Where is Zandronum Going? (Follow-up to the Mapping Standards Thread)

[Ænima]

https://www.doomworld.com/forum/topic/1 ... ouncement/

After what happened with GZDoom and UZDoom, I completely agree with others here that Zandronum should ditch both and do its own thing. It's ridiculous trying to chase either of them now. I don't know if I somehow predicted the future and timed this thread perfectly but the writing is on the wall. The era of chasing other ports isn't the move and it never will be.

Agreed, the GZDoom event was the perfect catalyst for starting a new chapter here at Zan.

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.

I know this is an old post from the old thread but I just wanted to echo this here.

I know the licenses are a thorny issue and I don't pretend to know as much as the devs in terms of exactly how many hours of work this would entail. But this is not something we can keep on the "back burner" forever. Are there freelance programmers who specialize in this sort of thing? I'll chip in just to see Zandronum not die. Hell, I'd chip in even more to finally see Zandronum on Steam! Besides FMODex and snippets of Build’s software rendering code, how much else is on the to-do list to bring us in line with GPL3?

The dev team doesn't have enough time or people to do everything at once. But is there a compromise? Once we get to a solid milestone, like Zan 4.0 etc, can we shift development priorities away from new engine features and go all-in on the licenses? New features for modders mean absolutely nothing when there are no players around to experience them. We're already "behind" the late great GZDoom, what's 6 more months matter? I'd honestly be willing to wait even longer for those features if it meant a return to the good ol' days of having a decent selection of well-populated servers to play on. Other modders may not share this opinion and I might get shot for it but whatever.

I understand that resolved licenses =/= instantly more players, but come on. You know listing Zandronum on Steam will bring at least a few dozen new players, maybe even more over time. Imagine how less dead this place would be if we had listed on Steam like 6 years ago (if it were possible). Steam is, overwhelmingly, the method by which people discover games they haven't played before. It also features community pages for games so that players can talk about the game and share mods without, you know, having to make an account on a dead forum and hope that someone hears them. So it's really two missed opportunities in one. Steam offers a platform to potentially expand our community, both in terms of actual downloads as well as having a place to converse that we don't have to pay to host.

As it currently stands, it seems as if our best method of getting new players into our ecosystem is hoping that they accidentally type a sequence of keys into Google that spells out "ZANDRONUM" and then finding their way here while also just so happening to have a copy of Doom2.wad on their hard drive. There are probably Doom players out there, both newbies and old-timers alike, who would have loved to have a moddable multiplayer Doom experience like Zandronum but just simply never heard of us and never will, and who probably think that Nightdive's KEX port on Steam is the only possible way to play Doom online.

Go ahead and google "Doom multiplayer". You have to go to the second page of results before you simply see "zandronum.com" with no text or description below it. So even people who do go out of their way to find us could still miss it. Even if you click the Doom Wiki link below it, Zandro isn't even mentioned until a single sentence about 3/4 of the way down the page.


iunno i guess i'm done ranting for now. It's just frustrating that I can't do more to contribute to solving this problem otherwise I would.

[Fused]

Reported the blank site result to DarkAssassin on Halloween, 4 days ago, never received a response. I understand we're not obligated to a direct response, but perhaps there should be more control over with more people so it's not one one person's shoulders.

Last week, I took the liberty of converting my entire YouTube channel into the "official" showcase for Zandro mods. (since that's basically all I ever use my YT channel for nowadays anyway)

I still very much appreciate the gesture of doing this but the channel is only posting GZDoom VR mods, and nothing Zandronum. In my opinion it would be a good idea if you get access to the main Zandronum Youtube channel, give it a proper username, and upload Zandronum content on there. Then these can be posted in the Discord or the forums alongside other content creators that post Zandronum video's.

[Catastrophe]

Reported the blank site result to DarkAssassin on Halloween, 4 days ago, never received a response. I understand we're not obligated to a direct response, but perhaps there should be more control over with more people so it's not one one person's shoulders.

Go ahead and google "Doom multiplayer". You have to go to the second page of results before you simply see "zandronum.com" with no text or description below it. So even people who do go out of their way to find us could still miss it. Even if you click the Doom Wiki link below it, Zandro isn't even mentioned until a single sentence about 3/4 of the way down the page.

Wow you weren't kidding. I found no results directing to this website on all 13 pages. What on Earth is going on with this website? Web issues were called out half a year ago and there's NO COMMUNICATION acknowledging or posting publicly to address website concerns at all. Solutions were offered and these problems are ongoing for more than a decade. You have players, modders, programmers, etc, on this port that have poured countless hours into what I consider the best online doom multiplayer experience and they want people to keep playing and keep it alive. The gross neglect of the website is frankly insulting to everyone involved.

[Ænima]

I can kind of excuse the blank Google listing because (I assume?) that’s the anti-scrapers just doing their job perhaps too well. Or maybe there are more sitewide issues (it took me like 20 seconds to load this page and I had to log in twice). Meh.

Circling back to the licensing thing though:
https://skeletronmk.itch.io/sunset-street-ninja

Skel’ just spent at least 6 months making a full multiplayer game on Zandronum with zero Doom assets. For this, I give him immense props. Doesn’t he deserve to be able to distribute it commercially, eventually?

[2.5d_camper]

I can only say that I personally started playing Brutal Doom in Zandronum, and only later in Zdoom/Gzdoom. My path to Zandronum was through Skulltag, or rather, its cancellation. I love multiplayer Doom, but I see it's rarely played these days, given the many free alternatives available. We need a beautiful, engaging, non-vanilla, free iwad with all the latest engine bells and whistles.