So, what comes next?

wyland

Any news concerning the next generation of Doomsday?
What is planned and what will it be like?
Or is the whole project on hold because of corona?
A short overview would be much appreciated.
Thank you very much!

skyjake

Thanks for the reminder, I've been meaning to write a brief a update on the blog. But let's do it here:

The short answer is that not much has been happening since 2.3.1 so the project has been effectively on hold. The COVID situation has certainly been a component, and the time I have had available has been spent with other, smaller and simpler projects.

The next immediate work item is to fix the Windows build, where I hit a showstopper with performance of the planned build setup. I'll need to write some additional Windows-specific code (which I admit is not my favorite thing in the world) to get important capabilities like networking and process management working again in the master/3.0 branch. I've been considering releasing a partially-working unstable build on Windows but have decided against it so far.

The grand plan remains the same, though, once I have the opportunity to dive back in.

• The overarching goal is simplification, as exemplified by dropping Qt for 3.0.
• The main attraction is the new renderer, to take advantage of the power in modern GPUs for better lighting, surface materials, and additional detail in the maps.
• The new renderer is fully isolated from games, enabling bringing in new game plugins for different variants of DOOM. Porting ZDoom might be a bridge too far, but prBoom should be doable, for example. The purpose here is to expand mod compatibility.
• An isolated renderer will also ultimately enable dropping much of old/crusty resource management and map data code. The intent is to really cut down on the number of C++ source lines, making builds faster, maintenance easier, and dev iteration quicker.

Deimos_X

Cool, looking forward!