Favorite Source Port? (Multiple Choice Poll)

i usually use glboom+ and chocolate/crispy, and sometimes gzdoom when i just quickly wanna drag a wad to the shortcut on my desktop

5 hours ago, 40oz said:

There are times that I'm a little concerned about the popularity of GZDoom because it has opened up so many doors for people to create mods that are so out of scope of what Doom originally played like. I share this community with plenty Doom fans, and a large helping of them are exclusive GZDoom users. The depth of their knowledge about Doom goes about as far as whatever the most popular gameplay/weapons/randomizer mods are and the annual cacoward winners. Unfortunately, because of that, we don't seem to have a lot in common. I think I'd have an empty void in my heart if Doom only existed anymore in the form of ZDoom derivatives. Doom modding would snowball out of control, raising bars, setting standards, modding mods, and eventually everything that made Doom what it is will be replaced with something more popular and we won't be able to have a clear look on our community's own history from its inception.

You can only make generic Doom wads for so long before it gets boring. If it wasn't for Zdoom I would probably have quit Doom modding by now.

5 hours ago, Cacodemon345 said:

Rest assured that people won't make so many maps for GZDoom.

Why is that?

@hardcore_gameryou do realise there are people using this forum who have been making vanilla maps for 20 years?

5 minutes ago, rehelekretep said:

@hardcore_gameryou do realise there are people using this forum who have been making vanilla maps for 20 years?

So what? I wasn't talking about them. I said:

1 hour ago, hardcore_gamer said:

 

 If it wasn't for Zdoom I would probably have quit Doom modding by now.

If you like making vanilla maps, then great. But I personally am sick of them and now work almost only with zdoom based content. It just gives me so much additional control and possibilities it makes vanilla feel dull in comparison.

You also said:

1 hour ago, hardcore_gamer said:

 

You can only make generic Doom wads for so long before it gets boring.

YOU. As in, the target of your message, speaking on behalf of someone, hence why someone else chirped up correcting you. Again.

Finally the numbers start to get some meaning.

I am not really surprised that GZDoom/ZDoom and PrBoom+/GlBoom+ lead the pack.

What does surprise me is that Eternity doesn't seem to be on many people's radar. I would have expected this port to have a bit more fans. But apparently the near-deadness of the Eternity forum isn't just a fluke, it looks like it really represents Eternity's standing

Also surprising is that nobody seems to have noticed that 3DGE was missing from the list of ports to choose from - and the numbers for 'other' are really low.

Does this mean that the time has passed for feature centric ports not derived from ZDoom? The numbers would suggest that.

1 hour ago, hardcore_gamer said:

Why is that?

Mostly because GZDoom seems to be the preferred engine of modders which only create so-called gameplay mods, but far less actual mappers. I kind of miss the style of maps that was rather common in the early ZDoom days. These days, when a GZDoom project comes out it's either highly ambitious and far removed from Doom - think Blade of Agony or Paranoid - or some n00bish crap that's hardly worth playing but very little Doomish stuff that is worth playing

Fellas, it's ok. No damage taken. I know my maps are fire.

15 hours ago, Cacodemon345 said:

Surprised to see ZDaemon and Odamex not being anyone's favourite whilst GZDoom outweighing the rest...

This forum is dominated by single-player focused people. You will not have single-player people favouriting ports that don't do sp as well for their respective niches as prboom+ or (g)zdoom. It's also pretty obvious to anyone who regularly keeps track of player populations outside of weekly events that zdaemon's consistent population is roughly a quarter of what it was even 5 years ago (regular average 80-90 to 20-30 on a daily basis) and odamex has never had a consistent playerbase (WDL focused). Given these factors, it's not a surprise at all, and shouldn't be to anyone who has been a doom mp regular for more than 5 years (when IDL moved to odamex, and odamex firmly established itself as a primary multiplayer port). A majority of MP players are not even forum goers either; a majority of zandro players are kids who just play the game and spend all day roleplaying or being idiotic memers, zdaemon and odamex players spend more time playing IRC, discord, and professional spectating than actually being in the servers. All the MP forums are deader than a door knob though.

Can I vote for more than 1. I use Zdoom for playing single player and Zandronum for multiplayer simple.

9 hours ago, dpJudas said:

As you can probably already tell, I don't prefer a pure vanilla experience. On the other hand, I also don't want a reshade experience. I like Doom to look like the original, with a visual enhancements layered on top. I think that if id software had the ability to do dynamic lights and bloom in 1993 they would have done so. Enhancing a game retroactively is not an easy thing to do - there are certainly things I wish my bloom pass didn't bloom, and there are places where dynamic lights end up creating something that is worse than the original. Overall I think subtle enhancements improve more than they destroy. As this is highly subjective, I understand that some people prefer to have those settings off.

It's indeed very subjective. Lots of people are the same as you, but the trouble is that every one of them draws the line in a different place :) I've had so many people tell me, "I really like the vanilla experience of Chocolate Doom, but I just wish there was an option for {higher resolution, uncapped framerate, widescreen support, Doom+'s raised limits, true color rendering, .... the list goes on ....}". In many ways it's much "easier" to take a hard line than it would be otherwise; I already made the decision about what the project's about.

That said, I do think there's a niche in the market that hasn't quite been explored yet - I'd love to see a fork of Chocolate Doom with a similar philosophy but with the line in a slightly different place. Maybe just with higher resolution, widescreen support and raised limits for example. Small, subtle visual improvements without any gameplay changes allowed (kinda like the Star Wars Despecialized Edition); similar to @perkristian's work and @Revenant100's Minor Sprite Fixing Project. I was hoping that Crispy Doom would be this but it seems to have grown in scope quite a bit.

9 hours ago, dpJudas said:

One thing I'd like to mention here at the end, just because I like an enhanced vanilla game doesn't mean that I don't value history. Particular Chocolate Doom I think is really good for historical reasons - if you truly want to know how Doom looked like in 1993, there's your port.

Thanks for saying. I've never expected Chocolate Doom to be everyone's favorite port; it's always been intended as a niche. If people can understand and appreciate where I'm coming from, that's the most important thing.

9 hours ago, dpJudas said:

After playing for about a month I got really fed up with looking at the palette banding. At the time I didn't know the upstream relationship GZDoom had to ZDoom, so I figured the easiest way to get truecolor graphics was to improve the software renderer. ...

 

As you can probably already tell, I don't prefer a pure vanilla experience. On the other hand, I also don't want a reshade experience. I like Doom to look like the original, with a visual enhancements layered on top. ...

 

Overall I think subtle enhancements improve more than they destroy. As this is highly subjective, I understand that some people prefer to have those settings off.

 

One thing I'd like to mention here at the end, just because I like an enhanced vanilla game doesn't mean that I don't value history...

Your work, and the work of the other developers is highly appreciated. Everyone has their own view of what is correct, and no one is wrong. We now have a vast range of capabilities to fit everyone's tastes. We have multiple ports, each with multiple sets of user-controlled options. One thing I never understand is when people shy away from ports with a lot of options. I think some work could be done to better organize the various options. But, it is the options that allow an experience custom tailored to everyone's needs. This is a good thing.

3 hours ago, Jerry.C said:

...What does surprise me is that Eternity doesn't seem to be on many people's radar. I would have expected this port to have a bit more fans. But apparently the near-deadness of the Eternity forum isn't just a fluke, it looks like it really represents Eternity's standing

 

Also surprising is that nobody seems to have noticed that 3DGE was missing from the list of ports to choose from - and the numbers for 'other' are really low.

 

Does this mean that the time has passed for feature centric ports not derived from ZDoom? The numbers would suggest that.

I'm a big fan of Eternity. I'm not as familiar with 3DGE yet, but, from what I've seen, it looks promising.

The numbers do not do the ports justice, because the poll only allows for one port. Every port has its uses, and I appreciate them all. Each port is built up from the efforts of many developers, mappers, testers, and players. Ports like GZDoom, PRBoom+, Eternity, and others are possible due to this collaboration as a cohesive whole. This is a community ripe with creativity, imagination, and determination. The Eternity forum has slowed down because Quasar is working full-time on another project at the moment. But, Eternity has brought some bleeding-edge tech to Doom which has had a direct cascading effect on ports, editors, mappers, and the community as a whole.

And, it's not just Eternity. All ports bring something to the table, and, in one way or another, add to the collective.

I don't like to pick one favorite port. I have a favorite game: Doom!

My go-to port for casual play is GZDoom. It's something I've settled on for good-time Dooming after being around forever and trying many different products. I specifically love that infinite height is off by default, since all the way back in '95, I was thinking, "Damn, it sure is ridiculous to get scratched up by an Imp 500 virtual feet below me." I also love to use Caco swarms, which can be a real headache in traditional ports.

Probably the first "port" I used was MacDoom, since that's where I started. Then I added a PC and as soon as I could stuff a Voodoo card into it, I installed GLDoom, and it was heaven. I basically never looked backed, and I added a Voodoo card to my Mac as well.

My first genuine source port was either Boom or the Amiga ports, ADoom and DoomAttack. The latter was my favorite, and included free look and jumping, while ADoom allowed high resolution. Given that my Amiga had a Motorola 68060 CPU running at an overclocked 57Mhz, playing ADoom at 1600x1200 made for an amusing slideshow -- about 1 frame every 2 seconds. ;)

Over time, I started using Legacy on the Mac. Then on the PC I began using Doomsday, which was quite nice at first but seemed to have too much sepia tint as time went on, plus it seemed to perform a bit slowly. I also ran into issues where it borked switch functions, and when they changed to Snowberry for loading wads it was IMO time to move on.

Thus began my Risen3D era. It's a fabulous-looking port and also seemed to pitch "Always Run" at Turbo 255 instead of 250. I was accustomed to Turbo 255 from my MacDoom days, so I really enjoyed being able to run faster and jump farther in Risen3D without resorting to SR40. My first playthrough of BTSX E1 was on Risen3D. Over time, however, as I tried other ports, I was bummed because Risen3D didn't have an enemy and secret counter, so I gradually switched over to GZDoom. Now, whenever I use Risen3D, it seems to have a player-hostile autoaim and RNG by comparison to GZDoom and PrBoom. Further, movement seems different -- I'm a keyboarder, btw -- insofar as there seems to be a bit of glide when you think you ought to be stopping. As a result, I suffer more deaths in Risen3D than other ports, but perhaps that would change if I used it more and got accustomed to the feel, the way I used to be. The problem is that GZDoom satisfies all my needs and has everything I need in a GL port except for demo capability, so there seems no compelling reason to use Risen3D at this point. Another issue I have with Risen3D is the way it treats gradient lighting. If I have 3 gradient sectors outside the main light source, Risen3D typically shows only 2 of them. Perhaps I'm missing something in the options?

Which brings me to the Boom Twins. You gotta have PrBoom/GLBoom for map testing, plus recording and viewing of demos/FDAs. For a long time, that's all I used them for. I also experienced problems with GLBoom chugging on my machine, with a bunch of little hitches in movement. It therefore couldn't compete with GZDoom, though recently, that problem magically went away. I now use Pr/GLBoom a lot more thanks to doing runs in the Ironman League, which is also changing my player psychology to actually trying to survive maps instead of dying my way to victory (yep, I'm a savescummer, too). This could result in me making smaller, easier maps in the future if this new focus gets out of hand. ;D  Again, there are differences in movement feel between GZDoom and the Boom Twins, so I die more in Boom, at least for now, but as I grow accustomed to the feel, things are evening out.

Still hate that infinite height, though. ;)

5 hours ago, fraggle said:

It's indeed very subjective. Lots of people are the same as you, but the trouble is that every one of them draws the line in a different place :) I've had so many people tell me, "I really like the vanilla experience of Chocolate Doom, but I just wish there was an option for {higher resolution, uncapped framerate, widescreen support, Doom+'s raised limits, true color rendering, .... the list goes on ....}".

[...]

I was hoping that Crispy Doom would be this but it seems to have grown in scope quite a bit.

I don't think it's any particular accident. Since that "one feature" people think Chocolate Doom "should have" changes so wildly from person to person, the only way to truly be satisfied is to make your own fork, to be in control of the feature set.

Fabian has added quite a lot to Crispy Doom, indeed, but those are his own itches: mainly a double-resolution engine with some Boom support, but without sacrificing vanilla demo compatibilty.

GZDoom. I love the fancy graphical effects way too much and it doesn't break stuff like Doomsday :P

I just try to be careful not to break anything on vanilla maps.

I mostly use GZDoom and Chocolate Doom, so I guess those two are my favorites.  GZDoom is nice because of the mapping features and ACS, while Chocolate Doom is nice when I want that classic DOS-alike feel. 

I was a total Doomsday fan before I found GZDoom, though.

22 hours ago, Jerry.C said:

Mostly because GZDoom seems to be the preferred engine of modders which only create so-called gameplay mods, but far less actual mappers.

I think this is changing slowly, mostly down to the freedom that UDMF provides. Even if you don't use a single bit of scripting or modding, the UDMF features like texture scaling, flat offsetting, individual floor/ceiling lighting etc. etc. are very tempting. Granted this isn't GZDoom specific, but it's a good driver to advanced-feature ports.

Just look at the reaction to the Doomworld Mega Project 2018 rejecting UDMF maps. Nothing to do with modding, just mappers wanting more options. For the projects I've personally worked on, Confinement 256 comes to mind: it targeted GZDoom/UDMF purely for mapping options, not gameplay changes. Also isn't JOM up-to-GZDoom targeting? Again, no modding there.

Edit:  To add to this, I think there's also a vicious circle going on - the DW comminity does this to itself.  There's this perception that if a map targets GZD/UDMF, it should use all the advanced features.  How many times have we seen new mappers release something that targets UDMF specifically for a smaller feature like Flat offset, and people immediately criticize them because it "should have been in Boom".

I think some people have a chip on their shoulder about GZDoom (even though you can make it look and play 99% the same as PRBoom+ with little difficulty).  And I think it's because they're used to GZDoom wads deviating a lot from classic Doom.  So when a GZDoom wad comes along that is classic Doom, they complain that it's in the "wrong" source port.  It's catch 22.

Can you imagine the outrage if someone released a vanilla-limited Episode 1 replacement in UDMF?

11 hours ago, fraggle said:

I was hoping that Crispy Doom would be this but it seems to have grown in scope quite a bit.

Initially, Crispy was meant to be right that: Chocolate Doom with the most often requested non-Vanilla features on top. But once this was achieved (around the time of the 1.5 release in late 2014), people requested more and more features and improvements. And where I found that I could help, I delivered.

But even nowadays, if you leave all the extra features disabled and switch to low-resolution mode, I guess you won't be able to distinguish Crispy Doom from Choco - unless you do a frame-by-frame comparison or find the Crispness menu, that is.

Over the years I've seen a lot of PrBoom screenshots and bits of youtube videos and I've had a question about them for a long time. Do PrBoom players actually play with the default overbright washed out gamma setting, do they turn it up for screenshots/videos, do they not know you can change it?

The PrBoom default gamma correction setting is really high for some bizarre reason.

Nothing worse to me than a dark game that looks washed out.

1 hour ago, Randy87 said:

Over the years I've seen a lot of PrBoom screenshots and bits of youtube videos and I've had a question about them for a long time. Do PrBoom players actually play with the default overbright washed out gamma setting, do they turn it up for screenshots/videos, do they not know you can change it?

Be careful about judging YouTube videos. The site automatically adjusts the brightness of videos with no options for the uploader to override it.

I can't vote for both GZDoom and Zandronum. So....

34 minutes ago, chungy said:

Be careful about judging YouTube videos. The site automatically adjusts the brightness of videos with no options for the uploader to override it.

Check the "Enhancements" tab under "Edit Video"; there's a bunch of settings for adjusting brightness, contrast, color temperature, etc.

But it's definitely a PrBoom thing.

That was something that always bothered me about PrBoom+ in my earlier days - I searched and searched the options menu and couldn't find anything that fixed the gamma brightness. It wasn't until later that I discovered it could be fixed by going into the config file and setting the gamma to zero.

My Introduction to Doom was the shareware episode in Legacy of all ports. I am currently defaulting to the following:

Wolfenstein 3d: ECWolf
Doom: Eternity Engine
Heretic/Hexen/Strife/etc.: GZDoom
Quake: Mark V
Hexen II: Hammer of Thyrion
Quake II: Yamagi Quake II
Quake III: ioquake3

I like native resolution support, autorun, decoupling of turn and strafe (I'm looking at you Wolfenstein), mouselook in games that had look up/down keys, mouse 4/5 for move up/down, scroll wheel for inventory management, and a console is always a nice thing to have.

I am also totally okay with hardware renders (gl_nearest_mipmap_nearest, now that I know more of what a mipmap is), and I like that border around my screen in all of these 90s shooters. 

I like being able to do most setup with the menu as documentation and console for quick changes. I am so used to maneuvering Eternity's menu, that PrBoom+'s gives me headaches. Enter to toggle, page up/down don't do what I want (it's left and right), and I have to start at page one every time I close the dang menu, what is this? And why does PrBoom+ default to French Doom II‽ Also, is Chocolate the only port that actually uses %DOOMWADPATH%?

1 hour ago, fraggle said:

The PrBoom default gamma correction setting is really high for some bizarre reason.

"Changed default gamma correction to 3 (only affects people with a missing default.cfg -- I hope there are no objections -- it's just I hate having to turn up gamma correction everytime I start with a fresh default.cfg)." — boomsrc/log_lee.txt

The reason it was changed originally was that Lee Killough's monitor was too dark. I guess following maintainers all thought "there must be a reason this was changed, annoying as it is" and left it alone. FWIW, it's been back to zero in latest PrBoom+ for a while.

1 hour ago, valkiriforce said:

That was something that always bothered me about PrBoom+ in my earlier days - I searched and searched the options menu and couldn't find anything that fixed the gamma brightness. It wasn't until later that I discovered it could be fixed by going into the config file and setting the gamma to zero.

Press F12.

F11?

Not on my old laptop - it was F11 for some reason, even though it was supposed to be for the volume

22 hours ago, Jerry.C said:

noticed that 3DGE was missing from the list of ports to choose from - and the numbers for 'other' are really low.

 

Yeah, I noticed that too. ^{Oh well, the team is sort of used to that now. ;(}

But, at least we are getting more positive feedback with each release, and the compatibility we are working towards supporting things like UDMF, GLSL shaders, rendering speedups, PK3 -- everything that will hopefully continue to keep EDGE relevant. :)