Favorite Source Port? (Multiple Choice Poll)

[spineapple tea]

ZDoom v2.8.1 for my casual Doom needs and PRBoom+ for testing maps I make.

[MarsHappyNation]

I have what feels like every source port under the sun sitting around on my desktop just for kicks but I've grown to prefer running Doom straight through DOSBox. Most cozy way to kill things. I love Chocolate and Crispy too for the faithfulness to vanilla without tweaking many of the settings.

Otherwise PrBoom+/GZDoom is my main squeeze if a mod or map requires something that either of the two bring to the table.

[Zilch]

LZDoom because it's awesome

[skaags]

GZDOOM because I have it set up to look identical to vanilla (with hardware renderer believe it nor not), and it runs everything. I play casually so whatever differences to vanilla that doom-strict compat doesnt cover I wont notice.

[DannyMan]

LZDoom because I think it just works well for me

[thiccyosh]

I use dsda-doom mainly for playtesting and for playing Doom (who would've guessed). There isn't a more rounded off source port for me that actually does what I expect it to do. Not just being able to run vanilla Doom, but also is able to run very large maps with a crap-ton of enemies without easily lagging and being able to run monstrosities I call my dehacked projects, which usually would crash the hell out of GZDoom.

[3t0]

I don't see my favorite source port k8vavoom there, so I was forced to pick Other. If you intend to fix it, you can subtract my vote from Other and assign it to k8vavoom, you have my full permission. Strangely GZDoom is missing as well, are you sure you did your research properly?

 

EDIT:

Ah I see you forgot it, don't do that man just don't do it. I guess you will get most of Other this time around :)

[Gregor]

I prefer DSDA myself.

But most people will use "Others" aka GZDoom. ;)

[Doomkid]

Vanilla, Chocolate and DSDA for SP Dooming. I like DSDA because it handles just like an HD version of vanilla Doom with useful stats on the HUD and it performs efficiently/is easy to record smoothly. It’s also got a bunch of interesting features I don’t use but still think are cool (rewinding is awesome on paper but I’ll become terrible at actually playing the game if I rely on it - I’ve seen gameplay from some Doomers who seem to have forgotten their way around a shotgun because they’ve become too reliant on the rewind).

 

Odamex, ZDaemon and Zand for multiplayer Dooming, because they’re the multiplayer focused ports (duh).

 

I have GZDoom for any wads above Vanilla/Boom, though I don’t play those super often.

 

I wanted to give a vote to Doom Legacy because it was the first port to introduce 3D floors and “modern” deep water, not to mention the first port with an actually-functional OpenGL mode way back when - its importance in the Doom timeline is often understated because there was no pressing reason to use it from about 2006 onward other than split-screen local play. Still though, it did a ton of cool shit we take for granted well before others did. I didn’t vote for it though because I haven’t used it in years.

[indigotyrian]

I prefer Doom Retro for basically everything. It's slick and refined and has some really nice additional features and polish while keeping the game feeling squarely within "Mid 90s DOS game" vibes. Its almost like if Doom was a BUILD engine game in terms of how it feels.

 

I prefer Odamex for multiplayer. Lots of nice features including in-game WAD swapping, which is a quantum leap in usability. Also the only multiplayer port to feature MBF21 support. The special Horde mode it comes with is a lot of fun too.

 

I'm not a fan of GZDoom at all as I feel like its rendering is just weird and off. Everything in GZDoom feels flat. I'm not really sure how else to put it. I've done every tweak and every change to the graphics I could find and I just can't fix it. Nothing I've seen out of GZDoom looks particularly great either compared to other engines. Also I can't really get it to behave properly and give me a nice chunky "virtual resolution" unlike Doom Retro, which just does it for me. I keep GZDoom on my computer just for specific WAD compatibility and for when I need to test specific things, but that's it.

 

I want to give a shout-out to the Unity port here. While it's by no means my favorite, and I think it's severely limited and generally not good, it does do two things that as far as I understand no other big-name port does: split-screen multiplayer and, more importantly, an in-game WAD selector. The simple fact that Doom frontends like ZDL, Doom Launcher, etc. are necessary at all is IMO a massive UX failure across the board for Doom source ports. Some have basic WAD selectors in a splash screen and I know Odamex is working on a built-in one that behaves like ZDL kinda, but having it all in-game would be ideal.

[Goody]

PrBoom+ mostly. I did try DSDA Doom to see what the big deal was but from where I'm at, it's a lateral move. That rewind feature is interesting, I suppose, but it certainly didn't behave how I expected and I'd rather used fixed save points before an encounter and reload from there. It's got some neat things going on and some pretty broad support, so it's definitely sticking around my Doomstuff folder.

 

Of course, there's stuff hanging out for when I need it. GZDoom. Eternity. Oh, and I will absolutely play through a megawad whenever a new one drops on the Unity port. It's definitely not the best source port ever, but I just think it's really neat to see Bethesda showcasing community efforts. That and when I play on the Switch, that's what I have to do by necessity. 

 

Oh, and Odamex sits untouched but ready to go in the event anyone ever wants to play MP :')

 

[Herr Dethnout]

I use Doom Retro AKA Doom remastered(?). Is a great sourceport focused in SP and has te Best controller support of all sourceports.

 

I also use Unity just because I have they game on Steam lol

 

For complex mods and maps I use LZDoom, although I don't like playing vanilla/boom maps in it because it feels like playing everything but Doom and his focus to be a Boomer shooter Game Engine than a Sourceport

 

[Screamapillar]

GZDoom if I want to mess around with wacky mods, but Doom Retro for more vanilla playthroughs. Idk why, but there is something that attracts me to this particular port. It's just kinda neat I guess, and easy to set up.

[Herr Dethnout]

18 minutes ago, segfault said:

The simple fact that Doom frontends like ZDL, Doom Launcher, etc. are necessary at all is IMO a massive UX failure across the board for Doom source ports. Some have basic WAD selectors in a splash screen.. 

 

Agree. Loading a mod in GZDoom by Drag ad Drop rather than a proper built in wad/pk3 loaders feels like a big bullshit (sorry if I sound rude)  IMO

[Skullhacker]

Zandronum and Chocolate Doom. Best of both worlds without having the required specs for GZDoom's OpenGL renderer.

[Graf Zahl]

46 minutes ago, segfault said:

I want to give a shout-out to the Unity port here. While it's by no means my favorite, and I think it's severely limited and generally not good, it does do two things that as far as I understand no other big-name port does: split-screen multiplayer and, more importantly, an in-game WAD selector. The simple fact that Doom frontends like ZDL, Doom Launcher, etc. are necessary at all is IMO a massive UX failure across the board for Doom source ports. Some have basic WAD selectors in a splash screen and I know Odamex is working on a built-in one that behaves like ZDL kinda, but having it all in-game would be ideal. 

 

Not to be rude, but you are aware that maintaining such a launcher takes away valuable time from working on the game itself, aren't you.
Even maintaining that simple startup dialog in GZDoom is a major crapshoot because there's no decent cross-platform GUI library that can just be dropped in. It's actually 4 distinct pieces of code - different for each platform, that have to be maintained.

 

 

Yes, a professional engine made by paid developers has the needed manpower to do such a thing for multiple platforms.

Us port developers are grateful to the frontend developers that they save us that major piece of work.

[indigotyrian]

13 minutes ago, Graf Zahl said:

Not to be rude, but you are aware that maintaining such a launcher takes away valuable time from working on the game itself, aren't you.
Even maintaining that simple startup dialog in GZDoom is a major crapshoot because there's no decent cross-platform GUI library that can just be dropped in. It's actually 4 distinct pieces of code - different for each platform, that have to be maintained.

 

 

Yes, a professional engine made by paid developers has the needed manpower to do such a thing for multiple platforms.

Us port developers are grateful to the frontend developers that they save us that major piece of work.

 

Far be it from me to tell hobbyist FLOSS developers what to do or where to put their resources, but I really do think that Doom source ports not having a clean way to load mods without also installing separate hardware or doing command-line nonsense is a big limiting factor and is keeping gatekeeping people who would otherwise adore classic Doom, would join the community, and would perhaps start contributing to it. I know I've run into big problems trying to get my friends to play Zandronum with me because they can't get the damn thing to work, and explaining what they need to do to get it to work can be difficult. It's a really shitty thing to deal with.

The simple fact of the matter is that as time marches on and UI/UX philosophy changes, people have started to disconnect from the old way of doing things, and that old way is very much what Doom source ports are stuck in. We have college students today who don't know how to navigate filesystems. I'm talking about File Manager, what was considered basic computer literacy in the 2000s. Now, whatever you think of this changing phenomenon (and personally I think it fuckin sucks), the fact of the matter is that this is going to be the new generation of people playing Doom. If the point of Doom source ports is to make video games playable and accessible on modern systems for modern people to enjoy, part of that necessarily involves designing user interfaces that modern people can understand and wrap their head around.

[Revenant boy]

BOOM is my favourite course port.

[bofu]

It's a toss-up. I gave my nod to Woof because it hits the sweet spot of "adding new optional features while still feeling like vanilla when it needs to" (big shoutout for giving players the option to enable or disable blockmap fixes while also safeguarding demo compatibility!), but there are times that I wish that it had more robust display/rendering options (even if I understand why it doesn't), and DSDA-Doom hits the sweet spot there. I also like the transformative flexibility of GZDoom; while I wouldn't use it to try to get the "classic" experience (it's very capable of being very close, mind you), there's no denying that it's a lot of fun to boot up something like Guncaster, Corruption Cards, Doom RL Arsenal, etc. and get new experiences out of old mapsets, and it's also amazing to see what completely original creations have been made with it.

 

Honorable mentions go to Crispy Doom and EDGE. Crispy Doom is really flexible in terms of feature set (supporting things like DEHEXTRA, ANIMATED lumps, and so on while also maintaining vanilla compatibility), and I had a lot of fun with EDGE's scripting system back in the day.

[Casketkrusher]

GZDoom I uses the most. Works for me the best, does what I want. No issues ever. I dig.

[ChopBlock223]

Crispy for pure Vanilla with some QOL features, Woof! for playing Boom level stuff as they are, and GzDoom for stuff like gameplay mods. Probably use GzDoom the most. I really like being able to play with a gamepad and mouse at the same time, which both Woof! and GzDoom lets me do very comfortably.

Used to play Skulltag a lot back when that was a thing, but it's not anymore. I never did check out Zandronum.

 

1 hour ago, segfault said:

Far be it from me to tell hobbyist FLOSS developers what to do or where to put their resources, but I really do think that Doom source ports not having a clean way to load mods without also installing separate hardware or doing command-line nonsense is a big limiting factor and is keeping gatekeeping people who would otherwise adore classic Doom, would join the community, and would perhaps start contributing to it. I know I've run into big problems trying to get my friends to play Zandronum with me because they can't get the damn thing to work, and explaining what they need to do to get it to work can be difficult. It's a really shitty thing to deal with.

Stuff like Doom Launcher is really, REALLY easy, it's a couple of clicks with no command line stuff, and takes a minute to set up, you could make an idiotproof video tutorial that's a couple of minutes long and everyone should be able to get it. Even I figured it out.

 

I could maybe see a utility like that being either bundled with GzDoom or linked on GzDoom's page as a recommended download, but overall it's kind of hard to argue with "Someone has already done that and you can use it with GzDoom", particularly given that you can use a utility like Doom Launcher with any port or .exe you want.

[Graf Zahl]

1 hour ago, segfault said:

 We have college students today who don't know how to navigate filesystems. I'm talking about File Manager, what was considered basic computer literacy in the 2000s. 

 

Yes, yes, I know - but it doesn't change anything. Most ports are one- or two-man affairs with developers that tend to have zero interest in GUI programming. And the people programming the frontends have zero interest in engine programming. The best you can expect here is a bundle of a source port with an existing launcher. But - what launcher?

 

2 minutes ago, ChopBlock223 said:

 

I could maybe see a utility like that being either bundled with GzDoom or linked on GzDoom's page as a recommended download, but overall it's kind of hard to argue with "Someone has already done that and you can use it with GzDoom", particularly given that you can use a utility like Doom Launcher with any port or .exe you want.

 

Indeed. The problem has long been solved. IMO the actual failing is that the launchers do not get sufficient promotion. On the ZDoom forum there's at least a subforum for them, but even so it is easy to miss if you don't know where to look.

[Oddy_the_bastard]

I like both GZDoom and Crispy Doom, GZDoom is good to play mods (sexual style) and Crispy Doom for that vanilla stuff in widescreen

[Senor Cacodemon]

Vids basically a year old *darn* but my point still stands!

https://youtu.be/85ZezkcY3N4

Not my high pitched baby voice though.

[Dweller Dark]

I mostly switch back and forth between DSDA-Doom, Woof, and Doom Retro for a closer-to-vanilla experience, and use GZDoom for mods that require it. Not actually sure which one is my favorite, though, each one has it's advantages. 

[indigotyrian]

2 hours ago, Graf Zahl said:

 

Yes, yes, I know - but it doesn't change anything. Most ports are one- or two-man affairs with developers that tend to have zero interest in GUI programming. And the people programming the frontends have zero interest in engine programming. The best you can expect here is a bundle of a source port with an existing launcher. But - what launcher?

 

 

Indeed. The problem has long been solved. IMO the actual failing is that the launchers do not get sufficient promotion. On the ZDoom forum there's at least a subforum for them, but even so it is easy to miss if you don't know where to look.

 

My problem here is that the simple fact a launcher is necessary beyond "boot up the IWAD" is, in fact, a UX failure. I think having multiple different frontends (just like how we have an entire ecosystem of Doom source ports) is great, but it doesn't really solve the problem I have when I want to play Doom with friends who normally don't play Doom, don't know what IWADs are, and don't want to spend hours troubleshooting and figuring out what is, to them, arcane nonsense in order to play a video game.

 

The problem hasn't been solved because the solution on hand is, essentially, "git gud." We shouldn't be gatekeeping people's access to one of the most important video games and modding communities of all time like this. Hell, Odamex's team is working on this exact thing:

 

 

Maybe it's barebones and a little clumsy, but it's functional, and I'm certain it can be improved over time.

[Sonikkumania]

I'm fine with GZDoom. I've tried Doom95, ZDoom, Skulltag and Zandronum and I had no problem with either. Had some good time on Skulltag online servers long time ago.

 

Sometimes I just play via DosBox because nostalgia.

[Lila Feuer]

Barring GZDoom for the fidelity and modding platform that it is, I pick these: Woof!, Crispy Doom, Doom Legacy, Doomsday, Doom Retro, Eternity Engine.

Woof! because it's my go-to now, effectively windows MBF with strong limit-removing boom-compatibility that'll run just about everything that doesn't require very specific port features. Crispy Doom because without it Woof! wouldn't exist, and was my preferred option over Chocolate Doom. Doom Legacy because it's still cool to me in an antiquated way, I also like the way it does lighting in the hardware renderer (looks aged now but it was "cutting edge" for the time) and its hit impacts used as blood splats is cute, never seen it done that way again as we rely on decals. Doomsday because it's Doomsday, I like some visual specific things about it and is essentially hardware accelerated vanilla Doom. Doom Retro for some of its own ideas and visual elements even though I don't really use it. And Eternity Engine because it was a runner-up to replacing Crispy Doom before Woof! ultimately won me over, but I really like EE and wouldn't mind using it again, I especially like the alt HUD it has and its abundant particle effects.

[INfront95]

[Herr Dethnout]

4 hours ago, Graf Zahl said:

 

Yes, yes, I know - but it doesn't change anything. Most ports are one- or two-man affairs with developers that tend to have zero interest in GUI programming. And the people programming the frontends have zero interest in engine programming. The best you can expect here is a bundle of a source port with an existing launcher. But - what launcher?

 

 

Indeed. The problem has long been solved. IMO the actual failing is that the launchers do not get sufficient promotion. On the ZDoom forum there's at least a subforum for them, but even so it is easy to miss if you don't know where to look.

You know, I think having a Built in wad/pk3 launcher will benefit not only players with accessibility but also Game Developers.

GZDoom just a Sourceport anymore, is a Game Engine by itself, and it has at least a fairly succesful commercial game.

This will help a lot in, for example, loading mods through Workshop or even Online Multiplayer accessibility (idk if GZDoom supports multiplayer but I can be a great benefit). It doesn't need to be a fancy UI, I can be just like the Hotline Miami Launcher or the Odamex example from above. IDK, could be a great addition to probably the most popular sourceport between novices in Doom.