29/01/2006 @12:48:48 ^15:17:45

/!\ PRBOOM ABANDONS 2.4.0 /!\

No seriously I just went to the repository as I do from time to time to look for changes and I found that

Look at my horrible tendency to back the wrong horse! As you know I deliberately switched from stable to experimental because I thought upstream would be more likely to accept dumb new features for an experimental branch. I'm still glad I did this, as I said before I like most of the new stuff in 2.4.0. But it's true there is a lot of things that are missing or not working properly; I've fixed some of them, but nowhere near all.

As for this Prboom+ thing: it's a well-known fact that Prboom+ is only for Windows. I can only hope that if any merge happens, Prboom will remain compilable on POSIX systems. There aren't many Doom engines left that don't basically require Windows, and of those I'm not sure I'd want to use any of them for general gameplay (Chocolate Doom is a great idea but let's face it, it's a niche market)

But, 2.4.0 is abandoned. Aborted, even. What a word. It's been mauled. Eviscerated! With a coathanger!!

Initially I was like, "shitshitshit, now what am I going to do?" I'm pretty sure there's bugs in 240 that I don't know how to fix; very occasional segfaults that I can't fathom, other than there being some issue related to SDL making it multithreaded, I don't know. That sort of thing. I was hoping someone else would fix that shit, eventually. Also, it's an awful lot of work that's just been abandoned here. I mean, the console, the key bindings, the single hybrid software/GL executable, the sound code, blah blah blah. And all this is assuming they don't manage to break portability - keeping my stuff in sync with upstream would be a challenge then!

But then it struck me. In a remarkably out-of-character moment I realised this crisis was in fact an opportunity. The thing is, I no longer have to care about maintaining ease of compatibility with upstream's source tree because there no longer is an upstream source tree. I can delete - no, obliterate the parts I don't like - RPM building specs can be replaced with debian equivalents, the Dreamcast port I can't possibly maintain can go (console FPS gaming is a crock of bilge, anyway) not to mention FraggleScript (I am vaguely aware of the pain Eternity went through before they dropped that shit completely) etc.

In short, it's mine. MINE! MIIIIIIIIIIIIINE!!

Sorry. I can't believe this but I'm actually excited...