Fasted Engine These Days?

J.B.R said:

Zdoom mods won't work on any other source port other than Zdoom, GZDoom or Zandronum.

No shit.

If they're old enough, they may work on Vavoom!

If they are pre 2.0, they can probably also run on zdaemon and odamex.

Graf Zahl said:

Take some advice here:

Forget that attitude, please. You won't do yourself a favor.

I still remember the bad old days of ZDoom 2.0.x when Randy made an occasional new version every few months. They all were littered with bugs, mostly caused by typical developer blindness to one's own creation.

In contrast, the first 2.1 release was nearly rock-solid out of the box, because the development code got lot more testing due to public exposure through SVN.

I can guarantee that you'll end up the same, and you will inevitably start fixing stuff that may affect demo compatibility. So better have this ironed out before setting a particular set of behavior in stone. Users just have to be aware that interim releases won't guarantee demo compatibility.

Advice taken. But my situation is a bit different:

First, my baseline is vanilla Doom compatibility. So, personal preference really only applies to additions I've made to baseline. Second, my attitude is towards features that enhance vanilla, vs. deviate from it. In other words, my goals are for a new feature to feel obvious and like a seamless addition to vanilla.

And finally, once I release, the cat's out of the bag. Yes, I could adopt the policy that interim releases are not demo compatible, and I may just do that. However, my goal is to have a system that is thoroughly tested, and does not require a lot of bug fixing. At least, before version 1.0. I am aware that no complex software is ever completely bug-free. Conversely, there's no need to release a program with known bugs.

Luckily for me, though, there's still known bugs, and there's been no release, so I don't have to adopt any poilcies yet :)

This does not leave me guilt-free, however. I've seen released ports with bugs that I have already fixed in KBDoom, and I do believe that my port has some novel, efficient approaches to problems that would probably be beneficial to the community. In those cases, I usually interrupt a forum, and describe a possible fix.

And, I have directly benefited from the community's hard work, which creates an obligation within me, to keep that spirit alive.

Considering these points, I come to the conclusion that I need to get rolling on fixing my port. Time is traditionally a scarce resource for me, but I'll do what I can.

kb1 said:

Conversely, there's no need to release a program with known bugs.

I disagree here. It all depends on the severity of the bugs, the cost/reward of fixing them, and the user end issues with the bugs. Slade 3 has a whole host of known issues, but it is still considered a very stable piece of software, because they don't impact the users in any severe manner at all.

Of course, it's your software and you can do with it as you please :) I'd be way too eager to share my creation with people, than hide it away until it's 'perfect'.

I have to agree with jmickle. Too many cool things in 3DGE that other source ports haven't done, which is why I released many versions, even if they had bugs. Stability was completely grounded, save for modders, which I think is a natural part of the process. ^_^

I'll consider everyone's advice here.