What is your favorite sourceport?

[Tartlman]

I use PrBoom+ for vanilla play, but I would say that GZDoom is the port I like more since you can do more with it.

[doomsucksass]

I say it once again...Add more options

[cambreaKer]

35 minutes ago, doomsucksass said:

I say it once again...Add more options

just use the "other" option, i can't add all the source ports ever released

[JBerg]

Eternity for me (why isn't it in the poll?)

[Redneckerz]

2 hours ago, cambreaKer said:

just use the "other" option, i can't add all the source ports ever released

Cambreaker after hearing yet another participant asking ''Why is this port not in the poll?''

 

[JBerg]

41 minutes ago, Redneckerz said:

Cambreaker after hearing yet another participant asking ''Why is this port not in the poll?''

 

 

haha. I mean it's not some obscure source port, it even has its own doomworld subforum

[Boaby Kenobi]

@Redneckerz I get a fatal error. I was sure the laptop would be okay with it as it runs early PS2 era games like GTA III & Max Payne.

 

 

[Redneckerz]

42 minutes ago, Boaby Kenobi said:

@Redneckerz I get a fatal error. I was sure the laptop would be okay with it as it runs early PS2 era games like GTA III & Max Payne.

 

 

Again, please bring this up at the ZDoom forums, along with your GZDoom ini. It seems to run in software mode, but let the people at ZDF take a look at it :)

[drfrag]

 Try LZDoom (choose OpenGL) or a recent GZDoom version or both. It's an old TC so it should run.

[Graf Zahl]

12 hours ago, Boaby Kenobi said:

@Redneckerz I get a fatal error. I was sure the laptop would be okay with it as it runs early PS2 era games like GTA III & Max Payne.

 

 

 

Why are you using such an old build?

Try 4.3.3 instead.

 

[Spectre01]

Voted GZDoom and PRBoom+. Those two cover most of what I like to play. Surprising to see Crispy and PRBoom+ neck and neck considering Boom still seems to be the most popular mapping format. Crispy is cool and all, I just prefer playing at a resolution above 640x400.

[famicommander]

GZDoom because it's the easiest to deal with. Especially when you run 3 different Linux distros on 3 different machines you use to play Doom.

[-TDRR-]

I use ZDoom32 the most. Solid, fast, supports the vast majority of mods, and has a truecolor SW renderer but without the crappy framerates. If a mod doesn't run there, i use ZDoom LE or Zandronum.

 

I also use Crispy Doom for certain things (Mostly BTSX and D4V, and stuff that just won't run in ZDoom).

 

And when playing a dynamic light heavy map or a map made specifically for it, i use K8Vavoom. It just looks so nice!

[CyberDreams]

GZDoom than PRBoom+ as well as Crispy Doom. My main is GZDoom though even though i like a more vanilla experience so i voted GZDoom. I just like the "feel" of it is all. It probably stems from playing ZDoom years before i switched to GZDoom.

[Phobus]

Without ZDoom, I wouldn't be here. Without GZDoom continuing on after ZDoom folded, I may not have remained. As it is, embracing 3D has been pretty cool.

[BigBoy91]

On 2/20/2020 at 6:50 AM, fabian said:

 

Me too, really! The problem is that Boom hasn't been implemented as a "clean patch" against the Vanilla code base (granted, there was no GIT available back then). It introduces changes everywhere, even in unrelated code, from comments over white space changes down to the renaming of entries in enum()s - literally everywhere. And it is close to impossible to fiddle all this into a source port that aims to be a clean patch against Chocolate Doom from its very beginning.

Makes sense!

[Senor500]

PrBoom+ for when I have to play more complex wads, my computer aint too good so having Eviternity run between PrBoom+ and GZDoom is... quite different.

I really like the mods that GZDoom can run but the way it renders things makes me not wanna use it as much anymore, as soon as I get a new computer though, I'll be playing a lot of what I'm missing out there and it will probably become my favorite port.

[MadGuy]

I voted "other" for DOOM BFA (mainly DOOM 3 BFG port)

[DwarfCleric]

On 2/17/2020 at 5:48 PM, Voltcom said:

I'm shocked that more people have not voted for PRBoom+. I always thought the majority of Doomworld's playerbase were PrBoom+ diehards.

 

I think they actually are at least double the ammount of people appearing in the poll, it just happens that most of them don't visit the forums anymore because of "things".

One of these "things" is censoring and removal of posts or even banning accounts of anyone who voices criticisms that go against what is the current "popular opinion". Some features in these forums only reinforce negative and gang-up behavior such as "see who liked this post", "see who visited this profile", "see who follows this profile", all these things that make Reddit and StackOverflow the mess they are (downvotes, reputation)

I assume most of these guys don't even bother coming here anymore.

 

Back to the poll itself... As of late I've been noticing how Doom Legacy is barely mentioned anywhere (it's in the newer poll, I saw that) It was my port of choice back in the day after upgrading PC in early 2000's and realizing Doom95 would not work anymore. I think at the time Zdoom was already around the block but my first impression of it was that "it doesn't feel right", Legacy felt like playing the classic games. Higher options of resolutions without ruining the atmosphere or changing too much how it looked. (comparisons done to Doom95 which was still fresh in my mind and also from playing the original DOS sharewares back in the day) Also, Legacy had support for Heretic and split-screen multiplayer, all within this easy-to-use built-in launcher. I don't know if Legacy brought many innovations compared to Zdoom, I wasn't paying attention to the modding scene at all, I just know it was the port that looked and felt like Doom was supposed to look.

 

Screenshots:

Spoiler

 

 

[DwarfCleric]

Oh, just adding to the list of "things" above, the new feature of these forums right here:

The Search feature doesn't work. I think this must be the only internet forums I have ever seen where the search doesn't work.

 

Spoiler

(totally not looking like another effort to limit what people find in here and to obscure other things, not at all...

Anyway, who's in charge of these forums right here? Was there any kind of election to select who's in charge of moderating?)

 

 

[DwarfCleric]

On 2/23/2020 at 1:21 AM, -TDRR- said:

I use ZDoom32 the most. Solid, fast, supports the vast majority of mods, and has a truecolor SW renderer but without the crappy framerates. If a mod doesn't run there, i use ZDoom LE or Zandronum.

Interesting! Does it support all mods that are tailored for gzDoom? Like Golden Souls, Hocus Pocus, the "total convertions"... I have been using LZdoom as an alternative for these, basically because gzdoom doesn't accept anything below opengl 3.3 anymore, or 4.0 I don't even know. (the only game in history on which opengl is not backwards-compatible with older hardware, I have never seen any other game having this problem...)

But if I can play those in ZDoom32 and ZdoomLE it means that I can hopefully get rid of the slowdown and insanely-high CPU usage.

 

edit to help with google searches and such: Answering my own question, yes ZDoom32 is compatible with mods (decorate, pk3, zscripts)

Not all of them (I tested HocusPocus which was released just a few months ago, seems to use a few new scripts, this in an exception) but for most mods that do not depend on opengl for maps it works (example: 3D models placed inside of maps) I was able to load Golden Souls 1 perfectly with ZDoom32.

Also, for people that do not have opengl 4+ try this one: gzdoom 3.2.1 (October 2017 - doesn't require OpenGL 3.0)

In short, ZDoom32 will allow you all the functionality of modern mods but still using the software renderer.

 

Download links in my personal repository: (executable MD5 checksums are the same from the original releases, since the EXE's and everything else are still the same files, you can easily verify if you're paranoid... only the CFG and INI files are updated)

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/8m9wrub7k42p22z/AAC8-H3Avpn2qZ1Y9ef3xxV8a?dl=0

Edited April 16, 2020 by DwarfCleric

[VGA]

1 hour ago, DwarfCleric said:

slowdown and insanely-high CPU usage. 

GZDoom runs smooth as butter on my 6 year old PC, which was cheap when I got it, too. (i3 4170 with a GTX 750Ti)

 

If you really think Search is intentionally broken to limit people from searching for obscure stuff then you make me laugh, thanks :D

 

No need for triple-posting, by the way.

[holaareola]

2 hours ago, DwarfCleric said:

Legacy stuff

 

Legacy isn't as actively maintained as some other ports as far as I can tell, and except for splitscreen, its natural niche (hardware rendering, advanced editing features) is occupied much better by GZDoom.

 

I used to be a Legacy user back in the day. I agree with you on feel (ZDoom controls always felt terrible to me), but as for looking like the classic games, I depart from you there. Legacy looked horrendous, both software and hardware renderers were so washed out!  The main innovation other than splitscreen was 3d floors, I recall it being the first port to have them.

[drfrag]

Legacy was my port of choice until i swithed to ZDoom (probably 2.0.63a). Legacy had several bugs and made quite a few questionable gameplay changes, remember that solidcorpse feature? But yes it was (is) cool and i played splitscreen too.

ZDoom32 is older than LZDoom, it's faster but no ZScript support (DECORATE support is more complete than in 2.8.1 and LE tough).

[El Juancho]

gzdoom for playing mods, prboom+ for the rest

[fraggle]

Let's stay on topic please.

[-TDRR-]

7 hours ago, DwarfCleric said:

Interesting! Does it support all mods that are tailored for gzDoom? Like Golden Souls, Hocus Pocus, the "total convertions"... I have been using LZdoom as an alternative for these, basically because gzdoom doesn't accept anything below opengl 3.3 anymore, or 4.0 I don't even know. (the only game in history on which opengl is not backwards-compatible with older hardware, I have never seen any other game having this problem...)

But if I can play those in ZDoom32 and ZdoomLE it means that I can hopefully get rid of the slowdown and insanely-high CPU usage.

ZDoom32 only supports mods that would run in GZDoom 2.3 (This is not counting the total omission of ZScript support of course), but it makes up for that in spades by including significantly faster renderers (It does not have softpoly, but there's  both paletted and truecolor carmack so it's not a big loss), and great options for draw distance for both renderers (These are also in LZDoom, but you will probably get some more mileage out of them here). In short, use it if you are gonna run some mods from the GZDoom 2.3 era and need some extra performance, or just use it for highly detailed pre-GZDoom 2.4 maps or Boom/Limit-removing maps.

 

In fact, it's what I used to play through Eviternity's larger maps, and it worked really well and at high framerates.

[DwarfCleric]

On 4/8/2020 at 5:11 PM, -TDRR- said:

In short, use it if you are gonna run some mods from the GZDoom 2.3 era and need some extra performance, or just use it for highly detailed pre-GZDoom 2.4 maps or Boom/Limit-removing maps.

 

In fact, it's what I used to play through Eviternity's larger maps, and it worked really well and at high framerates.

Interesting! It's been my experience with updated 2020 LZdoom as well, I had to basically switch to Prboom+ because some maps in Eviternity gave me severe slowdown, because the renderer portion of the code is basically the same. Map05 or Map08 if I'm not mistaken, the one with that tall room with structures that look like book shelves.

 

I went on and did some testing, Zdoom Classic 2.1.8 was not able to load mods (even small one like hexen_balance.pk3)

but ZdoomLE was able to open all mods that I had here (with the exception of Hocus Pocus, some new script not recognized yet): PirateDoom works, Avactor works (much slower than in Prboom+) and also GoldenSouls (software renderer is slow) Hex_balance.pk3 worked as well for the gameplay changes.

 

Is ZdoomLE the same thing you mention? The executable is called zdoom32.exe. Or is it another fork?

 

So this means that people with older hardware are somewhat able to take advantage of newer mods, except by the rendering part which makes everything slow in huge areas, depending on the maps. What makes this interesting is that new modders could use a well-executed mod with a clean code like Golden Souls 1 for example (features full inventory system, collectibles, hub maps, custom weapons etc etc) and use it as template for gameplay mods in the future that want to remain somewhat compatible with hardware pre-2010. Adjustments would need to be made in regards to the renderer of course (such as using walls to limit visibility, not making entire map on a single place, separate areas with doors or lifts, all the tricks Romero used back in the day, etc) but the core of gameplay mod features is all there. For weapons, modders could use PirateDoom as template but remove all the instances of "Spawn_LightXYZ" (sic) (these are not present in Golden Souls, which makes it a perfect template for making mods and remain compatible with older hardware)

 

Spoiler

I was able to load the OpenGL renderer in ZdoomLE and map02 runs much faster, but for some reason this yellow tint appears over the screen, this happens with older gzdoom versions too, way back to 2013. I wonder if there's a way to fix that yellow stuff?

 

 

[-TDRR-]

13 hours ago, DwarfCleric said:

Is ZdoomLE the same thing you mention? The executable is called zdoom32.exe. Or is it another fork?

ZDoomLE is an older, unsupported fork of ZDoom 2.8.1. I don't recommend using it since the performance differences between LE and 32 are very, very small and anyways 32 has multithreaded software rendering and draw distance options to make up for it.

 

13 hours ago, DwarfCleric said:

I went on and did some testing, Zdoom Classic 2.1.8 was not able to load mods (even small one like hexen_balance.pk3)

but ZdoomLE was able to open all mods that I had here (with the exception of Hocus Pocus, some new script not recognized yet): PirateDoom works, Avactor works (much slower than in Prboom+) and also GoldenSouls (software renderer is slow) Hex_balance.pk3 worked as well for the gameplay changes.

This is because ZDoom Classic is based on an ancient ZDoom version (Much older than even the one the last version of Skulltag was based on), while ZDoomLE is based on ZDoom 2.8.1, so it still supports various mods. As I said, ZDoom32 also has support for most of these and some more, being based on ZDoom 2.9-pre and with some newer additions too.

 

13 hours ago, DwarfCleric said:

So this means that people with older hardware are somewhat able to take advantage of newer mods, except by the rendering part which makes everything slow in huge areas, depending on the maps. What makes this interesting is that new modders could use a well-executed mod with a clean code like Golden Souls 1 for example (features full inventory system, collectibles, hub maps, custom weapons etc etc) and use it as template for gameplay mods in the future that want to remain somewhat compatible with hardware pre-2010. Adjustments would need to be made in regards to the renderer of course (such as using walls to limit visibility, not making entire map on a single place, separate areas with doors or lifts, all the tricks Romero used back in the day, etc) but the core of gameplay mod features is all there. For weapons, modders could use PirateDoom as template but remove all the instances of "Spawn_LightXYZ" (sic) (these are not present in Golden Souls, which makes it a perfect template for making mods and remain compatible with older hardware)

I'm not sure if Golden Souls' code and assets are allowed for reuse (Been a very long time since I last checked but it's not AFAIR), but anyways it's not really that necessary as we got a ton of examples of ZDoom 2.8.1 compatible mods already, and that version still supports the vast majority of things current GZDoom supports for it's mapping (Not so much in scripting, but still).

 

Again, limiting visibility with the map itself is not necessary at all since ZDoom32 includes draw distance options for a reason, and they are extremely helpful in almost every case I've tried so far.

If you wanna try them out, they are located in the "display options" menu, scroll down and you will see 2 sliders "wall distance cull" and "sprite distance cull", these sliders affect Software mode only. For OpenGL, go to the same menu, then "OpenGL options" and then into "preferences", and you will see sliders that are named the same as the previous ones.

 

13 hours ago, DwarfCleric said:

 

  Hide contents

 

I was able to load the OpenGL renderer in ZdoomLE and map02 runs much faster, but for some reason this yellow tint appears over the screen, this happens with older gzdoom versions too, way back to 2013. I wonder if there's a way to fix that yellow stuff?

 

 

 

 

 

Hm, that's definitely not ZDoomLE, look at the bar at the top, it says "ZDOOM32 2.8.5c"! Not sure why there's a yellow tint however, that did not happen the last time I played through GS on ZDoom32. Does this occur in any other mod? What's your graphics card?

[DwarfCleric]

Well, that's why I asked, I had downloaded an archive called ZDoomLE285 in the past, but (as you noticed too) the executable in it is called zdoom32.exe

So they are different things, thanks for explaining all that. There are so many variants made by drfrag that it can get confusing at times. Even following stuff closely I wasn't even aware of this "drawing distance" feature, if you didn't wrote it down now I would never know. And it can also load recent mods! Great! Again, thanks!

I will test it out... I also tried testing Doomsday but it's not working on Wine. I never cared that much about dynamic lighting and 3D models so that's why I have no experience with Doomsday whatsoever.

 

6 hours ago, -TDRR- said:

I'm not sure if Golden Souls' code and assets are allowed for reuse

Well, that's the neverending issue around the block... It's interesting to me that some people pay attention in regards to policing that, but when we get mods with "critical acclaim" and "accolades" like Hocus Pocus Doom (a recent example) they are allowed to use Hexen code and assets all over (glitter bridges, the spiral homing projectiles from enemies, gargoyles' code probably copied and pasted directly from hexen too) I don't mind it at all, but I see most of the time this policing and scrutiny is very selective and one-sided. If you get a certain size or get accolades within the community there's no scrutiny at all, there's double standards. For me this is a non-issue. Just do it. And I wish all the guys who re-used bits of code from Brutal Doom would give credit when they released it in their own weapon mods since then HeHeHeHe I don't personally like to play that mod, but I'm not jumping into the hating bandwagon towards the author. He brought innovation and new people into it, either we like the mod or not.