Why are people stupid [kid gets angry at people using other port]

[Hekksy]

I don't get why people keep saying ZDaemon has more players. Usually when I look in IDE ST has just a few more on than ZDaemon at any time.

Today I opened IDE and saw this: http://img697.imageshack.us/img697/7309/zd62st105oda212910.png

(look in the bottom right corner)

Sure ZD has more servers but ST is the one that needs them because of the rapidly growing player base. Regardless I'm just happy to see Odamex getting more players because Odamex IMO has the funnest Deathmatch.

[Malinku]

I rarely find a good game on skulltag. all that is ever played is gvh aow and zdoomwars (and soon Who Dun It but that should be fun)

and when a dm game is going its almost always the stock map (which get boring after a while). and your lucky to find a 2or3 good ctf game a week.
a lot of the gamemodes never get played domination, skulltag, terminator, and possession.

I never played zd
I just started playing Odamex
and I agree with Vulture's view on it

[Philnemba]

Well I've played Odamex last night with one person on a Gothic99 server(despite being infamous for heavy detailing, mapset is actually fun when you play 1on1). Had great fun, got my ass handed on map08 but won on map01. Only complaint is that when you get hurt, the screen goes red badly which throws off my aim. Odamex will for now on be an alternative for me if I feel like playing Doom without the Skulltag/Zdoom bells and whistles.

[Kagemaru_H]

Multiplayer is multiplayer, so might as well grab the one with the most content balance and can also do single-player and bots (Skulltag) rather than something designed for CTF and in the end is a huge lagfest (ZDaemon).

Skulltag has 2 places here: Best ZDoom-based port and best Multiplayer port. Plus some mods will only work on Skulltag.

[Gez]

Kagemaru_H said:

Skulltag has 2 places here: Best ZDoom-based port

No. You can't play Legacy maps with it, for example; and it lags behind ZDoom's development so there's always some missing features.

[Ralphis]

Kagemaru_H said:

Skulltag has 2 places here: best Multiplayer port.

Maybe if you like playing a game that is hardly Doom

[DuckReconMajor]

Kagemaru_H said:

Multiplayer is multiplayer, so might as well grab the one with the most content balance and can also do single-player and bots (Skulltag) rather than something designed for CTF and in the end is a huge lagfest (ZDaemon).

• Might as well grab? Why not grab IDE so you can play them all?
• If by content balance, you mean just as many bad servers and bad wads as there are good servers/wads, then yeah, I agree.
• Lagfest? I have never noticed a disparity in latency between the two.

[myk]

Vulture said:
Sure ZD has more servers but ST is the one that needs them because of the rapidly growing player base.

It looks like neither really needs them, because each has a big number of empty ones. That is, servers always outnumber players by a big margin.

ST caters to more altered stuff, which may make admins into the more classic stuff less interested. Some people may argue that you can still run classic servers with ST, and people do it to a point, but it's convenient to place stuff where it's easier to find, amid similar stuff, and without being invited to edit yet more server settings, in a place where the type of players that like that kind of thing are likely to show up.

[DaMan]

Zdaemon has better netcode than ST. It uses less bandwidth per player and if the server runs out of bandwidth ST will try to play catchup (where your likely to get booted) instead of dropping packets.

[Kagemaru_H]

Ralphis said:

Maybe if you like playing a game that is hardly Doom

I play Doom frequently on Skulltag software mode in low resolution and I've played vanilla at one time or another and if you have certain options enabled and don't cheat it'll feel (almost) like Doom. Plus as a bonus Skulltag gets exclusive content (Mini-guns and Grenade Launchers) in the same way Legacy gets exclusives (Split-screen co-op and Deathmatch). Now if I could get Carny to change ST's netcode to something similar to ZDaemon, ZDaemon would have a formidable opponent. I've also seen Skulltag servers hosting Dwango WADs and Hell Revealed, as well as Heretic and Hexen, so if you want to play HR or Dwango, occupy those servers. Skulltag has plenty of servers, they're just not very occupied now because n00bs new Doomers play GVH and JumpMaze.

[/walloftext, which I'll probably make into a Magic card]

[Gez]

Kagemaru_H said:

Now if I could get Carny to change ST's netcode

You missed the memo. Brian Carney has not worked on ST for a long, long while and is not even part of the ST staff (STaff?) anymore.

[Ralphis]

Kagemaru_H said:

I play Doom frequently on Skulltag software mode in low resolution and I've played vanilla at one time or another and if you have certain options enabled and don't cheat it'll feel (almost) like Doom.

It feels absolutely nothing like an actual game of Doom. As a fan of 1on1, the BFG's behavior works so differently in Skulltag that you can't pull off certain tricks that you can in Vanilla (and Odamex or ZDaemon), not to mention much of the physics differences. Oh yea, d5m1? No BFG bump last time I checked.

Not even close. As far as mini guns, railguns, and grenade launchers? They're fun once or twice a year for me, but I don't care for them.

ZDaemon is just as bad in some respects. The Judas23 BFG trap? Rendered useless in modern ZDaemon competition thanks to 'no switch on pickup' like behaviors. I'm not even sure why that map is still played so heavily under broken conditions.

Both ZDaemon and Skulltag have weaker (and incorrect) SSG behavior than vanilla and Odamex.

The only thing I like personally about Skulltag is survival coop on private servers and I doubt that will change anytime soon.

So as a fan of classic Doom multiplayer, Skulltag is an entirely different world.

[Kagemaru_H]

Well, it seriously boils down to whether you can get over little quirks with the Doom engine missing from ports. Because I'm not completely spoiled on classic Doom's bells and whistles taken off ports, Skulltag is my definitive port. In my opinion, saying Skulltag is nothing like Doom is like saying Sonic 3 & Knuckles is nothing like the original Sonic the Hedgehog: Sure, they cleared some bugs and added content and features, but the mechanics and atmosphere are very much the same.

[DuckReconMajor]

Nah, you don't get it.

[Kagemaru_H]

Ports don't kill Doom's atmosphere, modders do.

Seriously, I don't mind the direction Skulltag is taking Doom, especially if it opens more opportunities for modding and mapping - especially making maps with Skulltag's stock resources, like textures, monsters, weapons, and power-ups. I'm not saying everyone has to download Skulltag or they're stupid, but I never really got why people rip on something just for adding content and removing bugs. It would be like saying Doom is worse than Wolfenstein 3D because Doom has more features.

You don't like the direction ports are taking Doom, then don't use them and stop whining. Hell, play Doom on your old 486 in DOS for all I care. I also wouldn't care if someone made a Zelda game on the Doom engine. Someone even made a Sonic the Hedgehog game on a modified Doom Legacy. These ports are made for a reason - to give modders a bigger arsenal to work with.

[Ralphis]

Kagemaru_H said:

Ports don't kill Doom's atmosphere, modders do.

I don't care about atmosphere, I care about mechanics. I'm not a single player type of guy, I'm a multiplayer type of guy. When you take the core mechanics that you've had for years and scramble them, there is bound to be dissent (note that there is basically no competitive scene on Skulltag for a reason).

Imagine if the MLB teams went from using standard wooden bats and baseballs to wiffle ball. It's still the same game at the core, but the mechanics have changed in a way that drastically affects how games are played out.

[kristus]

Kagemaru_H said:

Ports don't kill Doom's atmosphere, modders do.

Ports ARE mods.

[Kagemaru_H]

Mechanic changes aren't always bad.

Let's look at how Zelda made a transition from a 2D SNES game to a 3D N64 game. The 2D SNES game at core is the same thing you played on NES, but Hyrule was altered to provide a different experience, and graphics and sound aren't just big pixels and beeping. Now look at the N64 game: At core it's the same SNES game, but new mechanics, like manual Bow/Slingshot aiming and the ability to evade enemy attacks with Z Targeting were added for the 3D gameplay, but in the end, you're playing the SNES Zelda in 3D, but it plays out differently than the SNES Zelda. The 3D combat and puzzle solving are welcome (albeit controversial) changes to the franchise. If Zelda never made the leap to the world of 3D gaming we'd be getting the exact same SNES Zelda with different worlds and the occasional new character/weapon, which would get boring after a while and people would stop buying the Zelda games.

So no matter how much you nitpick at Skulltag missing little bugs that Vanilla had and whine about how it added railguns and grenade launchers, in the end it's still Doom, and classic deathmatch WADs like Dwango and Greenwar are still available on Skulltag, just not widely played these days.

In the end this is going to boil down to one side being open minded and embracing the changes in Doom's mechanics and the other being close minded and scorning the changes.

By the way, MLB uses aluminum bats now.

[DuckReconMajor]

Kagemaru_H said:

In the end this is going to boil down to one side being open minded and embracing the changes in Doom's mechanics and the other being close minded and scorning the changes.

Oh yeah, lets throw around the term "closed-minded."

First of all, we're not bashing your way of playing. My statement was in response to

Kagemaru_H said:

whether you can get over little quirks

"Little quirks" can be big issues to some people. That doesn't give you the right to belittle them.

The difference is that everyone likes a different level of modification. If anyone was truly "purist", they'd be using the connection tools with the original game, and if anyone absolutely had to have the most advanced experience, they wouldn't be playing Doom to begin with.

[phi108]

I guess being a single-player or experienced competitive multiplayer makes a difference in how you feel about different behaviors.

I use ZDoom and sometimes skulltag to play single player vanilla wads, and I usually have a few important options checked in the compatibility menu (Limit lost souls, vanilla heights for missile clipping, sometimes infinitely tall actors).

But the Blockmap fix in ZDoom, that doesn't have an option, is commonly brought up. I personally am fine with the fix, as it makes sense that any hitscan should actually hit the monster it intersects.

But competitive players point out that it changes the behavior for SSG and BFG. I guess that's a valid point, but at least the weapons still behave the same for all players in a game, so I don't see how it makes competitive gameplay not possible. Then again, I haven't played vanilla doom competitively in multiplayer at all.

[Contorted_Extirpation]

Sergeant_Mark_IV said:

I never used Zdaemon. I don't ever downloaded it. Seriously.
After I found skulltag, I never searched for multiplayer sourceports again.

same here

[myk]

Kagemaru_H said:
In the end this is going to boil down to one side being open minded and embracing the changes in Doom's mechanics and the other being close minded and scorning the changes.

People who are obsessed with changes and think that choosing to stick to specific mechanics is in general narrow-minded are by definition narrow-minded, because, not understanding why others choose this more strict functionality, they view them with prejudice and error.

People of all types can be narrow-minded, but choosing strict rules for a game does not make them narrow-minded in itself, it just makes those rules narrowly bound. The rules are strict, not the people who use them.

Sticking to specific mechanics has its reasons, particularly long-time playing consistency for competitive purposes. The people doing it are playing a game in the usual formal sense games are defined, so they value the game rules, which make playing through the years more easily comparable, because any subtle change in mechanics may have an impact on play that is hard to measure or compare.

[ReFracture]

Ralphis said:

ZDaemon is just as bad in some respects. The Judas23 BFG trap? Rendered useless in modern ZDaemon competition thanks to 'no switch on pickup' like behaviors. I'm not even sure why that map is still played so heavily under broken conditions.

I supposed when you play a level like Judas23 on a modern engine you are going to inevitably deviate from the original intention of the author, but I cannot stress enough how much I hate being forced to change weapons on pickup.

I suppose playing other shooters that give me options in this field such as Counter-Strike or the Unreal Tournament games has spoiled me, and I think this is part of why some people go back to doom and modify the engine to allow such things.

Purists will scorn such changes and others will embrace them.

I'm on the fence, personally. I hate weapon pickup and infinitely tall actors, but I see no reason to mess with most other aspects of the game (though I realize doing something about the infinitely tall actors alone is going to break the original behavior in more than just this respect..)

So I have to ask, Ralphis, as somebody who picks up on the little (yet obviously have big consequences) details like this, do you approve of Odamex?

[Ralphis]

Kagemaru_H said:

Mechanic changes aren't always bad.

*Long rant about Zelda going from a 2D NES game to a 3D N64 game over 10 years later.*

So no matter how much you nitpick at Skulltag missing little bugs that Vanilla had and whine about how it added railguns and grenade launchers, in the end it's still Doom, and classic deathmatch WADs like Dwango and Greenwar are still available on Skulltag, just not widely played these days.

In the end this is going to boil down to one side being open minded and embracing the changes in Doom's mechanics and the other being close minded and scorning the changes.

By the way, MLB uses aluminum bats now.

Ok, the first thing I'm going to point out is that the MLB doesn't, NEVER HAS, AND NEVER WILL use aluminum bats. Find me a source or even a picture of the MLB using aluminum bats from last season. If the MLB used aluminum bats, almost every hit would sail for about 3 miles before it hit the ground. Most baseball bats are made out of maple.

Secondly, you're comparing two entirely different things when you compare a 2D Zelda to a SEQUEL years later. If you were comparing Doom to Doom 3, then you have a working analogy. However, you're comparing the progress of a game series over 10 years to the modification of a single engine and game over time. If they re-released a modified Link to the Past on the N64 and changed the behavior of how most things in the game work, then your argument would at least have some basis.

Third, it has nothing to do with being open minded. I'm very open minded and said earlier that if Skulltag is your thing, go ahead and play it. However, Skulltag (and ZDaemon in many cases) are modified versions of the game. For somebody that is newer to the game and started with these newer engines, these are likely what you consider normal. For those that grew up playing the game as it was for many years, these changes are VERY noticable and have nothing to do with being close minded, but rather having the standards changed over a period of time. I've dealt with it mostly and won tournaments under new school settings, but that doesn't mean I like it very much. If that makes me "close minded", then so be it.

I'll close with this question: If you're a great chess player and you like to play competitively, you sit down to a table to play with somebody, and you find out that they play by their own rules and pawns can move diagonally at any time, are you going to find this fair? If not, are you being CLOSE MINDED and WHINING? I mean, after all, no matter how much you nitpick at these pawns having a different behavior and whining about how it changes game mechanics, in the end it's still Chess. Right?

Mike.Reiner said:

So I have to ask, Ralphis, as somebody who picks up on the little (yet obviously have big consequences) details like this, do you approve of Odamex?

I'm one of the original founding members of the Odamex project and am still actively involved with its development, so yes! Come play :)

[Kagemaru_H]

Chess is a board game. Doom is a computer game with bugs that were exploited in its DOS incarnation then removed in ports.

[esselfortium]

Kagemaru_H said:

Chess is a board game. Doom is a computer game with bugs that were exploited in its DOS incarnation then removed in ports.

Doom is a computer game whose quirks can have a significant impact on the way that the game plays.

[Kagemaru_H]

Also, even board and card games have variations. When Tempest of the Gods (obscure CCG) was created, the developers even created variations to slow down/speed up gameplay. Magic the gathering has several variations, even an officially supported variation (Planechase). Later versions of vanilla Doom had Deathmatch 2.0 and Deathmatch 3.0, which are variations of Deathmatch. Skulltag and ZDaemon add more ways to play, like CTF. I recently downloaded Chocolate Doom again and use Skulltag so I could study the disparities in certain levels (Judas23) and see how they'd affect gameplay.

[Ralphis]

Kagemaru_H said:

Also, even board and card games have variations. When Tempest of the Gods (obscure CCG) was created, the developers even created variations to slow down/speed up gameplay. Magic the gathering has several variations, even an officially supported variation (Planechase). Later versions of vanilla Doom had Deathmatch 2.0 and Deathmatch 3.0, which are variations of Deathmatch. Skulltag and ZDaemon add more ways to play, like CTF. I recently downloaded Chocolate Doom again and use Skulltag so I could study the disparities in certain levels (Judas23) and see how they'd affect gameplay.

And these games were designed with those features in mind from the beginning. People had been playing Doom for nearly a decade before ZDaemon and Skulltag began to truly thrive.

I guess my point was this. Don't make a long nonsensical post where you call people whiners and close minded when you aren't even willing to acknowledge other peoples' stance on why they feel a certain way (with much reason). What you consider bugs that were fixed, many consider correct behavior.

In the end nobody is truly right or wrong and that's why different choices exist.

Also, don't make up facts about baseball

[Creaphis]

For the record, the mechanics of chess have gone through vast changes during its history. You don't hear anybody clamouring for the old rules.

Don't take this as an argument against vanilla purism. I do appreciate the importance of vanilla Doom's gameplay mechanics, and the real difference between Doom and chess (for the sake of this discussion) is that, unfortunately, those who are still interested in playing by Doom's original "rules" can't easily do so, while anybody can play an older version of chess, if they really want to, using the same board and pieces.

[Gez]

Creaphis said:

those who are still interested in playing by Doom's original "rules" can't easily do so

This sound you hear is Fraggle's heart breaking.