Where would you need a less demanding port than GZDoom?

[mankubus]

Ever since GZDoom was launched I haven't switched back to any other port. I can just download any wad or pk3 file, and I know it will run in GZDoom, from classic vanilla to fancier stuff. The thing is, I see all these other ports. Lately I see a lot of people using dsda-doom for instance. I don't get it, unless you really want to go for the more retro experience.. any other reason? And you could in any case just have a classic looking cfg file for GZDoom that makes it look like it's 1993.

 

I know that prboom and it's forks run at smoother fps when there's massive amounts of enemies, but I haven't seen the necessity for it in any wad i've played. I've only seen the nuts.wad comparation but that's an extreme case.

 

So which wads would require that you don't use GZDoom because the wad is unplayable due too many enemies? because again that is the only reason I see to not use GZDoom at least for single player (I use ZDaemon and Zandronum for multiplayer)

[Edward850]

Already discussed:

https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Comparison_of_source_ports

Edited April 24, 2023 by Edward850

[Shepardus]

Weren't you just asking this same thing yesterday? I don't know what sort of answer you're expecting that you haven't already received there. If GZDoom works fine for your purposes, that's great, no need to switch to anything else. Please stop asking vague questions and then dismissing everyone's responses as irrelevant to you.

[D4NUK1]

• Some maps just play or feel better in other type of Source Port, like Eviternity or Going Down for example, telling some of the most popular.
• There are maps that really need to be run on those types of Source Ports, like Slaugthermaps or Tricky maps to render all the linedefs like Italo Doom.
• Not all people have a hardware that can play GZDoom, LZDoom or any fork of ZDoom, and such other more grounded Sourceports works like a charms giving the newer maps a good fps. 

 

[Mr. Alexander]

If you want to record or play back demos, particularly speedrun demos, then GZDoom is an instant no-go thanks to its lack of demo compatibility with the vanilla exes, Boom, MBF, and older versions of GZDoom, even if you change the compatibility settings to the appropriate values.

 

I like DSDA-Doom because it has demo compatibility, which is a deeper matter than just looking retro, and it has a lot of conveniences for recording demos, like the ability to rewind a few seconds, for a tool-assisted speedrun, and the ability to reset and start a new attempt at the press of a button, without having to exit the game, rename your demo file on the command line, and start again. It also has some neat command-line options for generating text files.

 

I don't mean to pour scorn on GZDoom, of course. GZDoom is great for playing combat and monster mods, and it has a lot of cool total conversions. The movement feels distinct from that in "PRBoom-like" source ports, but it feels great. You can make the game look really incredible if you dig into the settings. I just tend not to play with a lot of stuff built specifically for ZDoom, so I don't often see a reason to run it specifically as opposed to a "simpler" port.

[Lucius Wooding]

Why not try one of the other ports? PRBoom+ and DSDA are terrific. GZ is very useful and I use it the majority of the time, but it's mainly geared towards compatibility. It's hard to explain some of the feel and visual differences exactly, but having so many sliders and options isn't always helpful, especially since some of GZDoom's default settings are admittedly pretty cursed.

[No-Man Baugh]

•Believe it or not; this community likes their (vanilla DOS 1.9) bugs! and GZDoom doesn't always replicate those 1-to-1 even on the "Doom (strict)" comp setting. it's not just demo playback that GZ's "fixes" breaks, but alot of maps actually require and exploit certain bugs in vanilla/Boom/MBF to do interesting and/or bullshit things such as the Plutonia Experiment's Caught Yard and Speed which have rapidly teleporting Arch-Vials that slow way down on zdoom based ports

 

1st clip: DSDA-Doom, complevel 4. 2nd clip: GZDoom, Compatibility: Doom (strict)

 

•It's easier to get something that looks like vanilla Doom with a port dedicated to replicating that look and feel (even with technically more advanced ports like DSDA-Doom or Woof). It's really hard if not outright impossible to get GZDoom to look just right, and the more familiar you are to the classic DOS experience, the more persnickety you're going to get with how Doom looks

 

•Personal note: But when I want to play vanilla style after a session of HDest, I'd rather open up a different application for that than go back to all the different settings and reset everything (Including disabling freelook, jumping, and crouching) [Which always goes back to "default" i.e. ON after closing the game], and go back and recalibrate everything AGAIN when I wanna play HDest again or GOD FORBID a different gameplay mod (I could just swap config files, but again, would rather just load up a separate app at that point)

 

Edited April 25, 2023 by No-Man Baugh

[DynamiteKaitorn]

I prefer WooF cause it's a DooM engine that sounds like a barking dog. .-.

[BerserkerNoir]

You cant record demos on gzdoom, thats the purpose of other sourceports and of course faithful gameplay.

[Edward850]

6 minutes ago, BerserkerNoir said:

You cant record demos on gzdoom

You can, the problem is they are immediately useless once you update anything, as there's minimal compatibility maintenance for either itself or Doom's original physics, behavior or input. It's mathematically imprecise, so to speak, where demo's require a perfect recreation of each frame to work.

[yakfak]

one-stop ports often seem to have defaults that tell me they're not designed for me

[Metal_Slayer]

2 hours ago, mankubus said:

Ever since GZDoom was launched I haven't switched back to any other port. I can just download any wad or pk3 file, and I know it will run in GZDoom, from classic vanilla to fancier stuff.

Try Hexen ELV, Duke it out in Doom, Heartland and KDIKDIZD in GZDoom to see if it works. 

2 hours ago, mankubus said:

 Lately I see a lot of people using dsda-doom for instance. I don't get it, unless you really want to go for the more retro experience.. any other reason? And you could in any case just have a classic looking cfg file for GZDoom that makes it look like it's 1993.

GZDoom even in the most classic settings it isn't exactly vanilla for a lot of people.

Besides that Doomsday has better support for HD models and smoother animations, some people also use K8Vavoom for that.
Also, GZDoom will not have functioning RTX until a lot of time, it simply isn't possible to have it running at more than single digit frame rates even with the most modern hardware. Also, aren't you the one one that keeps asking every month or so about RTX in GZDoom? Isn't that enough of a reason for you?

[Firedust]

I recommend giving other sourceports a go anyway, because the game just feels different depending on what you are using you know?

 

Out of the ones I have tried, I, in fact, loved all of them except one. Eternity felt clunky af and generally very irritating to configure.

 

Also, GZDoom isn't optimised for certain kinds of levels and even if you own a supercomputer, you'll still get massive framedrops on those.

[mankubus]

1 hour ago, No-Man Baugh said:

•Believe it or not; this community likes their (vanilla DOS 1.9) bugs! and GZDoom doesn't always replicate those 1-to-1 even on the "Doom (strict)" comp setting. it's not just demo playback that GZ's "fixes" breaks, but alot of maps actually require and exploit certain bugs in vanilla/Boom/MBF to do interesting and/or bullshit things such as the Plutonia Experiment's Caught Yard and Speed which have rapidly teleporting Arch-Vials that slow way down on zdoom based ports

-complevel 4: https://youtu.be/Fe3_eu-e3FY?t=477

GZDoom: https://youtu.be/DX6AhS7pzJw?t=244

 

•It's easier to get something that looks like vanilla Doom with a port dedicated to replicating that look and feel (even with technically more advanced ports like DSDA-Doom or Woof). It's really hard if not outright impossible to get GZDoom to look just right, and the more familiar you are to the classic DOS experience, the more persnickety you're going to get with how Doom looks

 

•Personal note: But when I want to play vanilla style after a session of HDest, I'd rather open up a different application for that than go back to all the different settings and reset everything (Including disabling freelook, jumping, and crouching) [Which always goes back to "default" i.e. ON after closing the game], and go back and recalibrate everything AGAIN when I wanna play HDest again or GOD FORBID a different gameplay mod (I could just swap config files, but again, would rather just load up a separate app at that point)

 

 

Couldn't you have different .ini configuration files and load them? like vanilla.ini, gzdoom.ini and so on, and automatically load everything.

 

In Quake you can easily open the console and write /exec myconfig.cfg and all the settings are loaded, I assume there is something similar in modern Doom ports.

[No-Man Baugh]

4 minutes ago, mankubus said:

 

Couldn't you have different .ini configuration files and load them? like vanilla.ini, gzdoom.ini and so on, and automatically load everything.

 

I do this for various gameplay mods what with the different keybinds, but as far as playing vanilla/boom/mbf goes:

 

1 hour ago, No-Man Baugh said:

... would rather just load up a separate app at that point)

 

 

[D4NUK1]

14 minutes ago, mankubus said:

 

Couldn't you have different .ini configuration files and load them? like vanilla.ini, gzdoom.ini and so on, and automatically load everything.

 

In Quake you can easily open the console and write /exec myconfig.cfg and all the settings are loaded, I assume there is something similar in modern Doom ports.

 

No because there a lot of different logic, code, rendering and many other technicals stuff to be the same as just other sourceport.

 

GZDoom rigth now as many Mods creators will say, it's a game engine that happens to run Doom.

[Lucius Wooding]

4 minutes ago, mankubus said:

 

Couldn't you have different .ini configuration files and load them? like vanilla.ini, gzdoom.ini and so on, and automatically load everything.

 

In Quake you can easily open the console and write /exec myconfig.cfg and all the settings are loaded, I assume there is something similar in modern Doom ports.

 

Probably, but one of GZDoom's best selling points is the ability to plug and play basically anything without needing to mess with config too much. It seems designed around using the user facing menus, as extensive as they are. The average GZDoom user isn't going to be messing around with the console. It's a lot fewer options to set up a good retro config in a simpler port and just stick with that, especially since Vanilla/Boom/MBF generally are going to be using very similar settings for this sort of player. GZDoom doesn't exist for the purist; the venerable PRBoom+ as well as ports like DSDA and Woof as well as vanilla targeting ports already do that better than anything else.

 

Having something dedicated to classic Doom that also has demo compatibility and better performance makes a ton of sense. If using UDMF or ZDoom based WADs, sure then use GZDoom, and casual players might just not care and use GZ for everything if they aren't picky and want convenience. Speedrunners and other demo recording players really can't, and honestly even Doomtubers or streamers might prefer having demos in addition to capture for making their content, since it gives them a chance to do more with it later.

[Tangra]

I tried to give another go of DSDA a few weeks ago. Being a regular ZDoom user, DSDA felt very awkward, i don't remember it being this bad the first time i tried it briefly a few months back. This time the mouse aiming felt very, very weird. I've played PRBoom two years ago, and i don't remember having issues with that (or maybe it's the same and i just don't recall), but with DSDA i can't get my mouse control right, i play around with the settings, but i can never make it feel as good as the mouse aiming on ZDoom ports, which by default are flawless in they're responsiveness... i'm talking about playing with classic aiming, no free look. Another thing that i'll never get use to is the infinite height. I know it's the vanilla way, but so much modern maps are designed in ways that don't take infinite height into account. Getting blocked by something in a pit below or a cacodemon flying above, only leads to unnecessary frustration. Also the screen flashes in DSDA are killing me, getting hit for max damage, or zapped by an archvile, and you can't see anything for a brief moment, but that moment feels long enough to get you into more serious trouble... not to mention that the flash hurts my eyes. The damage flashes are not as extreme in ZDoom ports, and in GZDoom they can be adjusted, i don't remember if ZDoom and LZDoom can adjust them as well.

 

So at the end of the day, as much as i like to keep the gameplay fairly pure, with vanilla controls and no mods, i'm still not a classic player, and i will never be cool with these vanilla quirks. :D 

[mankubus]

2 hours ago, Mr. Alexander said:

The movement feels distinct from that in "PRBoom-like" source ports, but it feels great.

In which way specifically? I play Zdaemon, which as far as I can remember, feels exactly the same as the original Doom, and compared to GZDoom, I don't see much of a differece. Wallrunning is there, weapon bob feels the same, not sure what else.

[magicsofa]

1 minute ago, mankubus said:

In which way specifically? I play Zdaemon, which as far as I can remember, feels exactly the same as the original Doom, and compared to GZDoom, I don't see much of a differece. Wallrunning is there, weapon bob feels the same, not sure what else.

 

First of all the original engine was capped at 35 fps, which makes a big difference (feels heavier whereas higher framerates feel lighter). But there are lots of other things that are different, which might be missed if you aren't very experienced with the game, or just aren't bothering to pay attention to certain things. For example, you said wallrunning is the same, but it's not - GZdoom wallrunning behaves differently than doom.exe.

 

Also, GZ can play "almost anything" but some vanilla hacks don't work right, which can even make a wad unplayable. Some of that can be solved with the compatibility menu, but it's easier to just play with a port that serves the mod properly and not worry about it.

[Shepardus]

34 minutes ago, mankubus said:

In which way specifically? I play Zdaemon, which as far as I can remember, feels exactly the same as the original Doom, and compared to GZDoom, I don't see much of a differece. Wallrunning is there, weapon bob feels the same, not sure what else.

Diagonal walls (i.e. those not facing north/south or east/west) are one thing that GZDoom handles differently, D5DA MAP12 being an extreme example of that (I'm not sure the map is actually possible to complete in GZDoom).

[Edward850]

42 minutes ago, magicsofa said:

First of all the original engine was capped at 35 fps, which makes a big difference (feels heavier whereas higher framerates feel lighter).

Every port is still capped to 35hz (except for Vavoom), they all run the playsim at the same speed to maintain how the frame state table works. What's introduced is sub-frame interpolation to allow them to draw faster, this applies to both ZDoom and Boom based ports, and even crispy and the modern official port.

Well, assuming that they aren't trying to compare to the actually vanilla executable, which would be an odd one to pick given the context of the thread.

1 hour ago, mankubus said:

In which way specifically? I play Zdaemon, which as far as I can remember, feels exactly the same as the original Doom, and compared to GZDoom, I don't see much of a differece. Wallrunning is there, weapon bob feels the same, not sure what else.

People here have provided examples, the thing is you're expecting drastic changes where the effects are actually quite subtle but cascade over time. Besides, the problem isn't just demo compatibility, you have fundamental feature differences as well. GZDoom can't handle Boom's tranmaps, only Eternity can play Heartland, only Odamex/Zandronum/Zdaemon provide you with on-the-fly multiplayer, and Odamex itself is near-exclusively used by the competitive scene, things like that. You can play most things in GZDoom, and most of the time you won't notice a difference, but not all things are absolute.

Edited April 25, 2023 by Edward850

[Shepardus]

Oh yeah, I just remembered that GZDoom only uses the first palette from PLAYPAL and ignores part of COLORMAP too, so changes to those for things like altered pain effect and invulnerability palettes, like those seen in Struggle and JunkFood, will not work in GZDoom.

[Edward850]

BTSX also has an altered invulnerability map, which doesn't work in GZDoom.

[Master O]

The original Batman Doom mod does not work with GZDoom iirc.  (Before anyone says it, I know someone remade Batman Doom for GZDoom, but I haven't played that remake).

 

https://www.chocolate-doom.org/wiki/index.php/Batman_Doom will play the original Batman Doom mod correctly.

 

https://www.chocolate-doom.org/wiki/index.php/Aliens_Doom_3.0 also only plays correctly in Chocolate Doom too.

 

[No-Man Baugh]

I decide to edit my earlier response to include a homebrew clip because the decino clip didn't show the AV teleporting too good, and all the other walkthroughs use GZDoom and as such demonstrate the laggy AV:

 

4 hours ago, No-Man Baugh said:

alot of maps actually require and exploit certain bugs in vanilla/Boom/MBF to do interesting and/or bullshit things such as the Plutonia Experiment's Caught Yard and Speed which have rapidly teleporting Arch-Vials that slow way down on zdoom based ports

 

1st clip: DSDA-Doom, complevel 4. 2nd clip: GZDoom, Compatibility: Doom (strict)

 

I would've label'd the respective clips in-video, but I didn't feel like installing a proper editor and just went with vanilla quicktime

Edited April 25, 2023 by No-Man Baugh

[ReaperAA]

6 hours ago, Metal_Slayer said:

Try Hexen ELV, Duke it out in Doom, Heartland and KDIKDIZD in GZDoom

 

TBF, latest version of KDIKDIZD runs on GZDoom, though it did require a special ZScript file written for it to make it compatible.

 

As for when DSDA is preferable over GZDoom? Apart from demo recording, also see high monster maps like Profane Promiseland or the like (where GZD's slower actor logic would cause terrible performance on many CPUs) or maps that require vanilla bugs/glitches/oddities not supported in GZDoom. Stuff like mandatory thing-running is an example.

[banjiepixel]

Why use more resources to run Doom than necessary? Original engine is from 1993 and running it should be very minimal task for modern hardware. That is why I prefer to use more "low-end" source ports like Crispy Doom or Woof, as they use much more minimal resources to run Doom. And I play mostly limit-removing megawads anyway so personally I simply don't need anything extra that GZDoom offers.

[Noiser]

It's a matter of what you want to create and what's the most efficient way of doing it. I had a few headaches in the past because GZDoom is not very reliable in terms of compatiblity (or visual settings). Creating stuff is time consuming, so I tend to stick with complevel ports like DSDA or Crispy Doom\Chocolate so I can focus on what I want to make.

Edited April 25, 2023 by Noiser

[Zahid]

I just want to play in classic style and record demos so i use prboom plus dont like jumping or crouching either....