Overview of the ports

[NiGHTMARE]

Here's overview of the current ports and why people use them. It can get confusing, as some of the ports have lately begun to "borrow" features from one another :)


Boom - the "I want everyone to play my .wad" port. Levels made for Boom will work in almost any other port, except of course the original .exe's, and JDoom. ID Software have announced this to be doom.exe's true successor.

Ease of editing - 9.5/10 (basically just the same as Doom but with more linedef types)


Doom.exe - the seriously old schooler's port. Some people still use it, although as I've said, Boom levels will now work with almost any port, so there isn't really much point.

Ease of editing - 10/10 (well of course, it is the normal .exe :) )


EDGE - the MOD maker's port. DDF allows you to change and add just about whatever you want in terms of enemies, weapons, power-ups, and so on. It also has true 3D.

Ease of editing - 6/10 (3D bridges are a tad tricky to implement, and DDF is pretty confusing at first, especially the way it has a million and one lumps available for editing)


JDoom - the art critic's port. If you want Doom to look amazing, this is the port for you.

Ease of editing - 10/10 (identical to editing for doom2.exe)


Legacy - the Quake lover's port. Why? It just FEELS like Quake somehow. Nice looks, a few editing functions (not much more than Boom though) and the an improved version of the true 3D code from Edge, and enhanced FraggleScript from SMMU.

Ease of editing - 7/10 (FraggleScript is apparently a lot less confusing than ACS)


MBF - the Doom perfectionists' port. For some reason a few people view this as the perfect Doom port, although it is no longer being updated. It's also considered to be Boom+, as it's based on that port and MBF's creator also contributed greatly to Boom.

Ease of editing - 9/10 (not really all that much more than Boom)


Skull Tag - the editor's port plus. It's based on ZDoom, but has even more editing features, and is geared around a new mode of play (i.e. Skull Tag) that adds several new power-ups, new bot skins, etc. It also has client/server player, and may even get a GL mode in the future (with code from JDoom).

Ease of editing - 5/10 (Very similar to ZDoom editing)


SMMU - a couple of guys' port. MBF with various cool features thrown in, such as Fraggle Script. Unfortunately, very few people seem to have even heard of it.

Ease of editing - 8/10 (same as MBF, except FraggleScript, although as noted for Legacy it's supposedly pretty easy to pick-up)


ZDoom - the editor's port. Has hundreds of new features for level designers, including ACS scripting and now slopes. Team TNT announced this to be boom's true successor.

Ease of editing - 5/10 (can get VERY confusing. ACS is bad enough, but there's a tonne of different lump you can edit, such as MAPINFO, SNDINFO, SNDSEQ, ANIMDEFS, etc).


ZDoomGL - no-one's port. Why? It either doesn't load or crashes on 99.9% of computers (i.e. everyone's except the author's). Just wait for Skull Tag GL :)

Ease of editing - 4/10 (same as ZDoom, except now you can also mess around with MD2 objects if you want, which is probably a bit tricky).


There's also PRBoom and VaVoom, but I don't know much about them right now; I generally only tend to download ports other than ZDoom and Skull Tag when there's a .wad that needs them :)

[Guest fragg]

Thanks for nice overview. Glad to see Boom is a standard of sorts.
How about now ranking them for "ease of use" (for Editing newbys) ?? Thanx.
fragg

[NiGHTMARE]

Done! :) (see the original post)

[Guest fragg]

Excellent!
I printed out and will save for ref., your edited post. Real helpful. Thank you.
fragg

[Guest fragg]

Editing newby working on first map, using (ID's) Doom2.exe and WadAuthor.
You say JDoom makes a Doom map look super-nice and is "easy-to-use" as Doom.exe.
That makes it very tempting to switch over to JDoom.
But I have a lot of work invested in this map.
If I switch to JDoom would I have to dump it, start all over from scratch?
Can I dump my map into JDoom -- "turn a crank"(or sumethin) -- and out it comes in JDoom format?
fragg

[Guest Lament]

As long as your map will run with Doom/DoomII, it will also run with any of the source ports. No changes needed. All source ports are doom-compatible.
And since JDoom doesn't have any fancy editing features, just edit the map as a normal DooM map and run it in JDoom.

[boris]

VaVoom - the MOD creator's/noone's port. It's progs make DDF look like crap, it's got sky boxes, slopes (for the last two: don't know if/how well they work), should in theorie support ACS for Heretic and Doom, client/server. Unfortunately it's slooooow. When it becomes better it may kick the other port's asses.

Ease of editing - 3/10 Basically same as doom2.exe BUT... if you want to use it's new features you are rather left alone. As far as I've looked into the progs you can change whatever you want, but the source is nearly not commented and if you don't know C you can forget about it.

[Guest fraggle`]

afterglow did the start map for smmu and jon did some graphics but i did all the coding :)

[zxcvbnm]

cool. the first port i ever downloaded was an early version of legacy. damn that was cool! but now i use zdoom for its editing stuff. if only i could make a half-decent level......... damn

[Sephiroth]

i like zdoomgl/zdoom, unstable yet it can still run ok on my computer, but i use doom legacygl the most for making demos, maybey i will try jdoom too

[Guest cacoman]

Lament said:

As long as your map will run with Doom/DoomII, it will also run with any of the source ports. No changes needed. All source ports are doom-compatible.
And since JDoom doesn't have any fancy editing features, just edit the map as a normal DooM map and run it in JDoom.

hmmm use boom for the extra crap stuff (its supported with most ports)

[Guest fragg]

Lament said:

As long as your map will run with Doom/DoomII, it will also run with any of the source ports. No changes needed. All source ports are doom-compatible.
And since JDoom doesn't have any fancy editing features, just edit the map as a normal DooM map and run it in JDoom.

All the info u guys offered here was much appreciated. Happy New Year all.
fragg