Which sourceport to use to play heretic nowdays?

[ptrdoom]

Hello folks I was wondering what some of you use as a source to play heretic since there's so many. I did some research on my own and stumbled upon the doom wiki page mentioning the various sourceports.

https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Comparison_of_source_ports

Now I don't know if there are more of them not mentioned in the above list. I was looking for one that allows the resolution to be higher than the standard game and that doesn't change the gameplay at all. What do you guys and girls use to play it? Just to hear different opinions, etc. Thank you in advance.

P.S

I wasn't sure if this was supposed to be made in the DOOM general section.

[CacoKnight]

GZDoom or DSDA? Had zero issues the few times I played it with one or the other.

Edited December 16, 2023 by CacoKnight

[ptrdoom]

I wasn't sure about Gzdoom because, in the list above, it scored low in compatibility, even mentioned as "Low indicates that the port makes significant changes to gameplay and presentation. Some vanilla-targeted modifications may not work as intended". As for the DSDA, I didn't even know about it. Thank you!

Edited December 16, 2023 by ptrdoom

[liPillON]

how are dsda's accuracy and support for the raven's iwad nowadays?

how does it compare to choco's and crispy's?

[Shepardus]

4 hours ago, liPillON said:

how are dsda's accuracy and support for the raven's iwad nowadays?

how does it compare to choco's and crispy's?

dsda-doom has been tested against the demos on DSDA, so it should be as accurate as Chocolate/Crispy Heretic in terms of gameplay. Graphically I'm not sure, but at least all the graphical glitches I knew of have been ironed out. (For Hexen, there are still some limitations like the layered skies not working.)

 

I personally used Crispy Heretic and Crispy Hexen for my first Heretic and Hexen playthroughs, and found them to be very good. I would recommend those if 640x400 is high enough resolution for you, otherwise dsda-doom. Honestly GZDoom should be just fine too, I think the differences it has tend to be overstated at least for casual play. Many Heretic and Hexen PWADs are made for ZDoom since historically there haven't been many other choices, so if you're going to be playing those you'll be setting up GZDoom sooner or later anyway.

Edited December 17, 2023 by Shepardus

[plums]

Crispy Heretic, dsda-doom, and GZDoom are all good choices, so whichever is the equivalent to your favourite Doom port is fine. EDGE also has good support though I haven't played through it 100% yet.

 

One issue I had with dsda-doom is that I couldn't seem to get F1 to use an artifact, which is what I was used to using for quartz flasks -- it just always brings up the health screen. That's probably not a problem that affects a lot of other people.

[ptrdoom]

Thank you for the answers, folks. As for the sourceport, I did try DSADA Doom and played a bit of Heretic for the first time and reached e1m4. As for the graphic, it looks normal to me. It's not definitely the level of Crispy Doom or Chocolate Doom. The only thing I changed was pretty much the resolution. If the gameplay remains untouched, with stuff not changing, I'm definitely happy with DSADA Doom and will eventually try Hexen and Hexen II.

 

Here is how it looks.

https://imgur.com/a/SN1gHTt

Edited December 17, 2023 by ptrdoom

[plums]

6 hours ago, ptrdoom said:

will eventually try Hexen and Hexen II

Hexen currently has at least one annoying bug in dsda-doom: using a banishment device makes you use all artifacts. So until that bug is fixed, I would suggest a different port for Hexen.

 

Hexen II is a different engine altogether of course.

[ptrdoom]

22 minutes ago, plums said:

Hexen currently has at least one annoying bug in dsda-doom: using a banishment device makes you use all artifacts. So until that bug is fixed, I would suggest a different port for Hexen.

 

Hexen II is a different engine altogether of course.

I'm not particularly well versed yet with the sourceports for Doom since there's so many. Right now, I'm playing through TNT Evilution and going through the progression in this old thread.

https://www.doomworld.com/forum/topic/107015-wad-progression-for-skill-improvement/

Once I'm done with TNT Evilution, I'll start from where I left Heretic in e1m4, which I reached yesterday while trying out the game. Feel free to suggest the one for Hexen, which I hope to eventually play.

Edited December 17, 2023 by ptrdoom

[Vermil]

If all you wish to do is play the original games with enhanced graphics and you are on Windows, I would recommend Doomsday 1.8.6. Naturally, as it's very old version of the port, it probably won't play modern mods though.

 

https://sourceforge.net/projects/deng/files/Doomsday Engine/1.8.6/

Edited December 17, 2023 by Vermil

[Catoptromancy]

Crispy heretic for what works with it. gzdoom for gzdoom mods. Needed zdoom 2.8.1 for heretic amp because its not compatible with gzdoom anymore. 

[Shepardus]

8 hours ago, plums said:

Hexen currently has at least one annoying bug in dsda-doom: using a banishment device makes you use all artifacts. So until that bug is fixed, I would suggest a different port for Hexen.

I don't think I ever used the banishment device in my playthrough of Hexen, but there are much worse issues for Hexen in dsda-doom so I can't recommend it at the moment. For example, here's how the opening of Darkmere should look (screenshot taken in Crispy Hexen):

Spoiler

And here's how it looks in dsda-doom:

Spoiler

Software renderer:

And with OpenGL renderer, because for some reason that looks different:

I'm not sure what's going on with the fog, but the layered skies are simply not implemented, and that's a known limitation stated in the patch notes when Hexen support was implemented. This doesn't affect demo sync of course, but it does matter if you're playing through Hexen for the first time.

 

For what it's worth GZDoom doesn't look quite right here either, even using the software renderer. Seems that the fog is thicker or the lighting falloff is different, making the bricks fade to green earlier than they should:

Spoiler

Software renderer:

Hardware renderer:

 

[plums]

18 minutes ago, Shepardus said:

I don't think I ever used the banishment device in my playthrough of Hexen

On skill 5 (with fast monsters), there are a few times where they're really handy, like getting rid of the hyperactive Wendigos in some spots. Otherwise it's not very important. But Hexen to me is partly about just using items for the fun of it, and so it sucks when something is off-limits even if you don't need it.

 

GZDoom has its own fog implementation(s) I guess. IMO the hardware renderer is the closest if you don't care about losing the banding, and you set the fog to standard and "fog forces fullbright" on. Might be better if you tweaked the display settings a bit just for that level, it you were really concerned about visual accuracy.

 

But yeah Crispy is your best bet for "accurate without going as far as vanilla/chocolate."

Edited December 18, 2023 by plums

[Devalaous]

I like how that comparison of ports doesn't have DSDA Doom, despite it practically being one of the most popular ports these days.

 

for GZDoom however, is there a recommended compatibility for Heretic or Hexen to use for them? Somehow I doubt Doom or Doom (Strict) is optimal.

[plums]

1 hour ago, Devalaous said:

I like how that comparison of ports doesn't have DSDA Doom, despite it practically being one of the most popular ports these days.

Hm? Shepardus's post has screenshots of dsda-doom in the 2nd spoiler, and is a response to my post about a bug in Hexen with dsda-doom.

 

Quote

for GZDoom however, is there a recommended compatibility for Heretic or Hexen to use for them? Somehow I doubt Doom or Doom (Strict) is optimal.

There isn't a compatibility preset that matches the Raven games as closely as possible. The defaults are good enough for just playing the iwads, and also probably what you want for any ZDoom-specific wads. Doom is actually fine I think, Doom (strict) is not because it sets actors to be infinitely tall. "No minotaur flames in water" should be on for Heretic E4M1 and doesn't matter too much otherwise (and doesn't even make too much difference on E4M1).

 

It might be interesting to go through the compat options to try to match the Raven games as closely as possible, I'm not 100% sure about what some of them do.

 

 

edit: One thing about Heretic that I didn't mention earlier is that the ethereal crossbow has some unconventional auto-aiming: each bolt gets its own autoaim and so can all fly towards the same target, or alternately can all fly off in completely different directions. A number of people who use ZDoom family ports like playing with full mouselook and no auto-aim, and this ends up weakening the crossbow somewhat. Of course you can still leave auto-aim on in ZDoom.

Edited December 18, 2023 by plums

[Devalaous]

I meant in the link in the first post, the Doom Wiki page. But yeah, I got through Heretic's entire 48 maps earlier, just wondering if there was a better way to play, its currently just on Default for Heretic and Hexen.

[CacoKnight]

3 hours ago, Devalaous said:

I meant in the link in the first post, the Doom Wiki page.

It's a big wiki man, some pages get updated when people notice things, you can push updates and they will be approved by the mod/mod team.

[Lippeth]

I made "Raven" and "Raven Strict" compat modes for myself a while back and had planned to try and make a pull request for GZDoom with things like Raven scrollers, wall running, etc. though I wasn't ever confident enough that a few weren't still missing even after so much testing. Aside from the obvious things that break the Raven games in "Doom Strict" like infinitely tall monsters and lesser issues like spawning items on the floor, I know the buggier stair building can prevent the stairs that form at the entrance of Guardians of Ice to lower in the first hub.

[ptrdoom]

10 hours ago, plums said:

 

 

edit: One thing about Heretic that I didn't mention earlier is that the ethereal crossbow has some unconventional auto-aiming: each bolt gets its own autoaim and so can all fly towards the same target, or alternately can all fly off in completely different directions. A number of people who use ZDoom family ports like playing with full mouselook and no auto-aim, and this ends up weakening the crossbow somewhat. Of course you can still leave auto-aim on in ZDoom.

 

 

That's interesting and good to know. I'll play Heretic like I've played Doom so far without freelook and with autoaim on. Now I'll start soon with Heretic since it seems like prboom+ has some bugs on the last level of TNT. I can't get the red key normally, and the last stone steps in the icon of the sin's room can't be reached either. As for Hexen, is there a sourceport that is similar to DSDA? I like the higher resolution of DSDA Doom, and nothing else changed pretty much.

Edited December 18, 2023 by ptrdoom

[Egregor]

When working on Quoth The Raven I found that both Crispy-Heretic and DSDA do not support custom ANIMATION or SWITCH lumps. @SilverMiner actually went ahead and solved this issue for Crispy-Heretic! Custom ANIMATION lumps for Heretic are now currently supported, while SWITCH lumps should be supported in Cripsy-Dooms next update. (Hopefully soon, we've been waiting!)

 

DSDA, however, does not appear to have a framework that will be capable of implementing these custom lumps, and thus appears to only be compatible with Vanilla-limit-removing style projects.

 

Overall, for Heretic I recommend GZDoom, ZDoom, or Crispy-Heretic (for a classic feel). DSDA could also work (for classic feel) but because of the reasons listed above I am recommending Crispy-Heretic over DSDA.

Edited December 18, 2023 by Egregor

[ptrdoom]

I assume Crispy Heretic is like Crispy Doom. I did try the latter, but what I didn't like about it was pretty much the low resolution and the effect of distorted enemies from afar, sadly.

Edited December 18, 2023 by ptrdoom

[Egregor]

48 minutes ago, ptrdoom said:

I assume Crispy Heretic is like Crispy Doom. I did try the latter, but what I didn't like about it was pretty much the low resolution and the effect of distorted enemies from afar, sadly.

I'd recommend GZDoom if you are looking for a modern ultra-crisp visual experience. If you haven't, try messing with the visual settings in GZ, there are a ton of different render styles, hopefully one that will suit you.

[ptrdoom]

38 minutes ago, Egregor said:

I'd recommend GZDoom if you are looking for a modern ultra-crisp visual experience. If you haven't, try messing with the visual settings in GZ, there are a ton of different render styles, hopefully one that will suit you.

Thank you. I'll give it a try and see how it goes. I'm mostly after the higher resolution, but no other fancy effect like openGL or lightning.

[CacoKnight]

11 minutes ago, ptrdoom said:

I'm mostly after the higher resolution, but no other fancy effect like openGL or lightning.

Give these settings a try, if you want software rendered just uncomment "//vid_rendermode 4" and change it to 0 = "vid_rendermode 0".

[ptrdoom]

I will! Right now I'm almost done with the first episode of Heretic. Thank you.

[liPillON]

so it seems that choco/crispy are the closest to vanilla option also for Raven's iwad, after all

 

if resolution is an issue there's always "Russian Doom" which is a friendly Crispy fork with 800p support

https://github.com/Russian-Doom/russian-doom/releases/latest

 

 

[Shepardus]

3 hours ago, ptrdoom said:

Now I'll start soon with Heretic since it seems like prboom+ has some bugs on the last level of TNT. I can't get the red key normally, and the last stone steps in the icon of the sin's room can't be reached either.

You have to play with the right compatibility settings for the stairs in TNT MAP30 to work. It'll work with vanilla compatibility (Doom 1.9, Ultimate Doom, Final Doom), but Boom and later complevels break it. dsda-doom should automatically detect that level and set the right flags when using MBF21 compatibility, but that isn't a thing in PrBoom+. I think when using PrBoom+'s default complevel there's a flag you can toggle to fix the issue ("Use exactly Doom's stairbuilding method").

[ptrdoom]

59 minutes ago, Shepardus said:

You have to play with the right compatibility settings for the stairs in TNT MAP30 to work. It'll work with vanilla compatibility (Doom 1.9, Ultimate Doom, Final Doom), but Boom and later complevels break it. dsda-doom should automatically detect that level and set the right flags when using MBF21 compatibility, but that isn't a thing in PrBoom+. I think when using PrBoom+'s default complevel there's a flag you can toggle to fix the issue ("Use exactly Doom's stairbuilding method").

Oh, the more you know. I did read about the compatibility settings and watched some videos about it, but I totally forgot it was a thing. That's good to know, thanks!

[Redneckerz]

19 hours ago, Devalaous said:

I like how that comparison of ports doesn't have DSDA Doom, despite it practically being one of the most popular ports these days.

 

for GZDoom however, is there a recommended compatibility for Heretic or Hexen to use for them? Somehow I doubt Doom or Doom (Strict) is optimal.

To be frank, that comparison list doesn't get updated a whole lot. I did keep it up for a while on a different list, but if you are posting so many that i (used to, i should pick it up again this holiday) to do, it becomes kind of trite.

 

But in the here and now, DSDA is a general excellent option for all things Doom. Its very all-round.

[Syoku]

Crispy all the way.