GZDoom successor project UZDoom gets a first preview release

After the GZDoom implosion, the rest of the developers split off to form UZDoom and the first preview release has rolled out with some essential improvements.

This release is supposed to be a directly follow-up to GZDoom 4.14.2 with UZDoom keeping the versioning just bumping it up to UZDoom 4.14.3. As the changelog notes, updating to this is deemed "critical" as it has multiple security fixes. With UZDoom they also aim to address some historically contentious issues in the ZDoom community with a change to some of the defaults, to make it closer to how Doom originally looked. That, and, make it easier for users since the current amount of options can be a bit overloading.

Pictured - Doom 2 with UZDoom

Changes from GZDoom 4.14.2:

• Multiple security fixes. This update is being deemed as critical. It’s highly recommended to upgrade to it.
• Added new game-based cursors (courtesy of Nash Muhandes). These are much more cursor-y, and very good at pointing and clicking on things.
• Changed defaults to be more balanced between vanilla and modern.
• Lowered the master volume so it's less likely to blow out the system audio and become muffled (especially with things like the Plasma Rifle firing sound).
• Added the Default option for automap colors, allowing the automap to choose based on which game is being played.
• Added a Display option to control the render style of rocket explosions (these now default to additive instead of translucent since we felt it visually fit the other projectiles better).
• Made the mouse less sensitive in menus when it’s been dormant for a short period. This should help reduce it accidentally shifting the selected option randomly while idle.
• Added the powerup_fade_scalar cvar for controlling the strength of the fade on power ups (e.g. the Radiation Suit’s green tint).
• Added support for the BUSY script flag for ACS.
• Fixed audio not muting properly when the game is unfocused, causing it to build up and play back explosively in certain cases (especially for multiplayer games).
• Fixed the master volume not properly applying to music when the game starts up.
• Fixed weapon bobbing not disabling correctly when manually set to 0 via cvar.
• Fixed the wrong music being played during Strife’s bad endings.
• Fixed the opening subtitle for Strife not displaying.
• Fixed the Iron Lich’s whirlwind blaming the wrong target for its damage dealt.
• Fixed the textured automap being broken.
• Fixed mid textures clipping incorrectly when skewed.
• Fixed a crash with VisualThinkers when loading from a save.
• Fixed IQM models with decoupled animations not displaying correctly if spawned without an animation.
• Fixed gun flashes from MBF21 weapons not displaying correctly.
• Fixed a bug with CreateTossable where items wouldn’t be removed if their amount was 0.
• Fixed Quat’s Conjugate and Inverse functions throwing a JIT error.
• Fixed the BrokenLines class being unserializable.
• Fixed level data fields e.g. Sector not being cleared properly when transitioning between levels.

You can test it out by downloading it via GitHub. You can also follow UZDoom on Bluesky.

Hopefully this will be the start of plenty of improvements and a long life for UZDoom and the ZDoom community.