1.8.6 contains various small enhancements, tweaks, and fixes. For example, Doomsday can now read compressed PK3 files (i.e. normal ZIP files). The changes of the other updates can be seen in the log.

If you want to use surface reflections where there is no sector light, set the new Min color value in the definition. Min color can also be used to make the reflections tinted, for example by setting the blue component of Min color to a value near one.

The next maintenance update for 1.8 should be available around Christmas. I can't promise anything for certain, though, because I'll be quite busy with other things, mostly related to university.

I'll also try to work on the Mac OS X port and release the second Mac Beta before the end of the year.

However, since we are going to be doing this by the book, we will need some feedback from the Doomsday community. For starters, we have prepared a short questionnaire about the current launcher. I would like to invite all users of the Doomsday Engine to participate and take a few minutes to answer our questions. This will provide important background data for our team to base our design on.

There is a discussion thread about the study on the DHQ Forums.

Changes vs. 1.8.0:

• The non-smooth camera was removed. Now everything in the game will always be rendered at the highest framerate possible.
• The implementation of camera smoothing was revised. Previously it didn't work very well when the framerate dropped below 35. In the earlier release candidates the smoothing was prone to fall out of sync, which caused slight skips in player movement. Now the smoothing works much better, if not perfectly. :-)
• Mouse input latency was reduced dramatically. In earlier versions mouse input suffered from a noticeable lag. Now input events are processed as fast as possible.
• Improved stability. A couple of segfaults were located and fixed.
• The glBSP node builder is now a plugin in the Doomsday installation. GL nodes will be built automatically when necessary. glbsp.exe is no longer included in the distribution packages. It is safe to disable all the glBSP options in KickStart and let Doomsday worry about building and updating the GL nodes. The engine Readme has more details about the glBSP plugin.
• Graphical improvements. A couple of FakeRadio issues were fixed. Lens flare defaults were toned down to more realistic settings.
• Linux improvements include MUS music playback (see the readme!), configuration options for skipping compilation of OpenGL or any of the games, and display color adjustments (gamma, contrast, brightness).
• To allow building Doomsday on a G4 (and other big-endian processors), a number of endianness issues were fixed.

I hoped to have the new website up and running by now, but I guess one cannot have everything. :-) While work continues on that front, I have set up a Doomsday Wiki at SourceForge.net. Currently the wiki is still under construction, but don't let that stop you. Register and start contributing. One possible application for the wiki is a list of resource links that the authors of the packs can maintain themselves so that it's always up to date. It would also be great to see a F.A.Q. and some kind of Doomsday Reference manual in the wiki.

The main reason why I did release 1.8.0 already a week ago was that because I have a full time job during this summer, I don't have a lot of time to work on the Doomsday project. Had I not released it, there would have been no telling how long the release would have gotten postponed.

As far as I'm concerned, the 1.8.x series will see no new major features. I intend to keep fixing the remaining issues and generally maintaining the codebase, but I want to shift my attention to other projects, such as Doomsday 2.0 (a.k.a. Hawthorn). The 1.8 codebase has too much legacy code and I'm just generally not very happy with the implementation of some of the features (like particle generators).

Some of you may have been wondering why the website hasn't been updated with the 1.8.0 release information. The reason is that the current website implementation is going to be discarded soon and replaced with a better and more dynamical site that I have been preparing with Dani. It is not yet ready for the general public, though, so please be patient until we've gotten everything up and running. If I had to wager a guess, the new site will be launched sometime during July.

For the time being things will be progressing at a slow pace. I will be looking into fixing those input event problems (they can be hugely annoying) and then doing a 1.8.1 release. Keep in mind, though, that I have no time for any larger changes in the 1.8 codebase.

I'm planning to get myself a Mac PowerBook as a birthday present (which happens to be July 14 :-)) so there is a very good chance that Doomsday will get a Mac OS X port in the near future. Yay!

The good news is that I have just released version 1.7.15. This is basically 1.7.14 + snapshots + some fixes + FakeRadio. It can be downloaded from SourceForge.

The release package now contains the updated KickStart from the Modelyard and glBSP 2.05.

A warning to Nvidia owners, though: while testing the latest drivers (56.72, dated April 1) I encountered some strange rendering errors with regards to multitexturing in OpenGL. The Direct3D renderer seemed to work perfectly, though.

Let me know if anything seems to be completely broken.

FakeRadio is enabled by default. It can be disabled by setting the cvar rend-fakeradio to zero.

Then the bad news. Doomsday 1.8 will have to be postponed. The original plan was to have a beta out by the beginning of June, but due to me having a Real Life job this summer I won't be able to make that deadline. It's too early to tell how much time I can spend on Doomsday during the summer, but it will be much less than what is required to complete version 1.8.

This also means I will re-evaluate the need for having a version 1.8. I would really like to get rid of the idiosyncrasies of the old code base. For example, the rendering algorithms should be completely redesigned so that they can leverage the features of modern graphics cards (programmable pipelines, T&L). In all likelihood my spare time this summer will be spent on Doomsday 2.0 (dubbed "Hawthorn"), which will be written in object-oriented C++.

I will post more news when the best course of action becomes clear.

• multiple viewports
• local players are automatically assigned to different viewports
• ccmd viewgrid: set up the viewport grid
• clientside turning/looking
• basic toggle controls once again included in ticcmds
• distinction between stick and pointer controller axes
• engine handles all controls

bindaxis mouse-x turn
bindaxis mouse-y look
bind +mb1 +attack
bind -mb1 -attack

Use the viewgrid command to play around with viewports. E.g. viewgrid 2 1 will give you 2 columns and 1 rows, i.e. a screen split in half vertically.

The viewgrid is not really useful unless you create more local players using makelocp, preferably when running a multiplayer host. Even so, you'll notice some funny quirks, like viewbobbing that affects all viewports.

To create a control binding for a local player other than the 'main' consoleplayer (set with setcon, defaults to zero), add a "/N" to the binding (where N = player number). E.g.

bind +mb2 +attack/1
bind -mb2 -attack/1

The current jDoom Controls menu is obsolete. A new control setup screen will be added to Doomsday's control panel later.

• Fixed: Ogg/Mp3 in PK3 Virtual Folder Structure Not Playing
• Fixed: model flag df_worldtime
• jDoom plays a random sound when quitting (cvar menu-quitsound)

This is the first Alpha release of the 1.8 series. In this binary snapshot you will find a new debug build of the Doomsday Engine and jDoom. This build is pretty much the first one that can be compiled and run after the nix-to-HEAD merge.

The game is not playable at the moment because I'm in the process of revising and integrating the player control system. Currently it is impossible to move the player. However, the rest of the engine is somewhat operational, save for the sound system, which will crash the game almost certainly if not disabled.

This release is intended for you to experiment with. Please note, however, that there are numerous bugs and rendering errors. Many of these will not be addressed until the Beta phase begins. During the Alpha phase I will concentrate only on adding new features. Few, if any, of the Alpha releases will be suitable for normal gameplay.

The good news is that I'm moving all development over to the HEAD branch, i.e. version 1.8. The new features added in the Linux branch have already been merged to the HEAD. This means there will be a Windows and a Linux version of each future snapshot, and all new snapshots will be from the 1.8 Alpha series.

I'm going to have proper Alpha and Beta releases before the 1.8.0 release. In other words, during the Alpha phase, I will be adding new features as quickly as possible. No bug fixing will be done during the Alpha phase. The snapshots will be marked 1.8.alpha-N. The Alpha snapshots should be considered unstable and possibly even unsuitable for daily use. During the Beta phase, all efforts will be concentrated on testing and bug fixing. The snapshots will be marked 1.8.beta-N.

No new development will be done in the 1.7 branch. It is now the official 'stable' branch. If huge new problems are discovered, I will see if it's feasible to fix them as a 1.7.14-N patch release.

I estimate that the first 1.8 Alpha snapshot will be released in two weeks. I can begin working on it starting from next weekend. Right now there are still a couple of things missing from the HEAD branch, making it impossible to build a properly working snapshot.