Favorite Source Port? (Multiple Choice Poll)

Csonicgo said:

The plugin system, definitely.

Each game mode (doom, heretic, hexen) is contained in separate libraries (plugins) loaded by doomsday to play the games. In theory, perhaps other game modules could be loaded with no modification to the base code.

This is smart insofar as they are thinking of adding support for other like Doom64 and dukenukem3D AFAIK,unless they have changed their minds Also some opengl goodness like Dtex, model shinyness,etc.
But this is not a port I like that much.

I find Chocolate-Doom's 320x200 resolution (or is 320x240?.. well whatever) doesn't bug me so much. Probably because this LCD monitor of mine has fuckin' awesome scaling capabilities. Anyway, I think ZDoom at 640x480 suffices, honestly. Increasing the resolution does nothing for making it look better. The only reason I use GZDoom is for the smoother lighting (though sometimes it looks better to me with the original lighting.. depends on the map i guess.)

Most texutre/model packs for more graphically enhanced doom engines are so inconsistent or poorly done that they just end up looking silly.
Granted, there was a pack that added a grainy detail texture over the originals. I don't remember who made it or where it's from, but it was pretty nice.

The only thing JDoom ever did that I like was the awesome particle effects. So badass. Though I've found that the latest version doesn't have the same effects.

In the end though, I play doom for doom's gameplay, not it's eye candy.

Mike.Reiner said:

I think ZDoom at 640x480 suffices,

That also depends on the monitor. If you got a CRT that shows visible scan lines on low resolution it doesn't suffice anymore. My monitor only becomes tolerable at 800x600.

Before anyone asks, yes, I've read through at least the first few pages of this forum.

I have several different things that I want to do with the Doom engine, so that's why I figure multiple may be necessary.

- Play Doom/Doom2 single player. I've tried both OpenGL and the Software renderer, and I'm still on the fence. I like the classic look of software, but the distortion (from looking up and down) sort of bothers me. Same with mouselook. I like it because it makes it more playable, but keyboard only reminds me of my first days playing it.

- Play other id tech 1 games. Really only Hexen and Heretic. Same thing about OpenGL applies, I only made this a separate thing because I've heard some ports play Doom really well but won't play Hexen/Heretic.

- Play all of the above online. Specifically with friends, not so much otherwise.

Can anyone make recommendations for ports to use or check out for each task?

Also, sort of an aside, are there multiple versions of the WAD files for the different games, or when people say "1.9" are they talking specifically about the software? I have the WAD files that I've gotten from the base install off of all of my disks.

Edit 3: I found the answer to this in the Wiki, checked my md5sums and it seems everything's up to date.

Edit: I just wanted to clarify that I know of many out there, I'm just a bit overwhelmed by the choices. PrBoom, PrBoom+, Doomsday, ZDoom and it's various versions/derivatives, Eternity... I'm having trouble narrowing it down.

Edit2: I'll also be running this under Windows.

Few questions/statements:

- How much do you care about preserving the original Doom look and feel? You could either be pretty much exactly like it (Chocolate Doom) or as far from it as possible (ZDoom/Doomsday), and there's several steps in between (eg, PrBoom, Eternity).

- Heretic and Hexen supports kills off quite a lot of options, and even for the ports that do support it, the same question as above also applies (Chocolate Doom has an experimental branch to support them, but they're still unfinished; Eternity I hear has good support; ZDoom and Doomsday support them, but like with Doom, they are quite far away from the original look/feel).

- Online play... this varies depending on what kind of online play you want. Chocolate Doom will support regular co-op and deathmatch like the original games (only the main branch, the Heretic/hexen branch has no network support). Odamex doesn't support Heretic or Hexen but adds tons of multiplayer functionality. There's also ZDaemon and Skulltag if you don't mind non-free software.

Also yes, there are multiple versions of the WADs. If your installation disks are not already 1.9, you will need to upgrade them (inside DOSBox) in order to get the final version of the WADs.

Hm. Any examples of ways in which ZDoom/Doomsday and the like lose the Doom look and feel? I mean, I know about GZDoom and the OpenGL renderer making it look a lot different, but what happens other than that, and specifically what happens in ZDoom that makes it significantly different?

ZDoom changes things like the physics, melee and blockmap. It can look very different if you have an uncapped framerate too.

Doomsday is closer to the original in terms of gameplay, but the OpenGl renderer is obviously a very different feel.

Just download a bunch of different ports, try them out and choose the one(s) that you like most. Even if you have a slow internet connection you'll be able to download and try most of them faster than you'll get any deciding results from this topic.

I can't speak for Doomsday, but the ZDoom physics feel more like Quake than Doom. I personally prefer the ZDoom 1.22 physics over ZDoom 2.X, although they aren't completely vanilla-like. Also, don't dismiss ZDaemon as a single player source port, as it's based on Zdoom 1.23 and has many improvements. It works very well with most Boom wads and some ZDoom wads, provided they don't use features from 2.X like DECORATE or advanced ACS.

Edit: Damn, beat by two posts. D:

Alright, I'll look into a few mentioned here. Two more quick questions..

-Is there any difference between playing ZDoom and GZDoom with the Software renderer?

-When people are saying it feels very different from the originals, like in ZDoom, does it feel like a whole different game or like a "tweaked" version of the original? I know that's a vague, tough to answer question, but any further input there would be appreciated. Though I will definitely be trying several out.

raptir said:

-Is there any difference between playing ZDoom and GZDoom with the Software renderer?

-When people are saying it feels very different from the originals, like in ZDoom, does it feel like a whole different game or like a "tweaked" version of the original? I know that's a vague, tough to answer question, but any further input there would be appreciated. Though I will definitely be trying several out.

1) GZDoom has an "unlimited" mouselook, while ZDoom prevents you from looking too high or too low.

2) For example in vanilla monster missiles push the player around much more violently than in ZDoom, and in ZDoom it's possible to push enemies off cliffs with attacks. There are also some bugfixes that fix bugs that caused what some people have come to consider as "proper" vanilla behavior, like sometimes bullet (hitscan) attacks would miss the targets in vanilla because of a bug, but that doesn't happen in ZDoom. Stuff like that.

raptir said:
Same with mouselook. I like it because it makes it more playable, but keyboard only reminds me of my first days playing it.

Well, the lack of mouse-look does not necessarily imply keyboard only, as the mouse is still very helpful for movement and with its two or three buttons, even when free-look is disabled. Many people play without mouse-look, even when they could enable it, particularly because many WADs were made assuming free-look would not be used or available.

Edit: I just wanted to clarify that I know of many out there, I'm just a bit overwhelmed by the choices. PrBoom, PrBoom+, Doomsday, ZDoom and it's various versions/derivatives, Eternity... I'm having trouble narrowing it down.

Yeah, that's normal. Some of us have been using various engines for years, so we know them a lot. If you take your time, you'll gradually see how each may have its benefits for this or that usage, and how that suits your preferences.

raptir said:

Alright, I'll look into a few mentioned here. Two more quick questions..

-Is there any difference between playing ZDoom and GZDoom with the Software renderer?

THe only difference will be that even in the software renderer the 3D-floor physics are active. As long as you don't have any 3D-floors in your map it is basically the same.

-When people are saying it feels very different from the originals, like in ZDoom, does it feel like a whole different game or like a "tweaked" version of the original? I know that's a vague, tough to answer question, but any further input there would be appreciated. Though I will definitely be trying several out.

What you should not forget here is that many old-schoolers tend to exaggerate when it comes to gameplay physics because every deviation from the original can be too much for them.

Of course ZDoom's physics are closer to Doom's than to Quake's. The engine has not changed that much. There have been some changes but most of these mean that some of Doom's weird quirks are not present, not that something was changed completely.

A few of these can also be switched in the options menu.

Graf Zahl said:
What you should not forget here is that many old-schoolers tend to exaggerate when it comes to gameplay physics because every deviation from the original can be too much for them.

It's hard to say who's exaggerating without being specific. In any case, this is the sort of thing one can decide in the long run, because how much the changes matter (either way) depends on what one wants to do with the game. And even if one does decide to use a "purer" engine for some purposes, more "changed" ones can still be of used for others (at least the mods made for them).

Plus "feels different" may depend, as for example I find ZDoom's mouse closer to Doom's than PrBoom's (which tends to be closer in other respects, for the most part).

Eh, well what bothers me about ZDoom is all the little physics changes like acceleration, momentum, sliding, et cetera. I mean, I'm not terribly picky when it comes to physics or movement behavior, but ZDoom is a far stretch from any other source port I've played. I mean, this is coming from a guy that can't really tell a difference between ZDaemon and vanilla Doom movement. :P

EarthQuake said:

Eh, well what bothers me about ZDoom is all the little physics changes like acceleration,

Nothing was changed there.

momentum,

Works precisely the same as in the original

sliding,

Wallrunning can be reenabled and the fix for sliding along diagonal walls was one of the most crucial movement related fixes of all because the original just did not work due to the low precision of the sine table. Aside from these 2 points again, nothing has changed.

I mean, I'm not terribly picky when it comes to physics or movement behavior,

Way to contradict your own previous statement. :P

but ZDoom is a far stretch from any other source port I've played. I mean, this is coming from a guy that can't really tell a difference between ZDaemon and vanilla Doom movement. :P

ZDaemon is much closer to modern ZDoom than to Doom.exe unless its developers reverted some of ZDoom's changes. Of course nobody can tell because its source can't be analyzed.


The two biggest physics related changes in ZDoom were the blockmap fix and the hitscan collision change (hitting the outer box instead of a cross section of the actor.)

Graf Zahl said:

The two biggest physics related changes in ZDoom were the blockmap fix and the hitscan collision change (hitting the outer box instead of a cross section of the actor.)

Killing an imp with one shotgun blast happens much less in zdoom than any other port that's for sure...and zdoom smells.

Use3D said:

Killing an imp with one shotgun blast happens much less in zdoom than any other port that's for sure

I for sure can not confirm that. Sure, the random number generator is implemented a bit differently in ZDoom but that should even itself out over time.

...and zdoom smells.

To be blunt, I am getting tired of that attitude. I contantly have to see such tirades of the anti-ZDoom crowd here. I might as well spill the same amount of shit over Chocolate Doom, for example, if I just wanted to but it's not only pointless but also very counterproductive. I'll openly admit that the port is utterly useless to my needs though but it's not something I feel the need to reiterate over and over again and even less reason to devalue fraggle's work.

Hey I'm not anti-zdoom, ad2 is for zdoom, that's the main reason to use it. Also, knock Chocolate Doom if you want (oh yeah, you just did!) but everyone loves Chocolate Doom, maybe if you bought us all Easter baskets you wouldn't come off like such a zchump. For the record, I like those big cream eggs!

Here's my fun Doom Engine breakdown:

Prboom - Good boom support, feels a lot like the original game.

Pr+ - A few fixes over Prboom, better demo support, supports a few more obscure boom features iirc.

zdoom/gzdoom - A great port for mods and custom gimmicks. Changes a lot of game mechanics mostly for the authors' personal preferences.

Chocolate Doom - A fun pure Doom port with useful features like removing limitations of the old engine, without sacrificing core gameplay mechanics.

Eternity - A stable engine that supports Boom features and some amazing new features that haven't been fully taken advantage of.

Doomsday - I havent used this thing in years. Cool if you like opengl support, which I don't.

Legacy - A port no one cares much about anymore.

Doom95 - this port is for myk. He keeps the disc under his pillow at night.

Graf Zahl said:

I might as well spill the same amount of shit over Chocolate Doom, for example, if I just wanted to but it's not only pointless but also very counterproductive. I'll openly admit that the port is utterly useless to my needs though but it's not something I feel the need to reiterate over and over again and even less reason to devalue fraggle's work.

Heh, Chocolate-Doom has only academic interest for me, because there are no features/modes/etc which prboom does not have (network code does not interest me). Some time ago, when I researched the latest incompatibilities between prboom and vanilla (almost all of them are not fixable in practice) I used Chocolate-Doom for debuging during demo playback. Initially I tried to debug it with IDA and Doom95, because it's more powerfull and useful for detecting overflows, uninitialised data, etc, but if it's too hard or useless, then Chocolate-Doom is good. WinMBF is good for MBF emulation by the same reasons. Also Chocolate-Doom is good for stealing some of funny ideas like "Screen Multiple" and some features like endoom text mode, pc speaker code, new midi to mus converter by Ben Ryves heh, etc, because fraggle's code is good and it's C (C++ is not compatible with prboom). The most impressive port for stealing is gzdoom, the most useless port in this context is Odamex, because it's based on zdoom and has no any interesting idea for my needs. SVN descriptions of Odamex's revisions are boring for me and there are no points of contact between prboom and odamex, even Vavoom and Legacy have more.

I think I smell a shitstorm brewing.

My Primary Choices

Chocolate Doom - This is the closest to the original as it gets. And it runs nicely under Linux. This is my port of choice for classic gameplay and feel

PrBoom+ - I mainly use this for watching demos. It doesn't quite feel just like Doom, but its good for playing through things like DVII and AV

GZDoom/ZDoom - I don't get all the hate towards these, but I mainly use these for making my mods, I do the most editing for these ones. I turn off texture filtering and dynamic lights for that original pixelated feel, as well as disabling mouselook, particles and other more "modern" things....

Use3D said:

but everyone loves Chocolate Doom,

That statement is highly debatable. :D Doomworld may give that impression but wanna bet that outside this forum most people will just go WTF?!? about it. ;)

Changes a lot of game mechanics mostly for the authors' personal preferences.

That assumption is flat out wrong. The problem with the Doom engine is to put it bluntly, that essentially it's a bug-ridden mess that just happens to work by sheer coincidence - so any port that wants to go beyond the mere basics will eventually have to address some of them. In a few situations ZDoom's design decisions may have been a bit unfortunate (and I even corrected some that were just too nasty) but this was never just for the author's personal preference.

I did try out ChocolateDoom, and for some reason it runs terribly on my computer. I know it's not specs related, but it lags and "locks up" for short periods constantly.

Also, I tried out PrBoom, but the lighting with the software renderer is godawful. It's so bright. And I don't feel like resetting my monitor every time that I play, and yet there's no built-in way to modify the brightness/gamma in the engine. Not saying it's a bad engine, but it seems like a pain to deal with for that reason. Good for OpenGL, though.

So far I'm liking ZDoom the best. Yeah, the physics and all that have changed (I won't speak to how much, I'll just go along with "Sure, it's different"), but I wouldn't say it's worth. Slightly less true to the original, but the distance I was knocked back by a rocket isn't exactly what I get nostalgic about when I think about Doom. I certainly understand why some people would want the more authentic ports, but after having played for a while on ZDoom, I feel like people are exaggerating the magnitude of the changes, to some extent.

I will be giving Doomsday a try. Eternity's okay, though I have to say I'm starting to get spoiled by the look of the OpenGL renderers. I'll also so that ZDoom is the only engine I've been able to get Hexen and Heretic to work properly on.

raptir said:
I did try out ChocolateDoom, and for some reason it runs terribly on my computer. I know it's not specs related, but it lags and "locks up" for short periods constantly.

After about 4 re-installs, I have the same problem. I chuckle at the irony. Also, sometimes when I pick up an item, the border of the screen keeps flashing until I quit the game. Same with the red flash of pain. When it wants to work it's got a nice feel, though

Also, I tried out PrBoom, but the lighting with the software renderer is godawful. It's so bright. And I don't feel like resetting my monitor every time that I play, and yet there's no built-in way to modify the brightness/gamma in the engine. Not saying it's a bad engine, but it seems like a pain to deal with for that reason. Good for OpenGL, though.

It's bright for me too, but I got over it after a while. This port's growing on me.

So far I'm liking ZDoom the best. Yeah, the physics and all that have changed (I won't speak to how much, I'll just go along with "Sure, it's different"), but I wouldn't say it's worth. Slightly less true to the original, but the distance I was knocked back by a rocket isn't exactly what I get nostalgic about when I think about Doom. I certainly understand why some people would want the more authentic ports, but after having played for a while on ZDoom, I feel like people are exaggerating the magnitude of the changes, to some extent.

I really don't think people hate ZDoom as much as they put on. I think they're on what I like to call the "anti-bandwagon." Most people, when they find out that the mouse doesn't work with Doom95, are told that ZDoom is a great place to start (and rightfully so). Unfortunately, many go around after that thinking ZDoom is the only port that's any good and refuse to try anything else. After a while people start to resent that.

I will be giving Doomsday a try. Eternity's okay, though I have to say I'm starting to get spoiled by the look of the OpenGL renderers. I'll also so that ZDoom is the only engine I've been able to get Hexen and Heretic to work properly on.

Doomsday's a good port. I used to play Heretic on it. Only part I didn't like is that there are a lot of graphics options and it can become somewhat of a hassle, especially if you change computers a lot.

Use3D said:

Chocolate Doom - A fun pure Doom port with useful features like removing limitations of the old engine, without sacrificing core gameplay mechanics.

Also, Chocolate should be good for testing vanilla compatible pwads if you are not able to use DosBox by some (strange) reasons. But unfortunally it's true only in theory. The latest few times I tried to use Chocolate in this manner - I failed. Levels worked fine with Chocolate, but collapsed with vanilla and I needed to debug for understanding and fixing. So if you want to test your level about vanilla friendliness, you should test it with vanilla. And there is no way to change this situation in future

Patrick Pineda said:

PrBoom+ - ... It doesn't quite feel just like Doom

I can't understand this point of view. PrBoom with doom.cfg by myk is the same as Chocolate, but without limits. The only different you can feel is mouse handling (acceleration, etc), but it can be 'fixed', because there was no standards for mouse handling in DOS. Each fucking driver (tmouse, gmouse, [any_other_letter]mouse.com) implemented it as it wanted.

Back to subj question "Choosing a source port (or two or three)" my choice is: glboom-plus, gzdoom, chocolate

I must say that I've been playing bunches of ZDoom after I figured out how to get it to compile. I also have PrBoom and Eternity installed. The one thing I really wish is that I could make all my Dooms look at /usr/local/share/games/doom/ like PrBoom rather than me having to create softlink all my WADs into all sorts of hidden directories in my system...

At some point, I plan on trying Doomsday too, just for the sheer eyecandy factor, though I've been led to believe that Doomsday is bad for playing 3rd party WADs with...

Graf Zahl said:

What you should not forget here is that many old-schoolers tend to exaggerate when it comes to gameplay physics because every deviation from the original can be too much for them.

Of course ZDoom's physics are closer to Doom's than to Quake's. The engine has not changed that much. There have been some changes but most of these mean that some of Doom's weird quirks are not present, not that something was changed completely.

That's pretty much exactly how it is. As far as I know, all bug fixes in ZDoom over the vanilla engine didn't break any of the official levels (or any other levels that used just the standard vanilla features, not 'features' (Self Ref. sectors anyone?)

There are a few behavior things that bugged me (solid decorations stopping projectiles, damage system going from patterns to randomized numbers between two integers(at least that's my understanding)), but it's a huge stretch to say that ZDoom and it's derivatives are unfaithful to doom.

The only bug fix I found that had me kind of pissed was something involving the hit boxes, which made melee so much easier.. guess I'm just way too used to how vanilla behaves in this respect, even if ZDoom's is the more proper way of doing it.

But as for the engine I would recommend, GL/Prboom-Plus for limit removing wads, GZDoom for anything ZDoom related (or co-op for that matter) and Skulltag for deathmatch.

Use3D said:
Doom95 - this port is for myk. He keeps the disc under his pillow at night.

Heh, you got me confused with some other dude, since I use the DOS executables a lot, not Doom95. I've also pointed out to people giving some vague bashings to it what it's known bugs are, some workarounds and that it's for Windows 9x, so one can't expect it to work well elsewhere.

EarthQuake said:
I think I smell a shitstorm brewing.

I guess you mean entryway speaking badly of Odamex, although it just seemed like he found nothing to learn from it, or that since it's based on ZDoom he can't easily take stuff to port to PrBoom/+.

entryway said:
Also, Chocolate should be good for testing vanilla compatible pwads if you are not able to use DosBox by some (strange) reasons.

Chocolate is less taxing on the system, and also has its interface (setup app and chocolate-doom.cfg), which some may prefer over DOSBox. Keep in mind that if there's a demand to test vanilla compatibility, some people will play the resulting level in vanilla, limits and all (possibly using Chocolate). It's also portable and directly modifiable, from a source-related point of view.

Use3D said:

Legacy - A port no one cares much about anymore.

I still care though not as much as I used to. :P

raptir said:

Also, I tried out PrBoom, but the lighting with the software renderer is godawful. It's so bright. And I don't feel like resetting my monitor every time that I play, and yet there's no built-in way to modify the brightness/gamma in the engine.

Did you try hitting F11 a few times?