Source Ports personal deal breakers

[DreadWanderer]

9 minutes ago, CacoKnight said:

Yeah Shepardus and others were saying that and they also said the "new system" may even be better, that doesn't matter anyway, there should always be a way to keep it or switch it to whatever Id Software intended.

 

I can agree with that, though with 30 years of hindsight it's amusing to observe how certain quirks of the Doom engine and/or coding mistakes that would be classified as bugs in almost any other game have been readily absorbed by the community as charming features that give Doom its identity. To cite just a few examples - the blockmap bug, the ghost monsters, the wonky hit detection, the oversight of colored blood on hell nobles and cacos, or how the arch-vile's flame is shifted in certain cases due to erroneously checking the x position of the player twice.

Edited March 14 by DreadWanderer

[DreadWanderer]

3 minutes ago, ceski said:

 If they don't work, read this and blame Windows.

 

Somehow I feel that this is a safe bet for an inordinate amount of problems anywhere, not just in Doom 😂😂

[CacoKnight]

6 minutes ago, DreadWanderer said:

I can agree with that, though with 30 years of hindsight it's amusing to observe how certain quirks of the Doom engine and/or coding mistakes that would be classified as bugs in almost any other game have been readily absorbed by the community as charming features that give Doom its identity. To cite just a few examples - the blockmap bug, the ghost monsters, the wonky hit detection, the oversight of colored blood on hell nobles and cacos, or how the arch-vile's flame is shifted in certain cases due to erroneously checking the x position of the player twice.

Oh 100%, I'm still new to all this but I still want to play it like it was supposed to be if possible. One of my favorite features that I hated for so long is the walk over/under things, now I don't even bother disabling it anymore, I'm like "oh geez that stupid cacodemon 40 miles away up from where I am is getting me stuck".

 

There is a thing to say though, it may be a fun feature and all but also maps weren't that big for a long time, now with all the new quirks sometimes we kind of need to disable it.

 

And I still want FOV and ≥800p.

Edited March 14 by CacoKnight

[AmethystViper]

On 11/2/2023 at 5:59 PM, Devalaous said:

Dealbreakers:

• No controller support/bad controller support. Ever since the PS1 version, ive only enjoyed this game with a controller, and most ports since then on consoles have a really good control setup thats intuitive.
• Archaic required command-line or manual filepath typing in the settings. We live in the future damn it!
• Limited resolutions. Non-native resolution games on monitors looks bad and often mucks up desktops
• No stat tracking for stuff like Doom Launcher. This is important to me because it gives my scatterbrain a clear indicator of what I have and havent finished, and the completed stats gives me a feeling ive accomplished something
• Lack of widescreen support. Its 2023 and every monitor is 16:9 or higher now, not supporting 16:9 at the minimum is backwards, especially since the official ports do.
• No xINFO of any kind. These lumps free the game from its hardcoded secret exits and level progression and enabled so much quality of life options. UMAPINFO in particular means 'Universal' so I *expect* it to have support in anything I use.

I'm not versed enough with the modding scene to understand some of this stuff but a lot of these issues are often my dealbreakers for source ports I've shied away from or have a harder time enjoying (not to discredit the work that went onto these source ports however). As someone who grew up playing Doom 1 as much as I could when my brother borrowed the Xbox port of Doom 3, and it's unfortunate some of the source ports I've tried either have very archaic support for controllers like in the DOS days (or when using DOSBox) or none at all. Speaking of the official Enhanced Unity port, a deal breaker (among various issues I've mentioned in the Steam forums in the past as well as here) is the lack of proper support of non-16:9 resolutions. The Unity port also seems to refuse to accept any command-line parameters I throw at it; I tried forcing a 1600x1200 resolution with -screen-width 1600 -screen-height 1200 and it immediately forces back the original resolution setting I had earlier.

Edited March 14 by AmethystViper

[Edward850]

53 minutes ago, AmethystViper said:

The Unity port also seems to refuse to accept any command-line parameters I throw at it; I tried forcing a 1600x1200 resolution with -screen-width 1600 -screen-height 1200 and it immediately forces back the original resolution setting I had earlier. 

Where did you come up with these command line parameters, and what do you expect them to do exactly? Remember you can't just invent parameters out of nowhere, the program actually needs to be expecting to find them.

 

Doom Classic is permanently locked at a 853x400 internal resolution, so the only thing you can affect is the window resolution, which it already has menu controls for.

Edited March 15 by Edward850

[AmethystViper]

1 hour ago, Edward850 said:

Where did you come up with these command line parameters, and what do you expect them to do exactly? Remember you can't just invent parameters out of nowhere, the program actually needs to be expecting to find them.

 

Doom Classic is permanently locked at a 853x400 internal resolution, so the only thing you can affect is the window resolution, which it already has menu controls for.

I found them in PC Gaming Wiki's Unity engine article since it lists common settings and command-line parameters used by the engine. I used them out of curiosity seeing how the few other non-16:9 resolution the Enhanced port of Doom since I remember someone else in the Steam forums was looking for non-16:9 resolution workarounds a long time ago.

Edited March 15 by AmethystViper

[Edward850]

Huh, well that's actually a good bet then. You'll have to forgive me, usually when people try something like this they just assume command line parameters are universal.

But yeah it's stuck at 16:9 and 4:3 regardless of the monitor resolution. Doom's original renderer isn't quite as flexible as source ports would have you believe, and the library module they have it placed in makes it even more complicated because it's not actually aware of the output dimensions.

Edited March 15 by Edward850

[houston]

For me, it's got to be the ports with zero 200p support. Looking at you DSDA, "accurate" my ass

[redEYE]

On 3/15/2024 at 1:27 AM, ceski said:

With that said, if you want Woof or DSDA-Doom to match your old PrBoom+ settings exactly, then try these values. If they don't work, read this and blame Windows.

I can't believe how good and precise the mouse controls feel now. That's both Woof and DSDA Doom. I hassled with mouse controls at least two years and never would have found these by myself.

 

THANK YOU!

[CacoKnight]

Not sure this is a deal breaker YET but I just disabled F2, F3, F6 and F9 on all my ports, too many times I saved/loaded when I wanted to do the opposite because I was clicking too fast, now I just press Esc and read Save or Load clearly.

Edited April 4 by CacoKnight

[dasho]

5 minutes ago, CacoKnight said:

Not sure this is a deal breaker YET but I just disabled F2, F3, F6 and F9 on all my ports, too many times I saved/loaded when I wanted to do the opposite because I was clicking too fast, now I just press Esc and read Save or Load clearly.

 

Don't those all have confirmation dialogs before you commit to them?

[CacoKnight]

Just now, dasho said:

Don't those all have confirmation dialogs before you commit to them?

Yeah but even yesterday I was almost done with a map and boom, F3 enter enter without thinking and I loaded when I actually wanted to save. I am trying to learn to play Doom patiently and I am actually even enjoying the pistol and shotgun much more now.

[dasho]

1 minute ago, CacoKnight said:

Yeah but even yesterday I was almost done with a map and boom, F3 enter enter without thinking and I loaded when I actually wanted to save. I am trying to learn to play Doom patiently and I am actually even enjoying the pistol and shotgun much more now.

 

That's fine, but I don't know if it's fair to call user error a deal-breaker.

[CacoKnight]

6 minutes ago, dasho said:

That's fine, but I don't know if it's fair to call user error a deal-breaker.

For sure, also a setting that can easily be changed can't be a deal breaker, that's why I said "NOT YET", now thinking about it I'm not entirely sure what to call a deal breaker in this case.

 

Maybe I was thinking about the position of the keys, doing save, quicksave and load, quickload would be better? It can be easily changed anyway, sometimes I just write down things and hear people's opinions before I make decisions, to see how others use the game etc.

 

Personal deal breakers can be stupid things that don't bother anyone else also obviously.

Edited April 4 by CacoKnight

[Shepardus]

The keys can be easily rebound, and their defaults are the same as in vanilla Doom and pretty much every source port.

[CacoKnight]

Yeah I disabled all four on Chocolate, Crispy and all the other ports (12 total), it's ok for now, I'll keep it this way and just press Esc.

 

Also added "Zip loader" to the list, a few days ago I downloaded a wad and there were many files inside with no instructions, there was a Python file (.deh.py) too and I had no idea if I had to use -file, -merge, -deh etc. so drag&drop the .zip and done works better for casual players.

Edited April 4 by CacoKnight

[Edward850]

42 minutes ago, CacoKnight said:

Also added "Zip loader" to the list, a few days ago I downloaded a wad and there were many files inside with no instructions, there was a Python file (.deh.py) too and I had no idea if I had to use -file, -merge, -deh etc. so drag&drop the .zip and done works better for casual players. 

Wouldn't work globally for that kind of scenario. If a collection of files is packed like that as a zip, especially old content, it is only by pure luck that it loads correctly. These sorts of packages usually have abstract installers with absolutely zero standardization.

[CacoKnight]

34 minutes ago, Edward850 said:

Wouldn't work globally for that kind of scenario. If a collection of files is packed like that as a zip, especially old content, it is only by pure luck that it loads correctly. These sorts of packages usually have abstract installers with absolutely zero standardization.

I figured yeah, I was thinking about that too, so it's always better to load the .wad/s and .deh/s manually?

Edited April 4 by CacoKnight

[Edward850]

Pretty much. Additionally for anything modern there should only be one or two wads to load for the average user. Deh files are typically in the wad and will be loaded automatically in all sourceports (only vanilla doesn't, because the deh program was explicitly designed to modify the dos executable).

Edited April 4 by Edward850

[Robo_Cola]

On 11/3/2023 at 1:23 AM, pantheon said:

 

• Porch flash emulation.
• Support for console port mugshot head exploding animation when you get gibbed.

How do you enable these options?  Didn't see it in the menu(s)

[pantheon]

1 hour ago, Robo_Cola said:

How do you enable these options?  Didn't see it in the menu(s)

 

Porch flash is 'vga_porch_flash' in nugget-doom.cfg or woof.cfg, there's no menu item. For the mugshot, you need to load a WAD with exploding head frames named STFXDTH0 up to STFXDTH9. The graphics themselves are from the 3DO/Jaguar/PS1 port assets which I guess I shouldn't link to on here? But if you can find them, I used the Jaguar version and the exploding head is STFXDTH0 - STFXDTH5. I've got them in a WAD in my doom-all autoload folder.

[CacoKnight]

18 hours ago, Edward850 said:

Pretty much. Additionally for anything modern there should only be one or two wads to load for the average user. Deh files are typically in the wad and will be loaded automatically in all sourceports (only vanilla doesn't, because the deh program was explicitly designed to modify the dos executable).

Already had my first issue loading a .zip with too many files, gone from the list.

 

Funny how the "deal breakers" are becoming less and less important over time, learning how to play the game "properly/the old school way". I'm left with three only now: ≥800p, FOV and Complevels and I'm not entirely sure about the FOV.

Edited April 5 by CacoKnight

[Meerschweinmann]

To be honest, from the viewing point of someone who knows DOOM since the shareware even Chocolate DOOM is an enhancement, because you can play the game with todays hardware. It's all about what you want and from which viewing point you are looking. DOOM source ports have evolved in so many ways, and every way is interesting to see and test out.

 

I am happy if a source port can use my monitors aspect ratio and resolutions above 200p, because today i don't own my 14" 4:3 CRT from the 90s anymore.

And coop multiplayer is a must have for me.

 

 

[CacoKnight]

I miss my old CRT :|

 

As an older dude and having been around tech stuff since before the Commodore I must say there is nothing noble in playing Doom at 200p on big screens, 800p is my limit on 24"/1080p+, if I had a smaller one sure, 400p would be just fine. Sometimes I load International Doom and Nugget at 800p just because I feel I like it more than native res, there is something magical about it but again, nothing noble going lower if I have to ruin my sight.

Edited April 5 by CacoKnight

[Meerschweinmann]

Yeah, my 19" CRT i had after the 14" was really nice. To have no native resolution was a fine thing :)

But with that bigger Monitor 200p began to be blocky in comparision to Duke Nukems 640x480 resolution.

 

today i am switching mostly between 600p and 800p, depending on the screen size. I like my pixels well done but not to small.

 

Another pro of higher resolutions, there are so many maps with extremely wide areas and far away points to view today.

In 200p it is hard to notice whats going on.

 

Back in the days the maps were much smaller and lesser detailed. So 200p was absolutely ok.

 

The pre Version 1.9 maps had to be lower geometry detail. I have in mind that there was a reduced amount of sectors on screen, which caused HOM when using too much of them in one place.

 

Btw, this were nice times 😊

Edited April 6 by Meerschweinmann

[Gez]

On vendredi 15 mars 2024 at 12:19 AM, CacoKnight said:

there should always be a way to keep it or switch it to whatever Id Software intended.

This is rather funny, given all the audiovisual and gameplay differences between all the various official Doom versions, including some that weren't even using the Doom engine at all.

 

The only thing id Software really intended was that you'd want to play the game so you'd buy it, again and again and again and again.

[CacoKnight]

I believe you have a valid point there :|

[TruthInFiction]

On 4/8/2024 at 1:51 AM, Gez said:

This is rather funny, given all the audiovisual and gameplay differences between all the various official Doom versions, including some that weren't even using the Doom engine at all.

 

The only thing id Software really intended was that you'd want to play the game so you'd buy it, again and again and again and again.

Also, the game we got was heavily simplified compared to the original vision due to the hardware limitations of the day.  Strictly speaking, if one wants to play the game "the way ID intended", more modern settings are probably the way to go. 

[CacoKnight]

21 hours ago, TruthInFiction said:

Also, the game we got was heavily simplified compared to the original vision due to the hardware limitations of the day.  Strictly speaking, if one wants to play the game "the way ID intended", more modern settings are probably the way to go. 

You sort of read my mind, that's exactly what I meant when I said "the way ID intended".

[Muusi]

Might as well complain about this in this thread too. If you do controller support in your source port, do not half-ass it like GZDoom does, support rumble too. Be like Eternity Engine and do it all the way.