Russian Doom 2.6 release plan

JNechaevsky commented 6 years ago

Estimated date: 11 April 2018.

I think I have done everything I have planned for 2.6.

Step 1: Remaining stuff

[ ✔ ] Some viewheight code should be stolen!
[ ✔ ] Uncorrected aspect ratio screenshots are broken.
[ ✔ ] Internal demos are working fine? Oh, yes.

Step 2: Release

[ ✔ ] Update readme files in both Russian and English.
[ ✔ ] Update change logs in both Russian and English.
[ ✔ ] Update my translated online help for setup executable with new features.
[ ✔ ] Update project's web pages.
[ ✔ ] Upload binary and source code archives on the net.

Step 3: Web

[ ✔ ] Upload project's web page and online help.
[ ✔ ] Put online changelog files.
[ ✔ ] Update iddqd.ru forum thread.
[ ✔ ] Update page on Chocolate Doom Wiki.
[ ✔ ] Update page on Doomwiki.
[ ✔ ] Make a post on VKontakte.ru social network.

JNechaevsky commented 6 years ago

Binaries have arrived:

Version for Windows: russian-doom-2.6-win32.zip
Version for DOS: russian-doom-dos-1.4.zip
Source code snapshot: russian-doom-2.6-source.zip

Changelogs:

Russian: changelog_rus.html
Russian-English: changelog_eng.html

JNechaevsky commented 6 years ago

Ah yes, traditioanly, some afterwords!

First of all, as always I would like to thank Fabian, Brad and Jeff for all help, advices and all-all-all everything! Yeah, we have dig out few more totally unique cases, and I'm always wondering - will be there something else? Hopefully yes, because it should. :)

Notable features:

Compiled under Chocolate's canonical MSYS environment, using latest GCC 7.3.0. No support for music pack though, because: a) I don't know what it is and how to use it, b) I want to keep number of included dlls as small as possible, c) OPL is the only orthodox synth!
3500+ small and various corrections in all vanilla levels of Doom 1, Doom 2, TNT and Plutonia.
Candle and Candelabra finally animated. It was a hugest pain to replace MT numbers before and after internal demos. But I got it working.
Internal demos are still working, by the way.
Couple of vanilla bugs has been fixed, small technical improvements.
Freedoom now using ~watch me dark~ proper improved palette.

Some crazy ideas not for implementation:

It would be nice to see some nature ground detailing in grass, mud and dirt floor textures - sprites of grass, bushes, rocks and etc. It's not awfully hard to make/draw some vanilla-like graphics and take some from Romero's Doom dump. But I have feeling that it's not right way to go.
Sky textures can be animated. Despite of it is possible to make it only for vanilla maps, there are couple of problems. I have revamped them to 420 px high, and good looking animation require at least 30, 40 or even 60 frames of animation. It's a colossal amount of work which will require a technics far beyond of my skills. I'm meaning not a simple scrolling, nope, there should be a pixel "morphing". However, using some animation pattern can be good for some textures, but another problem is 256 colors, which will make any animation looking not very good.
Some additional "whoah" tricks can be done. For example, upon entering secret tunnel which is leading to E2M9, lights can go out and gargoyle-wall textures can open their eyes showing brightmaps. It's extremely easy to implement via ACS scripting, but in game code it will be a bunch of hacks. Duh.
Following amazing idea of amazing Doom 2016, Chainsaw can use ammo. That's amazing! 10 gas cans of 10...

Russian-Doom / russian-doom