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gemini09

Why is the Doom gameplay always lost in source ports?

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Why are there no source ports that keep the good old Doom gameplay feel? Each one feels different. Why is that???

In my opinion, the newest ZDoom's feel the most like Doom. But it has its idiotic features, like more splash-damage on the rocket launcher, if you run out of ammo, but pick up some more WHILE RELOADING, you still must change weapons, unlike in the original Doom. Rockets also easily crash with nearby walls, when they SHOULD HAVE NOT, or occasionally they will blow up on a 32 high floor, which it never should do, unless you're aiming down because of monsters below, ofcourse.

Anyway, what's the reason none of these new ports haven't been able to keep the original Doom gameplay, not changing it a tiny bit?




Hope to hear from lots of (0d|ng gurus!

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If you don't want it to change don't use a friggin source port!

They keep changing it because they want it to be different! If they didn't want to change it why would they make a source port?

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Lutrov71 said:

They keep changing it because they want it to be different! If they didn't want to change it why would they make a source port?


Maybe because the original Doom doesn't run well on modern systems?

Personally I'd love to see a Doom port that ran on XP, removed visplane and savegame buffer limits, medusa and various fatal errors, but otherwise changed nothing else. But I'm sure it'll never happen. And be fair to the source port guys, it's not like we have the v1.9 source.

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Gemini, just use ZDoom or PRBoom. They're the closest you'll probably get. You also don't have to use the latest version of ZDoom.

And Ryback, if the original Doom doesn't run well on modern source ports and they just wanted to get rid of things like visplane overflows and everything, they wouldn't add all of the other special features, they'd just get rid of all that stuff.

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gemini09 said:

Anyway, what's the reason none of these new ports haven't been able to keep the original Doom gameplay, not changing it a tiny bit?


The most important reason: bugfixes! Believe it or not. Part of Doom behaves as it does due to bugs. If those bugs are fixed the feel of the game might change slightly.
Second: Engine enhancements. Doom exhibits a lot of really odd behavior that annoys a lot of players. For example, one thing that was getting on my nerves are the infinitely tall things. Some of these enhancements are also necessary for engines which support other Doom engine games because they also removed much of Doom's oddities.
Third: Mapping enhancements. Yes, some people use them and keeping Doom's original behavior tiny bit by tiny bit would severerly limit that.

If you want gameplay as close to Doom2.exe as possible the best choice is PrBoom with all compatibility options turned on. I don't think you can get much closer.

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Graf Zahl said:

If you want gameplay as close to Doom2.exe as possible the best choice is PrBoom with all compatibility options turned on. I don't think you can get much closer.

Yes, "-complevel 0" (in 2.2.4) does its best to emulate Doom2.exe, but you can't use savegames then, and it gives you GF49 gametics instead of GF50. Minor irritations, but still... Eternity is a good option, and doesn't have those problems, but doesn't have a Doom2.exe compatibility mode built in (yet?). schepe's modified version (which does have a Doom2.exe compatibility mode) doesn't seem to mimic Doom2.exe quite as reliably as Prboom (though it's marginal). Nevertheless, schepe's modified Eternity is what I'm currently using when I want to record a Doom2.exe compatible demo.

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We're all talking about the players movements here, right?
That's my only real complaint, it's just not as smooth in ANY source port, Doom has the smoothest and most precise movement (ever).

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gemini09 said:

We're all talking about the players movements here, right?

I'm thinking mostly of game physics.

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OK. But I meant player-movements first and foremost, since that's the most important part. Source-port-coders delibiritely change it, or it's a glitch in the matrix?

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Doom shall be "hot wired" until the end. Its surprising how close people have got the engine to look like something modern. It shall live past you.

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That might be to do with Windows mouse drivers. Some people seem to have major problems getting the mouse to feel right in Windows ports.

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Well, I noticed that the movements are (nearly?) the same in DOS ports: Boom, MBF, DosDoom (at least the early versions of it). When it comes to windows ports, they all have very strange mouse movement, it's quite OK to play casually but I wouldn't record any demo with such controls.

At least this is my experience.

EDIT: heh, Grazza said the same but in fewer words just before I did

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Grazza said:

That might be to do with Windows mouse drivers. Some people seem to have major problems getting the mouse to feel right in Windows ports.



That is, if you call the mouse 'feeling' in Doom.exe 'right'. I have to say I am much more comfortable with Windows's mouse behavior. In the end it's all a matter of personal preference. The fact is that different OS's handle the hardware (including mouse and keyboard) differently and it is not surprising that this can have an effect on how a game behaves. It also means there's not much that can be done about it.

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If you run Doom2.exe in Windows (98 or something), it still plays as if you were playing in DOS, or at least so close that you practically can't tell a difference. There is a SLIGHT difference, but nothing to worry about, at all...

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Fredrik said:

The only thing that sucks about the latest ZDoom is that you can't rocket jump.

Uh, yes you can. I just tried a couple rocket jumps in E1M4 and it works fine.

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Personally I can't tell the difference movement-wise when playing in pure DOS and DOS box except that the sensitivity is probably higher in windows.

I do have some inconveniences in windows, but these are SB-Live! issues: the game randomly locks up momentarily before playing a sound, no midi music etc. Everything's fine in pure DOS with SB16 emulation on (but crappy sound quality).

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Fredrik said:

Against the floor? I can rocket jump against the floor but not against walls.

No, I tried it off the wall near the exit (as you go up the steps). It's entirely possible.

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In Zdoom (recent versions) rocket blasts hardly move you at all if you're invulnerable. I assume that's what Fredrik is referring to.

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I'm sure the sarge's are more accurate in zdoom than the original exe. I seem to take more damage.

Graf is right about bugfixes. Doom* is very quirky so by changing code to make it more accurate or simply easier to maintain you'll affect the feel of the game.

There are a lot of factors that affect feel, my last mouse was pretty sludgy but my optical mouse is very twitchy.


* so are most id engines come to think about it

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gemini09 said:

OK. But I meant player-movements first and foremost, since that's the most important part. Source-port-coders delibiritely change it, or it's a glitch in the matrix?


Yeah I noticed that. Actually myk explained that most old DOS ports and the vanilla EXEs take the mouse directly from the source (either windows mouse driver or the DOS mouse driver) without modifying it.
And this makes it highly customizable.

Most windows source ports modify the mouse behavior, no longer allowing people to customize it as they would like.

I also personally like to "feel" the mouse like in the DOS version, and most ports don't. I would never record serious demos on zDoom, EDGE, Eternity and some others, because I need a genuine pure mouse behavior like in old DOS/Win98 times. I don't like when ports are trying to "enhance" it, it fucks up my play. For casual games, it's ok tho.
I record bit with prBoom, nothing serious tho, because it's still far from perfect. Legacy would be my port of choice if it had more options to make it closer to vanilla gameplay-wise (in legacy : the BFG attracts monsters instead of pushing em and the monsters, when alive, can be pushed off the ledge).

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Ryback said:

Maybe because the original Doom doesn't run well on modern systems?

Personally I'd love to see a Doom port that ran on XP, removed visplane and savegame buffer limits, medusa and various fatal errors, but otherwise changed nothing else. But I'm sure it'll never happen. And be fair to the source port guys, it's not like we have the v1.9 source.


Have none of you never heard of DooM95?

It runs on XP and behaves exactly like the DOS version.

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DooMAD said:

Have none of you never heard of DooM95?

It runs on XP and behaves exactly like the DOS version.


And sucks too.

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I never said it didn't, but it seems to be the ideal solution for anyone who doesn't like more modern ports.

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Grazza said:

In Zdoom (recent versions) rocket blasts hardly move you at all if you're invulnerable.

Why is that? Is there a good reason, or is it a bug?

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DooMAD said:

I never said it didn't, but it seems to be the ideal solution for anyone who doesn't like more modern ports.


I think the ideal solution would be setting up a system with pure DOS mode (Win98) and getting an ISA sound card.

DOOM95 would be a good solution for someone who doesn't like ports and also can't/won't set up such a system.

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LogicDeLuxe said:

Why is that? Is there a good reason, or is it a bug?


Depends if you like ZDOOM or dislike it.

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LogicDeLuxe said:

Why is that? Is there a good reason, or is it a bug?



It's a bug which comes from the fact that Hexen handles this differently than the other Doom engine games and ZDoom currently uses Hexen's code here.

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