Graf Zahl
Won the popularity contest
Posts: 8903
Registered: 01-03 |
DaniJ said:
I think you are missing the point kristus. I agree that it is easier to install GZdoom (but then look what happens when you try to use it). What I said is that at present it is not possible for a Doomsday install to work the same way.
What happens if you try to use it? For me it works flawlessly.
For starters, there is both Doomsday and the launcher to install and you need to install it so that multi-user works (not everything lives in the same directory).
Strange. ZDoom manages to be multi-user friendly despite being essentially a portable install.
I totally agree that Windows made quite a lot of mistakes with this. However I sure am glad that 99% of apps do NOT adopt the "portable" model of basically abandoning all Windows conventions and making it up as they see fit.
A well behaved Windows application these days shouldn't need anything more than a subfolder somewhere in the user's application data directory. You don't need an installer for that. GZDoom manages to find the proper path without one (to store cached BSP data.)
My main gripe with installers is that almost every single one of them adds more crap to the registry that's increasingly hard to get rid of later. I don't mind installers that merely copy an application to the proper directory and set up some start menu links. Anything more is just an open invitation for problems.
The DOOM community and other bastions of decade-old, outdated best-practice still like to think of games as small self-contained things that can be put anywhere they damn well please.
Guess what: They are! I can't imagine any scenario in which a game needs to be integrated into the system the way most installers do. They are self contained applications if developed properly
This community really needs to stop thinking of source ports as simply a different binary that you can use in place of doom.exe
Ah, now I understand why Doomsday is so unwieldy compared to all those 'primitive' other ports. What you describe here is precisely the mindset that bothers me in general about 'modern' software development: It's all idiot proof and discourages users from learning some basic understanding. As a result the more experienced user is subjected to countless things he doesn't need and make his life more inconvenient.
Well duh. Most of those apps were developed with no best practice in effect and expected free reign over their install directory. Modern oses don't allow that so software needs to be updated accordingly to put things in their Rightful Place.
What is the 'Rightful Place'? A centralized directoy? That's ok if there's only one instance of an application installed. I, however, have currently 6 versions of GZDoom, 11 versions of ZDoom, 2 versions of Eternity, 2 versions of PrBoom and some other ports installed. What a nightmare if I couldn't keep the config data local to each installation...
In short: Give me an installer for your port and I'll gladly pass. Give me a zip with a portable installation and I might try. You might guess correctly that I haven't bothered to install any Doomsday version for a very long time as a result.
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Apr 8 2010 04:02 
