Which sourceport do you use the most and why?

I use primarily DSDA-Doom because it runs smoothly, and it looks best in my eyes: it creates an illusion of being vanilla without actual 1993 antiquities. Most of the wads I play are either limit-removing or Boom/MBF compatible, anyway.

GZDoom I use for wads that DSDA cannot run. 

Personally I don't care much about what ports people use. There are however a few things about ports I dislike, in no particular order.

• Closed source.
• People that complain about something not working in their favorite port, and blame it on the project, not the port.
• Absurd definitions of vanilla-compatibility.
• Ports breaking vanilla effects / design tricks (deep water etc).
• Self-appointed groups declaring port/feature/implementation so and so is a standard, and that others have to follow this.
• Features/changes that make the game easier/different and players comparing something done with these changes on compared with stuff done in other executables without such changes.
• Boom in general due to its history and its many bugs that we still have in many code bases.
• Disallowing or not supporting important features found in the original games.
• Ports not showing ENDOOM screens in any way or rendering them badly.

All of these are however just what I think, and I don't mind people disagreeing with me. I might even be wrong about some of the points. I get to choose and use the stuff I want and so do you. Don't shove it down my throat that I have to do something because of a specific port.

I also dislike when people are judging maps made for a certain limit to maps without these limits or complaining about features that add compatibility. And on that note i dislike how boom-features are presented as doom-features and the lack of clarification about this in wikis.

PrBoom+. It can run almost everything I care to play (I never really got into those WADs that are exclusive to other source ports, except Heartland), and it does so with perfect accuracy to classic Doom. It also runs well, which I can't say for ports like GZDoom. Seriously, GZ had a stroke when I tried to play Eviternity MAP16 on a pretty high end PC. GZDoom used to be my port of choice, but when it shat itself and died upon my attempt to play Holy Hell, I made the switch. I used to use Crispy Doom as well, until they removed quicksave confirmation.

7 hours ago, BedrockCastle said:

PrBoom+. It can run almost everything I care to play (I never really got into those WADs that are exclusive to other source ports, except Heartland), and it does so with perfect accuracy to classic Doom. It also runs well, which I can't say for ports like GZDoom. Seriously, GZ had a stroke when I tried to play Eviternity MAP16 on a pretty high end PC. GZDoom used to be my port of choice, but when it shat itself and died upon my attempt to play Holy Hell, I made the switch. I used to use Crispy Doom as well, until they removed quicksave confirmation.

Prboom is far from perfect, but it is really good. It will sometimes render things wrong, but it's not a big issue. It has an acceptable level of compatibility, but it is not as good as Chocolate Doom is.

ZDoom 2.8.1, i use it cause my tablet is trash at running GZDoom lol

I mostly use GZDoom. LZDoom for my laptop.

I use GZDoom for alot of modding-related doom playthroughs, but recently I've been using Chocolate/Crispy Doom for more vanilla-esque playthroughs. Over the years I developed a philosophy that the original 320x200 and 640x400 resolutions were suited for the pixelated, blocky levels of the original, and so I've decided to embrace this with the vanilla source-ports. When you deviate to a higher resolution then everything looks ugly, and because these games were designed with lower resolutions in mind they play best with those resolutions. Besides this I've been digging the recent raytraced-port at 200p, which looks amazing.

I've switched back and forth a bit, but Woof! is the sourceport I have been using most often now. Chunky, easy to set up and use, can run REKKRSL as an IWAD, and very smooth performance-wise. The chunky look is somehow more pleasing to my eyes than OpenGL, where everything seems dark and muddled. Anything Woof! can't run, DSDA-Doom and GZDoom will, so I only need those 3 to play practically any Doom game or clone.

On 4/10/2022 at 5:21 AM, zokum said:

Prboom is far from perfect, but it is really good. It will sometimes render things wrong, but it's not a big issue. It has an acceptable level of compatibility, but it is not as good as Chocolate Doom is.

That is accurate. I should have said "near-perfect" or something of that sort.

Source port vanilla compatibility tend to fall into two camps: Handle everything in the iwads correctly. Handle everything the original executable could handle. I tend to fall into the latter camp, since I consider things like deep water and other effects as important.

I once saw a post on youtube (i think) where someone complained about deep water in AV. The poster said that this effect shouldn't have been used in this map set since by that time GL ports were out and they do not handle this effect well.

People have wildly different ideas about what a mapper/port should conform to, and there is no perfect port that has both features to run more complex port based wads and also handle all of the weirdness/effects possible with the original executables.

I tend to use GZDoom the most.

I love playing vanilla, so I use Screempals and the vanilla essence plugin for GZDoom to create a very vanilla-esque experience, even though there are certainly more authentic ways to play vanilla.

My goto port is Crispy Doom. And I'll use PRBoom+ or Eternity maps that require them and last, I'll use GZDoom but I tend to avoid playing maps that need it

GZDoom because I simply must use Beautiful Doom

DSDA-Doom. I used to love Woof, but DSDA-Doom spoils me with all the QOL features. I simply can't go back at this point.

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I keep Zandronum around for when I wanna revisit WhatDaFuck.

I'm a chocolate-doom kind a guy. 

Edit: oh yeah, why. Well, I'm mapping within vanilla constraints, and I like to play those kinds of maps too. 

DSDA-Doom, for two reasons. 1: Rewind, 2: The extended HUD that sits above the regular HUD.