Favorite Source Port? (Multiple Choice Poll)

15 minutes ago, Lila Feuer said:

Took ten plus years but glad to know it's finally fixed!
 

What can you do if nobody reports it for all the time...? I never noticed because I don't like playing the Cleric.

8 minutes ago, Graf Zahl said:

 

What can you do if nobody reports it for all the time...? I never noticed because I don't like playing the Cleric.

 

 

I don't have to like it either, if I manage a source port that supports [x] games I should be trying things anyway, but that's just me.

52 minutes ago, Lila Feuer said:

I don't have to like it either, if I manage a source port that supports [x] games I should be trying things anyway, but that's just me.

Sorry but that's easier said than done. And I should know.

It's more difficult, sometimes considerably more so, when investigating issues about games or features you don't like and aren't familiar with the game's intricacies either, this is how bugs and problems slip in and go unnoticed, or because they use different configurations and forget to check something, and the list goes on. From a user's perspective it's easy to blame the devs...

This is also further complicated by users who refuse to report bugs too. I am sure many bugs were there for years but went unfixed because no one bothered to report them, despite someone, somewhere learning about their existence. Case on point, the floor damage in Heretic, I've talked to people who claimed that existed for well over a decade but it wasn't fixed until this year (or 2019?) because the people who noticed it never bothered to file reports. Or the incorrect Lost Soul behavior. I can think of something much more recent too.

My source port of choice is GZDoom because I like the way it controls. With PRBoom+/GLBoom+/Eternity, I can never get the mouse sensitivity just right. It's always either too sluggish or way too sensitive. My second favorite source port is Crispy Doom because it controls about as well as GZDoom. It's also my main test port when I'm making my own wads.

I use gzdoom for videos and casual play, but I use crispy doom for speedrunning. The uncapped framerate option in crispy doom is horrible tho, it has such a bad input lag, so I just keep it off and enjoy my 35 fps :)

gzdoom because im not a vanilla basic bitch  

GZDoom unless I'm testing compatibility for a map I'm making. Always mouse look, no autoaim and always run, too. None of that infinite height bullshit, either.

2 hours ago, Percy T said:

I use gzdoom for videos and casual play, but I use crispy doom for speedrunning. The uncapped framerate option in crispy doom is horrible tho, it has such a bad input lag, so I just keep it off and enjoy my 35 fps :)

Try turning off VSync. 

GZDoom forever! Graf Zahl rocks!

Unsure about what GZDoom actually stands for....

but for me, it will always stand for Graf Zahl's Doom

20 hours ago, seed said:

Sorry but that's easier said than done. And I should know.

For a start, and this is just off the top of my head, you can use the console to give yourself all weapons and summon monsters, the second part not so much in a vanilla environment but it certainly cuts down on the work involved so you wouldn't have to play the whole game as a character you don't like, just to see how something functions on the player's end.

8 minutes ago, Lila Feuer said:

For a start, and this is just off the top of my head, you can use the console to give yourself all weapons and summon monsters, the second part not so much in a vanilla environment but it certainly cuts down on the work involved so you wouldn't have to play the whole game as a character you don't like, just to see how something functions on the player's end.

Doesn't help when you're unaware of the fact that something is wrong, which was my point...

Sorry, Lila Feuer, but that's classic armchair advice you were giving here.

Where I work there's one guy whose sole responsibility is to think up new test cases and run our software through all sorts of ludicrous scenarios. But he's doing nothing else the entire day, 5 days a week, 52 weeks a year minus vacation.

But for something that's ultimately a hobby project on a limited time budget with too few people working on it that's totally impossible, even on a smaller scale. We inevitably have to depend on users to report when they see something wrong.

Graf Zahl doom for mods

Crispy doom for vanilla shit, can i run strife in crispy doom sourceport?

1 hour ago, Boomslang said:

Crispy doom for vanilla shit, can i run strife in crispy doom sourceport?

I think only Heretic and Hexen can be played in Crispy alongside Doom. I'm unaware of Strife ever receiving such treatment.

4 hours ago, HAK3180 said:

 

Try turning off VSync. 

I did, now its super wobbly and distorted. I prefer 35 fps anyways.

for vanilla stuff I'd say prboom+

GZDoom is my go-to, but i keep Chocolate, Crispy and PRBoom+ handy (especially for testing map compatibility). I use Chocolate most when I'm using my laptop unplugged cause the battery life sucks

PRBoom+.  If Crispy added higher-res support, it would be Crispy.  But it won't so it isn't. :)

For those experiencing input latency with Crispy, set vsync off and uncap the frame rate in Crispy itself, then go to NVidia control panel and set Low Latency Mode to Ultra, and force vsync to Fast Sync. That should help.

Another big help for this would be if get an exclusive fullscreen option, as borderless windowed fullscreen fucking sucks. Increases latency so much. It's a nasty method, I hate it.

It seems to be a favoured these days for games and I just can't understand why. Exclusive should always be the only way to go.

I've really only tried the source ports from the ZDoom family.... I'm gonna have to say LZDoom, because I can play a lot of wads and not have to deal with "OpenGL needs to be updated" lol. 

I wanna give Chocolate Doom a shot though for that vanilla experience.

16 hours ago, seed said:

 

I think only Heretic and Hexen can be played in Crispy alongside Doom. I'm unaware of Strife ever receiving such treatment.

damn, oh well gzdoom it is

holy shit i forgot how crazy high rez the game looks in gz.

I like to play with PrBoom+ because I usually don't look for fancy features if I'm playing Doom 1&2 vanilla, but of course you kinda need any of the ZDoom ports if you want to play any advanced mod these days. I just compiled Odamex but I haven't been able to play on any server yet, but it does seem pretty solid!

To all my Chocolate Doom players:

Friendly reminder that the Doom source code was released over 20 years ago, so you can download the Doom engine for free: https://github.com/Doom-Utils/iwad-patches/tree/master/vanilla-engine

If you want to run Doom in DOSBox, here's a beginner guide:

-To run Doom2, the files you need to download from the above link are: Doom2.exe and Setup.exe. (use version 1.9, the latest version)

-Put those two files in a folder called C:\Doom or D:\Doom or whatever.
(You actually don't need setup.exe, all that does is create your config file; you could just copy/paste the config file from somewhere else, but whatever, let's assume you don't have default.cfg file and need to create one with setup.exe)
-Copy/paste Doom2.wad into this folder as well.

(If you want to run Ultimate Doom then you need Doom.exe and Doom.wad. You do not need to download setup.exe twice, as all versions of Doom will use the same default.cfg file)

-Download DOSBox. I prefer DOSBox-pixel-perfect because it comes with integer scaling so I will link that: https://github.com/bladeSk/DOSBox-pixel-perfect/releases/tag/r4019.3

-Copy/paste the DOSBox files in your folder, C:\Doom or whatever (you only need dosbox.exe and SDL.dll)

(We can run DOSBox without a config file, but, for the sake of convenience, let's create a config file for DOSBox that corrects Doom's aspect ratio. Doom was designed to be stretched vertically 20% by the monitor so we will add aspect ratio correction to our DOSBox config file.)

-Right-click inside your folder C:\Doom and create a new text file

-Rename the text file dosbox.conf

-Right-click dosbox.conf and edit it

-Copy/paste this code into dosbox.conf:

-Double-click dosbox.exe to run it

-ALT+ENTER to toggle fullscreen on/off
-It should automatically go to C:\Doom (The reason DOSBox does not recommend you mount C:\ drive is because you can stupidly type something like del system32 and delete your system files. Don't do that. I personally have Doom on my D:\ drive. If you want to do the same you can, just change C: to D: where applicable in dosbox.conf)

-Type setup and it will launch the setup program. Leave the sound values to their default values, with the exception of the number of voices, set that to the maximum, 8. Here is a video on youtube if you want a more in-depth guide on how to use setup.exe, skip the first 4 minutes or so since it's just the game installing:

-Remember to set your keyboard keys for WASD
-Select exit and launch

-????
-PROFIT!!!

-To launch Doom2 without using setup.exe (since you don't need it anymore), double-click dosbox.exe and type doom2

I am a techlet so if I messed something up pls no bully.

I am aware that the DOSBox.conf file can be further configured. If I missed something important pls met me know and I will update. I tried to keep this as basic as possible so I intentionally left out the code to automatically launch in full-screen for example

More info: if you want to run Plutonia, you need to download the Final Doom Doom2.exe (use the id anthology edition if you don't know the difference between the two). Put the Final Doom doom2.exe in C:\Plutonia and put Plutonia.wad in there. If you want to run TNT.wad, put that in a separate folder, such as C:\TNT, with the Final Doom doom2.exe present (doom2.exe with automatically launch plutonia.wad if tnt.wad and plutonia.wad are in the same folder, even with the -iwad tnt.wad parameter). You can copy/paste the dosbox files into the new folder, just change the dosbox.conf file to look for C:\plutonia by changing the final line of code from "cd doom" to "cd plutonia"

How to turn on "always run":
Doom did not originally come with an always run option, but because of a bug ("feature"), you can edit default.cfg and set joyb_speed to 29 and this will make you always run

Edit: It seems OP abandoned the thread, so rather than bumping the thread, I will do a stealth edit. I failed to answer OP's question. My favorite port is Woof because it can run virtually anything, it sounds great (different ports have different sound code, and, for whatever reason, when comparing how ports sound with pitch-shifting enabled, which is how I play, Woof sounds better than the rest IMO), and it lets you run maps with Doom's original 320x200 resolution (aspect corrected to 320x240 by default) AND it has an option for integer scaling. It lacks the many cool extra features of Crispy Doom, so for limit-removing and vanilla stuff I still use Crispy, but I still say Woof is my favorite since, for example, I can run Valiant with it in Doom's original resolution and integer scaling, which no other port can do. I recently learned about the Eternity engine and that, similar to ZDoom, it can display Valiant's custom episodes while still looking faithful to Doom's original look, but it lacks integer scaling so by default Woof wins

ZDoom or Dosbox with novert. 

Nothing against GZDoom, I use it occasionally, it's just so rare that I would play a newer mod designed for mouselook. 

Haven't even tried the Boom family to be honest. 

PrBoom+ is my favorite - It allows me to play half of the wads I have without any lag or slowdown.

GZDoom is my second - It has a lot of customization and I can play all the wads I have on my PC. It does stutter a few times and if I update my current version to the newest one - it will break some of the wads that I have (the newer version broke Memoirs of Magic, so I'm keeping the old version).

LZDoom is my third - It's a bit more stable than my current GZDoom version, but for some reason It also breaks my old wads (Memoirs of Magic doesn't work correctly on the newer version of LZDoom)

Crispy Doom is my fourth - It's a fine port, but I'm not someone who values vanilla accuracy.

Chocolate Doom is fine I guess, but why use it if Crispy Doom exists?

Doom 95 was my first experience with DOOM, I respect that port!

I could never get The Eternity Engine to work on ANY machine that I had! 0/10 - It's poo poo!

Made a tiermaker tier list of doom source ports, here you go, go wild 

https://tiermaker.com/create/doom-source-ports-480529

Edit: Meant to put ZDoom in A tier, not B.

Edit 2 from the future: what the hell is this tier list? 

eh, sure.

S - fantastic, almost daily use from me

A - Also get a lot of mileage out of these

B - Useful for their niches but not perfect

C - Don't care

D - No

So this is only for ports specifically, not the original EXEs and Doom95? There's also a few others missing such as Legacy and K8vavoom.

For nostalgia's sake and simply because I'm a bit of a devotee, I have to put vanilla at the top. In reality though, all of these source ports offer far more for most Doomers than vanilla does. They're really just ranked by how often I use them, truth be told. All the ports I didn't include are ones I simply have never / no longer use:

I don't think anything I know of deserves the dreaded D or F rankings, not even Doom95. They all play Doom well, immediately making them all "at least good".

Since it's relevant here are some old threads about people's favorite source ports, just to help get a broader idea of community opinions:

Mixing it up