Are Zandronum devs adding back in old skulltag items?

[Marcaek]

Off the top of my head, modern shooter communities? Youtube is a good angle as well, if we can maybe convince a few zandro players to start recording their games. Maybe Twitch streams as well?

I'm sure someone else could come up with more suggestions.

[Catastrophe]

Zandro needs a trailer, imo. (An actual good one)

[Hypnotoad]

Thanks for the workarounds guys, a shame they wont add back the other stuff, seems kinda weird they intentionally left out content that expanded the game. it's not like any of that stuff was mandatory, or forcefully changed the gameplay.

It was bloated, stolen garbage that served as a crutch for bad mappers as well as unnecessarily inflating the size of the project. It hardly "expanded" the game.

Except in a way, having this resource wad helped contain the bloat of your wad folder, because regardless of the actors, skulltag_data did have a compilation of some rather decent textures, which meant that wads didn't constantly have to bloat themselves with custom textures just to add some texture variety.

[Ænima]

Thanks for the workarounds guys, a shame they wont add back the other stuff, seems kinda weird they intentionally left out content that expanded the game. it's not like any of that stuff was mandatory, or forcefully changed the gameplay.

It was bloated, stolen garbage that served as a crutch for bad mappers as well as unnecessarily inflating the size of the project. It hardly "expanded" the game.

Except in a way, having this resource wad helped contain the bloat of your wad folder, because regardless of the actors, skulltag_data did have a compilation of some rather decent textures, which meant that wads didn't constantly have to bloat themselves with custom textures just to add some texture variety.

I agree. I've grown quite fond of Skulltag's selection of textures over the years.

[katZune]

its true, what about to start an "universal texture pack"? it will be a pk3/wad that contain useful textures/flats, ofc it will be optional, but would be more flexible than add textures to your project, since players only need to have the texture pack and not need to download the same textures in each wad

[Blzut3]

When work gets done on Zandronum 2.0, we'll hopefully finally have the GAMEINFO lump. Using that, it wouldn't be stretch to have downloadable resource packs. I wouldn't even be opposed to having community selected packs be included with the installer.

As far as forced content, I really don't think Zandronum should go beyond what is established as cross port standards (CTF flags for example). Not only does it bloat the initial download, but all of Skulltags little changes have at one point or another caused problems. The extra actors is the whole reason "actor demon : demon replaces demon" is valid DECORATE. IIRC we have compat options to toggle between Skulltag and ZDoom behavior (powerup gravity for example).

Even the more harmless stuff has caused issues. For example Skulltag's texture selection was not stable and many old Skulltag mods are missing textures. I also seem to recall having to do extra work to support Heretic, Hexen, and Strife due to the extra content referencing Doom stuff.

So basically it comes down to the Skulltag stuff is a relic from the time where content simply could not be added without modifying the source. These days there are better ways to achieve the same thing.

[StrikerMan780]

I personally think the Railgun should be added back, perhaps with a new sprite set and behavior change, to make up for the fact that the Instagib mode is still there built-in, but lacking the proper weapon.

This sprite set by osjclatchford, perhaps?


or:
?

[Blzut3]

Well like I said, I only believe we should include stuff related to cross port standards. I've asked in the Odamex IRC channel if they'd be interested and got a it depends. So I guess if the sprite set can be licensed to be compatible with them and the railgun behavior can be agreed upon we could add it back. I suppose if he's willing to conform with whatever licensing issues then that sprite set could work, would be nice if we had a sprite set that could follow ST's reload animation.

The other option that should be seriously considered is simply nuking the modifiers altogether. Both instagib and buckshot could be easily replaced with a mod and one would still be able to toggle the mode if that's in question.