Favorite Source Port? (Multiple Choice Poll)

[Devalaous]

would help if there was a guide to what is what, I dont recognise all those icons.

[maxmanium]

@Doomkid: do you actually use DOSBox and manually load the DEHACKED patches? That's some dedication, I'd just launch Chocolate with -dehlump.

 

Here's mine:

 

Edited November 10, 2020 by maxmanium

[Doomkid]

I do, although thanks to Jading Tsunami I can now use the automated DEHpick program which makes it as easy as entering one command. I can manually apply Deh patches with my eyes closed at this point, but being able to just type "dehpick" then hit enter and bam, it's ready to launch, really helped me stay on the DosBox train.

[maxmanium]

1 minute ago, Doomkid said:

DEHpick

 

Whaaat? Didn't know about this.

[Doomkid]

Not to derail the thread too much, but here it is if ever you need it: https://www.doomworld.com/applications/core/interface/file/attachment.php?id=104049

[GraphicBleeder]

 

S: Personal favorites

A: Good
B: Meh

C: Bad

D: Never used
 

[snapshot]

 

S - Most used

A - Good

B - Okay

C - Only used when a map runs badly on S and A Tier

D - Never used or used once but don't care for it

Edited November 10, 2020 by sluggard
PrBoom+

[AtticTelephone]

PRBoom+ and ZDaemon are the BEST.

[LexiMax]

 

Crispy Doom is a fine example of a port that has a niche and executes on it perfectly.  It gets the top spot, and is my go-to for playing vanilla content.

 

Chocolate is similar, but since I think I prefer resolutions above 320x200 and fps caps above 35 it gets knocked down a peg.

 

Odamex I freely admit I'm biased about, so I won't try and justify its placement. :)

 

GZDoom is....strange.  I feel like if you were trapped on a desert island and could only use one port, GZDoom is probably it simply because it supports the majority of Doom Community's collective output...acceptably.  That said, the port just feels kind of bloated to me at this point - I don't think it's any accident that the vast majority of decent single player content for Doom is made for Boom/MBF standards, while GZDoom seems to excel in amazing-looking single maps, weapon mods, and total conversions.  Not to mention that I am first and foremost a multiplayer doomer and upstream GZDoom doesn't seem interested in catering to the client/server crowd.  I suspect that GZDoom is going to swap places with Eternity on this list within the next year or two, as I find myself having to use the ZDoom-specific feature less and less over time.

 

Zandronum is also strange.  It used to be quite a bit higher on this list, but slowdowns in development plus the realization that upstream GZDoom was making changes incompatible with its netcode kind of puts its ambitions of being a "multiplayer ZDoom" in a bind.  It's fine for what it is, I suppose, but I don't find myself needing to use it much these days - for classic stuff there's a myriad of options, for ZDoom stuff there's GZDoom and for multiplayer ZDoom stuff there's not really much of an option unless you are fine with p2p or being stuck at a ZDoom 2.5 featureset.

 

prBoom+ is the gold standard in demo compatibility, but every time I find myself needing to pull out the engine to actually play I find myself wishing I hadn't.  There's too many options, and the interface feels too "backwards" compared to what I'm used to.  It's good that this port exists, but I get the feeling that other ports might come along and pick off the really good features and leave the rest.

 

Eternity I used to be much more indifferent about, but the realization that I've been needing fewer and fewer ZDoom-specific features makes me realize I could actually probably use Eternity full-time as my single-player port of choice.  Just haven't gotten around to it yet.

 

Doomsday I am not onboard with the mission.  I feel like Doom has a very specific artstlye and trying to HD-ify it rarely works in its favor.  And on a related note - I haven't tried a fresh GZDoom config, but I hope that it turns on software-style light diminishing by default and uses nearest neighbor texture filtering because Doom's art was not designed to be blurry or have that flat lighting GL is known for, it kind of looks terrible that way.

 

The other ports I am indifferent about.  I either haven't used them in forever or haven't booted them up period.

Edited November 10, 2020 by AlexMax

[OpenRift]

Ladys and gentlekids, I present to you, the definitive Doom source port tier list.

 

S

Vanilla exe: ground zero for everything that would come after. I really shouldn't have to say more. Fuck you it's Doom.

xttl's sigexe (SIGIL.EXE): A great, fully fledged companion for running Romero's SIGIL in DOS. (would be nice if it supported the buckethead soundtrack thru some kinda CD music function but it's still really fucking good)

 

A

Chocolate Doom: The definitive way to play vanilla Doom natively on modern operating systems.

Crispy Doom: The definitive source port for Doom newcomers.

Zdaemon: A modern multiplayer port I use all the time at USDQC, very faithful modernization of Doom multiplayer with the right settings.

PrBoom+: My favorite port for Boom/PrBoom-compatible WADs.

Eternity Engine: My favorite port for ZDoom WADs.

TeamTNT's BOOM: Not always my favorite port, but definitely the most important port of all time.

Doom-plus: Cool EXE hack that significantly raises Doom's static limits. Great workaround if you start getting savegame overflows in vanilla. Also good for some limit-removing WADs, though there are a notable few that still exceed said limits (No End in Sight Episode 4, Scythe 2, etc.), so that's why it's not S-tier.

 

B

ZDoom: Also one of Doom's most important ports, stands at the core of so many of today's advanced ports, I can't imagine how different Doom's modding landscape would be without ZDoom.

Zandronum: Another multiplayer port I use regularly. Not as cool as ZDaemon though.

CTFDoom: Very important port that laid the groundwork for CTF in Doom as we know it today. Kinda wanna try this out with some people sometime.

CSDoom: The FIRST client-server multiplayer Doom port, also the groundwork for Doom's current multiplayer scene.

Skulltag: The cult-classic. Doom's multiplayer reniassance age in the 2000s was lead by this port. Everyone who's been around long enough remembers Skulltag very fondly.

 

C

Doom95: Not a great port, but one of the first. Had a really nice launcher, which is what people remember of it. Bogged down by lower pitched sounds and misaligned weapon sprites. :/

Doom Legacy: Cool port, cool features. Just, not as enthused about it personally.

 

D

Doomsday Engine: "The pinnacle of HD Dooming," as a wise man once sarcastically said. Features are cool I guess, but seems a bit... much to me.

Doom Retro: Cool in concept, but the abundance of additional options being only accessible through the CFG is kind of annoying and unintuitive.

 

E

Odamex: Unstable, pain to set up. Kind of overrated if I'm being honest. Most people praise it for its vanilla qualities or something like that, but I couldn't tell you what those qualities are, because ZDaemon does basically most if not all of those things better. Reason it's not F-tier is because I'm not a hyperbolic baby,@NationwideMoose (I'm only half-joking so don't piss your pants yet).

QZDoom: Cool software rendering experiments are cool, but it's based on GZDoom, so...

LZDoom: Fork of an older version of GZDoom but targeted at older hardware. Could've just done that for GZDoom, since it's oh-so-good.

 

F

GZDoom: Bloated, ludicrously overrated port made by a salty member. Now, don't get me wrong, there are some great mods for GZDoom (VietDoom and @MikeyScoots's Hell Unleashed seems pretty sick). But the port itself is just.... yucky... Yucky in so many ways.... For a port that's oftentimes the beginner's port (including my own), it's not a very user-friendly experience for noobies.

Edited November 29, 2020 by OpenRift

[Redneckerz]

2 hours ago, Doomkid said:

I do, although thanks to Jading Tsunami I can now use the automated DEHpick program which makes it as easy as entering one command. I can manually apply Deh patches with my eyes closed at this point, but being able to just type "dehpick" then hit enter and bam, it's ready to launch, really helped me stay on the DosBox train.

So happy to hear you are using these things DoomKid :) And with Xttl's custom DeHacked build, who knows where VULD will end.

2 hours ago, maxmanium said:

 

Whaaat? Didn't know about this.

It is a byproduct of VULD - the launcher utility heavily utilizing DeHacked to craft custom executables.

 

Whereas VULD will look for DeHacked patches and graphics in PWADS, DEHPick just merges a patch with a Doom executable.

 

As playtester of VULD i wholeheartely approve of the package (I am not paid to say this) and i use it whenever i need to dabble with Vanilla and DOSBox. Its infinitely useful. Vanilla has a lot of tricks still up its sleeve!

 

Derail over.

[P41R47]

There is no Woof! option?
There is no @P41R47 ranking

:P

Jokes aside, Just DoomRetro for me, and it daddy (Crispy) and grandaddy (vanilla/chocolate).

Almost everything else rapes my rig to death.

[mxrgan]

Heres my two cents...

Spoiler

[Lippeth]

 

S - Gotta have it (daily use)

A - Love it (use it when I'm feeling some type of way)

B - Like it (rarely use it, but enjoy when I do)

C - Multiplayer (It's for multiplayer)

D - Don't use it (but don't hate it)

Edited October 10, 2022 by Lippeth

[inkoalawetrust]

S - Ports I often use and really like. I'm assuming that's vanilla Doom and not Chocolate Doom since the other graphic is identicaly except for the white background, but either way while I haven't really used Chocolate Doom much I still put it on S since it's the way to play (Almost) completely vanilla Doom natively on a modern system without using emulation or having to actually use a PC with MS-DOS.
A - Ports I used often pretty much just because my PC doesn't have OpenGL 3.3 to run GZDoom. I primarly use LZDoom on my ancient PC to play GZDoom or even just Doom stuff in general since it's relatively up to date with GZDoom and supports stuff like ZScript which Zandronum doesn't. However I also use Zandronum on maps that are too laggy to play on LZDoom, but besides that I don't use it since I don't care about multiplayer.
B - Ports I don't like
C - Ports I really don't like I guess ? I have tried Eternity but didn't like it since it seems to just kind of be in a limbo between a modern source port and one closer to vanilla. For example it has some advanced features and UDMF support but doesn't have a hardware renderer so you can't even look up and down without Y-Shearing. Also when I went ahead to delete it some sound related program that Eternity used kept running in the background so I couldn't delete the folder until I manually closed that program from task manager. Though I did mention that issue on the Discord server for Eternity so it's probably fixed by now.
D - Ports I haven't used.

 

2 hours ago, OpenRift said:

GZDoom: Bloated, ludicrously overrated port made by a salty member. Now, don't get me wrong, there are some great mods for GZDoom (VietDoom and @MikeyScoots's Hell Unleashed seems pretty sick). But the port itself is just.... yucky... Yucky in so many ways.... For a port that's oftentimes the beginner's port (including my own), it's not a very user-friendly experience for noobies.

I wouldn't exactly call dragging a file or two on an EXE file user unfriendly. Also as far as I can tell pretty much no other fork of the Doom engine is as advanced and has as much stuff as GZDoom does (Besides EDGE from what I've read about it, which I also want to use eventually.), so that's a pretty good reason for it to be "ludicrously overrated". Also how is it bloated ? It's only around 12-13 MB large with the engine PK3 included, I have dozens of images on my computer that are about as large, if not larger, than that.

Also VietDoom is more of a Zandronum mod since Mark wants it to have proper multiplayer.

Edited November 10, 2020 by inkoalawetrust

[Biodegradable]

3 hours ago, OpenRift said:

GZDoom: it's not a very user-friendly experience for noobies.

 

Huh, that's weird, because it's the exact opposite in my experience when compared to the other sourceports I've toyed with. I've found GZDoom to be way more straightforward and easy to use. Funny how that works hehe

Edited November 10, 2020 by Biodegradable

[LexiMax]

4 minutes ago, Biodegradable said:

 

Huh, that's weird, because it's the exact opposite in my experience when compared to the other sourceports I've toyed with. I've found GZDoom to be way more straightforward and easy to use. Funny how that works hehe

 

In my experience GZDoom is one of the easiest ports to go from zero to something that's functional.  The menu system and console also work very well and show lots of options at once, whereas other non-ZDoom ports tend to use Boom-style menus with big fonts and options you have to page through, which is very aggravating.

 

However, if you try and go beyond functional, you soon realize that GZDoom has a quite severe options menu bloat problem.  I dread the process of getting GZ to look "just right" and I usually have to resort to googling a console variable at least once.  And although GZ's menus might be better than the competition, they still feel like they haven't progressed much past the Quake 1-2 style they were originally based on, and interfaces have gotten much friendlier since then.

[OpenRift]

8 minutes ago, Biodegradable said:

  

Huh, that's weird, because it's the exact opposite in my experience when compared to the other sourceports I've toyed with. I've found GZDoom to be way more straightforward and easy to use. Funny how that works hehe

Can you give an example? You're being kinda vague.

 

1 hour ago, inkoalawetrust said:

I wouldn't exactly call dragging a file or two on an EXE file user unfriendly. Also as far as I can tell pretty much no other fork of the Doom engine is as advanced and has as much stuff as GZDoom does (Besides EDGE from what I've read about it, which I also want to use eventually.), so that's a pretty good reason for it to be "ludicrously overrated". Also how is it bloated ? It's only around 12-13 MB large with the engine PK3 included, I have dozens of images on my computer that are about as large, if not larger, than that.

Also VietDoom is more of a Zandronum mod since Mark wants it to have proper multiplayer.

Dragging files on an exe is not really a unique trait of GZDoom, so that's obviously not what I'm referring to. I think most people who use source ports regularly use a launcher like ZDL or Doom Launcher anyway. How advanced GZDoom is isn't really what I have a problem with, it's the fact that it's the only engine that is that advanced. Because despite being as advanced as it is, it has a lot of problems, which leads into my first complaint. The options menu. You cannot look at that maze of submenus and tell me that it is a user-friendly layout, let alone noob-friendly. You could absolutely trim the fat there and clean it up. 

 

But lets take a look at the elephant in the room: the default settings. I just reset my GZDoom settings and was reminded of how fucking awful they are. And I'm not just talking about texture filtering either. Like, I spend a good 30-35 minutes (yes, I checked) trying to get GZDoom looking vanilla as possible, and even then there were STILL settings that I couldn't change. Not to mention there's probably numerous settings where I have NO IDEA which would be the more vanilla option. I think this alone is what takes away from the experience the most. Sure, PrBoom+ has bad default automap colors, but everything else is easily configurable.

[Hekksy]

 

S) Use very often, respect what's going on.

A) Use now and then and respect, just not primary picks

B) Has cool stuff, but I don't play it much

C) Don't care for it, rarely play it

D) I haven't played it (I played everything in the icons provided)

[Biodegradable]

2 minutes ago, OpenRift said:

Can you give an example? 

 

I'm not a big tech nerd like a lot of you guys, so I'm not very good at articulating specifics but I'll try. I've just found GZDoom's options much easier to navigate and change than other ports, it's a lot more powerful so I don't need to worry about additional stuff like Dehacked files and the like and it can basically run anything. I'm also not much of a purist, so I only need to make a handful of adjustments in the options that take less than a minute rather than spending over half an hour tinkering like you have to do, so if I need to make a new ini file it doesn't bother me. I can sympathise with it being a bit of a hassle for you though.

 

In short, it's just a lot less fussy and easier to get along with than other ports I've used and does everything I personally want it to do to get the most out of my Dooming experience.

[OpenRift]

15 minutes ago, Biodegradable said:

 

I'm not a big tech nerd like a lot of you guys, so I'm not very good at articulating specifics but I'll try. I've just found GZDoom's options much easier to navigate and change than other ports, it's a lot more powerful so I don't need to worry about additional stuff like Dehacked files and the like and it can basically run anything. I'm also not much of a purist, so I only need to make a handful of adjustments in the options that take less than a minute rather than spending over half an hour tinkering like you have to do, so if I need to make a new ini file it doesn't bother me. I can sympathise with it being a bit of a hassle for you though.

  

In short, it's just a lot less fussy and easier to get along with than other ports I've used and does everything I personally want it to do to get the most out of my Dooming experience.

I mean dehacked files are just drag and drop like any any other port, so I don't see how GZ solves that problem any differently than any other port. I guess I've just grown so used to using the arrow keys to navigate the menus since every other port does it. But see, that's the thing, being introduced to Doom through GZDoom kind of neuters the experience for people, because there's so many things that are different by default that it alters that first experience too much. I was lucky because I have what I like to call "Star Wars syndrome" where I want to seek out how it was originally designed to be played instead of a so-called enhanced edition.

Edited November 11, 2020 by OpenRift

[Biodegradable]

Just now, OpenRift said:

I mean dehacked files are just drag and drop like any any other port, so I don't see how GZ solves that problem any differently than any other port.

 

It does in the sense that GZDoom doesn't require dehacked files for a WAD to work, that was my point. One less file to concern myself with. In fact, half the time, if you put in a dehacked file, it DOESN'T work! I remember watching Austinado streaming a WAD one day and he couldn't get it to work, then we realised he was trying to load it into GZDoom with a dehacked file. Once he tried loading it again without the file, presto! He was good to go.

 

2 minutes ago, OpenRift said:

being introduced to Doom through GZDoom kind of neuters the experience for people, because there's so many things that are different by default that it alters that first experience too much. I was lucky because I have what I like to call "Star Wars syndrome" where I want to seek out how it was originally designed to be played.

 

That's understandable. Personally, I don't need to worry about missing out on that. I played Doom consistently from age 6 to 13 and still have vivid memories of what it was like to play back then. If I ever wish to go back the Vanilla, if the Purist Bug ever bites me, there's the myriad of Vanilla accuracy-orientated ports available. Personally, I very much prefer the advances GZDoom offers. It's much less of a hassle for me to use than any other port I've tried. It just works for me. 

[Erick]

 

S) GZDoom: Use it basically all the time for non-vanilla mapsets. I like having so many options with display settings, minor gameplay options, and even stuff like changing the HUD and automap. I don't got many issues trying to run GZDoom and the questionable defaults were easy to change anyways.

Chocolate Doom: Faithful to Vanilla Doom and works natively on modern operating systems. I don't have to modify my IWADs to play custom WADs with new sprites and it was not a hassle to tweak some settings like having pitch shifting and GUS music. My go-to port for vanilla maps.

 

A) Crispy Doom: Faithful to Vanilla Doom and has many nice features that do not break the vanilla experience. There's some gameplay options but the higher resolution and framerates are already big changers for me. Basically, the image quality is crisp (no pun intended) and it plays smoothly.

Doom Retro: Not a port I play often but I respect what it's trying to do. It has its own touches that gives a different feeling when playing through the original games.

 

B) Zandronum: Development looks to be stagnant but it does support some mods I like such as Quake Champions: Doom Edition.

PrBoom+: I guess if a mapset doesn't run well on any of the above ports, I use PrBoom+.There's also demo recording but I am slacking on that for the past year.

 

C) To cut it short, I don't use these ports often or in the case of ZDoom, stopped using it.

 

D) No.

Edited November 11, 2020 by Erick

[OpenRift]

2 hours ago, Biodegradable said:

That's understandable. Personally, I don't need to worry about missing out on that. I played Doom consistently from age 6 to 13 and still have vivid memories of what it was like to play back then. If I ever wish to go back the Vanilla, if the Purist Bug ever bites me, there's the myriad of Vanilla accuracy-orientated ports available. Personally, I very much prefer the advances GZDoom offers. It's much less of a hassle for me to use than any other port I've tried. It just works for me. 

I'm mostly talking about future generations, something like that

[Biodegradable]

Given how prevalent playing Vanilla is in the Doom community, I wouldn't worry about that. ;^)

[LexiMax]

3 minutes ago, OpenRift said:

I'm mostly talking about future generations, something like that

 

Now that the Unity port is up to scratch and widely available on a variety of platforms, seeking a source port is not the virtual necessity it was before then.  I'm willing to bet most people's first contact with Doom henceforth will be through an official port, and not GZDoom.

[Mordeth]

11 hours ago, OpenRift said:

Eternity Engine: My favorite port for ZDoom WADs.

 

What.

[Andromeda]

 

Seriously, without all these devs' hard work I doubt many of us would still be playing Doom to this day!

[Biodegradable]

Right, close the thread, Andro just made the definitive and undeniably correct tier list.

[Gez]

Yeah. I like all ports, even those I don't use.