User Friendly Source Port?

[Frozti]

Seeing my ultimate doom collection disc out of the corner of my eye got me in demon killing mode... I wanted to ask which of the many source ports is the most simplistic and easy to use?

I used to use Legacy and it worked alright but it only seems to run on XP and doesn't have a ton of support. Zdoom and doomsday worked well but even though I could work it easily, I want something more simple. Easy lan set up and control binding is a must. I play doom 1, doom 2, final doom, heretic, and might try Chex for nostalgia sake.

[chungy]

If you're after nostalgia, Chocolate Doom might be one you'd like.

[vadrig4r]

If all you want to do is play the original games faithfully on a modern system with easy keybinding, sound setup and conveniences like novert emulation then try Chocolate Doom. Crispy Doom supports a higher resolution of 640x400 along with some optional tweaks and features but isn't currently distributed with binaries for non-Doom games.

PrBoom+ is great too but probably unnecessary for your use case and has some defaults that need tweaking. Doom Retro is a unique take on the original that has some cool visual effects. These two are Doom/Doom 2/HacX only (not sure about chex?).

I can't tell you much about what's easiest/best for LAN play but maybe someone else can give you advice regarding that.

[Li'l devil]

I'd say Doom Retro. It's the easiest port to set up imho.

[Ralphis]

Odamex has support for all of the iwads listed, allows you to change wads on the fly through the console and play through multiple iwads in order for coop, and is geared towards multiplayer. It has UPnP support built in so you don't have to forward any ports on your router manually when running a server, it will do it all for you.

It also has uncapped framerate and 32-bit color if you want to enhance the game without making any significant changes.

[Graf Zahl]

It might help to know which parts of ZDoom you don't consider 'simple enough'. Without that any advice is reduced to guesswork.

[VGA]

If you want something that doesn't flood you with options then go with Doom Retro. It also does map fixes and sprite fixes by default, you don't even need to worry about that. Check my signature for smoother animations.

I don't know why people suggest Chocolate Doom, it emulates the behaviour of the original exactly, all the bugs, crashes, quirks and with an unacceptable resolution for a non-hardcore doomer. It is not for mainstream consumption. New users can fall in the pitfall of trying to run Boom projects, too, which it doesn't support.

[jeff-d]

VGA said:

I don't know why people suggest Chocolate Doom

Neither do I. As far as I can tell it is only of use to map makers to ensure that they really are 'vanilla' compatible. There's little point in anyone else using it.

[fraggle]

The purpose of Chocolate Doom is right on the front of the webpage - it's intended to be an accurate retro experience. If you don't like it, by all means don't use it, but please don't go around telling people that "a tool for map makers" or that there's "little point in anyone else using it". Not everyone has the same tastes.

[vadrig4r]

Ralphis said:

Odamex has support for all of the iwads listed, allows you to change wads on the fly through the console and play through multiple iwads in order for coop, and is geared towards multiplayer. It has UPnP support built in so you don't have to forward any ports on your router manually when running a server, it will do it all for you.

It also has uncapped framerate and 32-bit color if you want to enhance the game without making any significant changes.

Odamex was one of the multiplayer-focused ports I was thinking of!

Graf Zahl said:

It might help to know which parts of ZDoom you don't consider 'simple enough'. Without that any advice is reduced to guesswork.

This is fair. Considering OP's emphasis on simplicity and the Ultimate Doom box that triggered the search in the first place, I guessed they were referring to ease of setting up something that looks, plays and behaves like the original games. Zdoom offers tons of useful functionality and features that perhaps they weren't looking for.

VGA said:

I don't know why people suggest Chocolate Doom, it emulates the behaviour of the original exactly, all the bugs, crashes, quirks and with an unacceptable resolution for a non-hardcore doomer. It is not for mainstream consumption. New users can fall in the pitfall of trying to run Boom projects, too, which it doesn't support.

jeff-d said:

Neither do I. As far as I can tell it is only of use to map makers to ensure that they really are 'vanilla' compatible. There's little point in anyone else using it.

This is bollocks.

[Gez]

vadrig4r said:

This is fair. Considering OP's emphasis on simplicity and the Ultimate Doom box that triggered the search in the first place, I guessed they were referring to ease of setting up something that looks, plays and behaves like the original games.

The OP also mention that they "used to use Legacy" which I wouldn't hold as a paragon of exacting replication of the original games.

In fact, the OP says what is sought quite explicitly:

Frozti said:

Easy lan set up and control binding is a must.

Personally I don't really see how ZDoom fails on the second point.

[Jon]

VGA said:

I don't know why people suggest Chocolate Doom

It's got the best emulation of how Doom's music sounded to me back in the 90s, for one thing.

[kuchitsu]

I think a user friendly source port should have some place where you could easily set up the most important stuff. With every port I download I look for pretty much the same basic settings, such as mouse sensitivity, screen resolution, buttons for movement and other actions... So it would be nice if this basic stuff was available on some dedicated settings page rather than spread all over the menu. Would speed up things a bit.

[Graf Zahl]

Most ports categorize settings by grouping functionality. So mouse gets set in the mouse menu, not the keyboard menu, and sound doesn't get set in the mouse menu, and so on.

A good menu puts items under a label where they can be found.

[kuchitsu]

Well, maybe it could be in some first time setup interface... I think would be useful. Ideally there would be a config converter where you could write something like:
doomconf.exe -toLegacy eternity.ini
And get legacy.ini with as many settings copied from your Eternity config as possible.
I'm sure I would be more inclined to try out new ports if such a thing existed.

[Graf Zahl]

kuchitsu said:

Well, maybe it could be in some first time setup interface... I think would be useful. Ideally there would be a config converter where you could write something like:
doomconf.exe -toLegacy eternity.ini
And get legacy.ini with as many settings copied from your Eternity config as possible.
I'm sure I would be more inclined to try out new ports if such a thing existed.

Sorry, but configs for different ports are too different for this to ever work well.
If you can't take the time to set up an engine to your liking once there's really nothing to be done here.

[dew]

Graf Zahl said:

Sorry, but configs for different ports are too different for this to ever work well.
If you can't take the time to set up an engine to your liking once there's really nothing to be done here.

I disagree. In the end, ports just have different names for the same thing, or the same thing is split into two settings in the other port. I'm pretty sure it would be possible to create an, uh, "ini converter" that would translate (or approximate) the common settings, fill the missing ones with defaults and erase the extraneous ones.
It most probably won't happen, however, because 1) it's a gigantic hassle, 2) it would require a lot of maintenance, 3) port authors themselves won't ever do it, because why would they. Any volunteers? (Not it!)

[Graf Zahl]

dew said:

It most probably won't happen, however, because 1) it's a gigantic hassle,

You got that one 100% correct.

[VGA]

I didn't say I don't know why people use Chocolate Doom, I said I don't know why people suggest Chocolate Doom to non-hardcore doomers. It is a niche port, seems user friendly but has a lot of pitfalls.

[Graf Zahl]

VGA said:

It is a niche port,

Most definitely. Every time I show someone Doom in 320x200 they ask something like "What? People really play at such low resolution?"

[Frozti]

Wow, didn't know the forum was so lively.... email notifications is checked and no notifications...

Any way, I don't need the game to be replicated to a T, it would be cool if I was using a CRT monitor but I'm not... It's a 1080p lcd 144hz screen. So lack of frame cap and ability to change resolution would be a plus. If legacy worked on windows 7+ I would be using it as we speak. But last I recall I could not get it to work on anything by my old xp machines.

Also here's something to throw in... I remember using DoomsDay and there was a big input lag, felt like I had vsync on when I didn't. It was almost as if the mouse movement was digital, emulating analog movement but idk it just didn't feel right... Input lag is my absolute biggest pet peeve of gaming, I like to feel completely connected. Also for doom I don't use vertical aim if that changes anything.

I seem to be between odamex and retro, is there a way to save co-op games? and are they true lan or will I basically just be setting up a private server?

[Linguica]

Frozti said:

Wow, didn't know the forum was so lively.... email notifications is checked and no notifications...

You have to subscribe to the thread and then go to the thread subscriptions page and turn on email notifications for that specific thread, in case you haven't.

e: actually, why doesn't that checkbox work... maybe I should MAKE it work...

[Frozti]

Linguica said:

You have to subscribe to the thread and then go to the thread subscriptions page and turn on email notifications for that specific thread, in case you haven't.

e: actually, why doesn't that checkbox work... maybe I should MAKE it work...

Maybe you should since we're on the topic of user friendly LOL ;D

Retro doom is nice but it's so bare bones, not even a .cfg? Dang lol I don't see options for lan, and it's also really dark... I don't remember the game being so dark... and I have an ultra bright monitor...

[bradharding]

Frozti said:

Retro doom is nice but it's so bare bones, not even a .cfg? Dang lol I don't see options for lan, and it's also really dark... I don't remember the game being so dark... and I have an ultra bright monitor...

Doom Retro is customizable, however it's settings are changed through its console (opened using the ~ key). See wiki.doomretro.com. It is also single player only, so perhaps not what you're after since you mention lan settings. And by default DR has it's gamma set slightly darker than usual. Pressing the F11 key will brighten things up for you.

[Frozti]

bradharding said:

Doom Retro is customizable, however it's settings are changed through its console (opened using the ~ key). See wiki.doomretro.com. It is also single player only, so perhaps not what you're after since you mention lan settings. And by default DR has it's gamma set slightly darker than usual. Pressing the F11 key will brighten things up for you.

Well strange the read me in the breach folder that came with the install said something about multiplayer co-op... And the tilda key didn't bring up the console, maybe I need to activate it? Any way, time to try odamex.

[Voros]

Frozti said:

Seeing my ultimate doom collection disc out of the corner of my eye got me in demon killing mode... I wanted to ask which of the many source ports is the most simplistic and easy to use?

I used to use Legacy and it worked alright but it only seems to run on XP and doesn't have a ton of support. Zdoom and doomsday worked well but even though I could work it easily, I want something more simple. Easy lan set up and control binding is a must. I play doom 1, doom 2, final doom, heretic, and might try Chex for nostalgia sake.

Lan set up... You should try Zandronum .
It has key binding and the ability to run all those games.
Maybe also use ZDL for the lan part.

[Da Werecat]

I wanted a novice-friendly source port for a long time. The kind of port you'd recommend to a friend. It should represent the game reasonably well, with no jumping and similar features turned on by default (or even available), but various carefully applied prettifications in place.

I expected Doom Retro to be like this, but it isn't. Some of the prettifications are rather haphazard, and you can't even tweak the options without hacking the cfg. I'm all for a simplistic menu for such a port, but not when it's impossible to set controls while the game is running.

[Jon]

Da Werecat said:

I wanted a novice-friendly source port for a long time. The kind of port you'd recommend to a friend. It should represent the game reasonably well, with no jumping and similar features turned on by default (or even available), but various carefully applied prettifications in place.

I expected Doom Retro to be like this, but it isn't. Some of the prettifications are rather haphazard, and you can't even tweak the options without hacking the cfg. I'm all for a simplistic menu for such a port, but not when it's impossible to set controls while the game is running.

As part of the SDL2 work for Chocolate Doom, I've been thinking about the fact that chocolate-setup is a totally separate program. That's totally authentic to the original Doom and the right choice for Choco, but a bit of a pain in the ass for modern convenience. I wondered how much work it would be to put the setup program into the main game, especially after SDL2 migration since some of the screen stuff is easier that way. I wonder if that would be of interest to Crispy or Retro.

[Voros]

Da Werecat said:

I wanted a novice-friendly source port for a long time. The kind of port you'd recommend to a friend. It should represent the game reasonably well, with no jumping and similar features turned on by default (or even available), but various carefully applied prettifications in place.

I expected Doom Retro to be like this, but it isn't. Some of the prettifications are rather haphazard, and you can't even tweak the options without hacking the cfg. I'm all for a simplistic menu for such a port, but not when it's impossible to set controls while the game is running.

PrBoom+.
Its fast
Its precise
It fixes various bugs
It keep the classic gameplay
It has OpenGL and Software
It runs Doom and HacX!
Its simple
Its elegant
Did I say its fast?

What else do you want?
Yes it has features not present in vanilla.

Edit- right, lan set up... How about Odamex then?

Note to self-ask the PrBoom+ devs on why they didn't fix the netcode.

[VGamingJunkie]

PrBoom certainly seems to be the most popular among Doom source ports, at least for getting it on other platforms. Even the DS, of all things, got a homebrew release.

http://pdroms.de/nintendods/dsdoom-v1-2-1-nds-engine-port