Version 1.9.7

The first stable release of the 1.9 series.

This release is an important milestone in the project's history. We have made great improvements to our development practices and project infrastructure, allowing us to provide weekly unstable builds and more frequent stable releases.

• Ringzero Mode. One of the most significant changes in this release is ringzero. It allows the engine to run without loading a game plugin, and lets you change games without shutting down. For instance, you can launch with Doom but switch to Heretic on the fly using: load heretic-ext

• Resource Locator. The engine's resource locator has been improved to locate the required resources for all games and determine which games can be launched. Consequently, startup is a bit slower than in previous releases.

• Resource URIs. All resources are now defined using URI paths into the engine's virtual filesystem.

• FMOD Ex. By default, the engine will once again use the high-quality FMOD Ex audio library for 2D/3D sound effects, reverb, and music playback. If you're using Ubuntu the FMOD plugin is provided as a separate .deb package.

• Multiplayer. This is the first release in the 1.9 series where multiplayer is fully functional (with some caveats). The Deng Team will be running public multiplayer games for Doom, Heretic and Hexen for testing purposes. These online games are available via the dengine.net master server. For more information, see the detailed notes.

• 64-bit for Unix. We've fixed all known issues in the 64-bit build for Unix platforms (Linux, Mac OS X). On the Windows platform we are only offering a 32-bit build at this time.

• Bindings. The input event and player control bindings system has been enhanced with more flexibility and contextual information. For instance, its now possible to create bindings that apply only in multiplayer or, say, when the automap is open.

• HacX and Chex Quest. The libdoom plugin now supports HacX and Chex Quest.

Other important notes:

• The Hexen 1.0 IWAD is not supported in this release. You need to patch your copy of Hexen to version 1.1 or buy a copy online.

• replace_cmake_with_qmake
• fix_network_games_in_master
• drop_nondedicated_multiplayer_hosting
• fix_player_controls
• fix_64-bit_build
• merge_ringzero_and_master_branches
• resource_uris: common way to refer to all kinds of resources and game data.
• use_fmod_ex: solves our audio problems.

If you are upgrading an existing installation of Doomsday, note the following:

The default location of game and player configs has changed. Configs are now stored within subdirectories of the runtime directory with the following scheme:

• Game configs: ./configs/<gamename>/game.cfg
• User configs: ./configs/<gamename>/<profilename>/bindings.cfg

If you wish to continue to use configs created by an earlier version of Doomsday you will need to manually copy them to their new home (otherwise new configs will be generated automatically).

There have been changes to the default control bindings. We recommend resetting your old bindings with the following console command:

clearbindings; defaultbindings

Only dedicated_servers are supported. You can start one on your own system via the Doomsday Frontend. In dedicated mode, the engine only shows a text mode console window. Presently you must use the console to configure the server and start the game.

For instance, the following would set up a deathmatch without monsters in E1M5:

server-game-deathmatch 1
server-game-nomonsters 1
setmap 1 5

Note that you can set up a .cfg file where you can define the server configuration and automatically open the server (see the example here).

If your server is not public (server-public), a client can connect to the dedicated server using a custom address search:

• Client on the same computer: use search address localhost.
• Client on another computer: use search address dedicated-server-ip-address.

The deng_team is currently running a public_multiplayer_server for the purpose of developing the network code further. When joining these online games, please note the following:

• The network code in this release has some limitations that we will work on in future versions.
• The connection should be able to sustain 100KB/s transfer rate (1 Mbps or better).

• detailed_list_of_changes_in_doomsday_version_1.9.7