Shipping the correct version of GZDoom

[incrediblyimpressiveusername]

While this flatpak isn't updated frequently, it is still updated far more often than the game is. And those updates frequently include updating the GZDoom engine. Turns out that is a bad idea, because apparently the game does not support updates to the GZDoom engine between versions.

BoA v3.1 only supports GZDoom v4.6; BoA v3.2 will only support GZDoom v4.12.

Please rollback the version of GZDoom shipped as part of this flatpak to the supported v4.6.

[Talon1024]

The GZDoom developers put a lot of effort into backwards compatibility, so updates to GZDoom rarely break compatibility with Blade of Agony.

I do a bit of testing each time the Flatpak is updated, and I've had no issues so far with GZDoom 4.11.0. I like to keep GZDoom up to date because newer GZDoom builds may offer better performance, and have fewer bugs and crashes.

However, there are instances where a GZDoom update will break the game. For example, GZDoom 4.12.x made some struct/class fields read-only, and I recently rejected a GZDoom update because of that.

[incrediblyimpressiveusername]

I understand. And I don't know whether there are in fact even any incompatibilities whatsoever between BoA and unsupported versions of GZDoom.

Unfortunately, regardless of the presence or absence of any real technical incompatibly, there is currently in practice an incompatibility of policy:

• The BoA developers apparently won't investigate or help with bugs that occur while using a version of GZDoom newer than the one from when they released their latest version of BoA, regardless of whether those bugs are caused by the GZDoom version.
• Meanwhile, the flatpak maintainers want to include the most up-to-date version of GZDoom that doesn't cause obvious issues during testing, even if that means it isn't officially supported.

This leaves users like me holding the bag between a rock and a hard place, as I now have to either convince one party or the other to change their policy, or to resign myself to never playing the game outside of those very rare and short periods immediately following a BoA update, when the officially supported version of GZDoom is still the latest version.

Tagging in @Tormentor667, since this is no less a BoA issue than an issue with the flatpak.

[Tormentor667]

Currently we are trying to be compatible with GZDoom 4.13 as soon as this is stable. We can’t do anything more than that as of now, while preparing a 3.2 release