Pretty much what Decay said. While I would love to stay home and play Odamex all day, I unfortunately have a job and social life, and so do 99% of the other people that have this port on their hard drive.
Your idea for Nightmare is great except for one problem: the fact that Odamex has the worst cooperative netcode right now. Why play Odamex when the competing ports already have cooperative (and survival) and have done it BETTER? As much as I hate to say it, Odamex just isn't "caught up" with the other ports in aspects like that. The developers are focusing more on catching up with newer features and standards that are in higher demand by the competitive scene. Remember that the majority of Odamex players are:
*People that play Odamex with more "exotic" environments, such as PPC Mac and XBOX.
*IDL players that want features that are now standard on ZDaemon and Skulltag
*Doomworlders that play occasionally when a new highly anticipated wad is going to be hosted for Nitro (DDWID, 32in24-11).
So the problem? IDL people still play ZDaemon because Odamex doesn't have everything they need
yet. Doomworlders only play occasionally, and usually get their ass kicked by the IDL people. IMHO, only time can fix this as Odamex gains more features that have become standard in other ports over the years. Then in addition to that, Odamex has to do things
better than the other ports. How do we get there as fast as possible? Simple.
We need more people willing to tackle the problems in the bug tracker.