What compatibility options do you play doom with?

Do you prefer strictly vanilla compatibility or do you have no regard for original compatibility? I'm curious how people play doom these days, whether they're playing the original game or some new fancy looking megawad.

I always play with the same settings unless the wad requires jumping/free look. Otherwise I play with zdoom's default settings until recently, where I've turned off secret/monster count in the automap as well as show key doors, because it's cheating (hey, that's what zdoom says about it), but I'm not about to turn infinitely tall actors back on again (which is also cheating to have it off). I should probably turn it on while playing through the original IWADS, but just can't be bothered messing with compat settings all the time.  

I knew this topic will pop up eventually after the last couple of posts in the Sigil thread :D.

As for me, I prefer it the vanilla™ way (no jumping/crouching, freelook, etc), unless the author of whatever I'm currently playing explicitly states otherwise. I'm mostly a purist when it comes to video games, so quality of life improvements or bug fixes aside, I like it old school or default. Unless you're Elder Scrolls.

I always follow the intended compatibility of the wad. For example, If I play Eviternity, I'd play it on PrBoom+ with -complevel 11; infinitely tall actors ON. And If I play Skulldash, I'd play it on GZDoom with default compatibility; infinitely tall actors OFF.

Whatever the hell readme states or implies.

5 hours ago, antares031 said:

I always follow the intended compatibility of the wad. For example, If I play Eviternity, I'd play it on PrBoom+ with -complevel 11; infinitely tall actors ON. And If I play Skulldash, I'd play it on GZDoom with default compatibility; infinitely tall actors OFF.

This as well. Infinitely tall actors are just encompassed in the whole array of tweaks a compatibility level implies. It's not really about whether I prefer them or not.

7 hours ago, antares031 said:

I always follow the intended compatibility of the wad. For example, If I play Eviternity, I'd play it on PrBoom+ with -complevel 11; infinitely tall actors ON. And If I play Skulldash, I'd play it on GZDoom with default compatibility; infinitely tall actors OFF.

This. I usually don't like infinite actors on but I respect the rules(intended complevel) of a wad more than caring about infinite actors.

I always play with infinite tall actors off and that's the ways I likes it,

Depends on what I am playing but I prefer infinitely tall actors in the vast majority of cases.

Also GZDoom is the only port I use freelook in. I never use jump/crouch unless required. I also prefer holding a key down to run unless it's GZDoom.

Authenticity is nice and all, but infinitely tall actors are just a pain and I'd rather not have to deal with being unable to jump off a ledge due to an imp standing far beneath me.

I usually have infinitely tall actors on despite using mouselook and crouching/jumping enabled. Just personal preference I guess.

considering i'm a godless hipster who plays Chocolate doom/heretic/hexen unless i'm absolutely not able to because of a pwad, it's pretty much a matter of the fact that i don't use zdoom or prboom very often.

It depends what the wad’s read me file says. I don’t care much one way or the other so I picked option 3. It’s cool how evenly spread the votes are!

Zdoom, Doom strict with unlimited lost souls from the pain elementals and also Prboom-plus -complevel 9.

I just play with PrBoom+ and use the default settings for practically every wad unless it's a Zdoom wad or the readme states what complevel I should use.

I play on GlBoom+ with the -complevel parameter corresponding to format the PWAD is in. If Zdoom functionalities are required, then I use GZDoom with default compatibility. I picked the second option ("depends on what I'm playing but I prefer infinitely tall actors"). That being said, in my experience Zdoom-based PWADs worth playing are far more uncommon than vanilla/limit-removing/boom PWADs worth playing.

I really hate infinite tall actors. If the map is designed with them in mind (used to block secrets) than that's kinda ok you almost always need to use the legit path to get the secret anyway. If it is balanced around getting blocked over and over by shit you can't see then fuck playing the map. 

@Pegg If they provide a rocket launcher, now is the time to start emptying into the walls and cheese anyone wanting to gnaw at your heels. 😛

Honestly, if I had to live without infinite height / Lost Souls blocked by pickups / Z-axis splash damage abuse I could if I didn't have a choice. But I'm more offended by static objects blocking my and enemy's projectiles.

I tend to favor Chocolate Doom when I'm just playing the original games and I tend to favor maintaining the original mechanics. If I'm playing mods or limit breaking IWADs, that's a different story. It really just depends on what I'm playing and the way it was designed.

Nowadays infinite tall always

I prefer vanilla compatibility as well so i assume that means having infinitely tall actors on. Lately i've been using the GZDoom source port for ease of use and i like how the mouse movement feels (also no screen tearing with VSync on & no mouse delay is a major plus for me). I typically prefer software mode but i'll use hardware mode when it's needed, especially if i need to look up/down in a WAD.

For IWADS and 90's PWADs i've been using either the "Doom-Strict" or the "Doom" setting. For modern WADs that don't specify i just use the default setting as i'm not really sure what to set it at. Also, i know that some PWADs can automatically use the correct compat settings (unless that's only for .pk3's?).

I'm used to w/e the stock settings in Pr+/GLBoom+ are as i was using that source port for quite a while before i switched back to GZ (i still use it from time to time; same with Choco/Crispy). I never really changed the in game menu compat settings (i do the -complevel setting via the ZDL "extra command line arguments" section) so i guess i'm used to infinitely tall actors? Either way i'd do w/e the textfile says anyways.

i mostly play vanilla and boom maps so it doesn't really come up! but when I played through jom5 recently-ish I just resigned myself to having gzdoom take me on its wild ride, I sorta stop having an opinion cos the port feels slightly hostile to how I think about the game

I bet even if Sigil's a little messed up cos of innocuous zdoom-isms slowly changing the way we relate to the game, someone'll still find a route through it in prboom+ lol. i bet someone will beat it in .exe and the route will include times when you have to look away from definite VPOs

When I first got into playing wads a few years ago it was with GZdoom's default settings which had infinite height disabled. I played everything that way but then after a while I started to think it was cheating. Over the last year I've switched to Boom->Strict settings in GZdoom with infinite height on to give a more "faithful" gameplay experience. It forced me to change up strategies on slaughter wads in particular. Though for intense ones with huge environments and seemingly endless flying enemies, I've been tempted to disable the infinite height once more. There's nothing like dying because you got stuck on a Lost Soul that was a mile up in the air, totally out of sight, and it's something that happens a lot. Asides from potentially disabling infinite height, I still prefer to play with the original/traditional auto-aim, as well as no mouse look and no jumping unless the wad absolutely requires it.

My preferred way to play is with the latest PrBoom+ (not GLBoom) with the appropriate complevel, if I'm lazy I'll just leave it at 9 (Boom) compatibility. So this means very vanilla settings. But sometimes it's fun to use mods and all the modern stuff with GZDoom and just fool around, or play zdoom maps. Infinitely tall actors are not a problem for me after using it all the time since the very beginnings. I like how it makes things a bit trickier if you're fighting a horde of cacos up in the air and have to evade monsters on the ground at the same time.

Code that turns infinite heights off is easy for most cases, but it has some diabolically-complicated cases that ports rarely get completely right. Imagine a moving plat with multiple items (or monsters) stacked on it. If the plat is moving up, you must sort the stack by z-height. The plat pushes the first item which must push the second item, etc., and the top-most item must stop the plat if it hits the ceiling, otherwise the items get stuck within one another. This is slow, complex code, and those difficult cases rarely occur in a game, so ports don't always consider those possibilities. But it really sucks when monsters get stuck, because they were pushed by a plat. All of this is avoided when original, infinitely-tall mode is on.

Having said that, it can be fun to have multiple levels of cacos coming towards you all at once! Doom II Map08 becomes quite interesting. I play either way.