Favorite Source Port? (Multiple Choice Poll)

GZDoom might become one of my favorites, i recently tried messing with the options and managed to make it look almost exactly like the software renderer.

Which i prefer the look of.

I forgot to mention, I think giving level designers the freedom to define their own end state is a great boon and mapinfo is the best addition. Sad that it took till Quake for that to be vanilla. Of course due to world map and such, Keen gives more freedom here than Wolf or Doom. I'm excited for the new universal standards in advance engine capabilities. Umapinfo is going to be a game changer, and if we have get a cross-port content definite language, a singular Chex 3 rewrite could work in most advanced engines.

And this might not be the place, but this has been bothering me, why do most level editors not have full UDMF support? I'm guessing it's a whole use-case scenario. How many people are going to use the vanilla name spaces? They only are useful for someone who wants more control over thing placement, or needs to surpass the binary format size limits, right? Well, and debugging for engine programmers maybe. I managed to mess with the configs in the pk3 of Slade to produce a Doom name space map, but I couldn't figure out how to make the editor use the boom line specials. So I just entered 11 under special in the linedef property plane, and ran it through GZDoom, EE, 3DGE, and Doomsday. The exit switch didn't work in Doomsday, but otherwise it went well. I couldn't get that far with GZDoomBuilder-Bugfix.

6 hours 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?

Oh god the gamma :v One of the first things that I did when I got prboom (after going into the ini file to rebind the controls because I couldn't find a button to unbind stuff in the actual options menu...) was figure out how to turn that shit down. Now I have it at a brightness that I like (but don't know if it is correct or not)

I use PrBoom+ for most stuff and GZDoom only for G/ZDoom wads minority. So PrBoom+ is being my favorite through the years.

ZDoom, because decorate & making new monsters with it. The lack of demo capability hurts though, gravitating me towards PRBoom. Argh.

I use DOSBox.

I know...Wow! I am a weird person

On 1/29/2018 at 3:58 PM, Spectre01 said:

Fun fact: I used to play the IWADs with Doomsday and 3D models. The lighting system was very nice actually, from what I remember.

 

I'd argue it's also the #1 port for authentic vanilla gameplay mechanics without being overly restrictive like Chocolate Doom or what have you. The GL version is also the #1 port for performance reasons and playing large-scale slaughtermaps.

 

I actually voted Zandronum though, because it does everything.

definitely. i had written how i had to load reverie's maps 32 and 21 without smooth doom because all those monster bits flying slowed my pc to a crawl (oc'd i5-4690k and gtx 1070, so it's not exactly slow for doom). and those are actually small maps. unthinkable with glboom. i also have noticed the brightness difference with gl/prboom, was much easier to see in dark maps.

15 minutes ago, Pirx said:

definitely. i had written how i had to load reverie's maps 32 and 21 without smooth doom because all those monster bits flying slowed my pc to a crawl

That's more to do with Smooth Doom's blood and gib calculation and not so much the port it's running on. Same deal with Brutal Doom. If you disable the extra blood and gibs, Smooth Doom shouldn't run much worse than vanilla, even on larger maps.

For me it's GZDoom. I like the modding capabilities, the ease of use, the ease of setting it up to behave however I like, and its versatility.

Before GZDoom though, I hopped around from port to port, trying just about everything from the list at least once and for a day or so. I think the first one I ever tried (other than Doom95) was Doom Legacy. From there, I jumped to Doomsday and played with that for a while before I hopped on board the Risen3D train before finally getting into ZDoom, which is where I've been ever since (along with its derivatives). I even played with ZDaemon, Odamex, and Skulltag/Zandronum a bit.

Despite my own leaning towards GZDoom and the ZDoom family of ports, I'd encourage everyone to give each port a try to see what's right for them. I'm glad that there's such a diverse selection to choose from in order to play Doom.

I've got to show some love for Odamex. I have no interest in multiplayer, honestly, but with the limited experience I have with source ports, Odamex by far has the best WAD filing and loading system I've seen. I was thoroughly surprised when it seemed as though GZDoom required a launcher to get the same effect with drag-and-drop being the only other option.

I of course use GZDoom periodically for its more ambitious mods and WADs, but Odamex is my main for all vanilla and near-vanilla content.

21 hours ago, PaquoCastor said:

Also, is Chocolate the only port that actually uses %DOOMWADPATH%?

Almost all of them do use DOOMWADDIR. Dunno about PATH. So try setting that.

Except for Risen3D ofc because that one just has to be special in every regard and not be a playable port like everyone else is

Crispy Doom's all for the vanilla gameplay! (as I mostly play IWADs and vanilla megawads)
It could be PrBoom+ but for the sound delay (even if it is only a few ms, it is still noticeable when switching between many ports.)

1 hour ago, bzzrak said:

Almost all of them do use DOOMWADDIR. Dunno about PATH. So try setting that.

Except for Risen3D ofc because that one just has to be special in every regard and not be a playable port like everyone else is

I do use dir, hence PrBoom+ loading French Doom II. The reason I set both is because I have an awkward hierarchy of wad folders. The nice thing is that once I set up Chocolate Doom I can just type:

chocolate-doom -iwad doom2.wad {-file, -merge} foo1.wad foo2.wad ... foon.wad -deh bar.deh

While with Eternity I tend to use:

set doom2=PATHTODOOM2FILES
eternity -iwad doom2 -file %doom2%/foo1 %doom2%/foo2 ... %doom2%/foon -deh %doom2%/bar

Replacing doom2 with whatever game I'm going to play of course.

I prefer GZDoom. It's really easy to set up, and it's really simple to load up mods with it. And it's very easy to mod for, Decorate's the kind of programming language that you just pick up and can learn the basics of it in maybe an hour or so.

On 1/30/2018 at 8:11 AM, dmg_64 said:

They're probably talking about texture filtering which I believe is turned off by default.

Is it disabled by default in 3.2.5? Sweet.

16 hours ago, Nems said:

the ease of use, the ease of setting it up

19 minutes ago, Pyrolex said:

I prefer GZDoom. It's really easy to set up,

am i getting punked

litetally one of the defining characteristics of zdoom ports is how difficult it is to set them up and use them compared to most ports

like the settings are a complete maze and most of the settings are difficult to understand and don't always have obvious immediate effects

i can only assume you're all joshin me

I personally find PrBoom's options menu far, far less manageable compared to ZDoom's options menu.

It might just be that I've gotten used to the menus in GZD, then.

23 minutes ago, bonnie said:

 

am i getting punked

 

litetally one of the defining characteristics of zdoom ports is how difficult it is to set them up and use them compared to most ports

 

like the settings are a complete maze and most of the settings are difficult to understand and don't always have obvious immediate effects

 

i can only assume you're all joshin me

based on the populations of the zdoom family of ports, the menus are designed to be navigated by the lowest common denominators. if you can't grasp the menus.............................................................................................................................................

Prboom+ for me, after boom 2.02 stopped working :) I like having slightly better resolution than the original .exe, but I mainly play old-school wads, and exclusively map for doom2 v1.9 limits myself because that's what I started out with and I don't have the willpower to start learning scripts, decorate and whatnot.

edit: For "other purposes" (i.e. Ancient Aliens, and similar), I have been using Zdoom. After checking out the screenshots from YukiRaven's latest project, I'm considering switching my "other" port to GzDoom :o)

edit 2: I've also used ChocoRenderLimits/Chocolate Doom or whatever that off-shoot port is called for editing purposes. A+++ for getting rid of those VPOs and HOMs

3 hours ago, VanillaExtract said:

I've got to show some love for Odamex. I have no interest in multiplayer, honestly, but with the limited experience I have with source ports, Odamex by far has the best WAD filing and loading system I've seen. I was thoroughly surprised when it seemed as though GZDoom required a launcher to get the same effect with drag-and-drop being the only other option.

 

I of course use GZDoom periodically for its more ambitious mods and WADs, but Odamex is my main for all vanilla and near-vanilla content.

True that. I'm not sure enough people know this but you can put your wad directory in your .cfg file and load wads directly from the console. It's super convenient! 

It's strange but, for those of you who are source port developers who are observing this poll, I'd discourage you from making any incomplete conclusions based on these statistics. I feel that people's preferred port has little to do with what is actually best, it just resembles a level of comfort that people want in their doom experience, and that will always differ from person to person. Somehow just having popularity makes it that much easier to keep it, whether you fuck up your port or make it amazing.

Odamex for example, has every reason to be just as awesome as anything else, it just doesn't have the people. It's a great port but as a multiplayer centric thing, it's awfully lonely for reasons that have very little to do with its utility.

im with you @bonnie prboom+ much easier to get up and running how you like it.

id argue g/zdoom suffer from 'feature bloat' in that most people shouldnt need to adjust every setting and putting them all in up/down scrolling pages is a recipe for trouble

I've tried out quite a range of ports- I mainly used Doom Legacy in 2003-05, then mainly Doomsday in 2006-07, then had a foray into Risen3D.  GZDoom has established itself as my main go-to port in the last 5-6 years.

3 hours ago, Decay said:

based on the populations of the zdoom family of ports, the menus are designed to be navigated by the lowest common denominators. if you can't grasp the menus.............................................................................................................................................

Oh? Banded SW Lightmode. Tell me where that is, what it is, what it does, and how the "lowest common denominators" are supposed to find this option, understand it, and know whether or not to use it.

Or can you not grasp the menus?

The cluttered, squished, poorly worded, and mostly undocumented scrolling menus. Compared to prboom+'s simple, easy to understand options in pretty, uncluttered, page-based, well marked, user-friendly menus, most of which don't even need to be bothered with in the first place... which apparently makes them less manageable.

I find ZDoom to be relatively easy to set up, I have no idea why other people find it hard to understand but I guess it's all about personal preference. 

2 hours ago, bonnie said:

poorly worded

How exactly? Can you provide an example?

Zandronum.  Doom is more fun with more than one, and it is the most capable multiplayer port out there by a long shot.  Plus, being a modern ZDoom-alike, it's as easy to set up as modern ZDoom too.

If I need vanilla-compatibility, I use Crispy Doom.

I honesty can't see how anyone could think any menu perfect, and PrBoom+ seems to have it's share of feature creep as well. (I get shadows, but why health bars?) I mean there are always nits to pick if one wishes. Also, could a community ever agree on what the defaults should be without alienation? (Which is for the rich by the way.) The only thing that truly annoys me about the Eternity Engine is that, as far as I know, autorun is not in the menus.

All we need is good documentation and a search feature. That's what makes power-user software awesome. But is it really power-user, since most things with that level of customization tends to be more popular in the parts I frequent. Although In high school I mentioned how what I want in games is a feature-full options menu to which I got a response in the vain of that's just the developers being lazy.

Also, GZDoom has added so much to the experience in the last year alone, it truly is an amazing engine. I just prefer the way EE feels, how it handles. I really don't know what it is, but I love EE. However, I do not think onetruesourceportism is a good color on anyone, but I can see both sides on various engines here and I think the developers should do what they think best, for better or worse. It's what I'd do, and that's what makes them worth chancing.

2 hours ago, bonnie said:

Oh? Banded SW Lightmode. Tell me where that is, what it is, what it does, and how the "lowest common denominators" are supposed to find this option, understand it, and know whether or not to use it.

 

Or can you not grasp the menus?

 

The cluttered, squished, poorly worded, and mostly undocumented scrolling menus. Compared to prboom+'s simple, easy to understand options in pretty, uncluttered, page-based, well marked, user-friendly menus, most of which don't even need to be bothered with in the first place... which apparently makes them less manageable.

The lowest common denominator wouldn't care about sw light mode, they care more about their sound, mouse and key settings. The only area where it would get confusing is the display settings but everything else is self-explanatory. All the kids that play zandro seem to find their settings rather easy...

If menus like Player Setup and Gameplay are too difficult to understand, it's pretty much a personal dilemma.

3 hours ago, bonnie said:

Oh? Banded SW Lightmode. Tell me where that is, what it is, what it does, and how the "lowest common denominators" are supposed to find this option, understand it, and know whether or not to use it.

 

Or can you not grasp the menus?

 

The cluttered, squished, poorly worded, and mostly undocumented scrolling menus. Compared to prboom+'s simple, easy to understand options in pretty, uncluttered, page-based, well marked, user-friendly menus, most of which don't even need to be bothered with in the first place... which apparently makes them less manageable.

Most of the default settings for GZDoom and Zandronum are pretty much ready to go for newcomers, since the only thing most newcomers would focus on is their video settings and/or renderer and obviously their controls. I do admit that they can be confusing for people who don't really know much about Doom, but then again, some people might test various settings on their own and see if they like it or not. Even then, you can pretty much customize ZDoom-related ports with minimal changes seeing that you don't really need to touch most of the settings anyways to play some Doom.

GZDoom.

I used to toy with different source ports about ten years ago after getting tired of running Doom on DOSBox. I started using Doomsday/jDoom back in 2009 or so, amazed by its gorgeous visuals. At the same time, I also played with Skulltag just for some Super Mario mod that I wanted to play from time to time. I found out about ZDoom as well so I downloaded it, but rarely used it. Eventually, I got bored of Doomsday's minimal modding capability so I kept using Skulltag until it got discontinued in late 2010. At last, I got into GZDoom since it was a blend of the better visuals from Doomsday (specially in recent years) and the mod support of ZDoom. Never looked back ever since.

I use the ZDL launcher to load files into GZDoom rather comfortably.

4 hours ago, Uni said:

How exactly? Can you provide an example?

Reread my post and you'll find one.

3 hours ago, PaquoCastor said:

Also, could a community ever agree on what the defaults should be without alienation?

Yeah, pretty easy: as vanilla as possible and let the user choose from there.

3 hours ago, PaquoCastor said:

PrBoom+ seems to have it's share of feature creep as well. (I get shadows, but why health bars?)

Sure, but it definitely doesn't have it anywhere near the scale of zdoom ports. As for the health bars, they can be useful for debugging/testing purposes to see the average remaining health of monsters in certain areas after fights.

2 hours ago, GuyNamedErick said:

Most of the default settings for GZDoom and Zandronum are pretty much ready to go for newcomers

No, that's the point: they aren't. Like at all. It's might be obvious from the get-go that the default settings are somewhat of a problem to some users, which will alert them that perhaps the settings need to be tinkered with more, which of course leads to them getting lost in the poorly designed menus. Other users who don't realize this though...

2 hours ago, GuyNamedErick said:

Even then, you can pretty much customize ZDoom-related ports with minimal changes seeing that you don't really need to touch most of the settings anyways to play some Doom.

Sure, you can play without many changes to play something that vaguely resembles Doom, or you could spent eons trying to work your way through all of the options, slowly bringing it back to a Doom-like state. OR you could always play something like Chocolate Doom or Prboom+ and actually be able to play Doom with minimal changes.

The point I'm making is that you shouldn't force some watered-down meme version of Doom on newcomers. Just let them play something vanilla like chocolate or DOS or something almost entirely vanilla with added features like Prboom+. Let them experience Doom the way it was when it was released, don't force your own way of playing on them because you think decals, low quality sound, and choppiness in a game from 1993 is more fun. Let them play true, authentic Doom in a user-friendly, customizable sourceport like Prboom+ (or fully vanilla with chocolate) and then let them branch out from there, unless they wanna play Brutal Doom first or something. If they play one level and hate it, so be it. At least that way they actually hate Doom, 1993 ID Software's release of Doom, bugs, quirks and all, and not just some vague resemblance of it.

Maybe they'll like mods or zdoom ports, maybe they won't. Let them decide and figure that out for themselves.