General Discussion

November 04, 2006, 00:03:28

I'm starting to join.  I still need to get all my contacts together.  I go by ThunderFox on most other forums, most of you should know me by that name.

The first thing I want to bring up is the question of a milestone plan.

What is the current milestone plan? If any?  Do you need someone to handle that, and code review?

Obviously the first key component will be to isolate and replace all non-GPL code from source projects, and select libraries.  I personally recomend arts for audio.  It's never given me trouble on any of the Linux apps I regularly use that utilize it.  It also is entirely platform independent.

The second option is to continue with the zDoom system, or to port key functions, such as scripting code, and level function support to another more GPL-friendly Doom engine, such as Doom Legacy.

A third option is the renderer.  Should we stick with the current one from zDoom, or put that as a 1.0 requirement as well.  I'd once again lean on SDLlib for that.  Obviously we need to make up our minds on everything before the first milestone.

The final point is at what point do we make source releases of milestones, and at what point do we make binary releases?  Also, how big a bug mandates a backpatches to one of these milestone branches, and what size can be said "just wait for the next milestone"

Regular code cleanups would help, and it seams nobody is assigned to this.  You'd be surprised how many bugs can be traced just coincidentally with just this work.

I'd gladly take on these two organization tasks, and be sure to deligate enough that people can work in my absence.

Now I'll head over to the buglist to find a list of bugs that I want to try my luck dirrectly on when I get a SVG logon.

November 04, 2006, 14:27:38

This is the current development roadmap.  It's been a while since it was actually created, and things might have been shuffled around since then, but for the most part it should be accurate.

http://odamex.net/wiki/Development_roadmap

November 04, 2006, 22:27:55

You're offering suggestions based on a real lack of knowledge about how odamex is actually constructed.  A bit of wiki research will tell you that most zdoom stuff has been ripped out and that it uses sdl_mixer for audio. 

Before you try to step in and start suggesting what our "few options" are, please find out more about what you're talking about.

November 05, 2006, 05:04:08

You're offering suggestions based on a real lack of knowledge about how odamex is actually constructed.  A bit of wiki research will tell you that most zdoom stuff has been ripped out and that it uses sdl_mixer for audio.

I mean to get equivilant functionality to the kit used in zDoom.  sdl_mixer is fairly limited compaired to the toolkit utilized by zDoom.

Anyways, it wasn't a suggestion but an example.  Sorry about the missunderstanding.  I will try to read the Wikki, but it's in pretty unstable shape which makes it difficult to read unless you are looking up a single topic.

I've got to go to bed tonight, though.  I was told something big was on forum index

Edit: Clarification and elaberation

November 05, 2006, 11:17:02

sdl_mixer is fairly limited compaired to the toolkit utilized by zDoom.

The latter (bass/fmod/etc) is not Free Software, so no.

November 05, 2006, 13:50:35

This is the current development roadmap.  It's been a while since it was actually created, and things might have been shuffled around since then, but for the most part it should be accurate.

http://odamex.net/wiki/Development_roadmap

Is there a plan to update this in the near future?

November 07, 2006, 08:56:04

The latter (bass/fmod/etc) is not Free Software, so no.

I said limited as in functionality, not as in license restrictions.  Read my post thoroughly.  And yes, there are LGPL/GPL audio toolkits out there that are far more advanced than SDL-Mixer alone.  Just go to FreshMeat and Sourceforge, and look them up.

November 07, 2006, 10:14:39

Why? We don't need stupid reverb capability.

November 07, 2006, 16:12:21

I said limited as in functionality, not as in license restrictions.  Read my post thoroughly.  And yes, there are LGPL/GPL audio toolkits out there that are far more advanced than SDL-Mixer alone.  Just go to FreshMeat and Sourceforge, and look them up.

I think the point of this thread has been lost.  Please remind me again why this matters?  SDL_mixer is working fine for us.

November 08, 2006, 23:39:24

I think the point of this thread has been lost.  Please remind me again why this matters?  SDL_mixer is working fine for us.

Yeah, I think it is a little off the orriginal subject too. 

Anyways, I'm sure it's working fine for the current version, and that's good for now, but I think a more advanced toolkit could bring better abilities for dirrectional sound.  However, SDL_mixer supports a lot of such add ons, so it's a good plan for now.

Obviously, like Leileilo bluntly said, what we don't need is a cheap reverb effect. However I do say we instead need a good 3D sound effects engine.  Plenty of good ones are availble, if you look through all the plugins for all the Open Source audio projects.  With so much to consider, it's not a decision to be rushed, and should probably be put off to later. 

November 09, 2006, 01:01:09

What manc is trying to get across is that Odamex is simply trying to get everything up and functional right now. Upgrades and more complicated software can be implemented later after we have the source code at least.