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plums

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Everything posted by plums

  1. I'm taking an indefinite hiatus from Doom. I figured I should at least let some people know, instead of randomly disappearing like I have in the past. I guess it's a little more intentional this time. Long ranty blog post follows.

     

    This is pretty much down to the recent Nightdive release of Doom + Doom II (D+D2 for short), though there's some other things going on in my life that would probably benefit from me taking a Doom break anyhow. People who have seen me on this forum for a while might have seen me make various statements about attempting to create stuff. Well, I've broken through the walls I had, and have actually started both mapping and making midis. However the release of D+D2 has completely evaporated any kind of enthusiasm I have for that right now.

     

    Specifically, two points:

     

    The absolutely insane mod uploader system

     

    Anyone can upload anything unvetted, and the only way to remove it is to report it. There aren't even checks to see if something that has been uploaded already is uploaded again, reported or not. (See the 4 copies of NUTS.wad currently up there.) I can hardly blame the people uploading stuff because there's no real guidance at all with it, certainly nothing to tell you you *shouldn't* upload something that isn't yours, despite the fact that the upload puts the uploader's account name under the by: line. And absolutely no text file information except what the uploader fills out. And so far at least two different Nightdive employees have responded with vague indifference.

     

    You should read this thing by JPL if you haven't seen it already:

    https://cohost.org/vectorpoem/post/7228939-okay-i-ve-slept-on

     

    The fact that people involved thought this would be OK, when there are still releases putting the goddamn GothicTX disclaimer in their text files because attribution is still generally valued here, is baffling.

     

    (The multiplayer community apparently doesn't value attribution so much! Boo to that! But I don't have the motivation to help nag them into compliance right now, and as someone that hasn't played multiplayer since the 90s except for like 30 minutes during the pandemic shutdowns I'm pretty out of my depth in that whole scene.)

     

     

    Development being lead by a major game studio

     

    Legally id (and whoever owns them) have always had the rights to Doom, but since Carmack relesed the source for Doom over two decades ago they basically haven't done anything to steer its direction. This was a good thing and one of the things I liked about Doom as an engine and community. Having them take charge of a new spec, one that includes reserved sections for future products and who's debut is a new closed-source engine, is a massive change in direction. It signals that they want to get "involved," and the only reason for a company to do that is because they think it will be profitable. (Remember how Microsoft, who owns id, just closed a whole bunch of game studios? Including the ones who were running Mighty Doom?) Even the Unity port, which was a major closed-source release, was bad from a free software point of view but was otherwise something you could just ignore.

     

    And I could probably just bite the pillow and deal with all of that if it was still just ZeniMax at the top. But it's fucking Microsoft of all corporate people, a company I've spent a significant part of my life intentionally not using, for numerous reasons including their history of embracing open standards and then making them fundamentally proprietary.

     

    To be clear, this isn't about a lot of what people were freaking out about in the ID24 thread, such as the unclear implementation of the spec, or even that it needs a new commercial product to work fully. And as far as the spec, to give credit where it's due, all the new required code is GPL and the specs are open. (Reading some more into some of the comments it seems like Xaser was fundamental in that happening, and as much as I'm frustrated with everything about D+D2 I'm glad he actually got paid to make some Doom stuff. Consider promoting him to Community Manager too, since he seems to be the only one associated with this project that is answering questions without coming across as dismissive or condescending.) But when I can only describe it to myself as "not as bad as it could have been!" I don't feel very encouraged.

     

     

    Of course this all ties in to other feelings I have regarding things like increasing commercialization and enshittification of public online spaces, corporate katamaris meant for profit maximization, explotation of workers' enthusiasm in the tech and games industries, etc. So at this point feel like I don't want to engage in anything by any of the companies involved in this, including Nightdive, ever again.

     

    I'm sure I could just sit back away from everything and just play wads on my own, but I am, or was, interested in doing more than that. And on a personal note I'm finding myself Doomworld-doomscrolling, something I'm not usually susceptible to, so even if this all got magically resolved tomorrow I think it's best if I just step away from Doom entirely for a bit. This just doesn't feel like the right place or thing for me to spend my energy on.

     

    For clarity, if there's a project of yours I've helped or contributed to in any way, you still have my full support to do with it whatever you want. Don't think about whether I would approve or not; I have no interest in retroactively making that help conditional.

     

    Anyhow here's a single midi that I'm going to offer up. It's free to use for anyone who wants (even if you're uploading it as part of a wad to the D+D2 mods thing), as long as I'm credited to the best of your ability.

    id Software (a subsidiary of ZeniMax Media (a subsidiary of Microsoft Gaming (a division of Microsoft))) can eat my ass.mid
    (My email address is in there too, in case anyone wants to say hi sometime. If you're midi-illiterate, it should show if you import and then look at the midi file in SLADE.)

     

    I'll probably check back here in a day or two. Otherwise, bye for now.

    1. Show previous comments  6 more
    2. plums

      plums

      Thanks for the support, all. See ya in the next wave.

    3. VoanHead

      VoanHead

      take care, plums

    4. TheNoob_Gamer

      TheNoob_Gamer

      Returning from exodus, I get fearful about old heads disappearing. In your case, to know you leaving in light of such complicated revelations filled my heart with plenty heaviness. 

      Regardless, your re-appearance around here since 2020 really enhanced my Doomworld experience. Happy trails on your new ventures!

  2. plums

    Blasphemer discussion

    If floor scrollers are the problem in that screenshot, you can make the scrolling flat 64x128 and it should eliminate the tutti-frutti. (or 64x65 which is what Heretic does, but doubling it is kind of easier and more obvious that it has been edited to work with scrollers)
  3. I 100% agree that things like that should be cleaned up, I was unaware that MP servers operated on mainly unattributed stuff like that until yesterday, and it was frankly really disappointing to learn. Hopefully this discussion around lack of attribution in uploads will bring more light to that. But also we can absolutely criticize a system in a commercial product that allows and even incentivizes people to do the same thing, at the same time.
  4. No, BD is zdoom based ports only
  5. plums

    Classic Doom - New Update on Steam

    It's cool that Doomkid is doing this. It sucks that the solution to such a terrible system is more free community labour.
  6. plums

    The state of Doom on Linux

    For Steam I recommend going into Settings -> Compatibility and enabling Steam Play for all titles, which will allow you to (attempt to) play any Windows game, instead of enabling it on a per-game basis. Most of the time things simply work. You can check titles at https://www.protondb.com/ beforehand if you want, it's pretty good (and feel free to make reports too for games that need it).
  7. plums

    Classic Doom - New Update on Steam

    double-click an image in a post (attached or embedded from another website) and you can set its dimensions
  8. plums

    ID24 - a new feature set standard

    WATERMAP was included as part of Boom and is a predefined colormap for underwater effects. Most wads use an all-blue colormap because it looks a little better, but for full Boom compatibility WATERMAP is required. from boomref.txt: "WATERMAP is a colormap predefined by Boom which can be used to provide a blue-green tint while the player is under water. WATERMAP can be modified by pwads."
  9. plums

    ID24 split

    1) That is bad news, actually, I personally had no idea that's how things are normally done. 2) The fact that the fairly niche multiplayer subsection of the Doom community embraces this behaviour is not a justification for a commercial entity selling a product, with what I presume is an exponentially larger userbase, to also do it.
  10. I don't think you need to. It was mostly that I kept forgetting to save IIRC. I found the cyberdemons on the stairs fight more frustrating than anything else on that map, but they weren't too bad and I'm not sure how you retool it without a dramatic overhaul of that area. Maybe increase the floor height so there's not as much downtime when you fall? It's a minor thing but when you're trying to shoot the cybers falling more than once feels kind of tedious.
  11. plums

    Crispy Doom 7.0 (Update: Aug 09, 2024)

    Given that Crispy Doom is meant to be "Chocolate Doom with a lot of patches on top," the nature of the changes make it very hard to create a single program that has both rendering types. In contrast, International Doom, which is broadly derived from Crispy, has a toggle for truecolour on/off. But actually it's *always* running in truecolour, and the toggle just affects how things are drawn. This has some consequences on performance, as well as visuals -- it doesn't use Doom's extra palettes for the pain effect for instance.
  12. plums

    Crispy Doom 7.0 (Update: Aug 09, 2024)

    It's a compile-time option, meaning you either build the truecolour version with it unconditionally applied, or the normal (non-truecolour) version which can't do truecolour at all. I'm guessing the Homebrew version only builds the normal version by default.
  13. plums

    ID24 - a new feature set standard

    Xaser clarified here in response to a question I had that the code for the new things is all available as part of the spec, and is under the GPL, here. So a freedoom-style resource wouldn't need to worry about any of the dehacked/decohack/etc., and just needs to replace the graphics and sounds. (Which is good because clean-room rewriting it to be demo compatible would be a massive pain in the ass.) edit: I'm unsure about SBARDEF, it looks like it's needed for ID24 compatibility and it may need to be written from scratch, but that's also doable as the specs are fully documented.
  14. plums

    Classic Doom - New Update on Steam

    Thanks, got a little confused. You guys sure could have named those wads a little clearer. :p more importantly I'm very relieved the new actor code is GPL licensed.
  15. plums

    Classic Doom - New Update on Steam

    A thought: since id1res.wad contains what is essentially new game code in the form of the dehacked file, and that file is not freely distributable, this means that the game code for ID24 maps is not fully open source. e.g. you can't make a FreeDOOM version for ID24 maps (unless someone wants to reverse-engineer the dehacked to the point of demo compatibility I guess). edit: this is not correct, answered by Xaser below
  16. plums

    Classic Doom - New Update on Steam

    Understandable, wasn't trying to blame you (or anyone on the team) personally, sorry if it came off that way.
  17. plums

    Classic Doom - New Update on Steam

    Thanks, it's a shame no one involved in the team was willing legally empowered to say that here, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt that maybe there's too much to respond to right now. Still, that is definitely not the answer I was hoping for, or even expecting tbh. @Sneezy McGlassFace there's our answer. I guess ports will be expected to look for id24res.wad so users can still drag-and-drop a single wad file.
  18. plums

    Classic Doom - New Update on Steam

    find Common.kpf and copy it to common.zip, and then unzip it. They will be in vault/maps/ from where you unzipped it.
  19. plums

    Classic Doom - New Update on Steam

    The point is not "previous GPL software is no longer GPL", of course that can't happen. It's that development of a game that has been open-source for decades is now being developed under a closed license, by the people who currently own it through a series of corporate acquisitions. (The fact that the top parent company is Microsoft doesn't help anything in this regard.)
  20. plums

    Classic Doom - New Update on Steam

    I've appreciated your posts here (and elsewhere, I sought them out) quite a bit, I have been trying to sort out my feelings on the matter and separating them from other things that are going on IRL. Back when Microsoft acquired Id through the subsidiary chain I was disappointed, but thought "at least it doesn't really affect classic Doom at all." Welp.
  21. fdas for maps 1-11, needs dsda-doom 0.27.5 cobrc1-fdas.zip
  22. plums

    This is Woof! 14.5.0 (Apr 30, 2024)

    If you really wanted, I *think* you could edit the ANIMATED lump of the wad to define what flats you want to swirl (give them a speed of 65536) and leave the global flat warping option off.
  23. plums

    Classic Doom - New Update on Steam

    Me too, but it's not explicitly stated anywhere, and considering it's now "official" content I feel like it's best to clarify.
  24. plums

    Classic Doom - New Update on Steam

    Are people allowed to use (and modify) id1-res content in their own wads, like any other texture/resource pack?
  25. plums

    Classic Doom - New Update on Steam

    It's not actually Windows built-in midi, but Gravis Ultrasound emulation. See my post about it here and Edward850's reply here. (I don't blame you for missing them.) TL;DR no system midi at all, and no soundfont support. It's probably possible to replace the GUS patches with improved versions -- there's a set called Pro Patches Lite widely available -- but I haven't tried it and have no real interest in doing so.
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