Best Way to Play Opinion

[Tolwyn]

Being that we're all pretty blessed with having ports of ANY kind out there, and I know a lot of people ask this question, here's what I do:

I have all my IWADS in a RAR file, in case I screw something up.

I place all the IWADS in one folder.
I have MBF, ZDoom, ZDoomGL, Legacy, Doomsday, et al installed into their own little folder and reference the IWADS.

These sourceports are so cool in their own way, and they are so small to download.

The reason why you really need all of them is that some PWADS are written for specific ports. The only thing that really takes up space are the IWADS (and given the size of today's games anyway, they really don't take up that much space).

So, download all of them! Use 'em all!

[myk]

MBF? That's totally DOS based, you can run that? Also, Eternity and PrBoom would be better substitutes for MBF nowadays, especially considering MBF's spectre bug (though I generally use Boom 2.02 if I have to mess with a limitless or Boom wad.)

I personally prefer DOS based engines to play, especially because of how the mouse responds.

[DooMBoy]

I prefer ZDoom myself, and I really have no need for anything else.

[Tolwyn]

I think I have MBF and PRBoom and such for the Demo support.

[NiGHTMARE]

I do have pretty much all the major ports installed (though some are rather ancient versions ;) ), but I only ever use most of them if a wad specifically requires it. I use Eternity to test my Mordeth E2 levels and occassionally I'll use Skulltag for multi-player, but otherwise it's nearly always ZDoom for me.

[Mr. Woot]

personally i like to start every level with just a pistol, while playing zdoom with 2x monster strength and monster and item respawn set at 60

[Grazza]

For wads that require no port, or require only Boom features, I'm wavering between Eternity and GLBoom. Very occasionally jDoom, as it's great for eye-candy and not bad compatibility-wise.

For wads that need a specific port, I'll use that port - I don't have any hangups in that respect. :)

[EarthQuake]

Zdaemon: Multiplayer
Zdoom: Single Player

If a wad requires some port like legacy... then I don't play that wad :) Nuff said.

[Kristian Ronge]

ATM I have ZDooM, ZDaemon, PrBoom, Desktopdoom and Legacy installed, as well as the originals of course. I use Legacy for co/op whenever I can convince a semi-reluctant friend to play, PrBoom for demo watching, ZDaemon for multiplaying and ZDooM for SP playing. I've had just about every port out there installed at one time or another.. I especially remember playing a lot of DosDoom back in the day (does that port still exist? It was cool).

I would like to use PrBoom for playing, as it is closest to the original engines in feel.. but alas I cannot because of a configuration issue (which I won't go into futher here).

[Grazza]

Kristian Ronge said:

I especially remember playing a lot of DosDoom back in the day (does that port still exist? It was cool).

It evolved into EDGE, believe it or not.

I would like to use PrBoom for playing, as it is closest to the original engines in feel.. but alas I cannot because of a configuration issue (which I won't go into futher here).

Have you tried Eternity (with schepe's hack)? Or does that have the same mysterious issue?

[wildweasel]

ZDoom all the way. When I play a WAD, I check it for a DEHACKED lump first - if it doesn't have one, or has one of little consequense, I load up DOOMOS.WAD or some other ICD-style WAD with it because I can't stand Doom's default weapons. If I get terribly bored, I'll play one of my megawads with godmode, SV_FASTWEAPONS 2, and a hotkey bound to GIVE BERSERK and just bulldoze through every monster in my path.

[engineer]

ZDoom for weapon mods or jDoom for everything else.

[Kristian Ronge]

Grazza said:
Have you tried Eternity (with schepe's hack)? Or does that have the same mysterious issue?

I can't remember. I'll have a look into it. Thanks for the tip!

(If you must know what this "mysterious" issue is, it's my key configuration. It cannot be replicated in PrBoom, nor vanilla DooM.)

[myk]

You can try the TSR mentioned here, or something similar.

[Nanami]

I generally use ZDoom for most intents and purposes, but SkullTag for multiplayer. I have all the other ports too, so I can switch over and play a Legacy wad too.

[Tolwyn]

I didn't mean for this to be a port vs. port thread, and I don't think that it is, per se. :)

I admit that I'm spoiled.

I like OpenGL. I like hardware acceleration and I (mostly) try to avoid ports that try to make the "spirit" of Doom well, "not" Doom.

At the same time, I love the simplicity behind Legacy's ability to make 3D floors. It's amazingly simple and works GREAT.

I also like ZDoom's simplicity behind slopes. I mean, it's just "logical" without it being some difficult "hack."

I like JDoom's XG ability.

Anything that you can use an old(er) editor or the existing TAGS and Actions and you can make some serious magic happen by using a port... it's a great thing.

I can't get past software rendering of Zdoom. The "stretched" appearance (ala Heretic, et al) when you "look up". I've become very accustomed to Jdoom's approach (Skyjake).

They all do great work, and I'm really glad for all of them. Especially DoomBuilder on the editor front. It's just wonderful to be able to still play the game and then notice that 3 hours have gone by. That's a pretty good testatment to the design "nervana" that is "Doom."

If Zdoom did OpenGL/DirectX (ZdoomGL is too far behind), then it'd be much more competition for my attention over Jdoom; however, I do use ZDoom to play things that Ty and company put out (Dadaulus).

[Graf Zahl]

Tolwyn said:

I like JDoom's XG ability.

Really?


I hate it. Of all the scripting formats implemented by various ports it's the least efficient, most bloated and most incomprehensible one available. I rather prefer something simple like ACS where you can specify an action with one line of code, not 20-30.
Getting through all the XG stuff in Doom64 was a major pain but I can't leave stuff like this alone. I have to know how it works...

[Tolwyn]

Let me rephrase.

I appreciate that it's there and that it's pretty powerful.

It's greek to me, mind you.

[Hyena]

I like all the ports. Unfortunately, EDGE never really did work out. Too bad, because it had a megaton of potential. It just never really felt like Doom.

[Graf Zahl]

Tolwyn said:

It's greek to me, mind you.

Good to know. Otherwise you'd probably hate it, too! ;-)

[toxicfluff]

Graf Zahl said:

I hate it. Of all the scripting formats implemented by various ports it's the least efficient, most bloated and most incomprehensible one available. I rather prefer something simple like ACS where you can specify an action with one line of code, not 20-30.
Getting through all the XG stuff in Doom64 was a major pain but I can't leave stuff like this alone. I have to know how it works...

I'd agree. I haven't looked into it or experimented with it to any great degree, but even from a casual look it's ridiculously cumbersome to create even a simple effect with - you can do much more impressive things with FS or ACS in a far more efficient way with much less work.

[Grazza]

Tolwyn said:

I didn't mean for this to be a port vs. port thread, and I don't think that it is, per se. :)

No, I don't believe it has become that either. Naturally if you ask people about how they prefer to play Doom, they will tend to say which port(s) they like, and why they like them.

Another thing is control configuration. For me, it's mouse+keyboard, with WASD and space for "use". All pretty standard there. I use the right mouse button for strafe on, and have (more unusually) Ctrl for turn left and Alt for turn right (both only used for strafe-50) - that's because my keyboard didn't respond well to lots of standard keys being pressed. I disabled the Windows key, which would otherwise be a problem. For ports with jumping, that's the centre mouse button (i.e. wheel).

When using the original exes, I also use novert and joyb_speed 29 for autorun.

Kristian: I wasn't prying, but just had no idea whether Eternity would solve the problem. As far as I can tell, it does give you a bit more freedom to remap the keys (and mouse functions) however you like.

[Kristian Ronge]

Grazza said:
Kristian: I wasn't prying, but just had no idea whether Eternity would solve the problem.

Hehe, no sweat, I didn't take any offense. :-)

[w M w]

Well I'm probably much less computer savy than most of you but I loooooooooove doom. It's the best game I've ever played... when you add the ability for an un-techsavy normal person like me to BUILD MY OWN LEVELS (!!) that makes it even better.

So far I've used legacy almost always and am only vaguely familiar with using zdoom. But since I tend to suck at making anything new work properly on any computer, I tend to stick to what I've been currently using (wadauther and legacy). I'm probably doing it wrong, but I put ALL the wads, doom2 itself, final doom, legacy's launcher all in the same exact folder in a huge mess of stuff. I do this because whenever I try to seperate stuff into orderly subfolders, legacy won't seem to load the wad. It only loads wads when they're in the same folder I think...

As for playing, I've read that most people use the mouse + keyboard. Well I've only ever used the keyboard exclusively. It sucks because I'm at a turning speed disadvantage. I should probably investigate the proper way to control it with the mouse.

I know for a fact that I won't break any speed records because I've tried before... however the best way to play I think (I only play single player- I don't really even know how to play over a modem... not that my dial up would likely handle it..) is to try to do everything quickly and efficiently. Most of the time it's more fun but more dangerous (more challenging) to rush through chaotically. I don't like to cautiously snipe everyone off in a linear fashion normally. Plutonia by id is the best wad I've ever played.

Being able to use wadauthor and being "the dungeonkeeper" is the greatest thing ever. So far I'm really enjoying creating small complex things and then copy/pasting it irregularly to create much bigger things of great detail. Either I'm not using the commands properly or wadauthor is buggy, because it seems that if I try to modify stuff (floor/ceiling height... deleting sectors etc) there's a fairly good chance that some sector adjacent to one you modified will "not be closed". When this happens, I better hope I have an earlier recent version saved because this one is considered irrepairable no matter what I do (and a sector which "isn't closed" tends to make the entire wad not work at all).

[DEMOn]

I always use seperate folders for everything. Even had 8 full half-lifes installed at one time. :) (being a demo fan has its disadvantages)
Doom2.exe for everything.
if I must, Boom2.02 or MBF.
beyond that, you can be sure I'm not playing seriously... but I'll play any port.
Zdoom is closer to Quake than DOOM... and I prefer DOOM.

[dr_st]

I still have Win98SE on one of my PCs, so I play DOOM in pure DOS mode, or from Windows DOS box, with full sound and no compatibility problems at all.

I have each DOOM game in a separate directory (DOOM, Shareware, Ultimate, DOOM2, TNT, Plutonia), I have all PWADs in one dir, and I have several ports, each in a directory of its own.

I have several ports, but it doesn't mean I play them. I play original DOOM 1.9 EXEs for the original levels, and I play all other WADs with BOOM, because of its 100% compatibility to the original gameplay, in addition to some cool features and bug fixes.

On my other machine I have Windows XP. So I play via Doomsday engine there, and I have all the DOOM/Heretic/Hexen WADs in the Doomsday folder.

If a WAD requires some port like ZDOOM, then I don't play that WAD. Nuff said.

[LexiMax]

I use prBoom for demo support, ZDaemon as my main multiplayer dish, ZDaemonCTF Beta since I'm a part of that project, SkullTag which I've only played once or twice, and ZDoom for single player everything.

No, my comp can't run any of the OMG WOW ports, otherwise I would at least thinker with them.

[engineer]

Heh, I can't wait until Fake Radiosity is added into jDoom.

Oh, and the next jDRP.

[Infinite Ammunition]

Skulltag for multiplayer, ZDoom for bot deathmatch (I gotta be the only one who always does it with infinite ammo on) and JDoom for teh eye candy. I can't stand Legacy.

[moonspell]

I use JDoom only. In my opinion, by far the best source port of Doom available. Superb graphics capability, great features and stable net code with Doom Connector.

Two thumbs up!!!