Eduke or JFDuke3D?

[Reckless]

I know there are quite a few ports available (although I expect a lot of have simply faded away by now) but it seems these two are the main ones.

I've read over the last 6 months a lot less about JonoF's port and more about Eduke. Is this an indication that 'the community' is finding favour with Eduke for some specific reason? It doesn't look like they're 100% compatible (some features in Eduke are not in JonoF's and vice-versa).

What does this [possible] fragmentation mean for long term future of DukeMatching? I know Eduke is a 'friendly fork of JFDuke32' - from their webby but this may not last or become impossible given changes in the base JFDuke?

Just to end, I'm not trying to suggest either port is better (I've never used Eduke so I honestly cannot comment). I also don't want to start a war of words on the subject. I'd simply like to get some feedback about why the situation is as it is and what that means for the average game player. Stuff like whether the HQ pack is (or will be) fully compatible with either or what things will [not] work etc.

Thanks in advance!

[Parkar]

Eduke is basically jfduke with better mod support. Jonof and TerminX works pretty closely and anything new in jfDuke is added to eDuke right away. This is the reason eDuke has had a few things in it's beta versions that was not yet in a released version of jfDuke. As for merging I'll let JonoF and TerminX explain that.

I don't think you need to worry, just do like I do, have both. eDuke is made to be able to run from the same folder. The HRP will come with both in the future as well.

[JonoF]

Firstly, here's the evolution of Duke for those who aren't familiar with it:
http://jonof.edgenetwork.org/misc/dukeevolution.png

Now, why aren't Eduke32 and JFDuke3D being merged? Because TerminX and I don't want them to be, and there's no really exceptional reason to do it either. Eduke32 is almost a complete superset of JFDuke3D, which means it's fully compatible with JFDuke3D (with the exception of network and sync), but JFDuke3D is not fully compatible with Eduke32. With the networking still in its infancy the question of fragmentation is not really relevant at present. Once things mature and it's practical to join and start games at will, then things will probably want to amalgamate to some degree.

Jonathon

[Reckless]

Thank you both for your posts!