What was the worst official DOOM port you have played?

You should read the title.

That explains a lot.

Probably 32x Doom. SNES Doom is a contender but at least it has the full game and the music is acceptable.

I never played the 3DO version but it looks like total garbage from the videos I've seen. At least the 32x version is playable despite being half the game with awful, awful music.

I knew it.

Edit: What happened to the 3DO

Doom? I heard that it's based of Jaguar Doom.

(Forgive me for double posting)

Anyways, I heard that GBA Doom 2 

have problematic game mechanics.

Just so you know, you can edit posts rather than double posting. 3DO Doom has an interesting history, watch this video starting about 8 minutes in for an explanation as to why it turned out so poorly (the whole video is good, but this part is the relevant part)

Well, 3DO Doom seems better than 32X Doom but worse than Saturn doom.

Anyways, I actually never played GBA Doom 2, but from I heard, it has poorer autoaim.

The game mechanics is also problematic.

For my money, the SNES port is by far and away the worst.  It looks like a low res Doom in screenshots but it plays very differently.  I also think the music is over-rated.  I reckon nostalgia has a LOT to do with that port's defenders, but to each his own. 

Speaking of nostalgia, I really like both Doom games on the GBA.  There are differences from the vanilla PC games but the overall experience of Doom is there - at least for me. :)  

The code for the 3do version of doom was released. But i have yet to see anybody make a updated version of the port.

2 hours ago, Cacodemon345 said:

(Forgive me for double posting)

Anyways, I heard that GBA Doom 2 

have problematic game mechanics.

No wonder, since along with the SNES version, it's the only "official" port not using the actual Doom engine.

I am between 3DO and SNES versions. I think 3DO, even if slightly slower than SNES version, I managed to play and finish and sometimes even enjoy. I tried to finish all Doom ports in consoles just for the lols. SNES is the one remained and last time I quit. There is something in the animation/speed/mechanics that breaks it for me. The enemies move like lunatic, and animation frames are removed of course to fit in memory, but the problem is even the first enemies start chipping my health and I don't realize it. Something is off. They move faster, you barely see the animation of them raising the gun, and give short bursts, and I think even the damage flash border is shorter. Then, I realize, if I shoot an enemy or a barrel half a meter from it's edges, my shoot still makes the barrel or zombie enemies (with 1 pistol hit sometimes!) to explode or die. Something is off with the hit detection. Or maybe low precision or lousy optimization. So maybe the enemies come, shoot faster than usual, and hit me when they shouldn't? That's why I never finish it and also last time I couldn't find save or passwords anywhere when I finish a level, so I have to restart.

The Saturn is the next awful thing, just as slow as 3DO but resembles the PS1 version (ambient music, more levels) which is cool.

I think the 3DO, even if slow, there was certain control acceleration that worked just fine.

Besides the PS1 which I think is the best on consoles, I really liked the 32X version which I think is underrated. Yes, lowres. Yes, awful sound. But it's smoother and I enjoyed playing it and finishing it. Jaguar is also good (better res and smoothish) but no sound. I kinda not like the controls (or the controller :) for some reason.

About GBA Doom2. They are both good, but I noticed there was a difference between Doom 1 and 2. First they use different engines, different teams. But they did something on the controls in Doom 2. I have hard time turning/strafing where I want and shoot where I want. It's much better in Doom 1, they kinda made it bad in Doom 2 even if there are options for sensitivity. Not sure what it is. Also,. interesting but not relevant, Doom 2 has mip mapping at further textures, very noticable (but maybe not in GBA small screen, but more in emu) which I guess is to reduce texel reads per pixel for better cache performance (not sure if ARM on gba has cache, but might be so). Doom 1 doesn't have that, and it looks better at times. The far away lowres textures and sudden swaps across the wall are noticable. Also, I was testing both recently on emulator. Because GBA screen is harder to see, might be dark, both Doom 1/2 were too bright as I try them here on emulator. But Doom 1 has options to reduce brightness. And then it's perfect for monitor. I didn't found those in Doom 2, everything is so bright. I think Doom 1 was in many ways better in GBA, although Doom 2 was a feat because they managed to include all original PC levels (few of them split in two parts) that no other console port (Saturn or PS1) did before.

I thought the first Doom on GBA was fine. The framerate wasn't bad and the controls were nice and responsive. GBA Doom2 has sprites that are too large for their hitboxes and a slight input delay, but it's a very complete port with good music, far better than GBA doom1's soundtrack.

My dislike for 32x Doom comes from how cut down it is, not just the crappy music. If it had every map, I don't think many people would refer to it as a bad port.

1 hour ago, MrD!zone said:

The code for the 3do version of doom was released. But i have yet to see anybody make a updated version of the port.

I have been looking at the 3DO Doom source and managed to compile it and test it on my real 3DO console.

I kinda understand how it renders the walls and floors. It's still using the column/span based rendering from original Doom engine, but it kinda uses the 3DO's hardware quad rasterizer, one thin quad for every column, while for the floors it renders a thin quad for every horizontal span, but here is the thing, it software renders inside the texture of each horizontal span. I would think so many thin quads fed to the 3DO rasterizer would slow down, but the rendering of the elements itself when they are prepared, according to some benchmark tests I did, are taking very few time. The majority of the time is spend on CPU. BSP pass still takes a little, like 10-20% at most, but the majority is going through the visible linedefs, calculating visplanes for the floor/ceiling, and preparing all necessary variables to feed on those quad elements (called CELs in 3DOs API) that are then read for the 3DO GPU to render. So, it's yet again CPU issue, if 3DO had something a bit faster, maybe 20 to 25mhz.

I was trying to think how to optimize all that stuff (one would think, why not send a big quad that fits one wall segment, instead of sending many thin quad for columns. There are issues with texture allignment, repeat and of course light diminishing per column, that the 3DO can't handle on a big surface, it will stretch a full bitmap to whatever quad area, but there are no texture coordinates or gouraud shading) but that needs more work and I kinda abandoned the project few months ago although I want to get back to it. I was trying minimal things like draw halfres columns but in most cases it doesn't win more than 1-2 fps. Average frame rate of the original game is 9-15, best when going close to a wall, maybe 20-30, and I had lows at 5fps.

Maybe there will be more interest, I know one more guy in the 3DO community who works with it, but works on other things like trying to load Doom 2 resources, new linedef flags, enemies, items, etc. I am more interested in how to improve the original, if hopefully I come back to it next year.

4 hours ago, Doomkid said:

Probably 32x Doom. SNES Doom is a contender but at least it has the full game and the music is acceptable.

 

I never played the 3DO version but it looks like total garbage from the videos I've seen. At least the 32x version is playable despite being half the game with awful, awful music.

Funny thing is, the 3DO version has by far the best soundtrack of all the ports:

1 hour ago, Maes said:

No wonder, since along with the SNES version, it's the only "official" port not using the actual Doom engine.

It uses the Southpaw engine.

If it used the GBA Doom 1 engine, it would have better gameplay and controls.

I doubt that, it uses a stripped down Jaguar version and seems to suffer from slowdown, using it with Doom II's more advanced maps would probably make it borderline unplayable. Southpaw allowed it to be more optimized for the system, and the levels are mostly intact save for 2 of them being cut in half and extra stuff being added to limit visibility.

Here are my opinions of the ports:

The SNES is a technical marvel, it's a miracle the game runs at all, let alone competently and with PC esque levels. The 32x version has terrible music but, other than that, it runs smoothly enough. GBA Doom I suffers from slowdown at times but it's generally good. The 3DO and Saturn versions are just tragedies, the former due to not having enough time and the latter due to John Carmack tying their arm behind their back. Supposedly, they had a version of Doom that ran like butter on the Saturn but it had affine texture rendering so Carmack forbid them to use it. For such a renowned genius as Carmack, this was probably one of his more foolish moments.

Of those that I've played, the SNES one is the worst in my eyes, despite the fact that it's got a few things going for it (very close to PC levels, etc). 32X Doom is pretty lame, for sure, but at least the gameplay is intact and responsive, and that's the most important part.

So, pretty much every official console port of Doom back in the day was dogged either by technical limitations, or poor design decisions, being rushed, or a combination of these factors. Even later official ports like e.g. Doom '95 or the Mac ports weren't very polished, while even the "Classic Doom" included in Doom: BFG Edition leaves a lot to be desired. Doom 64 seems to be the one brilliant exception, and maybe the PSX port (still pretty cut down, but with enough exclusive content/features to make them stand on their own).

I dunno, but for a game that pretty much had gained undisputed "legend" status already in its heyday, Doom sure seems to have gotten the short end of the stick when it came to ports. Not in terms of numbers/quantity, but in terms of quality. It's almost as if they wanted to get it out of the window....quite literally.

17 minutes ago, MetroidJunkie said:

I doubt that, it uses a stripped down Jaguar version and seems to suffer from slowdown, using it with Doom II's more advanced maps would probably make it borderline unplayable. Southpaw allowed it to be more optimized for the system, and the levels are mostly intact save for 2 of them being cut in half and extra stuff being added to limit visibility.

How?

They could have optimised the GBA Doom 1 instead for those GBA doom 2 maps.

Southpaw may have allowed Doom II maps to be optimised

but at the cost of problematic controls.

It even suffers from palette issues.

PSX Doom probably could've been done better if they had more time (and perhaps if it was done later when more optimization tricks were learned about the PSX), but for what it is, it's fucking amazing and you can really tell they cared about making a quality product. It's still really fun to play even now, which is a lot more than you can say for the other ports.

15 minutes ago, Cacodemon345 said:

It even suffers from palette issues.

That's not Southpaw's fault, I assume they used overly bright textures to make it easier to see on the GBA's screen since it didn't get a proper backlight until the SP. I know this because someone patched the game to use PC resources:

I haven't played too many, PC, SNES and GBA... at least that I can remember. I'll go with GBA as the worst, but I still enjoy it. There are far worse FPS on the system.

I agree with you.

1 hour ago, MetroidJunkie said:

I doubt that, it uses a stripped down Jaguar version and seems to suffer from slowdown, using it with Doom II's more advanced maps would probably make it borderline unplayable. Southpaw allowed it to be more optimized for the system, and the levels are mostly intact save for 2 of them being cut in half and extra stuff being added to limit visibility.

 

Here are my opinions of the ports:

The SNES is a technical marvel, it's a miracle the game runs at all, let alone competently and with PC esque levels. The 32x version has terrible music but, other than that, it runs smoothly enough. GBA Doom I suffers from slowdown at times but it's generally good. The 3DO and Saturn versions are just tragedies, the former due to not having enough time and the latter due to John Carmack tying their arm behind their back. Supposedly, they had a version of Doom that ran like butter on the Saturn but it had affine texture rendering so Carmack forbid them to use it. For such a renowned genius as Carmack, this was probably one of his more foolish moments.

Did he do this because he feared that low texturing quality would destroy the game's look + was this mentioned in MastersOfDoom?

I don't know about the second one but Carmack admitted on Twitter that he didn't want the ugly look of affine textures but that, in retrospect, it might have been the better idea. Which falls under the department of redundancy, I'm sure most gamers would agree warpy textures is a damn shot better than being unplayably choppy.

That was the reason for why Saturn 

Doom had lower frame rates, right?

Yeah, Carmack wouldn't allow them to utilize the Saturn's GPU due to the affine textures so the burden of rendering fell upon its underpowered CPU. If you notice, the Saturn version of Duke 3D has similar features as the Ps1 version of Doom and runs very smoothly, Doom could have become like that on the Saturn.

The worst I've played was the iOS port. I only put up with it because that's what was available. I hate it because of how much it tormented the music and how the pitches for sound effects are random. 

I mean, hey, at least it was functional.

6 minutes ago, MetroidJunkie said:

If you notice, the Saturn version of Duke 3D has similar features as the Ps1 version of Doom and runs very smoothly, Doom could have become like that on the Saturn.

PS1 version of Doom wasn't that different. It had a weird renderer that probably used GPU for some things, but essentially mimicked software renderer for its perspective correction. The benefits and the drawbacks are all the same, except they were lucky it didn't reach unplayable.

Doom95.

It's also the only official port of Doom that I've played.

Likely a better CPU on the Ps1, although there are occasions like Perfect Hatred where the Ps1's CPU is also struggling a bit to play Doom.