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PayPalGZDoom, the enhanced Doom engine has a new release out to add in new features, bug fixes and collect some hardware information.
This new release adds in dynamic spot lights, it adjusts Mod-defined aliases no longer permanently change CVARs (Console Variables), it fixes 'precise' rendering in OpenGL, new rocket smoke sprites by Talon1024 and also a new Materials Shader system to allow textures to show new properties such as glossiness and specularity, affected by dynamic lights, or with PBR, reflecting their direct surroundings. As usual it also fixes plenty of other bugs, so while it's not a huge release in terms of new features it's good to see the project continue to see some spit and polish.
In regards to the hardware collection, they will be taking note of your operating system, number of CPU cores and the renderer being used, including the generation of graphics hardware. They say it's completely anonymous and it's being done so they know where to focus future development. It will also ask permission first before doing so.
Want to completely turn it off? You can do that! If you've changed your mind about sending this information to the GZDoom devs, you can set the CVARs sys_statsenabled, sentstats_swr_done, and sentstats_hwr_done to 0. You can also open the ini file in ".config/gzdoom/gzdoom.ini" and add/edit the "sys_statshost" setting to nothing:
[GlobalSettings]
sys_statshost=
If you're interested in seeing the hardware info script, it's here on GitHub. You can also see a forum post talking about it here.
You can find the full release notes here.
Note: You do need access to a Doom "IWAD" file, you can get a copy of Doom from GOG (affiliate link).
Thanks for the tip Talon1024!
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
I get helping with development but it seems to be a default nowadays .
Can't wait to mess with these new features!
Quoting: razing32Are data slurps the new trend ?
I get helping with development but it seems to be a default nowadays .
It's the default because it's so extremely helpful to know exactly what kind of setup your customers actually use.
Quoting: F.UltraQuoting: razing32Are data slurps the new trend ?
I get helping with development but it seems to be a default nowadays .
It's the default because it's so extremely helpful to know exactly what kind of setup your customers actually use.
And it is exactly that kind of wrong doing this. Instead it would be better asking for help and not collecting information as default setting or some kind of opt-out process. Besides: We are not talking about "customers" and instead of that "users". Those steps do irreversible damage to free software!
Quoting: throghQuoting: F.UltraQuoting: razing32Are data slurps the new trend ?
I get helping with development but it seems to be a default nowadays .
It's the default because it's so extremely helpful to know exactly what kind of setup your customers actually use.
And it is exactly that kind of wrong doing this. Instead it would be better asking for help and not collecting information as default setting or some kind of opt-out process. Besides: We are not talking about "customers" and instead of that "users". Those steps do irreversible damage to free software!
Then you get data from a very small subset of the users and the data is basically useless. Collecting what HW you have and sending it home anonymized is hardly spying and I have no idea how you can paint this as doing irreversible damage to free software. The collecting that you should worry about is the "who you are and what you do" type of data that Google, Microsoft, Facebook et al collects since that can be used to profile you, the same cannot be said if you happen to have 8 cores or 4.
Quoting: F.UltraBtw how does one get the IWAD files out of the Doom bought from GOG, I reckon that it's a Windows installer so do one have to do a wine install and then move some files or is it possible to open the installer with an archiver and get the files that way or how does this work?
You can extract like that , with innoextract.
https://forum.openmw.org/viewtopic.php?t=3510
Quoting: throghQuoting: F.UltraQuoting: razing32Are data slurps the new trend ?
I get helping with development but it seems to be a default nowadays .
It's the default because it's so extremely helpful to know exactly what kind of setup your customers actually use.
And it is exactly that kind of wrong doing this. Instead it would be better asking for help and not collecting information as default setting or some kind of opt-out process. Besides: We are not talking about "customers" and instead of that "users". Those steps do irreversible damage to free software!
It doesn't look as if any data are collected by default; it just pops up a dialog box where you can select whether you want to share. If you want to try it out, I've updated my Blade of Agony snap to use the new release.
sudo snap install boa will get it on systems running snapd.
Quoting: throghAnd it is exactly that kind of wrong doing this. Instead it would be better asking for help and not collecting information as default setting or some kind of opt-out process. Besides: We are not talking about "customers" and instead of that "users". Those steps do irreversible damage to free software!Sure, it does irreversible damage to free software. Except that they announced they would make that change. And they made it possible to opt-out of the data gathering. And the source code is open for you to check what and how they are gathering. And you can make a fork with that functionality patched out. But sure, irreversible damage has been done and now the developers will know what super secret graphics card you run. Shock and horror.
Quoting: LeopardQuoting: F.UltraBtw how does one get the IWAD files out of the Doom bought from GOG, I reckon that it's a Windows installer so do one have to do a wine install and then move some files or is it possible to open the installer with an archiver and get the files that way or how does this work?
You can extract like that , with innoextract.
https://forum.openmw.org/viewtopic.php?t=3510
Thanks!
Quoting: GuestTBH I don't like the (permanent) automatic upload of info to other sites. Especially HW info - how often is that going to change? Why not make it a (main) menu entry 'send HW info to developers'? I'm sure you'd get a LOT more feedback that way.
At least I would opt out, but happily send it once.
Then the devs will only get the hw details of the few people which have a special interest in sharing that details and is how you end up with the false idea that your user base is 55% Linux users because we are more inclined to tell devs that we are that in order to promote our platform.
Please we must be able to distinguish between the collection of simple HW info that is useful to devs like this and the 4k+ data points that can fully profile you and predict your every future action that companies then can sell as a commodity to other companies. Allowing the first is not a slippery slope towards the second.
Last edited by F.Ultra on 27 March 2018 at 7:09 pm UTC
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