ios Doom ports are MUCH better than android ones

[Voros]

I have Doom classic and HacX ports on the iphone 5 and what elegant controls!

I cant find ports like them on android. So did you guys make one or do you agree with me?

Edit from 1 year later: how embarrassing. This whole thread is a butthurt for me to me read, especially my posts :/

[Jaxxoon R]

isn't there like, that one port of GZDoom to Android or whatever?

[Voros]

Doesnt work anymore...plus it was removed from google play. I had it once but it wouldnt download this update so didnt work.

[Maes]

Could the infamously strict Apple Store quality/performance control for iOS apps worked in favour of quality, for once?

[VGamingJunkie]

That Classic Doom app costs $5 and was made by ID themselves so it would be a complete joke if it wasn't much better than freebie ports some people made on Google Play.

[chungy]

Maes said:

Could the infamously strict Apple Store quality/performance control for iOS apps worked in favour of quality, for once?

No, and that's not what the Appstore is all about. The advantage is the mere fact that it was an official port by id Software with some good thought behind the limitations of the touchscreen and making the game control smootly with it.

[Voros]

Metroidjunkie,
Classic Doom is worth the money...Hacx the ios port is literally the same control methods as Classic Doom. Also its FREE. I'm serious. Same game format but different game. So its like the next free alternative to ios Doom, like choosing Freedoom over Doom on PC. Check out some videos on ios Hacx and Classic Doom gameplay and see for yourself.

[Voros]

BTW this info is extra:
Looked inside the hacx app(hacx.ipa) and found these mainly.
1-Prboom.wad
2-Hacx.wad(obvious)
3-Doom2.wad(...?)

What's that doing there!?!

[VGamingJunkie]

I can run Doom just fine on my iPhone 5 without having to pay, RetroArc has a PrBoom setting and there are enough controller options to find something playable. Of course, you have to jailbreak it first since Apple wouldn't ever allow such a thing on their Appstore.

[Graf Zahl]

Voros said:

Metroidjunkie,
Classic Doom is worth the money...Hacx the ios port is literally the same control methods as Classic Doom. Also its FREE. I'm serious. Same game format but different game. So its like the next free alternative to ios Doom, like choosing Freedoom over Doom on PC. Check out some videos on ios Hacx and Classic Doom gameplay and see for yourself.

In case you missed it, The iOS Doom app's source was released so obviously the Hacx variant uses the same PROFESSIONAL code as its base.

It doesn't change anything about the fundamentals here: There has never been a professionally made Android port - at the time the iOS version was made, Android was still mostly irrelevant.

[Maes]

The "professional" aspect, in this case, seems to revolve around actually creating a usable and responsive UI for a specific platform, which certainly is a different skillset than being an engine hacker/Doom porter of the week.

[Graf Zahl]

I wouldn't say 'different skillset', but being paid to do such work is an entirely different motivation than doing it for a hobby project.

That said, the code is open source, everybody who wants to know how to do it can investigate and replicate it on Android. No need to reinvent the wheel.

[Maes]

I suppose iDevices still have the old time-cherished advantage of standardized hardware: if you make a game for the iPhone 5, which has a multi-touch display with certain characteristics, it will work on all iPhones 5.

Certainly much simpler that ensuring that it will work on every single one of the thousands of generic "Android" hardwares in existence. OS compliance doesn't guarantee hardware compliance or sufficiency.

[Graf Zahl]

You make it out worse than it it. Even Android got minimal requirements, multi-touch among them (you couldn't use the OS without it decently.) Besides, every capacitive touchscreen got multi-touch support these days. OpenGL is also a requirement these days.

In some ways Apple is even worse, because you need to update your app every time a new model with a new screen size appears because iOS has no means whatsoever to gracefully adjust to a new screen size. It always requires recompiling, resubmission and jumping through Apple's hoops all over again - or the app falls back to an inferior compatibility mode.

[Maes]

Sure, on paper both the most expensive and the cheapest Android phones all have GPS, WiFi, multi-touch etc. but who guarantees that all perform exactly the same?

As for the other issue...well, Apple's pointy-haired bosses decided that this "old school" approach, trading intra-product-line compatibility, "flexibility" (also in the sense you described) and ease of development with raw performance and "user experience", was worth it. The very least you hear much more often "App X is so much faster/usable/better on iOS than stupid Android!". But at a price.

[VGamingJunkie]

And, apparently, Apple can't even keep their OS updates in order. 2K Games had to pull Bioshock from the Appstore because it's not compatible with iOS 9. You'd think a simple firmware update wouldn't break an existing game. That being said, D-Touch is cheaper than Doom Classic and I'd argue it's much better. It gives you all the customizing options in the world and it's the only mobile port of Doom to actually include GZDoom.

[Graf Zahl]

Maes said:

Sure, on paper both the most expensive and the cheapest Android phones all have GPS, WiFi, multi-touch etc. but who guarantees that all perform exactly the same?

Nobody. But who says that all Windows PCs perform exactly the same?

Hell, even the iPhone 6 performs noticably different from the iPhone 5. Please stop this FUD arguments unless you can substantiate them. I've got to deal with them all the time when dealing with Apple users. It's just annoying.

Maes said:

As for the other issue...well, Apple's pointy-haired bosses decided that this "old school" approach, trading intra-product-line compatibility, "flexibility" (also in the sense you described) and ease of development with raw performance and "user experience", was worth it. The very least you hear much more often "App X is so much faster/usable/better on iOS than stupid Android!". But at a price.

Sorry, but no. The real problem here is that the first iOS was never designed with arbitrary resolutions in mind and as a result the first batch of iOS apps was so hardwired to the original 480x320 screen (because the OS back then was lacking any kind of decent layout options) that any attempt to retroactively change the rules would have broken half, if not more of the apps in the wild. And that attitude hasn't changed. Once a new screen resolution appears, it gets hacked in, but there's absolutely nothing to add some forward robustness (like letting an app declare it can run with any screen size thrown at it.)

Funny that always the same shit arguments get repeated when it comes to Apple, sometimes even from people who I'd consider smarter than falling for that hogwash.

[snapshot]

Voros said:

I have Doom classic and HacX ports on the iphone 5 and what elegant controls!

I cant find ports like them on android. So did you guys make one or do you agree with me?

Think again, i've tested few IOS Doom sourceports and so far haven't found any ones as good as D -Touch .

[VGamingJunkie]

Graf Zahl said:

Funny that always the same shit arguments get repeated when it comes to Apple, sometimes even from people who I'd consider smarter than falling for that hogwash.

I assume this isn't a problem for the iPhone 5, at least if the thing's been jailbroken anyway. RetroArch allows me to set what resolution I want it in and even pixel precision of just how much I want it to stretch across the screen. Maybe Apple wised up in later generations. Either that or the people behind RetroArch are smart enough to know how to fix it themselves.

[Bucket]

MetroidJunkie said:

I can run Doom just fine on my iPhone 5 without having to pay, RetroArc has a PrBoom setting and there are enough controller options to find something playable. Of course, you have to jailbreak it first since Apple wouldn't ever allow such a thing on their Appstore.

Same here! Except for the jailbreaking part because I have an Android phone. The shit works out of the box, as it were. I'm currently trying to get analog controls working, which would be great when I run Quake as well.

[Voros]

I'm talking about CLASSIC gaming.no freelook, no jump and crouching, no fancy new things. D touch is like gzdoom prboom and chocolate doom put together rather than the NEAR ORIGINAL view of doom. Take a look at what I've tried.
Android
D-Tech/Demo(too 3D)
Prboom doom(bad controls)
Original doom(glitchy controls)

Ios
Hacx(very good controls)
Doom Classic(wonderful controls)

Haven't tried Gameception though.

[raymoohawk]

does d touch have the horrendous sprite clipping of gzdoom?

[Voros]

Let's see d touch...its the gzdoon of pc to android so probably yes.

[Gez]

raymoohawk said:

does d touch have the horrendous sprite clipping of gzdoom?

D-Touch features three Doom engines, you can decide which one to use:
Chocolate Doom
PrBoom+
GZDoom

If you select Chocolate Doom, you'll have the features and limitations of the Chocolate Doom engine. If you select PrBoom+, you'll have the features and limitations of the PrBoom+ engine. And if you select GZDoom, you'll have the features and limitations of the GZDoom engine.

It's not rocket science.

The ZDoom software renderer isn't available for licensing issues.

[Voros]

D-touch isn't actually a sourceport FOR android but an emulator of PC sourceports FOR android. There is a difference between emulators and sourceports.

[RestlessRodent]

Voros said:

D-touch isn't actually a sourceport FOR android but an emulator of PC sourceports FOR android. There is a difference between emulators and sourceports.

Well, I suppose writing a PowerPC/x86 user mode emulator is hell of alot easier than modifying a source port to fit the target platform.

[Voros]

Just saying that a sourceport allows better compatibilty for the user, while emulators try to bring the feel on another system such as Project 64 on PC, not the same N64 feeling but tries to do so. Can't run Quake 64 properly.

[scifista42]

Voros said:

Just saying that a sourceport allows better compatibilty for the user, while emulators try to bring the feel on another system

I would say that emulator's job is also to allow compatibility - between the software that runs in the emulator and the platform the emulator itself runs on. The actual difference is that a sourceport ports a single program (changing its code as necessary) from one platform to another, while an emulator should handle a range of programs that could run on the emulated platform (and without changing their code).

[VGamingJunkie]

Bucket said:

Same here! Except for the jailbreaking part because I have an Android phone. The shit works out of the box, as it were. I'm currently trying to get analog controls working, which would be great when I run Quake as well.

I use Android too, I just happen to have an iPhone 5 because it was given to me and it's much stronger (GPU wise, at least) than my older Android phone was and the screen resolution and camera quality are far beyond its as well. Only a shame I can't install Android onto this thing, but at least jailbreaking it gives me some flexibility. I don't even need RetroArch on Android due to the whole D-Touch app. XD

Voros said:

D-touch isn't actually a sourceport FOR android but an emulator of PC sourceports FOR android. There is a difference between emulators and sourceports.

If it's an emulator, then it's a very solidly built emulator, given it can run GZDoom (Even with shaders and 3D models) at a very playable framerate even on less than cutting edge technology. I thought it was more like WINE for Linux where it uses the same system of files but converted to work on the Android's ARM processor.

[Gez]

Voros said:

D-touch isn't actually a sourceport FOR android but an emulator of PC sourceports FOR android. There is a difference between emulators and sourceports.

what.


This is very hard to believe. All three source ports are open source and highly portable, and you'd get a much bigger performance hit, as well as an incredibly harder job, if you went and made a PC emulator just to run a source port instead of, you know, porting it.

Voros said:

Just saying that a sourceport allows better compatibilty for the user, while emulators try to bring the feel on another system such as Project 64 on PC, not the same N64 feeling but tries to do so. Can't run Quake 64 properly.

I can't make heads of tails of this. There is no sense in that assertion.

A source port is taking something source code, and then porting it to a different architecture. The very term "source port" was coined by the Doom community, when DOSDoom was created from the released Linux Doom source code: the source was ported from Linux to DOS, and the result was called a source port.