Favorite Source Port? (Multiple Choice Poll)

GreyGhost said:

Did you try hitting F11 a few times?

heh

Someone recommended GZDoom for Co-Op... what client would I use to play Co-Op on GZDoom over the internet?

Well, Skulltag is ZDoom based and has GZDoom features.

raptir said:
Someone recommended GZDoom for Co-Op... what client would I use to play Co-Op on GZDoom over the internet?

Most "single player" engines can connect over the Internet. For ZDoom and GZDoom, check the necessary commands at the ZDoom wiki.

Nice, thank you. One last question. On another forum, someone told me that they've heard that Skulltag is the best for Hexen. Is there any reason to use Skulltag over GZDoom for Hexen/Heretic? Just going to play single-player and co-op with one person.

There's absolutely no reason for ST to be better than GZD for Hexen in single player.

In multiplayer coop, though, some people may prefer a client/server system and then preferring ST would make sense.

raptir said:

Nice, thank you. One last question. On another forum, someone told me that they've heard that Skulltag is the best for Hexen. Is there any reason to use Skulltag over GZDoom for Hexen/Heretic? Just going to play single-player and co-op with one person.

Was it the Skulltag forums?

I have no idea why anyone would choose Skulltag for playing single player anything.

Nah, it was a private forum. So it seems like Skulltag is really only good for online, deathmatch multiplayer? Even for Co-Op I should still use GZDoom or something? Or would ZDaemon or Odamex be good, or are they targeted towards matchmaking and deathmatch as well?

raptir said:

Nah, it was a private forum. So it seems like Skulltag is really only good for online, deathmatch multiplayer? Even for Co-Op I should still use GZDoom or something? Or would ZDaemon or Odamex be good, or are they targeted towards matchmaking and deathmatch as well?

If you have someone in mind you want to co-op with, then I'd say just host a GZDoom game. If you want to find people to play with, go to Skulltag.

I heard someone say that ZDaemon was better for stuff like CTF and deathmatch but Skulltag was better for co-op. I'm not sure how true that is, but from experience I'd say it's somewhat true, though ZDaemon has great co-op servers and vice versa. Never tried Odamex. The main difference is, though, that ZDaemon is more "oldschool", with software rendering and such, and with the usual veterans popping up on the CTF servers, while Skulltag is more modern, with more of the advanced features that have been put into today's source ports.

raptir said:

Nah, it was a private forum. So it seems like Skulltag is really only good for online, deathmatch multiplayer?

Not necessarily. But Skulltag is always some versions behind the latest (G)ZDoom so you may not get the latest bugfixes and features.

Sorry, one last question. What other ports support Hexen well? Eternity doesn't work with Hexen yet. Only two I've found are ZDoom and Vavoom. Is Vavoom more true to vanilla Hexen? What other ports could I try to be more faithful to the original?

Only still-maintained Hexen-compatible ports that I know of are Doomsday-jHexen, ZDoom, GZDoom, Skulltag and Vavoom.

There shouldn't be noticeable differences in gameplay between the ZDoom family and Vavoom since large parts of Vavoom's code are synchronized on ZDoom. (For example, standard actors are all defined in DECORATE now IIRC.)

Chocolate Hexen is in the work, though Chocolate Heretic will come first. Eternity will start supporting Hexen once Heretic support is complete.

So you've got to choose between old and obscure ports, Doomsday, or the ZDoom family (including Vavoom but excluding Odamex and ZDaemon).

This should answer the question. You can list which ports support each Doom engine game.

http://doom.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Source_ports

Is Doomsday closer to vanilla doom/hexen than ZDoom? For physics and other gameplay issues?

Gez said:

Chocolate Hexen is in the work, though Chocolate Heretic will come first.

They're being worked simultaneously, neither of them are going to "come first". When raven-branch is done, it'll be merged back to the trunk and become the new mainstream Chocolate Doom.

raptir said:

Is Doomsday closer to vanilla doom/hexen than ZDoom? For physics and other gameplay issues?

I would say it's pretty much for standard maps with no extensive special effects and to show off pretty eye candy (High resolution textures with texture lighting, detail texture and other texture goodies, dynamic lighting, 3d models, etc)

I really can't tell the difference gameplaywise across the various source ports myself.

Gez said:

Chocolate Hexen is in the work, though Chocolate Heretic will come first.

Both are basically already working, although they need some more work before I'll consider them acceptable for a proper release. As MikeRS already pointed out, they'll be arriving together.

Graf Zahl said:

Nothing was changed there.

Works precisely the same as in the original

Then why is there a compatflag to re-enable the "plasma bump" and why is it (according to many good players and based on my own limited experience) harder to do than in doom2.exe, even with the compatflag enabled?

This is most likely a result of improved collision detection. I can't say for sure because that was changed way before I became involved in ZDoom. The acceleration (which I was referring to with the statement you quoted) is precisely the same.

entryway said:

I can't understand this point of view. PrBoom with doom.cfg by myk is the same as Chocolate, but without limits.

I started using PrBoom recently, and I'm really liking it. I'm just wondering what this is referring to. I haven't noticed anything different between PrBoom and Chocolate-Doom so far (just playing the original levels, and again not knowing much about the specific engine details), so I was wondering what big things are changed in PrBoom that would be fixed by this doom.cfg that you're talking about.

Also, for the non-ZDoom based source-ports (specifically Chocolate and PrBoom), is there a way to redefine the directory it looks for WADs and IWADs in? I'm using ZDL, but I'd much rather just use the command line (some weird issues with Chocolate's config file and ZDL, it seems), but I don't want to need to keep multiple copies of all my IWADs floating about.

raptir said:
I haven't noticed anything different between PrBoom and Chocolate-Doom so far (just playing the original levels, and again not knowing much about the specific engine details), so I was wondering what big things are changed in PrBoom that would be fixed by this doom.cfg that you're talking about.

Many of the differences are noticeable only after much play, but some are more obvious, such as monsters being kicked off ledges while alive and pain elementals spewing infinite amounts of lost souls in PrBoom or some sector based mechanisms not working as intended.

Also, for the non-ZDoom based source-ports (specifically Chocolate and PrBoom), is there a way to redefine the directory it looks for WADs and IWADs in? I'm using ZDL, but I'd much rather just use the command line (some weird issues with Chocolate's config file and ZDL, it seems), but I don't want to need to keep multiple copies of all my IWADs floating about.

There's an environment variable that works with PrBoom, but for me it does not work for Chocolate.

SET DOOMWADDIR=[PATH]

The [PATH] is the location of the folder. You can make that global by placing it in AUTOEXEC.BAT or AUTOEXEC.NT (the latter in newer Windows, in the System32 folder), or you can make batch files or the like set it directly.

Or you can right-click on "My Computer", select "Properties", then "Advanced System Properties" and finally click on "Environment Variables". It lets you define both system variable (affects the whole computer) and user variables (only affects your user account).

Okay, one (hopefully) last question. Why do ports like PrBoom, still using the software renderer, look so much... clearer than Chocolate? Is it using some sort of filtering or texture scaling that Chocolate is not?

raptir said:

Okay, one (hopefully) last question. Why do ports like PrBoom, still using the software renderer, look so much... clearer than Chocolate? Is it using some sort of filtering or texture scaling that Chocolate is not?

They are most likely using higher resolutions, whereas chocolate basically just has 320x200 in various scaled forms.

Ah, that makes sense. Actually, I can't notice much of a difference playing in 1280x1024 full screen (locking aspect ratio) and 640x400 full-screen, so the scaling idea makes sense.

What do you think is the best source in general and for wads and mods. Does any of them have a front end for selecting custom wads or are they all drag and drop.I would appreciate any answers.

All of them or none of them - or you search for other threads about this topic. They appear approximately once a month, you know.

maxrebo6 said:

What do you think is the best source in general and for wads and mods.

Depends on what you want.

maxrebo6 said:

Does any of them have a front end for selecting custom wads or are they all drag and drop.

Some have launchers included in the download (e.g., Doomsday), but for others you can use external launchers like ZDL 3.1.

Personally I add shortcuts to the ports in the SendTo folder, and I associate the .wad, .zip and .pk3 file types to my favorite port, so I can use right-click->send to or right-click->open with. This way, explorer is my launcher.

ANYTHING that isn't Legacy-based.