Favorite Source Port? (Multiple Choice Poll)

@AlexMax

Sure. But you have been saying things like "GZDoom focuses on mod features and doesn't offer single-player improvements" and "sometimes you just want to play Doom" as if GZDoom is a travesty of the original. Or that newer versions offered nothing. I disagreed and I politely argued against these statements.

Now you say you don't need a GL renderer or a port like GZDoom for 99% of the things you play. Now this is something that makes way more sense and I can't argue against.

2 hours ago, VGA said:

@AlexMax

 

Sure. But you have been saying things like "GZDoom focuses on mod features and doesn't offer single-player improvements" and "sometimes you just want to play Doom" as if GZDoom is a travesty of the original. Or that newer versions offered nothing. I disagreed and I politely argued against these statements.

 

Now you say you don't need a GL renderer or a port like GZDoom for 99% of the things you play. Now this is something that makes way more sense and I can't argue against.

It's not a travesty by any means.  But I still think it's a fair assessment to say that it's not focus of the port.  There is a long distance between "bad at it" and "not as much of a priority."

I guess what I'm trying to say is, people shouldn't need a hall pass or a doctor's note just because they don't want to use the port with the most on-paper features.  Feature glut should not be an automatic "I win" button.  I put Crispy in S-tier for a reason, because it has a specific niche and executes it perfectly.  If all I had on my hard drive was Crispy and GZ I'd still use Crispy for vanilla content.

13 hours ago, Spectre01 said:

GZDoom is still very much ahead in OpenGL rendering, and with the palette tonemap, I have no reason to use the much slower Software renderer in it.

Even better, now that its backend is in sync with that of Raze, it can use a Build styled palette - aka no more washed out BS colors in Hexetic because no COLORMAP.

But this may turn out to be poison for you though - because yes, it has its technical limitations. It simply cannot use texture anisotropy, and no texture filtering. You could say it's Software but in OpenGL that way, but hey.

I phrased it that way because you said multiple times you're allergic to aliasing. You could try mitigating it with MSAA, but that's the most you can do. I should ask how far did the implementation get in GZDoom though, but I seem to recall it's functional.

9 minutes ago, AlexMax said:

It's not a travesty by any means.  But I still think it's a fair assessment to say that it's not focus of the port.  There is a long distance between "bad at it" and "not as much of a priority."

 

I guess what I'm trying to say is, people shouldn't need a hall pass or a doctor's note just because they don't want to use the port with the most on-paper features.  Feature glut should not be an automatic "I win" button.  I put Crispy in S-tier for a reason, because it has a specific niche and executes it perfectly.

Now with this, I can agree.

But it took a few posts to clarify that up, most previous comments always came off as "GZDoom is not good for vanilla Doom" to me.

GZDoom is fine for vanilla. But, there is way better options out there when it comes to that. 

But, assuming somebody want to use only one source port for everything, you can do way worse than GZDoom in this regard. Still is a wonderful sourceport no matter how we look at it.

On 11/27/2020 at 8:29 PM, seed said:

Pro-tip: Not even hardcore Doomers are obsessed with faithfulness and accuracy.

On 11/28/2020 at 8:00 PM, seed said:

I suppose it all comes down to what everyone seeks in their experience, and what I seek is playing the game smoothly, I no longer have much concern for demo compat and the likes of it, since I'm not a speedrunner, I don't give a damn about multiplayer at all, and nowadays it's faithful enough gameplay wise. I switch to other ports depending on my needs, but it covers what I need for now.

It's fine to be casual and enjoy the expanded hi-fi advanced features of geezy in every day dooming... but isn't it disingenuous to give "pro-tips" and speak for the hardcore?

On 11/27/2020 at 2:29 PM, seed said:

Pro-tip: Not even hardcore Doomers are obsessed with faithfulness and accuracy.

Since it's been a while since I last made myself unpopular, I'm gonna cut in here, because this post has been linked to me several times over in last few days, so here we go...

Let's start with "hardcore Doomers"...
I can't think of doomers more hardcore than the people who spend hundreds or even thousands of attempts at recording a demo for a single map, or even runs of full megaWADs... Basically, speedrunners... Then there are other hardcore doomers, like the very people who play hard slaughter maps or challenge maps - both of which being subgenres which depend heavily on the game-behaviour the mapper in question was aiming for...

Also, what's gonna happen if one of said speedrunners uses the wrong source port - or in case of PrB+ the wrong complevel? Their runs gets uploaded to the DSDArchive (if they're lucky), where it will be listed in the "other" category... Why is that? It's because the hardcore Doomers - who you implied to know so much about - do actually care a whole lot about faithfulness to the original game's behaviour - or at the least they care about using the complevel which the mapper in question targeted...

 

On 11/27/2020 at 2:29 PM, seed said:

I used to be a "light" purist too, until I came to the conclusion that it's an unhealthy obsession that only narrows the horizon of the player and leads nowhere. GZDoom's "unfaithfulness" is also overblown nowadays, most gameplay-related issues have been rectified. The only notable remaining differences are the RNG - which Boom also altered, but was likely tweaked to stay closer to vanilla -, and some tricks and quirks are harder to perform in it, such as void glides. Bug fixes don't count.

Okay... So now we're swinging from "hardcore doomers" to "purists". You know what..? Fine by me...

So let's talk about purists for a moment. When, where, and most importantly why on earth do you think you get to judge purists - as in: people who happen to like what they like - as obsessive to an unhealthy degree? That's one thing I'd like for you to explain in no uncertain terms, preferably.

Also, perhaps the entire idea of purism is to, you know, stick to what's the most familiar and true to this game's actual roots. So, why even make that a talking point to begin with? And who's to say it needs to lead anywhere? If people wanted a different experience they wouldn't be purists. They don't want or need an experience that leads them anywhere, because they're happy with where they're at... Now go ahead and show me one self-proclaimed purist in this thread who deems the use of ports like GZDoom "unhealthy"... It's possible I missed one when I skimmed over this thread, but nothing of the sort caught my eye thus far...

No, GZDoom's unfaithfulness is not overblown... Not only do players experience the subtle lack of authenticity to varying degrees (regardless of whether or not they're aware of it), mappers have similar problems - be it mikoportals for vanilla format maps, or boom sector scrollers for boom format maps.

Furthermore, your argument assumes that players who download and run GZDoom know what they're looking at when they check the options menu, if they even have a look at compatibility flags to begin with. Sure enough, I can't blame the port for what the player doesn't look at, but it still exacerbates the differences in engine behaviour...

What GZDoom calls "strict vanilla" or "strict boom" is plain and simple not what it says on the tin, because GZDoom is an entirely different game engine that merely tries to "mimic" vanilla behaviour within the boundaries of the very engine that it is. That being said, it is nowhere near as "strict" as it claims to be. It is "strict enough" for the silent majority of players out there - who buy the game on steam and read a tutorial on how to make it run in GZDoom - but those aren't the hardcore doomers you've been talking about earlier...

On 11/27/2020 at 2:29 PM, seed said:

This may have been true in the past when some major changes were made and no compatibility flags were put in place for them, such vertical thrust from explosions and I think the infamous flying physics, but this no longer holds up. If there's anything noteworthy left, it's probably a bug and needs to be reported.

GZDoom had compat flags ever since I first used it, which I believe was version 2.4 years ago, and the validity of said compat flags was the same back then as it is today: Not acceptable as a basis for fair competition in the realms of speedrunning aka "hardcore dooming", and still potentially problematic for certain kinds of maps...

Pro-Tip: Putting "Pro-Tip" in front of something you claim doesn't make it come true for some magical reason...

On 11/27/2020 at 8:29 PM, seed said:

The only notable remaining differences are the RNG - which Boom also altered, but was likely tweaked to stay closer to vanilla -, and some tricks and quirks are harder to perform in it, such as void glides. Bug fixes don't count.

This is also a total mischaracterization of why hardcores or purists stay wary about *zdooms.

The difference in RNG would certainly be a disqualifying factor in competition, but it's perfunctory in regular everyday doom play. The real difference stems from GZDoom's entirely new collision detection and removal of the blockmap. You may call that a "bugfix" and discount it if you wish, but it fundamentally alters the way the game behaves. Classic behaviour does not let you consistently one-shot a mastermind with the bfg, while zdoom not only always destroys a spider, it outright flirts with one-shotting a cyberdemon. The BFG is far more powerful in all situations in Zdoom, no matter how you look at it.

The collision fix is also problematic, because it means mappers create bugs. They stick monsters into narrow non-orthogonal corridors and it works in Zdoom, but results in stuck monsters in any other port. Yes, it means the mapper didn't test their map properly, but we're already talking about a real scenario afflicting all casual players who dare to use not-Zdoom. I have personally caught many such bugs in playtesting, btw.

It's similar to the way mappers got used to Zdoom's "fixed" behaviour where you don't need to tag a linedef/sector pair if the linedef is a boundary of the sector, basically "don't need to tag lifts or switch doors". However when you play such a wad back in non-geezy, the entire map will do a squat (lower tag 0 lmao byeeee) and the game will most likely crash.

Finally, another huge difference in behaviour is Zdoom's expanded hitboxes for larger monsters. This is also a "fix" that allows you to very casually punch out mancos, arachs and even masterminds, something that'd be nigh-impossible in vanilla. Every monster is easier to punch in Zdoom, but it stands out for the larger beasts that "are known" to be off-limits. That is a huge change for hardcores who are the prime users of 'zerked fist, so saying they wouldn't care is ignorance.

@dew I'm pretty sure seed is talking about GZDoom using (Strict) compatibility, which enforces vanilla quirks like blockmap, melee hitboxes, flying physics etc. quite well these days. For casual play, the biggest difference I notice compared to PRBoom+ is bumpy floors are smoother and there is slight air-control when falling. (i.e. It's easier to land on the Mastermind platform when dropping down from where the Soulsphere is in The Crusher.)

6 minutes ago, Spectre01 said:

I'm pretty sure seed is talking about GZDoom using (Strict) compatibility, which enforces vanilla quirks like blockmap, melee hitboxes, flying physics etc. quite well these days.

I'll eat crow and apologize: the strict setting indeed fixes the hitbox issue and the blockmap issue, from a quick test.

The 0 tag is still fixed automatically and leads to backward compatability issues if mappers just assume they don't need to tag "touch" lifts.

6 hours ago, dew said:

 

It's fine to be casual and enjoy the expanded hi-fi advanced features of geezy in every day dooming... but isn't it disingenuous to give "pro-tips" and speak for the hardcore?

That depends on how you look at it. I speak in no-one's name, but perhaps "hardcore" wasn't the right word I was looking for, I was thinking of "people more dedicated and involved in Doom than those simply looking for a way to play it in HD" - no, not something like speedrunners either.

5 hours ago, Nine Inch Heels said:

this post has been linked to me several times over in last few days, so here we go...

Wait, it has? What? How did that come?

I'm not going to say anything about your points since they're all fair and good, I was more curious about this part.

And second person mentioning the "pro-tip" part. People actually took it serious? I certainly hope not.

Crispy is (well, was, before controllers stopped working) by far the best way to play vanilla DOOM in my opinion, and for more advanced wads, GZDoom is still far better than everything else it's not even close.

GZDoom is nice and all of that, but there are still no horizontally moving and rotating 2-sided and 3d floor sectors, and that is fine. Though it could and would be nice to see them in action as some sort of platformer and or puzzle section, or even just carrying entities around as a showcase.

I can understand why some people want Crispy or Chocolate Doom, but I prefer having customization options when needed or wanted.

Eternity seems to be the definitive port for Stacking and Connecting rooms with portals, and I can understand that as well.

Ranked by gameplay fun factor

1. GZDoom 450
2. Unity Port, Prboom+ 2517 (12 01 2021), Eternity Engine 401, Crispy Doom 510

Here you can submit the source ports of doom and what your favourtie one is!

Since I use it all the time, I guess GZDoom.

It's hard to decide. PrBoom-Plus is what I use the most, and Eternity falls barely short of what would be needed for it to become my main source port. And there are also plenty of things I like about Crispy Doom, GZDoom, and Doomsday.

Chocolate if possible. I go up to Prboom or LZDoom as the content demands.

Legacy 2, KBDoom, Fusion, and Thrust.

EE is my waifu!

I love Crispy Doom when I can use it, I feel it's the best marriage of OG Doom compatibility with QoL stuff like freelook, walking over/under monsters (thank Jebus), and of course removing static limits as well as nice floof like colored blood and brightmaps (even if they're hard-coded as far as I'm aware.)  It just looks and plays exactly how I want it to.

If I can't get away with Crispy then I usually use PrBoom+ for Boom-compatible maps, and GZDoom for anything fancier.  If I'm playing the IWADs then I'll play those in Choco Doom, or on my old Win98 PC if I have access to it.

19 minutes ago, StupidBunny said:

I love Crispy Doom when I can use it, I feel it's the best marriage of OG Doom compatibility with QoL stuff like freelook, walking over/under monsters [...]

You have a kind of odd definition of what counts as compatibility :p

GZDoom. It just werks™

ZDaemon

58 minutes ago, BoxY said:

 

You have a kind of odd definition of what counts as compatibility :p

lol yeah I guess compatibility wasn’t the word I was searching for...I guess the opposite if anything, I meant that I like how Crispy holds to the strictures of vanilla Doom’s physics and behaviors and idiosyncrasies while allowing certain gameplay comforts as I mentioned above. It’s a cool design principle well-implemented.

gzdoom

The one that suits my needs best ofc.

GZDoom/DSDA Doom/Crispy.

GZDoom, DSDA-Doom, PrBoom+ um, Eternity Engine.

Chocolate-doom and Prboom-plus, Lzdoom when I want to play with my xbox controller

Not this thing again (also Eternity Engine and GZDoom are the best)

GZdoom.

Just because it can play the most content.