Open Your Mind, Open Your Skull

This is a surprise. I expected 98e to be finished first.

This is great news. Awesome step Skultag devs.

Interesting.

This should probably increase interest in the source as you can actually modify it now and possibly fix broken things.

Excellent. Now to focus the open-sourcing attention on ZDaemon =p

Trasher][ said:
After much requesting, discussion and the occasional desperate begging, Skulltag is now open-source, along with source for all versions since 97c2.

WHAT?! And how will cheating source-forked clients be controlled now?

chungy said:

Excellent. Now to focus the open-sourcing attention on ZDaemon =p

The only reason why this was even possible to do is because this was something that Torr and various community members had wanted from the beginning, but was blocked by various "Community Administrators" over the years. Thankfully, the current administration team decided to go with the community opinion. Kilgore, on the other hand, has no interest in the source being opened. Cheating is a boogeyman that is often brought up, but he is also keenly aware that an open-source ZDaemon would give leverage to people he doesn't care for. I wouldn't count on it happening before Kilgore retires, and probably a number of other people too.

Personally, I'm not that concerned with open source ZDaemon. It might have been nice to do a year or two ago, but Odamex is very nearly at the point where it has most of ZDaemon's important features, and there's also Eternity Engine: Client/Server in the works as well. Most competitive players I know of are excited about both and are just waiting for one of them to be feature-complete to the point where it can be a substitute.

printz said:

WHAT?! And how will cheating source-forked clients be controlled now?

Working cheats are already out there for Skulltag, and are far easier to get working than trying to compile ZDoom just to add a crappy aimbot that will be spotted by anybody who is any good at the game.

AlexMax said:

Eternity Engine: Client/Server

ZOMG, oh yes!

About time.

Great news, good job Torr, and thanks to everyone who's worked on ST over the years.

Awesome!

This is fantastic to hear, thanks to all involved for finally doing the right thing :)

AlexMax said:

Eternity Engine: Client/Server in the works as well.

Slightly off-topic, I know, but holy balls when did this start? Even more awesome news :D

Sorry for being off topic again but from the EECS page:
"Extremely smooth, high fidelity, configurable netcode. Players can make their own decisions about tradeoffs between accuracy, latency and smoothness. "
That sounds awesome.

kristus said:

Sorry for being off topic again but from the EECS page:
"Extremely smooth, high fidelity, configurable netcode. Players can make their own decisions about tradeoffs between accuracy, latency and smoothness. "
That sounds awesome.

Most of those same features/settings are available in the latest release (0.5.6) and the development branch of odamex. Stay tuned for more information as we near release of 0.6.

cool.

Fantastic news. Damn, it will be hard not to be tempted to port/merge ScoredoomST from 97c2 to the latest for proper voodoo doll support ;)

Good news indeed, I wonder if this means that it will finally stay current with the zdoom svn. One can only hope.

I'm more curious to see if this ill mean that the plethora of bugs and game play issues in Hexen Skulltag will be resolved. The most presing one would of course be the jumping issue.

Or if MBF features appear in SkullTag. Also, how is SkullTag capitalized?

printz said:

Also, how is SkullTag capitalized?

How is SkullTag capitalized? Let's see how they capitalize it on the official site:

"Skulltag - Classic Doom online"

Welcome to Skulltag!
Remember Doom? Skulltag makes it even better.

Skulltag is a port for the original Doom and Doom II by id Software.

Skulltag brings classic Doom into the 21st century, maintaining the essence of what has made Doom great for so many years and, at the same time, adding new features to modernize it, creating a fresh, fun new experience.

Here's why you should kill your time with Skulltag, versus vanilla Doom:
<blah blah>

It seems to be "SkullTag" I guess. </sarcasm>

It's a trick question. Skulltag users don't bother with capitalization anyway.

Mancubus II said:

Most of those same features/settings are available in the latest release (0.5.6) and the development branch of odamex. Stay tuned for more information as we near release of 0.6.

Yeah, the EE C/S and Odamex teams are both making a concerted effort to work WITH each other for the good of the community. We frequently share ideas and a little code here & there ;) .

Congratulations to the Skulltag community and AlexMax in particular for this achievement. *sniffs* You've made me so proud!

Neat, kudos to the Skulltag team!

As Hamster would say...

"HOORAY!"

kristus said:

I'm more curious to see if this ill mean that the plethora of bugs and game play issues in Hexen Skulltag will be resolved. The most presing one would of course be the jumping issue.

From the top of my head I only remember some cosmetic Hexen bugs being reported and after a quick look at the bug tracker I couldn't find any report on this issue. Can you either point me to the report on this or create one?

I can't recall for sure if I ever bothered putting one in but I think I did, but I can't find out either since your forums aren't really working either. (Searching doesn't seem to resolve any hits)

I also don't seem to recall my password so I can't log in either. But to be honest, I've never had any good experiences with reporting bugs anyway. Because they've either never been adressed, or they've only been partially adressed. So I feel a bit blazé about the whole thing.

But let me just say it, in Skulltag Hexen you can jump a lot longer than you are supposed to be able to.

I think the issue must be this (fixed here).

I doubt it.
It's not jumping height that is the issue. It's the length of the jump which is about 1.5-2 times as far. A gap that you would need the Fighter to jump in Hexen/Zdoom/Doomsday/Vavoom can be easily cleared by the Mage, the slowest character. Would 8 extra vertical units do that? Maybe, but I find it unlikely.

Well, gravity also affect how long you're airborne and therefore how far you can go.

But Skulltag has another issue in that air control is greater than in ZDoom unless a compatibility option is set. That might also contribute to the effect.

Jump length? Might be the running speed? Or air control?

Also, another Hexen bug that got fixed in the end and should be checked whether it is still in Skulltag: player attacks must not push anything on damage. Exception make the Fighter melee attacks, because they cause an extra push independent on damage.