DRD Team

Yeah. I would say that most of the wolf3d mod authors do not actually know programming other than how to copy example code into their project. Granted there are exceptions, but I wouldn't expect any one mod to have be a great example of cross platform code.

It will be awhile before people in the community accept that doing source modificiations is a horrible way of doing modding, but I expect in time ECWolf will become the standard. Only then would I expect to see mods get ported in bulk.

That still sounds very reasonable. A frequent problem that I found with some Wolf4SDL TCs is that their code is often a bitch to compile properly on GNU/Linux added to the lack of respective binaries. So I was hoping ECWolf could at least support some of these mods for the sake of having everything working with a single application, instead of having to compile stuff from source every time I want to try out a new TC. But who knows, maybe the TC developers are whiling to convert their stuff to ECWolf.

I would love to, but for the most part no. ECWolf is designed to solve the problem that Wolf4SDL "mods" have. They're not mods at all. Each one develops their own source port with differing features which may overlap in incompatible ways. It is basically impossible for ECWolf to support arbitrary source code modifications short of being DOSBox or VirtualBox. :P

The reason I say "for the most part" is that there are a lot of features that "mods" add frequently and in a common manner. One example being the use of the third map plane for floor/ceiling textures. ECWolf will implement these where reasonable, so probably a large number of "mods" can be supported through a compatibility mod (one that translates the source code into ECWolf scripts). That said, of course anything that actually runs on vanilla Wolf4SDL (the binary you download from Ripper's site) or vanilla Wolf (the binary from your Wolf3D/SOD disc/disk) should work in ECWolf.

Thank you very much.

One more unrelated question, though. Will ECWolf ever become fully compatible with previously made Wolf4SDL mods/total conversions (stuff like Castle Totenkopf) without requiring any additional tinkering?

ECWolf is dual licensed. The official builds are non-commercial, but you're free to build it as GPL with the Dosbox emulator. Just enable the GPL switch in CMake.

See here: http://maniacsvault.net/ecwolf/wiki/Source_code

For the record I even submitted the patch to Wolf4SDL to use Dosbox's emulator for this reason. ;) Both the non-commercial and GPL version are supported, but please specify you're using the GPL edition when reporting bugs (even though it shouldn't matter for the most part).

Edit: I updated that wiki page to point to the debian note and updated my downloads page to mention the GPL edition on the source download.

That makes sense, but one could always try and mail Carmack, the same way the Debian dudes did. Maybe ask for a properly documented re-issue of wolfsrc.zip.

And it's good to know there might be a chance of ECWolf getting rid of the MAME license. Best luck for the future then.

There's apparently two different OPL emulators in DOSBox, one which is GPL and another which is LGPL. [url=http://zdoom.org/Changelog/3946/files]The LGPL one was recently added to ZDoom[/url], so it could be included here too. This would allow to remove the MAME OPL2 emulator and to dual-license ECWolf under both the original license and the GPL.

IIRC, Blzut's approach to Wolf's licensing is exceedingly cautious, as he doesn't seem to trust the legal worth of a couple IWADs more than an official release with the proper text files and licensing boilerplate.

Hello! First of all, I would like to compliment the theme for the successful release of version 1.0. Although slightly buggy in some bits, ECWolf already seems great project with a hopefully bright future.

What brings me here today (and I hope for I'm not being a nuisance for posting here) is a matter of licensing and code currently being used by ECWolf. At this point ECWolf seems to be using the mame OPL emulation code, which is licensed under the non-commercial mame license. I was wondering if it would be possible for the team to replace this code with the Dosbox OPL emulation code, which is GPL licensed, and would allow direct integration in the repositories of free software-only GNU/linux distros. The Debian Games Team already did this successfully with their [url=http://packages.debian.org/changelogs/pool/contrib/w/wolf4sdl/wolf4sdl_1.7+svn262+dfsg1-1/changelog]Wolf4SDL debian build[/url], and I've noticed no performance drawbacks at all. Do you think this change would be possible in future releases, or is there any technical reason preventing from doing so?

Additionally, and correct me if I'm wrong, I found a bit odd the inclusion of the id software proprietary license, given that the wolf3d source has been reclicensed to GPL a few years ago, [url=http://packages.debian.org/changelogs/pool/contrib/w/wolf4sdl/wolf4sdl_1.7+svn262+dfsg1-1/wolf4sdl.copyright]as confirmed by Carmack himself[/url]. Is the id license currently covering anything else?