for any other TC as well. What you're seeing is a new game. When you say "new game", do you mean "new engine" as well as new resources? Is "a dump of new resources" really all the credit you're willing to give? That's pretty harsh.

In a "new game" I would expect there to be its own rule set, and a set of resources that aren't designed to mimic Doom for the explicit purposes of circumventing id's injunction that add-ons only work with a registered version of their game. It may be legal, although I have my doubts that a lot of the fit-exactly-these-colors-and-pixel-measures textures, and the project as a whole, would stand up as non-derivative. I'm no expert. But even if it is legal, it still seems like a pretty questionable goal to set forth on, to me. Even the name "FreeDoom" makes no bones about what it considers itself to be.

There are plenty of bad TCs that just shove a bunch of ripped resources together, sure. But a good one (let's use HacX as an example, but if you want to go more modern, something like Harmony would work as well or better) will have changed rules and changed resources that aren't designed to just be a 1:1 drop-in where thing X in your TC is exactly equivalent to thing Y in Doom. If you load a Doom PWAD in HacX, you'll get a mess, since it wasn't meant for doing that. A respectable FLOSS Doom-engine game should IMO at least be more like HacX (or Harmony, or you get the idea).

Put another way, if you play chess with a makeshift board and pieces instead of buying a chess set, but you play with the same chess rules, it's still chess and not a "new game", isn't it? A TC on the other hand could be seen in this example as more like fairy chess.

So no, I do not consider FreeDoom to be deserving of being called a "new game" (which, I might note, was the stipulation from id that the project be, way back when the question was asked). Harsh? Maybe, but I'm calling it as I see it. If it's really meant to have "its own identity" then getting rid of the clone-off textures that are based around matching the colors and patterns of Doom's as closely as people dare for the sake of playing Doom PWADs would be a great start.

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according to chungy, the project lead, vanilla compatability is still a goal. this whole confusion happened because voros has gone around purposely mispresenting things

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Now, this is a good example of why this project will never get done. If not even the team members can agree on what they want to do?

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Well, that's just mush. Now I'm confused on several points:

  • Jon isn't the leader?
  • If not, why's he speaking authoritatively on the subject?
  • Why do they disagree about the vanilla point in the first place?
  • Who's actually correct?
  • Does this disagreement even exist at present? The latest I can find chungy speaking about the topic (on DW at least) is this nearly-year-old news post. The Github page mentions that FreeDM is vanilla-compat, but that's it.
I'm not a contributor to the project, but the fact that there's this much confusion about it from an outside perspective is rather concerning.

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Well, his post in this particular thread was rather pro-vanilla, although it didn't indicate the current state of affairs in a direct enough way.

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Xaser said:

  • Jon isn't the leader?
  • If not, why's he speaking authoritatively on the subject?
  • Why do they disagree about the vanilla point in the first place?
  • Who's actually correct?
  • Does this disagreement even exist at present? The latest I can find chungy speaking about the topic (on DW at least) is this nearly-year-old news post. The Github page mentions that FreeDM is vanilla-compat, but that's it.


Jon isn't, he was at one point, but management was passed to me a few years ago. I've shied away from using the term leader -- viewing myself more as the person with the technical capability to keep the project alive (I took it on when Cato was doing a lot of work, and no one was around to get that work into Freedoom officially). It really does need someone with an artistic vision to serve as a proper leader.

The post you mention talks about the goal for Freedoom 1.0, with little indication about the interim time. One of the releases between now and then, should be completely vanilla-compatible. I kept it vague mainly so any possible maps in progress could be cleaned up and included regardless of being vanilla-compatible or not, and I've laxed too much on the timespan since to really make the current objectives clear.

I do consider Jon and Fraggle to be capable of speaking authoritatively about Freedoom, but I do regret this confusion took place. In the vague future plans, I still expect 1.0 to be released fully vanilla-compatible. I cannot say whether 0.11 will be.

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ETTiNGRiNDER said:

In a "new game" I would expect there to be its own rule set, and a set of resources that aren't designed to mimic Doom for the explicit purposes of circumventing id's injunction that add-ons only work with a registered version of their game. It may be legal, although I have my doubts that a lot of the fit-exactly-these-colors-and-pixel-measures textures, and the project as a whole, would stand up as non-derivative. I'm no expert. But even if it is legal, it still seems like a pretty questionable goal to set forth on, to me. Even the name "FreeDoom" makes no bones about what it considers itself to be.

No, I'm with you there - I get it.

ETTiNGRiNDER said:

There are plenty of bad TCs that just shove a bunch of ripped resources together, sure. But a good one (let's use HacX as an example, but if you want to go more modern, something like Harmony would work as well or better) will have changed rules and changed resources that aren't designed to just be a 1:1 drop-in where thing X in your TC is exactly equivalent to thing Y in Doom. If you load a Doom PWAD in HacX, you'll get a mess, since it wasn't meant for doing that. A respectable FLOSS Doom-engine game should IMO at least be more like HacX (or Harmony, or you get the idea).

Put another way, if you play chess with a makeshift board and pieces instead of buying a chess set, but you play with the same chess rules, it's still chess and not a "new game", isn't it? A TC on the other hand could be seen in this example as more like fairy chess.

So no, I do not consider FreeDoom to be deserving of being called a "new game" (which, I might note, was the stipulation from id that the project be, way back when the question was asked). Harsh? Maybe, but I'm calling it as I see it. If it's really meant to have "its own identity" then getting rid of the clone-off textures that are based around matching the colors and patterns of Doom's as closely as people dare for the sake of playing Doom PWADs would be a great start.

This quote makes a lot more sense than the previous one. And, yeah, the "line up texture pixels" thing is what always seemed shaky ground to me - It was always my understanding that id wanted everyone to buy the iwad before being able to make/play pwads. This bothers me even less, now that id is no longer id, but, whatever.

You are getting 32-ish new maps with a new look, though. It's definitely a TC that tries to be more than that, which is why I think it deserves some respect, at least for that. And I can appreciate the effort - this is no easy task.

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raymoohawk said:

according to chungy, the project lead, vanilla compatability is still a goal. this whole confusion happened because voros has gone around purposely mispresenting things

Ahem.

1-Jon was probably being sarcastic. I think, as I too got confused after that post.

2-Almost no one maps in vanilla. Best we can hope for is a Boom map that can be changed into vanilla easily enough.

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Voros said:

2-Almost no one maps in vanilla. Best we can hope for is a Boom map that can be changed into vanilla easily enough.


Well that's not true, there's still a bunch of people making vanilla maps, especially if you count limit-removing.

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Limit-removing is a very different beast. Being limited in linedef actions and so on isn't that much of a problem compared to overflows.

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It's not that different. You can patch doom.exe with Doom+ binary patch. You can do the same with Chocolate Doom by changing some constants in the source code. And that even gives you easy testing tools.
That's a world of difference between all the new scripting stuff and behavior differences that Boom engine brings. And then you're stuck using DOS Boom 2.02 for testing, and still having problems with various port incompatibilites. Or ultimately throwing up your hands and declaring that PrBoom+ version X.Y.Z or newer is needed, like most advanced ports wads tend to do.

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hex11 said:

That's a world of difference between all the new scripting stuff and behavior differences that Boom engine brings. And then you're stuck using DOS Boom 2.02 for testing, and still having problems with various port incompatibilites. Or ultimately throwing up your hands and declaring that PrBoom+ version X.Y.Z or newer is needed, like most advanced ports wads tend to do.


Don't exaggerate. You make it sound like all those ports broke Boom beyond repair.
If you want to be realistic, the only relevant ports for Boom compatibility these days are PrBoom and ZDoom, anyone else being late in the game will have to make sure they are compatible with one of those. Nobody cares about Boom 2.02 anymore. That engine version is deader than dead and making something compatible with it gives no guarantee that it still works as intended on modern ports.

In addition, being 100% vanilla compatible also does not guarantee that the map will work everywhere. On the contrary: Due to the high tendency to use some sort of hack to work around the engine's limits and shortcomings I'd say the risk is far higher of something getting broken - unless a strict 'no hacks' policy is implemented. And we all know how that will fly with this community.

What's the problem with saying 'requires a current version of PrBoom+ or ZDoom'?
No normal person uses old and obsolete versions of current source ports. Besides, Changes in this area are very rare because they get immediately noticed.

I guess problems may arise if Boom compatible should include some ancient and poorly upgraded engines like ZDaemon, which is based on a ZDoom version which was anything but Boom compatible, if you look beyond nominal support for most features.

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Sorry, I couldn't read your post, GZ. All I could see in my browser was "U need latest Firefox or Chrome to view this post."

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hex11 said:

It's not that different. You can patch doom.exe with Doom+ binary patch. You can do the same with Chocolate Doom by changing some constants in the source code. And that even gives you easy testing tools.

It's a great example of a small change in the engine that makes a ton of difference for the mapper.

In any case, no one calls limit-removing maps vanilla. If Freedoom was accepting Lainos-style giant cities, I don't think a lot of people would object to the engine choice.

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hex11 said:

Well that's not true, there's still a bunch of people making vanilla maps, especially if you count limit-removing.

Limit removing is another story. Vanilla/Chocolate Doom can't run limit-removing maps properly.

The majority of mappers use Boom format. Yes there are a bunch of people. But there's not enough/not active much/don't care.

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Graf Zahl said:

In addition, being 100% vanilla compatible also does not guarantee that the map will work everywhere. On the contrary: Due to the high tendency to use some sort of hack to work around the engine's limits and shortcomings I'd say the risk is far higher of something getting broken - unless a strict 'no hacks' policy is implemented. And we all know how that will fly with this community.

I love the source ports focused on expanding the engine, but personally, this bit in particular always confused me. The thought of a map made 20 years ago potentially causing glitches in a modern engine when it works perfectly in doom2.exe is kind of funny you have to admit. On the other hand, it makes sense that a port focused on new map formats and such wouldn't be overly concerned with vanilla accuracy, especially since there are other ports that cater to that.

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