Wrapping Up 2011
The year is almost through, so let's take a look back and see what has happened, shall we? All in all, 2011 was quite an eventful year for Doomsday. There were a number of important changes that have had a very beneficial effect on the project.
This means that 1.9.7 has become feature complete and we can begin the Candidate phase. However, it is very important to note that due to the magnitude of code changes involved, there are more than a few rough edges, unfinished details, and other regressions that we will fix ASAP while the Candidate phase progresses. So in other words, this does not yet mean we have something traditionally called a "Release Candidate"; instead, it means we are now focusing the work towards producing one, leading to the Stable 1.9.7.
The ending of the ringzero branch will also leave us in the fortunate situation of having only one primary development branch. Both I and DaniJ will be able to contribute more directly to the main codebase, and all the changes will end up in the unstable releases much faster. Development-wise, we will be firing on all cylinders after this.
Thank you for being part of the community! We hope to see you in 2012 as we continue our progress towards the exciting items on our roadmap. We shall see if 2012 becomes the "Year of Doomsday" (and not because of the Mayan calendar
).
Happy New Year! <:-P
PS. While Build 365 is now available, it is not recommended at this time for normal gameplay. If you try it out, please install it into an empty directory where it doesn't mess with your existing installation. Also, you are likely to face some issues with Snowberry profiles. We're still working out the post-merge issues and will write a proper news item about the Candidate testing when a suitable build is ready.
- We revised the project's roadmap in the wiki. It had become clear that the best way forward was through evolution of a single codebase, not through a dramatic rewrite.
- We started the practice of posting weekly developer updates to keep team members and users up to date.
- The isolated dengDevs blog was shut down in an effort to consolidate team presence on the web.
- We started distributing biweekly automated releases from the "master" branch. It was no longer acceptable that the codebase regressed into an unreleasable state for long periods of time.
- We began seriously improving multiplayer support. Public multiplayer servers were set up so anyone could participate. This was one of the biggest undertakings of the year, with numerous bug fixes and enhancements in the engine and all game plugins.
- CMake was replaced with qmake as the official way to build Doomsday on all supported platforms. It was no longer necessary to handle any single platform as a special case. This helped with setting up the automated build system.
- Preparation work was started for the next big technology upgrade: switch from SDL to Qt/C++.
- FMOD was reintroduced as the default audio plugin on all platforms, greatly improving audio quality.
This means that 1.9.7 has become feature complete and we can begin the Candidate phase. However, it is very important to note that due to the magnitude of code changes involved, there are more than a few rough edges, unfinished details, and other regressions that we will fix ASAP while the Candidate phase progresses. So in other words, this does not yet mean we have something traditionally called a "Release Candidate"; instead, it means we are now focusing the work towards producing one, leading to the Stable 1.9.7.
The ending of the ringzero branch will also leave us in the fortunate situation of having only one primary development branch. Both I and DaniJ will be able to contribute more directly to the main codebase, and all the changes will end up in the unstable releases much faster. Development-wise, we will be firing on all cylinders after this.
Thank you for being part of the community! We hope to see you in 2012 as we continue our progress towards the exciting items on our roadmap. We shall see if 2012 becomes the "Year of Doomsday" (and not because of the Mayan calendar
).Happy New Year! <:-P
PS. While Build 365 is now available, it is not recommended at this time for normal gameplay. If you try it out, please install it into an empty directory where it doesn't mess with your existing installation. Also, you are likely to face some issues with Snowberry profiles. We're still working out the post-merge issues and will write a proper news item about the Candidate testing when a suitable build is ready.
Comments
Happy 2012 Every one.
This.
Edit: Oh, never mind. It already has been 1.9.7. The new build page just tricked me, since it has so many big fixes in the list.
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y226/l ... 65menu.jpg
Edit: I can't get Ultimate Doom to run at all, even with all the addons disabled. It shows the loading screen for a second, then it turns black and does nothing. I then have to improperly shut down the game with clever keyboard usage, since alt + tab and the windows key don't work, and the mouse doesn't appear. I'm going back to the old build until all this stuff is sorted out.
Yes the files are there, but there are currently about a dozen compile warnings listed for each platform (if you go back to previous builds, you'll see they list 0) that Deng team have yet to work out; fixing those are, essentially, the last stage before the release of a build.
I'm sure Deng team will make an announcement when the files are ready for downloading.
There's a couple things I also want to test out before I return.
1) Is anyone else's status bar stretching off-screen? I run Doomsday at a 1024x768 res, and I still got the same problem when I tried on smaller resolutions, such as 800x600 and 640x480
http://i.imgur.com/7q4nJ.jpg
Does anyone else get this problem?
2) I can't exactly narrow down when this issue occurs and doesn't occur. Sometimes when I start a new level or advance to the next level, the automap is waaaay too zoomed in. This happened going from E1M1 to E1M2, for example.
http://i.imgur.com/79YrV.jpg
3) Speaking of the automap, when you turn off follow mode and want to navigate, the navigation speed is incredibly slow, regardless of the zoom level on the automap.
4) This isn't really a bug, more of a feature request. I noticed that if you enable the kills/items/secrets trackers, they now show up on both the main HUD and the automap. In previous builds in was in the automap only. Could we have an option back to have those trackers display in the automap only?
5) This is some pretty weird behavior that happens when you finish an episode/game. In Ultimate Doom:
-After finishing episode 1, when the story text completes, the game immediately takes you back to E1M1, with the inventory you had after finishing E1M8. When finishing E1, you're supposed to see the id Software credits screen after seeing the ending text.
-After finishing episode 2, the story text goes through its process and you see that picture of Deimos above Hell, and then the game brings you right back to E2M1, again, with the same inventory you had at the end of E2M8.
You can repeat this for episodes 3 and 4 as well.
Another thing is that when the story text is typing out, pressing any key will bring up the menu, when I think the original instance was that only pressing the Escape Key would.
This happens in Doom II as well, with the cast of monsters at the end of the game. As you know, pressing any key kills the monster on screen, but if you press a key when a monster on screen is "dying", it brings up the menu.
If you need me to put this on sourceforge, I'll do it. Thanks.
Ok, so I'll wait for a new fixed version. Any idea why Ultimate Doom doesn't get by the first loading screen for me? It freezes and just shows a black screen before getting to "changing player name".
I've found that some aren't always configured by default.
Here is what Doomsday.out looks like after it freezes:
Actually, the textures work if you are lucky enough to get the game to load. Nothing else seems to work, however. I would wait. I'm sure it will be more stable soon.
But the bi-weeky builds allows much much quicker bug fixing than before.
So yeah, lots of brownie points to you guys, it's nice to see that multiplayer was (is?) worked on a lot.
Might be an issue with the package though, but I thought I'd still point it out.
http://img444.imageshack.us/img444/442/texturebug.png
Let me see if it happens without the 2011 DHTP, because it's kinda bizarre that a TNT texture appears there.
Edit: Fine without. But wait, what do we see here. It's also messed up with the previous 2010 pack.
So yeah, it's not the DHTP's fault. Since it worked fine before.
As for FMOD, both the MIDI (MUS) and the resampling quality are superior in SDL_Mixer.
Mixing sounds is nice and all, but that's also where FMOD's superiority more or less ends.
Edit: I doubt it's the DHTP, because as I pointed out in my edits, the 2010 version is broken too. (And it wasn't previously.)
Dani said it was a known bug in Doomsday that was fixed in the ringzero branch (or something) but hasn't been released yet (released into the wild). You will also see my post on the problem 2 posts above his in this link:
viewtopic.php?f=24&t=835&p=5120#p5122
Another seeming example of this bug, is coincidently on Map08 of TNT, right before the final arena. Though in that case it seems to be incorrectly displaying a switch hi-res texture from somewhere, in the middle of the animation...
Edit: I've figured out how to solve this but the fix sadly won't be ready in time for today's build.
The player arrow on the automap doesn't rotate when the player turns until a forward or backwards command has been entered while the map is open.
Might not be the most game affecting bugs. But I notice that in HeXen:
1. Korax's ghosts don't circle his corpse like they should; they simply fly outward and vanish.
2. There doesn't appear to be a shatter sound for pottery (i.e. like the pot you start the game in front of).
I remember in prior versions of Doomsday, the HUD weapon was offset vertically by 4 pixels down, which meant you saw too little of your HUD weapon compared to the original Doom. Now, it seems like you see a little too much of the HUD weapon in the latest build. I'm at school, so I'm not able to show a comparison at the moment.
Also, something is wrong with the automap in the latest build. It comes up blank and you need to press a zoom key to be able to see the automap. And it seems like the screen doesn't fade completely when going to the automap, it looks as if the bottom part of the screen doesn't fade.
And as I mentioned, when you finish an episode in Ultimate Doom, it immediately brings you back to the first map of said episode after you see the end of the text screen/ending image.
I'll respectfully disagree. To my ears FMOD is far higher quality.