On the topic of newer mapping/modding standards...

[HydroFS02]

I apologise if this has been talked about before elsewhere. First off, I really want to say congratulations to the Zandronum developers for getting a new version out the door. It's really been a glow up in many areas compared to the last stable release. Although this has made me wonder if the Zandronum team has any inclination to work towards including new Doom standards for mods such as DSDHacked, DEHEXTRA, and MBF21. As well as UMAPINFO/DMAPINFO. Many modern wads in the last few years on places such as Doomworld have been increasingly leaning towards these new standards and I would really like to know if these would be considered as goals for the future of the project. Playing these newer wads in Co-op with friends would be awesome!

[Sean]

Yes, but it's not easy, since we're tied down to an 11-year-old version of GZDoom. Implementing these features ourselves or backporting them would make it harder to update the GZDoom base in the future, especially because GZDoom has implemented them itself. Whether these features make it into Zandronum any time soon will depend on what we do for Zandronum 4.0.

On that note, GZDoom 1.8.6 is 11 years old today...

[Ru5tK1ng]

There two ways to go about implementing specifications such as MBF21 and DSDHacked in Zandronum. The first method is to continue on with the trail that has been followed since Zandronum's inception. This trail of course is to sequentially make major updates to the engine that coincide with major gzdoom updates. Just as a refresher, let's go over how this has looked for the last 13 years since the release of 1.0.

The first Zan version released in August 2012 roughly had a code base of gzdoom 1.2/zdoom 2.3, (I'm not entirely sure since it's not well documented), which was released in March 2009. Zan 2.0 came out 2.5 years later on March 2015 and it's code base was upgraded to gzdoom 1.5/zdoom 2.5 (dated August 2010). Another 2.5 years later yielded 3.0 on September 2017 which aligned with gzdoom 1.8.6/zdoom 2.8pre-441-g458e1b1 dated 2014. So here we are in 2025 still on this code base and even though a lot of work has gone into 3.1 and even more work into 3.2, it's going to be a long time before Zandro even reaches gzdoom 4.7 (which was the first version that had the beginnings of MBF21 support). Currently there is no target set in stone for Zandronum 4.0 and the only thing that has been hinted at as a possible code base goal is gzdoom 2.2 which is from 2016. Since we have seen that major updates to the code base takes roughly 2.5 years, we're looking at late 2027 to move our base out of 2014 into 2016, maybe 2017 if we're lucky.

What does this all mean? Well it means it's going to take a very long time to reach support of many mapping and modding specifications that a good chunk of the community is already on board with. Additionally many of these specifications have been implemented into various source ports including our contemporaries. Even though it is a bit humorous to say, the fact is Odamex and ZDaemon have already surpassed Zan in this department. Make no mistake, there is a lot of MBF21 content being made and tallies to a great amount of content that Zandronum cannot run properly without some bootleg conversion patch. It's not to say that other multiplayer ports cannot have unique features or capabilities, but it does paint a certain picture that a port which was once touted as cutting edge, when compared to its contemporaries, is now starting to lag behind. Specifications like MBF21, DEHEXTRA, DSDHacked and ID24 (and others I'm missing) aren't exactly doing things that cannot be replicated with Zandronum ACS & DECORATE, but that's only the case for now and more importantly, these specifications have been embraced by the rest of the community and map creators that aren't of the g/zdoom breed.

Some might argue that chasing ZScript is more important and that Zandro should just focus on making ZScript work within its C/S structure. However, as previously shown above, the dream of having working ZScript in Zandronum is still far away and will take many years to make it a reality. Recall that the initial beginning of ZScript was in 2016 and the first usable version was in 2017. Hypothetically if Zan were to reach parity with GZdoom 2.3 or 2.4, that old specification it would potentially support would be considered outdated when compared to the modern implementation of ZScript. So regardless if you're team MBF21 or team ZScript, it'll probably take approximately 5-6 years before Zandronum can reach a point where its support for either can be considered 'adequate'. As we have seen with GZdoom's history, a lot will happen in 5 years. Although it doesn't need to be pointed out, Zandro doesn't exactly have the same dev firepower that existed between 2012-2015. So it would be wise to curb expectations of development time and progress. Unfortunately, all the posturing people made back in the day about how ST moving to an OSS model would bring in vast amounts of help from all over never came to fruition.

As previously mentioned, this is only one development route that Zandronum can choose from. What is the other option then? Well, that would be detaching from the tired, traveled path of playing catch up with GZdoom. This means going rogue and not being tied to whatever GZDoom is doing upstream and making decisions in the present without having to worry about causing code base conflicts. This route is a bit reckless and it could very well be throwing away the practice that Zandro development has embraced for past 13+ years. However, the benefit of this route would be removing the shackle that has limited the development's direction and would allow Zandro to carve out its own identity. Zandronum would no longer have to worry about chasing GZDoom which has been both futile and doomed from the start (1.0 was already a few years behind the latest GZDoom at that time). It's worth noting that GZDoom has recently made improvements to it's netcode and there's a good chance in 5-6 years that C/S could be on the table which would spell disaster for Zandronum. So a reckless pathway such as this wouldn't be as reckless considering the changes GZDoom has currently undergone and will go through in the near future with regards to multiplayer.

No one can tell what the future holds, but we can control how we get there. A serious decision about the port's direction should be made sooner rather than later and be divulged to the community. I'm not trying to push for any specific direction, I'm just putting the choices out there so people can be aware and so the discussion within the dev team gets rolling. If the decision to double-down on how development had been led so far will be made, then at least an official word should be posted so the community is at least aware of what to expect from the port moving forward. However, I do believe that it would be a grave mistake to underestimate the continued advancements made to GZDoom's multiplayer capabilities.

[Catastrophe]

Chiming in here for a moment.

What Rust mentioned about Zandronum's former glory days resonated with me. We used to be the masters of a very hyper specific niche - which was being the most sophisticated online port for Doom with arguably the easiest setup. This is now currently under severe attack by multiple fronts.

1. Bethesda/Nightdive now ships a polished, plug-and-play source port with official multiplayer support: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2280/DOOM__DOOM_II/
2. GZDoom is actively exploring better netcode, shrinking Zandronum's remaining technical advantage: https://bsky.app/profile/nashmuhandes.b ... lk75mjns2t
3. And Roblox, yes really, is absorbing the younger modding generation. It’s multiplayer-first, highly moddable, and creators can earn real money: https://www.rolimons.com/games

Here's my hot take: Zandronum isn’t just competing with other Doom ports. The real competition is engines like Roblox, Garry’s Mod, even Minecraft; platforms where people can build and play custom multiplayer experiences with ease. Zandronum already has that potential. It’s lightweight, moddable, and built for online play. But for years, it’s felt like we’re stuck with the only path forward being backporting changes from GZDoom and praying to god that some insanely talented individual drops a killer mod that breathes life back into the port. And I feel the guiding principle for this project needs to move away from that mindset to survive.

Since the release of Mega Man 8-Bit Deathmatch or Brutal Doom back in 2010, has there been another breakout mod that truly put Zandronum back in the spotlight? Has there been a new CutmanMike or Sgt Mark IV? Nope. And it pains me to say it as a modder myself, but it’s hard to argue otherwise. Because right now, if you have a great idea, you need to go through absurd lengths just to get it in front of players:

• No unified way to bundle or distribute your game.
• No installer.
• No out-of-the-box game content.
• No real platform support.
• And no license that even lets you try fixing that.

It shouldn’t be this hard.

Making a Zandronum mod in 2025 feels like trying to ship a full indie game with duct tape and carrier pigeons. You have to explain to people how to find and install the port, how to set up IWADs, how to configure a server, and then maybe, maybe, they get to actually play. All while hoping the engine doesn’t break under modern OSs or input APIs. And god forbid you want to ship it somewhere like Steam or mobile, right now, that’s legally murky at best.

The silver-bullet in my eyes? If we want Zandronum to thrive, we need to modernize the license, something clean and GPL-compatible. That unlocks everything:

• We can bundle a flagship mod again, like Skulltag once did; fully decoupled from Doom assets, with its own identity and hook. Something no port can ever offer.
• We can ship it on Steam, Itch, Android, etc., just like other engines do.
• We can stop praying for miracle mods and actually build a platform that supports creators and attracts new talent.
• People can make fully-fledged indie games that they can sell and pour their life into.

That last point is what really stings. We’re in the middle of a boomer shooter renaissance. There’s a real, paying audience hungry for games that feel like classic Doom: fast, tight, and moddable. And yet, there isn’t a single commercially shipped game using Zandronum for multiplayer. Not one. It gets worse: Sgt. Mark IV, the creator of Brutal Doom, is literally building his own indie shooter and has publicly said he wanted to ship it with Zandronum pre-packaged, but legally can’t. He spells it out here. This is someone with the clout, the audience, and the will to support the engine and even he has to walk away. If that guy can’t make it work, what chance does a new modder or small indie dev have?

Right now, Zandronum is still alive, barely, because of what it was. But that’s not enough anymore. We need to decide: are we preserving a relic? Or building something people can actually use in 2025?

The licensing problem isn’t just a legal quirk. It’s an existential threat. It’s the brick wall between Zandronum and any real future outside its own bubble. And honestly, that bubble is the real issue. Too many people still see Zandronum only in relation to GZDoom or other Doom ports like we’re fighting for a piece of the same tiny pond. But that mindset is killing us. We should be looking at the ocean: Roblox, Garry’s Mod, Unity, Godot; engines and platforms that people are using to create entire ecosystems of multiplayer content. That’s where the energy is. That’s where we should be. Zandronum has all the raw ingredients to be a powerful, lightweight, moddable, online-first 2.5D sandbox engine. Not just a "Doom port with multiplayer" but a foundation for entirely new games and ideas. And yet we're still stuck with our primary goal to slowly catch up to GZDoom versions that are many years behind. That’s creative stagnation. We need to stop measuring ourselves by what GZDoom is doing and start thinking about what people outside the Doom scene actually want: an engine that's multiplayer-first, easy to mod, easy to distribute, and easy to build new ideas on top of. And none of that can happen until the license is fixed.

[Ænima]

As previously mentioned, this is only one development route that Zandronum can choose from. What is the other option then? Well, that would be detaching from the tired, traveled path of playing catch up with GZdoom. This means going rogue and not being tied to whatever GZDoom is doing upstream and making decisions in the present without having to worry about causing code base conflicts. This route is a bit reckless and it could very well be throwing away the practice that Zandro development has embraced for past 13+ years. However, the benefit of this route would be removing the shackle that has limited the development's direction and would allow Zandro to carve out its own identity. Zandronum would no longer have to worry about chasing GZDoom which has been both futile and doomed from the start (1.0 was already a few years behind the latest GZDoom at that time). It's worth noting that GZDoom has recently made improvements to it's netcode and there's a good chance in 5-6 years that C/S could be on the table which would spell disaster for Zandronum. So a reckless pathway such as this wouldn't be as reckless considering the changes GZDoom has currently undergone and will go through in the near future with regards to multiplayer.

I know my opinion doesn't really matter but I wholeheartedly support ^THIS dev philosophy for Zandronum going forward. "Catching up to GZ" is essentially a Sisyphean effort at this point. And the end result will be a port that's still obsolete compared to GZ with no unique features to draw people here versus there. Making mods for the latest GZ would be infinitely easier for modders like me, and I realized this way back in the Skulltag era, but I continued to stick with Zandronum because 1) my mods are multiplayer-focused and 2) I appreciate the amount of unique features and code that we do currently possess, and I enjoy playing other Zandro-specific mods that use these features as well.

At the end of the day when it comes to port "visibility" and getting new players/modders on board, the question is usually "what do I need to download to play this mod I saw on Youtube/TikTok?", and the mod in question is usually singleplayer Brutal Doom so they reach for GZDoom. If it's MM8BDM then they come here but I generally don't see a lot of that in my feed. So ultimately we should lean in hard on promoting mods/features that are unique to us like voice chat, etc.

The analogy I like to use amongst myself is that of a 15+ year-old car. You can maintain it as often as possible and replace all of the parts with new ones just to keep it in the same running order as the newer cars on the road, but for an increasing amount of effort and not much benefit aside from being able to say that you're still driving the same car. When you go to sell it, that effort goes to waste because nobody wants it for more than $1000, UNLESS you've tricked it out with some unique parts under the hood, or a custom body kit, sound system, or if it's a rare model that isn't made anymore. The point is that you'd have to convince someone that your obsolete car offers them something they wouldn't find at a dealership or in any other used car.

[Xenaero]

heyyy a Doom multiplayer topic and I'm an old community barnacle so I want to say things!!

It's worth noting that GZDoom has recently made improvements to it's netcode and there's a good chance in 5-6 years that C/S could be on the table which would spell disaster for Zandronum.

I was lucky enough to have a chance to playtest a recent build and I'm very impressed by the potential of what GZDoom is working on. To the point where I find myself wondering if there's a possibility of a multiplayer bubble on that port that, while small and localized, could be great for the health of multiplayer Doom in general. I'm not quite sure I see it being a major threat to the current way of life with Zandronum mods. I think it'll be way more popular with the developers of indie games that use GZDoom as a base - quality peer2peer gameplay for coop/pvp that isn't tied to the infrastructure of a master server - so it helps their games out way more than it'll be super applicable to Doom multiplayer itself.

There are good points made about how difficult it can be to get someone used to modern convenience to get into Doom source ports and MP ports in general. It's just not that kind of crowd anymore where server browsers and digging into the system is super common... I feel I've seen this become more prevalent over recent years, probably something to do with things like Steam just clicking a button and it Works. It'd be interesting to see if Zandronum eventually constructed kind of its own ecosystem, similar to the one that that has kept ZDaemon's public scene alive and well. That's...Probably a lotta work.

As it is tho, I don't believe Zan's MO of being a more modern based port (compared to Oda/ZD) with client/server architecture allowing always-on servers to be a thing is really that threatened. In 5-6 years if GZDoom people actually wanted to deal with all the cons of introducting multiplayer to their port with C/S offerings. Would it really be in line with GZDoom's way of thinking? I'd definitely be surprised. I just don't think they have people or the desire to dedicate the cost, staff, and infrastructure. If anything, don't those doomers come over to Zandronum instead?

[Fused]

I personally don't think I can add much else to what has already been shared. There are some really important points being made here that have personally worried me for a long time by now and it's clear the current direction is not getting the engine anywhere. If it isn't for the lack of true moddability compared to other engines mentioned, it's the clear major decline in player numbers and the fact that GZDoom, the engine that Zandronum continues to base on, is now making steps towards true c/s support which essentially makes Zandronum obsolete if it's gets anywhere meaningful. Do we really want to continue making small steps and always stay behind? Why would anybody pick Zandronum when another engine has more features, possibly even better multiplayer in the future?

I personally really enjoy spending my time making things using the engine, even if it has some major limitations. But I do have to say, what point is there if it's possibly not going to be played anyway?

[Ru5tK1ng]

Making a Zandronum mod in 2025 feels like trying to ship a full indie game with duct tape and carrier pigeons. You have to explain to people how to find and install the port, how to set up IWADs, how to configure a server, and then maybe, maybe, they get to actually play. All while hoping the engine doesn’t break under modern OSs or input APIs. And god forbid you want to ship it somewhere like Steam or mobile, right now, that’s legally murky at best.

It's also worth noting that at one point circa 2012/2013 there was a Steam page for MM8BDM. Obviously, that page didn't last long because of licensing problems (and probably Capcom assets too) and we no longer see it up today. One can only imagine what kind of avenues that could have opened for Cutman had he been able to keep that page up. For those who weren't here at that time, the mod was scorching hot when it dropped and the activity you see today pales in comparison to what was seen in those early days. I'm not trying to speak for him and say what he would have or wouldn't have done, but it does led one to wonder what someone could have done if they were able to sale their Zandro mod back in that time. Also before anyone asks, no, he did not put a price tag on it; it was free to play.

Overall, I agree with your points and there is value in cleaning up the license of the port. Unfortunately, the license is a big mess to cleanup and if Zan stays on its current track, the cleanup doesn't happen until GZDoom 3.0 which is going to take around 4-6 years to reach. Even if everything was dropped and the focus was solely cleaning up the license issue, that's still going to take some time. It just depends on the position this issue resides on the development team's priority list. Though, I will point out that there have been a small amount of people asking in the Zan discord if they could sell their mod on steam. Even if the amount of modders who have a commercial interest in Zandronum isn't very high, the potential is still worth considering.

The point is that you'd have to convince someone that your obsolete car offers them something they wouldn't find at a dealership or in any other used car.

Currently the main drawing power Zandro has over GZDoom is its multiplayer functionality, database support and maybe some specific features like Client-Side scripting. With the amount of contributors and pace of development that GZDoom receives, it could very well be on par with all of the aforementioned features in a shorter time frame than most people expect. People still wander into the Zan discord asking about Brutal doom coop because the experience is better on Zandro than what can be had with GZdoom. The question is, how long will that last?

As it is tho, I don't believe Zan's MO of being a more modern based port (compared to Oda/ZD) with client/server architecture allowing always-on servers to be a thing is really that threatened. In 5-6 years if GZDoom people actually wanted to deal with all the cons of introducting multiplayer to their port with C/S offerings. Would it really be in line with GZDoom's way of thinking? I'd definitely be surprised. I just don't think they have people or the desire to dedicate the cost, staff, and infrastructure.

The probability of GZDoom getting C/S added is small but it is not zero. A more likely scenario would be an internal browser that lists lobbies or rooms of current games being hosted by players. It may not be as robust or ideal as C/S infrastructure, but it would be serviceable, and you wouldn't really need clusters of paid servers. Regardless, C/S would still align with G's push to become a legitimate engine considering other, more mainstream, engines utilize client-server architecture. Even Godot has C/S capability. Once again, dismissing the idea of GZ+C/S isn't a good stance to take unless Graf officially says 'no' or some other roadblock kills the idea.

If anything, don't those doomers come over to Zandronum instead?

If their favorite gameplay mods worked on Zandro they probably would. GZdoom modders and developers simply don't touch Zandro in any capacity. Modders don't want to work with limited DECORATE & ACS while developers and contributors don't want to dig around in an old (and messy) code base. It's unfortunate, but it's reality.

Do we really want to continue making small steps and always stay behind? Why would anybody pick Zandronum when another engine has more features, possibly even better multiplayer in the future?

The port's development has just struggled a lot post 3.0. Although Kaminsky and other the devs have put in a lot of work for 3.1 and 3.2, it's not enough to steer the ship in the correct direction. There are a few key things that contributed to this situation the port currently faces:

Singular write access to Zan's repo with limited availability.
Moving to OSDN after Bitbucket kicked the Mercurial bucket.
Sticking to HG while the majority of the community uses Git.
Falling behind GZDoom at an increasing rate.

I'm not going to pretend I know what's best or what's the answer to resolve this situation. However, I do know that maintaining the status quo of how things are operated will not result in any significant change.


On a semi-related note, here a few things that have hurt Zandronum's community:

Lackluster community promotion and events from staff.
Social media age with no social media presence (bluesky doesn't count).
Little exposure to user created content
No hype anywhere

You can't attract new eyes if you don't put anything out there. Despite the Dark Ages, Doom is more popular than it was pre-2016 and Zan isn't doing much to draw from this burst of popularity. But I digress, since this topic is about port development.



#freedecay

[Catastrophe]

I'm of the view that fixing that licensing issue should be the #1 goal for this project's longevity. You get this sorted out, you get more projects on steam and elsewhere rolling out with Zandronum. You get that going, then you get more active players. You get more active players, you get more contributors to the project. You get more contributors? Well now you're on a cycle to save this project forever basically.

Unbanning people, running community events, etc, is nice but these actions only attract people in our small Doom pond. They don't break this project out of the Doom bubble like MM8BDM did. That's what Zandro desperately needs. You gotta move away from the Doom bubble.

If you need a data-point I sincerely think freeing up this license is in everyone's best interest and should be the primary goal.

Community events, socials, updating the website does not benefit the project as much as freeing up the license does. If we free up the license people can just make standalone games of their own mods, run their own communities, upload their game on popular platforms, and breathe life into this wasteland more than any of that stuff ever could.

XSnake or Fused should be allowed to strip doom assets and upload his Zombie Horde 2 project on Steam.
Aenima should be allowed to strip doom assets and upload a rebranded Super Skulltag on Steam.
Cutman should be allowed to strip doom assets and upload GvH on Steam if he felt like it.
Someone should be allowed to strip doom assets, make their own weapons and maps, and create their own "Private CTF" onto Steam.
I should be allowed to strip doom assets and upload any of my mods onto Steam.

Do people understand what I'm getting at? Don't fall for the endless cycle of actions that just keeps this project inside the Doom bubble.

[Ru5tK1ng]

I'm of the view that fixing that licensing issue should be the #1 goal for this project's longevity. You get this sorted out, you get more projects on steam and elsewhere rolling out with Zandronum. You get that going, then you get more active players. You get more active players, you get more contributors to the project. You get more contributors? Well now you're on a cycle to save this project forever basically.

The issue with what you're saying is determining how to go about executing it. This goes back to my original point of deciding whether Zan should continue to follow GZDoom or start doing its own thing. Should the license be cleaned up independently from code base updates or wait until Zandronum catches up to GZDoom 3.0? Both are going to take time and one path is going to break synergy with GZdoom. You fix the license, but now you are stuck having to cherry pick code into the engine. It just seems like a very hard sell for the Devs to focus on the license when people are still yearning for updated DECORATE and ACS dated 2016. Though to be fair, it's a hard sell to get the devs to do anything different from what's been done all this time. The only viable path I see is having someone or a group of people forking Zandro and doing the overhaul themselves. Good luck to whoever is out there.

Unbanning people, running community events, etc, is nice but these actions only attract people in our small Doom pond. They don't break this project out of the Doom bubble like MM8BDM did. That's what Zandro desperately needs. You gotta move away from the Doom bubble.

Community health is still important, in fact, many projects will list 'strong community support' as a pro. Even if you have a nice engine, a dead ass looking community isn't going to sway potential game makers or modders. Furthermore, Zandro isn't like your typical game engine, you can't easily separate it from Doom at this point. Plus if you have a strong, active scene, it would only benefit a potential game to have the Zan Community be capable of advertising and feeding in players.

Community events, socials, updating the website does not benefit the project as much as freeing up the license does. If we free up the license people can just make standalone games of their own mods, run their own communities, upload their game on popular platforms, and breathe life into this wasteland more than any of that stuff ever could.

It's still important to showcase what the port can do. If the license was magically freed up right now, what would there be to show for it? How are you going to get the port out there? How are you going to entice people to use the port over any other open source engine? Don't misunderstand, community health, media presence and events are not the most important thing but they do have weight and value; you can't just ignore them completely either. Aenima above even talked about how he sees Brutal Doom on Tiktok. Gotta play the game even if you don't like the rules.

[Catastrophe]

It's still important to showcase what the port can do. If the license was magically freed up right now, what would there be to show for it? How are you going to get the port out there? How are you going to entice people to use the port over any other open source engine?

What would there be to show for it? An estimated 20,000 players on a game that could've shipped with Zandronum prepackaged. If we're hyper conservative and say 10% or less decide to play online co-op, you're throwing away about 2,000 potential new players using Zandronum, just on the short term alone (!!!). That's what's at stake. We have data to back this up, we have modders that have already asked if they can sell their games, etc. While I don't know if cherrypicking is the right move, it is absolutely the best interest to have this be the major focus so the project doesn't miss another high-profile game like Brutal Fate again.

[Ru5tK1ng]

You also have to keep in mind it's not like Brutal Fate came out of nowhere. BD is going on 15 years in age and has the benefit of garnering exposure and a large fanbase during that time. It's more of an outlier than a potential norm (partially due to the fact Dark Ages is just Simon Says with a shittier wh40k story).

Regardless, the point still stands that it's a tough sale to get the dev team to buy into.

[Sean]

The licensing situation certainly should be sorted, but I think you might also want to think about the technical benefits? Like not being bound to a proprietary audio library that's been unmaintained for 9 years, or being able to be packaged in Linux distros. It might just be me, but "it'll allow other people to profit off your work" does not sound like an appealing incentive for doing so. You could have at least sugared it and suggested the idea these indie devs could re-invest it in the Zandronum project and team to help cover infrastructure costs or even fund development, but no. (For the record, the licensing problem has nothing to do with Zandronum itself and everything to do with the old GZDoom base using proprietary components)

With regards to development, what is the actual solution here? If you want new features now then we may as well break from GZD and go our own way, but nobody wants DECORATE and ACS, and that will just result in more of those, so you want ZScript, for which we may as well stay with following GZDoom but that's going to take ages and risks stagnating development of multiplayer features. These have and are being investigated and even worked on, but we are limited by a small team who have little free time to invest in the project.

My first suggestion is that dev meetings become more public in some way. Clearly people have a desire to write novellas about the problems, so they may as well do it in front of the people who can actually take on board these thoughts, and maybe it'll even result in suggestions being made that lead to decisions, or even actually material contributions.

[Catastrophe]

Appreciate the replies; But I want to be clear: I’m not saying the license problem is something Zandronum personally created. I’m saying it’s the single biggest thing holding the project back, full stop. Whether the mess comes from old GZDoom dependencies or something else, it still leaves modders in a place where they can't ship anything, can't bundle anything, and can't go anywhere outside the Doom community.

Sean, you mentioned the technical upsides like packaging for distros and removing old audio libs. That’s great and I agree. But that's not what gets creators to show up. Most people don’t start working on something because it’s “GPL”, they show up because they can build something cool, share it easily, and get players without jumping through hoops. Right now, Zandronum doesn’t offer that. The barrier to entry is way too high and the end result is… what? Another mod locked to forum threads and Discord pings? And to your point about “other people profiting off your work”, that’s not the pitch. The pitch is giving people the freedom to make complete games. If some of them want to sell it later and reinvest in their project or this one, cool; but even if they don’t, at least they can release something that lives on Steam, or mobile, or wherever players actually are now.

As for “what would we even ship?” That question misses the point. We act like we need to wait for some new killer mod before fixing the license, but that’s backwards. The only reason nothing exists yet is because the license blocks it. We’re sitting on a ton of legacy mods that, with a little cleanup and polish, could have, once upon a time, become standalone games. All Out War, Zombie Horde, GvH, Complex Doom, etc; they’re just examples of the kind of stuff that could’ve made the jump, if the option had ever been on the table.

I’m not against doing community events or socials either; that stuff does help, to a point. But attention alone doesn’t solve anything if all we’re doing is pointing people to a toolchain that’s stuck in the past. It’s a hard ask for any creator to spend months on a project just to have players jump through hoops, digging up IWADs and configuring ports in 2025. Maybe the only way forward is a fork; I’m not sure. But what I am sure of is Rust's main point: that survival isn’t going to come from playing catch-up with GZDoom.

[Ru5tK1ng]

While I don't know if cherrypicking is the right move, it is absolutely the best interest to have this be the major focus so the project doesn't miss another high-profile game like Brutal Fate again.

After speaking with a couple of people since my response, I believe you are overlooking a potential outcome that would arise by solely focusing on making Zandro a game engine. This outcome of course is the creation of more bubbles and spheres separate from the overall community. Think about popular mods back in the day such as 8bitdm. It is basically a community within a community and the same thing has happened to gzdoom to an extent. Think of it as a Discord effect where people just create their own separate spheres. If a bunch of people enjoy Selaco, they probably don't care about GZDoom as an engine or a community. Similarly, megaman players only play megaman on average and doomers don't touch megaman either. Even if you go by the numbers, it just doesn't seem like Brutal Fate will be the norm in terms of potential players/community members. Not every game will have that potential.

More importantly, there are still things the engine needs to resolve before it is ready for any possible primetime. Can you imagine having a game on stream running on current Zandronum: 'Let me live stream the demo and play some multiplayer...oh shit P_PlayerThink error messages are flooding the screen'. 'Look at these flying monsters I made, oh no they're desyncing online'. I have no need to continue on, you and a lot of other people already know.

I agree that Zandronum being a capable game engine is a good route to explore. I'm just not convinced it's the route that needs to be prioritized at this point. I'd rather have a netcode overhaul than ZScript implementation. Feature parity with ZDoom 2.8.1 would be enough to hold people over for a bit more while devs decide what to do for Zandronum 4.0.

With regards to development, what is the actual solution here? If you want new features now then we may as well break from GZD and go our own way, but nobody wants DECORATE and ACS, and that will just result in more of those, so you want ZScript, for which we may as well stay with following GZDoom but that's going to take ages and risks stagnating development of multiplayer features.

I disagree. Just look at the tracker and discord. People are constantly asking for more ACS & DECORATE backports; some of whom have been asking for years. If you meant to say that the developers don't want more; then yeah, maybe you're right. As I previously stated, most people would be fine having feature parity with zdoom 2.8.1 for a little while the port's future is in question. You'd be hard pressed to find someone who wouldn't be happy to finally use all the arguments in every DECORATE action function.

My first suggestion is that dev meetings become more public in some way. Clearly people have a desire to write novellas about the problems, so they may as well do it in front of the people who can actually take on board these thoughts, and maybe it'll even result in suggestions being made that lead to decisions, or even actually material contributions.

Maybe semi-public so people who don't know anything can't clutter up the discussion with irrelevant questions.

Novellas? We used to write out more.

[Xenaero]

A more likely scenario would be an internal browser that lists lobbies or rooms of current games being hosted by players.

Skulltag truly was ahead of its time. As long as an option for p2p exists in the engine that works well enough, that covers I dunno, 90%+ of indie game releases. I can see maybe some indie devs supporting C/S infrastructure if their title's big enough, but the majority of the boomer shooters? I dunno if they'd have the income to support hosting a master server for <X> months or years. This is based on what I've seen from stuff like Hellforge's titles. It's spitting hairs regarding infrastructure, but I agree with the sentiment. An in-game frontend to join people though means those titles can be spooled up whenever, master server or not.

Once again, dismissing the idea of GZ+C/S isn't a good stance to take unless Graf officially says 'no' or some other roadblock kills the idea.

ZDoom/GZDoom staff in the past have asserted that they don't want to deal with the multiplayer side of the community (attitude, developer demands, toxicity), and Skulltag/Zandronum existed for that. I didn't save the quotes from forever ago, but it was certainly the sentiment during the Skulltag/Zandronum changeover. Granted, that's been....~13 years ago now and the spicy competitive crowd that made up the vocal part of this community has been vastly reduced. I'd just be surprised if that attitude towards the multiplayer community has changed.

[Ænima]

Aenima should be allowed to strip doom assets and upload a rebranded Super Skulltag on Steam.

[Fused]

XSnake or Fused should be allowed to strip doom assets and upload his Zombie Horde 2 project on Steam.

FYI considering the mod doesn't even use an IWAD base at this point nothing stops it from actually going commercially if it wasn't for the fact there's no engine to go with it. I never actually gave it a thought, but combining everything into a convenient package and providing it on Steam or other platforms would greatly help with attracting new players. Really a win-win for everybody if it were to happen. I personally really don't care about being compensated, it's a hobby project for me and I like people playing/using my work.

P.S. Brutal Fate getting 50k wishlists on Steam should be a wakeup call about how much demand there would be for people to play this on multiplayer. Sergeant Mark is more than fine with providing Zandronum with the game as long as he is able to, but he literally can't. Imagine the numbers if people actually got informed about Zandronum and the community.

[Sean]

All this feels equivalent to commissioning an artist and offering to pay them in exposure. OK, Zandronum is more popular, now what? We still have a handful of developers with a small amount of free time to invest in the project, someone still has to pay for the infrastructure that deals with that increased popularity, etc.

Indie devs could contribute development time to the project? They could do that now! They could at least open a dialogue with us about fixing the licensing. But literally none of them have involved us at all. Again, it is well-known that the licensing situation is not that Zandronum's fault directly, it is fixable. I doubt they will involve us even if they could use the engine.
We could open to donations -- but plenty of FOSS projects see nothing while commercial endeavours exploit them. We can't force people to pay us (in money or otherwise) for using Zandronum commercially either.

Either way, it really sounds like that you don't have Zandronum at heart - it sounds like you just want your wallet to be thicker. It's unappreciative, and it's not a solution to solving the problems Zandronum actually has now. If, when I'm on my deathbed, you asked me what my life's greatest regret was - "Sgt Mark not being able to make 20 bajillion dollars off of my work" will not even remotely cross my mind.

We live in a capitalist society, and for as long as that holds true money will mean very different things to literally everything else. By principle I do not want to help other people's commercial endeavours if I see nothing from it. I generally don't like helping people with their Delta Touch problems for a similar reason. I contribute to openSUSE, but only allow that to spill over to SLE to the extent I also benefit from it, since I have no intention of doing SUSE employees' jobs for them, and will quite happily tell that to their faces. Combine this with the fact that I don't think it'll actually help Zandronum itself much, and it's why I think it's a poor incentive to fix the licensing situation.

Indeed, I even have no problem with people actually selling my work - Zandronum's own license permits it, and I have contributed code under it (and have released many other things under similar terms) consciously aware that I am giving people express written permission to use it commercially. But your commercial endeavours are your responsibility, don't burden us with it, especially if we see nothing back. Zandronum is not Roblox, or Garry's Mod, or Minecraft, or Unity, or Unreal, or Godot -- all but one are owned by large companies making massive amounts of cash off of their engines, except for Godot, which still makes tens of thousands per year. On that note, Minecraft is has been powered by an open-source library called LWJGL since literally day one. Minecraft is literally the best selling video game ever, and the sheer amount of wealth generated from that one media franchise would be a struggle for the cumulative mental power of everyone who has ever heard of Doom to comprehend. LWJGL has seen none of that wealth from Mojang or Microsoft. Not in donations, not in man hours. And I've yet to be convinced that Zandronum could be any different.

---

I disagree. Just look at the tracker and discord. People are constantly asking for more ACS & DECORATE backports; some of whom have been asking for years. If you meant to say that the developers don't want more; then yeah, maybe you're right. As I previously stated, most people would be fine having feature parity with zdoom 2.8.1 for a little while the port's future is in question. You'd be hard pressed to find someone who wouldn't be happy to finally use all the arguments in every DECORATE action function.

Yeah, I think continuing to chase GZDoom up to 2.2 or so is a good goal and reasonably attainable.

Maybe semi-public so people who don't know anything can't clutter up the discussion with irrelevant questions.

It'll need to stay focused somehow, but getting the community more involved in making decisions, staying informed in what we're up to, and even knowing what they could do to help is the core idea.

Novellas? We used to write out more.

And how much did that accomplish...

[Ru5tK1ng]

OK, Zandronum is more popular, now what? We still have a handful of developers with a small amount of free time to invest in the project, someone still has to pay for the infrastructure that deals with that increased popularity, etc.

Going by what has been written already, more eyes and players on the project mean more chances people will contribute to something they care about and enjoy. People apparently didn't have a problem using their funds for all the necessary services that run Zandronum 12-15 years ago when the average player count was 3-4 times more than it is today. You may not fall under the same category as them, but don't think for a second that there aren't other people with disposable income that would help run things by paying the bills. In all my years of playing, I have seen people come and go all the time who ran servers and port services; there will always be someone willing to step up.

Indie devs could contribute development time to the project? They could do that now! They could at least open a dialogue with us about fixing the licensing. But literally none of them have involved us at all. Again, it is well-known that the licensing situation is not that Zandronum's fault directly, it is fixable. I doubt they will involve us even if they could use the engine.

Why would they? There's no exposure that makes Zandro stand out in a sea of OSS and hobbyist game engines. If I were a game dev, how would I know that Zandro exists? Why would I use it over GZDoom? I go onto the Zan website, and I see nothing that tells me why I should use it for my game; I'm instead met with a dusty ass old site from 10 years ago that hasn't updated its presentation to be aligned with modern standards. If I'm trying to develop a game, why would I suddenly stop my own game development to go clean up a game engine’s license problem just so I can begin to even use said engine, when there are other engines ready to go? That is both a stupid scenario and a stupid expectation. There is no chicken vs egg dilemma going on here. You either have something to show and put it out there to be used or you don't.

Just to reiterate, my stance is that fixing the license is important, but it's not a priority right this moment considering there are things the engine desperately needs to iron out.

And how much did that accomplish...

Did you suddenly get amnesia? Quite a bit happened during those times considering all those long posts were all about dialogue and got a lot of discussion rolling. Was there a lot of shitstorms and hurt feelings? Yes..that tends to happen when you mix passionate people, stubborn people and idiots into a topic. More often than not, change happened because people were willing to start a conversation about something. Whether you agree with that stance or not, we can see the result that occurs when people who care end up departing.