After far too long, ZDoom 2.2.0 has finally been released. There have been a lot of changes—too many for me to list here—that can be found in the changelog. This release is also accompanied by a new version of ACC, which I quietly uploaded last night. Both are available from the standard place on the downloads page.

Short list of new features:

• Custom damage types
• Custom pain chances for custom damage types
• Custom damage effectiveness to make monsters stronger/weaker against custom damage types
• Custom state labels. Actors are no longer bound to Spawn, See, Death, etc. Users can define their own states.
• User Constructable Statusbars
• Custom Skill settings to modify or add user definable skill settings to the skill selection menu
• most thing functions treat a tid of 0 as an activator tid.
• Many things ported from skulltag including powerups and flags for increased port compatability
• New D3D display code for better Vista support
• Startup screens that mimic the MS-DOS versions of all games
• ENDOOM lump support for displaying dos graphic lumps once zdoom quits

Long list of more additions, in approximate chronological order:

• Custom blood on an actor by actor basis into decorate
• Smart autoaim code to prevent the targeting of friendly monsters.
• Skulltag-type armor bonus that increases the max amount that can be given by other armor items.
• New flag that prevents bleeding actors from spawning blood decals.
• Customizable border textures. They are defined with the MAPINFO keyword 'bordertexture' and are settable per map.
• Custom label support for A_Chase and A_VileChase
• r_maxparticles CVAR from Skulltag
• Added Skulltag's REDMAP and GREENMAP
• Player.RunHealth property to expose the StrifePlayer's behavior of not being able to run when its health is below 10.
• Customizable gravity per actor
• Summonfoe console command, which is analagous to summonfriend but forces the summoned creature to be hostile instead.
• Damage-specific player pain sounds
• Added two new MAPINFO flags to control what actor activates impact lines:
  
  • MissileShootersActivateImpactLines - the current behavior
    
  • MissilesActivateImpactLines - the original Hexen behavior
• Damage-specific player death sounds, in the same fashion as the
  damage-specific player pain sounds. The game looks for a sound with a name like
  "*death-damagetype" first and then "*death" if the first sound didn't exist.
• More player water sounds:
  
  • *dive - Played when your head goes below water
    
  • *surface - Played when your head goes back above water
    
  • *gasp - Played when you were drowning and get your air back
• Using "*" with ACS's music commands will play the level's default music set in MAPINFO
• Two new cvars (win_x and win_y) that keep track of the window position when not playing in fullscreen mode
• Key bindings can now be printed with ACS
• KEEPDEPLETED flag for inventory items to keep them in the player's inventory even when they have been used up. If the item also has an inventory bar icon, it will be drawn darkened while it is depleted.
• IGNORESKILL flag for ammo that prevents the given quantity from being modified by the skill level
• AttackZOffset for PlayerPawn. This is the offset from the center of the player at which their attacks are fired and scales according to their crouched height.
• Added a new SetActorState ACS function:
  

  Code: Select all • Expand view

  int SetActorState (int tid, str statename, optional bool exact);

  
  If tid is 0, it affects the script activator, otherwise it affects all the matching actors. Statename is the name of the state you want to put the actor in. The final parameter, exact, specifies whether or not partial state name matches are accepted. If you don't specify it or set it to false, if you try to do something like:
  

  Code: Select all • Expand view

  SetActorState (0, "Foo.Bar");

  
  And the actor has a Foo state but no Foo.Bar state, it will enter the Foo state. If you set exact to true:
  

  Code: Select all • Expand view

  SetActorState (0, "Foo.Bar", true);

  
  Then the actor must have a Foo.Bar state, or it will not change state at all, even if it has a Foo state. The return value for this function is the number of actors that successfully changed state. Note that you should refrain from using this function to enter special states such as Death, or unpredictable results could occur.
• CANUSEWALLS flag which allows a monster to activate 'use' specials like doors. This flag is on by default for any monster, which was the previous behavior.
• Thing_Stop action special
• Skulltag's Drain and Regeneration runes as powerups and used specific player sounds for their sound effects
• Skulltag's PowerQuadDamage and PowerQuarterDamage as more customizable PowerDamage and PowerProtection. These new powerups allow free customization of the damage modification per damage type by inheriting from these classes and setting specific values. Such derived damage/protection powerups will be considered as separate powers so that for example a QuadDamage and a DoubleDamage item can be stacked which would result in 8x damage.
• Skulltag's high jump rune as a powerup
• Skulltag's custom F1 help screen MAPINFO option
• New flag that allows exploding items to hurt boss monsters
• New flag that allows using things to execute their specials
• Compatibility option to restore the original behavior of the Invisibility powerup
• Telefrag option added to A_SpawnItemEx.
• Added option to A_Chase that prevents the monster from moving.
• Skill definitions from MAPINFO
• 'Allowrespawn' MAPINFO option
• New scoreboards
• IWAD-based [*.Autoload] ini support for games that have more than one IWAD. They are:
  
  • [Doom1.Autoload]
    
  • [Doom2.Autoload]
    
  • [Plutonia.Autoload]
    
  • [TNT.Autoload]
    
  • [HexenDK.Autoload]
• Custom status bars through the SBARINFO lump
• New A_LookEx function
• Customizable teams through the TEAMINFO lump
• 'Take' console command to do the opposite of 'give'
• UseInventory/UseActorInventory ACS functions
• New A_CustomBulletAttack aimfacing parameter
• New A_PlaySoundEx attenuation parameter
• Automap markers are stored in savegames now
• 'No respawn' DMFlag2 which prevents a player from respawning after they have died
• 'Keep frags gained' DMFlag2 which allows you to choose whether you want to reset the frags of each player next level or not
• Sector_Outside sector type which forces outside fog regardless of ceiling texture
• User-defined crosshairs in the Display Options menu. See xhairs.txt in zdoom.pk3.
• Skulltag's SAME_SPAWN_SPOT flag
• Skulltag's pickup sprite for the pistol
• Gneric log display that can show Strife's log messages in all games regardless of the current game, active status bar and HUD mode
• GZDoom's alternate HUD.
• Support for stencilling actors
• .TXT files can now be loaded by simply dragging-and-dropping them on top of zdoom.exe
• 'Ice' translation is accessible from DECORATE
• Teamplay MAPINFO option.
• Custom damage color per player class.
• ACS script type "return". These are executed by players who return to a map they've previously been to.

Now that zdoom.org is on a site that I have more control over, I've finally been able to do something I wanted to do ever since I first put up the changelog page: make it work. There was a simple version in place initially, but apparent resource utilization problems made me replace it with a boring page that linked to the log file in the repository.

No more. It's now much closer to what I had initially intended it to be. Now you can browse the changes for different revisions and see exactly what changed.

Now I should be able to get back to working on ZDoom itself. Maybe if we're lucky, I'll actually get a release out in 2007.

PS. The code that fetches files from the repository and turns them into HTML is written in Lua because Lua is just that awesome.

Most of the site is now online at the new host. If you're reading this, then that means your name servers also know where zdoom.org's new home is. Good.

It took forever to perform the conversion to phpBB 3, but the forum is back online. I'm not quite done setting it up yet, but it should at least be usable once again. There were some problems with attachments in private messages that are in both the sender's sent box and the recipient's read box. If this affected you and you need the attachment, send me a PM with the message's ID (from the end of the URL for that message), and I'll see if I can recover it. Also, if there are any other aspects of the forum that are broken, please let me know.

My current host has informed me that they will be suspending this site soon because it is still on one of their temporary servers. This has forced me to step up my plans to move to a new host. The forums will be going down tonight and will be back once the move is complete. Hopefully this won't take more than a few days. During the transition, the site will likely be inaccessible for a time, too, since I don't think I will be able to have the whole process done before it's suspended on the old host.

Thanks to my host's complaints that zdoom.org "is utilizing excessive resources, causing a significant degradation of services on the server," I have spent a lot of time recently determining how to conquer this problem. Since the site uses pretty standard MediaWiki and phpBB installs, I wasn't sure what to do to fix things to make my host happy.

That was when I decided I should try a different host. To start off, the wiki has been moved to a new server. All the current links to the wiki will silently redirect to the new site, so you don't need to update any bookmarks. In the process of the move, I was able to upgrade to the latest MediaWiki 1.10.1 software, so it's no longer running an old 1.6 version. Everything should still be working and present; leave a comment if not. We'll see how things go for now, and hopefully I'll be able to move the rest of the site over soon and get back to work on ZDoom itself.

Once again, here is a new version of ZDoom: 2.1.7. Here is a brief summary of most changes.

New

• Alias commands can now do parameter substitution. If you have %x, where x is some number, in an alias command, it will be replaced by the appropriately numbered parameter passed when the alias is used, with %0 being replaced by the name of the alias itself.
• A new MapMarker actor has been added that you can use to mark points of interest on the automap. If its first argument is zero, the map marker itself appears on the automap, otherwise it is drawn on top of any actor with a TID matching that argument. If the second argument is one, then the map marker will only be appear if the player has previously seen the sector it is one. You can use Thing_Activate and Thing_Deactivate on markers to turn them on and off. To make custom markers, all you need to do is subclass MapMarker with DECORATE.
• Added the SetActorPitch ACS command to set an actor's pitch.
• You can pass multiple jump targets to the A_Jump DECORATE function, and it will choose one of them at random if it jumps.

Changes

• Using a TID of 0 with Thing_Deactivate, SetActorAngle, Thing_Spawn*, Thing_Projectile*, and Thing_Move will now operate on the activator.
• The fifth argument for Line_SetIdentification can be used to set the high byte of the line ID.
• Added a CameraHeight DECORATE property for actors.
• Added special death states for projectiles hitting actors. If missiles hit a non-bleeding actor, they try the crash state first. If that doesn't exist or the actor is bleeding, they try the XDeath state next. If they hit anything else or neither of the two states are defined, they use the normal death state.
• Added a PierceArmor DECORATE flag for projectiles.
• The morphme console command can be given an optional argument to specify which class to morph into.

Fixes

• Lines of text with only one character were not drawn. This was most noticeable when drawing custom images to the screen, but is not limited to them.
• Demos recorded with -host 1 now playback correctly if you don't pass -host 1 when playing them. Really.
• Enter scripts were only executed on the first map entered.
• Improved hires replacement texture handling.
• Demos that included autosaves, dying, and reloading the autosave now play back correctly.
• Changes to vid_nowidescreen did not completely take effect immediately.
• Fixed an incompatibility in the way the Visual C++ and GCC versions of the game calculated sloped floors, which was a potential source of desyncs in multi-platform network games.
• Map markers were drawn in the wrong place on a rotated overlay map when screenblocks is less than 10.
• The yellow text color range was incomplete.
• A few more rare crashes have been fixed.

To use any of the ACC-related changes, be sure to get ACC 1.45 from the download page as well.

ZDoom 2.1.6 is now available. The following is a brief summary of changes from 2.1.5:

Changes

• Scaled 2D images are supported.
• Dehacked max health usage defaults to consistancy with other (BOOM) ports.
• A font parameter was added to A_Print.
• Quoted strings in DECORATE can no longer span multiple lines without using the escape character (\) at the end of each line. This makes it easier to spot places where you unintentionally left off a closing quote and got an error several lines later.
• A new writeini console command can be used to save the ini at any time, with any file name.
• If the ini is write-protected when you quit, an error dialog now opens to let you know your settings could not be saved and gives you the opportunity to unprotect it.
• Multiple stat displays can be enabled at once.

Fixes

• Warping textures stored in the Doom patch format gave random results for sprites and crashed when used on world geometry.
• Using Static_Init to set sector colors with fewer than six characters in the color code works again. This is an unintended usage and discouraged, but there are maps that do it. New maps that use this special should specify the full six-character RRGGBB code.
• The "no damage thrust" flag could sometimes be ignored when something was damaged.
• Voodoo dolls no longer trigger ENTER scripts.
• HIRESTEX scaled textures incorrectly.
• Actor damage parsing in DECORATE now allows for flags immediately after a damage expression, as you would expect it to.
• Using the echo console command with multiple parameters works again.
• Summoned friendly monsters were added to the total killable monsters count.
• Deferred scripts from an old game no longer execute after starting a new game.
• CustomInventory items could not use A_Jump when held by non-players.
• CustomInventory items that add other CustomInventory items now work as intended.
• Monsters would target friends if they acquired the target while it was an enemy and it subsequently became a friend.
• Using "give all" in multiplayer games between Linux and Windows machines no longer causes the game to desync.
• Playing a cooperative Hexen game with different player classes no longer causes the game to desync.
• Telefrag obituaries work again.
• ACS GetPlayerInfo no longer crashes.
• PlayerPawn and PlayerChunk have more flags defaulted to on.

ZDoom 2.1.5 has been released. Aside from running under Windows 95 again, here is a shortened list of differences from 2.1.4:

New

• New ACS functions:
  • GetPlayerInfo (playernumber, infotype);
  • ChangeLevel (mapname, position, flags, skill);
  • SectorDamage (tag, amount, type, protection_item, flags);
  • ReplaceTextures (oldtexturename, newtexturename, flags);
• New DECORATE functions:
  • A_PlaySoundEx ("sound_name", "channel" [, bLooping])
  • A_StopSoundEx("channel")
  Where "channel" is one of "Auto", "Weapon", "Voice", "Item", "Body", "SoundSlot5", "SoundSlot6", or "SoundSlot7".
• The vid_nowidescreen cvar can be used to disable widescreen aspect ratio correction.
• More supported texture formats:
  • Truecolor and interlaced PNGs
  • JPEG
  • PCX
  • TGA
  • DDS with DXT1, DXT3, and DXT5 compression
• A_SpawnDebris and A_SpawnItem can optional transfer the caller's color translation to the newly spawned item.
• New morphing artifacts can be created by subclassing the MorphProjectile and MorphedMonster classes.
• A_FireCustomMissile has a new parameter: Previously it always aimed straight ahead and altered the projectile's angle according to the resulting direction. If the 6th parameter is 1 now it will aim at the specified angle directly.
• Users can now define their own text colors, and there are several new standard ones.
• The fourth parameter of Polyobj_StartLine and the fifth parameter of Polyobj_ExplicitLine now set the line's ID.

Changes

• DECORATE explosion parameters are no longer considered deprecated.
• Calling Radius_Quake, Thing_Activate, or Thing_Remove with a tid of 0 now operates the activator.
• Strife's PhosphorousFire now does completely thrustless damage.
• An actor's damage in DECORATE can now be specified as an expression that is evaluated each time it needs to do damage. To do this, enclose it within parantheses, and the normal Doom damage calculation will be bypassed. For example, to do exactly 6 damage:

  Code: Select all • Expand view

  Damage (6)

  To deal normal Doom missile damage:

  Code: Select all • Expand view

  Damage (random(1,8)*6)

• Passing a negative script number to the puke console command now runs the script with ACS_ExecuteAlways instead of ACS_Execute.
• Polyobjects defined with Polyobj_ExplicitLine are no longer limited to 64 segs.
• Starting a new game or reloading an old one no longer resets the chasecam.
• The automap background is now a regular texture.

Fixes:

• Frozen corpses of stealth monsters were invisible.
• Starting a game without the skill menu always started the first episode.
• Random sounds that recursively refer to themselves caused a stack overflow.
• Resurrecting a morphed player caused a crash.
• Morphing did not clear the weapon's flash sprite.
• Using a negative index to access a global or world ACS array crashed the game with an out of memory error.
• Newly spawned monsters did not automatically chase their spawner's target.
• P_RunEffects used the consoleplayer's camera without checking its validity.
• The pickup message for Hexen's fighter's axe was assigned to the AxePuff, not the weapon itself.
• Using a map ACS script without strings in conjuction with an ACS library with strings could crash.
• Skin sounds weren't properly restored after a SNDINFO reset.
• CheckActorInventory stored the return value in the wrong address on the ACS stack.
• P_CheckOnMobjZ returned the first thing an actor could stand on, not the highest possible.
• Writing named screenshots didn't work.
• FMultiPatchTexture::CheckForHacks blindly assumed that all patches were FPatchTextures.
• Flats were only auto-scaled when in Doom flat format.
• The cell pack had the incorrect spawn ID.
• Multiple-choice sound sequences could not be assigned IDs for use with polyobjects and the sound sequence selector things.
• callstatechain didn't check for NULL code pointers
• P_LoadSegs() checked for invalid vertices too late.

You can now get ZDoom 2.1.4.

Changes:

• Added a queryiwad_key cvar to control which key can force the IWAD selection to appear. It can be either "shift" or "control". Any other value will disable its functionality.
• Added some simple translucency map analysis for BOOM maps to more intelligently pick the value to use for TranslucentLine's second argument.
• Something MinGW users will probably like: i_crash.cpp no longer needs dbghelp.h if you compile with GCC.
• Added deprecation warnings for the DontHurtShooter, ExplosionRadius, and ExplosionDamage actor "properties." They were considered deprecated before; now this is explicitly stated when they are used. The problem with them is that they are not really properties and do not behave like other properties and cannot be inherited, because they are really just an alternate way of specifying parameters for A_Explode. (Anything that currently prints a deprecation warning will be removed completely in 2.2.0, which will be the version where custom state labels make their debut.)

Fixes

• A_SkullPop() and A_FreezeDeathChunks() did not transfer the player's inventory to the new dismembered head "player."
• MeleeDamage was initialized to random values for each decorate actor if it wasn't explicitly specified.
• Friendlies would not turn to face you when you engaged them in conversation, nor would any actors reliably return to their original facing when you stopped talking to them.
• Some crashes fixed.

Sorry about 2.1.2. Get 2.1.3 instead.

Changes

• Sounds can be specified by full path now in SNDINFO and S_SKIN.
• Decorate replacement is more universal.
• Added NecroMage's submission for bitwise/shift assignment operators for ACS. (Requires ACC 1.42.)
• Changed PlayAttacking2 to always use the melee state instead of different implementations per player and hard coding it to MissileState+1. Also changed PlayAttacking for the HereticPlayer to use the same animation as PlayAttacking2. Now the special handling for Heretic in the FireWeapon functions can be removed.

Fixes

• Due to the player class inclusion A_NoBlocking never called NoBlockingSet for monsters.
• PlayerStartItem created a duplicate of the item's class name before converting it into an FName.
• When a non-player tried to play a player sound it tried to access the actor object as a PlayerPawn.
• The check for no skill menu was incorrect when a custom player class menu was present so instead of starting the game specific skill menu it always started Hexen's.
• S_ClearSoundData cleared PlayerClasses instead of PlayerClassLookups.