Odamex is a terrific source port and is quite obviously one of the "Top Three" for the online Doom Community. However, the immediate drawback od Odamex is how it is popularly inferior to ZDaemon and Skulltag.
This is not to say that there aren't enough people who like Odamex. Odamex Nitro's have shown that a whole lot of people have the latest version of Odamex installed on their computers. But while my enthusiasm for Odamex is high, one of my biggest turnoffs is how few people are actively playing it on a daily basis. There's no way that a lack various ZDoomisms are the one thing that's killing Odamex.
Almost every single time I open up my internet Doom browser, I'm presented with the same humdrum results. Nearly 100 servers; 0 people playing.
Odamex Nitro has done a pretty excellent job at stirring up some much desired public attention. (not from me though, I'm never home on saturday nights) I'm not sure how it's been doing lately, but I remember some early odamex nitros having a boatload of players, which is awesome! But still yet, when browsing the servers any day of the week, there's the occasional FFA that lasts about a half hour before the players get bored and do something else.
So the big question is what is seperating Odamex from the other two source ports? Why is it that ZDaemon and Skulltag have people playing daily over a 24-hour basis and Odamex does not? I'm sure there's some kind of snowballing effect going on there. Players congregate at one server, players who get bored disperse to other servers which eventually get populated with the other people who were initially just browsing.
I'm convinced there are plenty people browsing Odamex Servers, but none of them settle anywhere and start playing. I've been told many times, that if you pop up on IRC and say "hey lets play some CTF," many people awake from the dead and offer to join, which is cool but not as inviting as the other source ports have it.
So I'm thinking that we need some sort of course of action that will allow Odamex to take flight and soar with the popularity it deserves. Keeping the fire burning is one obstacle we'll have to tackle at a later point, but as of now we're having enough trouble just igniting the flame.
From my observations of Skulltag, which seems to have the most players on a regular basis, there appears to be a lot of wad and server variety. Many players are playing various gameplay mods, weapon mods, megawads, and gameplay modes I've never heard of. I don't advise that Odamex do this, but I do think the large scale of variety is inviting curious players to try something new.
In Odamex's case, things are much more traditional. Coop servers are just regular doom, deathmatches have the standard rules, etc. I'm not saying that this sort of tradition is hurting Odamex, but it could be keeping players from starting some random full-house games out of nowhere. Which leads to my next observations.
Playing by yourself is boring. Browsing the servers and seeing 0 people playing basically means you'll be having just as much fun on a server as you would be playing basketball with no net. But another point to address is that not everyone plays Odamex for a duel. Showing up on an empty deathmatch or a CTF server may indicate that you want to play an FFA or some team-based capture the flag, but an FFA doesn't become an FFA until there are 3 or more people playing. Seeing a server with one other person in it basically means you'll be stuck fighting that one person for a while. One-on-One games can be very sensitive, meaning the losing player may get bored or ragequit easily, isolating the other player by him/herself, which will also make that person want to quit. Server becomes empty again.
So from what I've gathered, I think the things that are really setting Odamex back are that there aren't many servers available that would be entertaining for one player to play by him/herself. Cooperative servers are hosted but they can be boring when the player can respawn as many times as they wish, giving them no incentive to stay alive or even try for that matter unlike playing single player.
While Skulltag and ZDaemon have a Survival Cooperative gamemode, where players who die are penalized with having to wait until the remaining players die or complete the level, Odamex could do something different. Now this is a bit of a personal preference, but in staying true to "Oldschool" themes of Odamex, maybe Odamex could promote playing Cooperative in Nightmare mode.
I've been playing a lot of Perdition's Gate in Nightmare mode. You might think that's a little ridiculous, but with infinite ammunition, it can be a real blast. There's enough resistance from the monsters to keep players entertained by themselves for a while, and with extra players, the fun multiplies as support from extra marines can make levels possible to complete even on the hardest (not even remotely fair) difficulty, which can be really rewarding. Especially with just one other player, plans and tactics can be exchanged to defeat an overpowered, nigh-unstoppable force. This could help players get together and congregate at a fast-paced server to hold their attention long enough until they decide to do something different.
Also Odamex seems to lack in a bit of gameplay variety in some of its servers. Maybe some servers could have a wad rotation (with the wads listed here on these forums as a reference), and change the wad being played on that server every week or so, and maybe skip to a random map daily. Also, If you join any deathmatch or CTF server you can expect the same things. Standard shotguns and super shotguns everywhere, plasmaguns, and bfgs hidden, same types of gameplay. Maybe some servers could run with dehacked patches that turn all the weapons into rocket launchers, or make all the players have 1% health or something nutty like that, to throw a few examples out there.
I think these things may help boost Odamex's popularity a lot hopefully these things will be considered and help make Odamex get the popularity and recognitiion it deserves. Odamex is my preferred source port and I'd love nothing more than to see it grow and prosper.
