Source Ports personal deal breakers (Jan 9, 2024)

Not having vertical aim and not being able to turn off autoaim.  Yeah, I know.  This pretty much limits my source port usage to maybe three?  I played it the old way with autoaim for years, but I like being able to aim my shots, and, most importantly, miss.  I like knowing if I missed a shot, it's because I suck ass and not the game screwing with me.

Doing everything what other ports are doing without any new interesting features. Why the hell i should try your port if i already have others that can do the same.

1 hour ago, silentzorah said:

turn off autoaim

Never thought about this, can you explain in simple words why would you need this off? When does this feature actually bother you for example?

Just now, CacoKnight said:

Never thought about this, can you explain in simple words why would you need this off? When does this feature actually bother you for example?

A good example of autoaim being annoying; a hole is in front of you, and there's a zombieman standing in it that you can barely see. Above you is a cacodemon, and you're trying to shoot a rocket at it. Instead, the rocket goes downwards, not even entering the hole but instead colliding with the floor because of the steep angle, and killing you.

15 hours ago, Individualised said:

A good example of autoaim being annoying; a hole is in front of you, and there's a zombieman standing in it that you can barely see. Above you is a cacodemon, and you're trying to shoot a rocket at it. Instead, the rocket goes downwards, not even entering the hole but instead colliding with the floor because of the steep angle, and killing you.

Oh I see, I'm kind of more old school for those things, I want to play Doom like id Software intended, for the engine at least but I like visual improvements without breaking the vanilla experience.

There's something to appreciate in every port but Nugget Doom with the amazing Woof! as its foundation is my favorite. Features I enjoy having all in one place with Nugget:

• High quality OpenAL Soft mixer with optional 3D audio and very polished MIDI support. The case of the extremely annoying clicks in Doom sound effects seems to be cracked. This is honestly the biggest deal for me.
• 4x and 8x higher resolution support. I switch around resolutions and it's good to have options, they all look nice in different ways. Linear sky scrolling for less distortion. Smooth pixel scaling so it looks more even and a bit less raw.
• Complevels and the basis in WinMBF with support for modern extras. Records and plays demos without any problems in my limited experience. Compatibility is easy to set and forget or tweak in interesting ways.
• Variable audio pitch bend. It keeps the sounds fresher and adds a lot of personality. Easy to get whatever your ideal balance is.
• Randomly mirrored deaths, colored blood, tweakable brightmaps and extra gibbing are fun and don't feel out of place.
• Vanilla fuzz effect and option for an alternate selective darkening method with an interesting origin story.
• Porch flash emulation. I have been playing more in 4:3 and it's nice to let the blank space do something. It's livelier and feels less cramped. A nice bit of nostalgia too.
• Flashing floppy disk icon is also a must. Support for console port mugshot head exploding animation when you get gibbed.
• Tag finder to figure out what that switch did or what opens that door. Blinking locked doors on automap, removing marks one at a time, teleport to pointer. Kills/items/secrets completion announcements so you don't have to look at the totals and maybe spoil something. It's all very smooth and puts the level at your fingertips.
• Extremely flexible HUD, you can pretty much do whatever you want with it. Approximated widescreen status bars for any WAD too.

There's lots of other good stuff that feels bad to leave out but that's a pretty decent list so far. "Deal breaker" is maybe a bit harsh but that's all stuff I miss if it's not available. It just gets so dialed in, it's a bit obscene. All the great options for source ports and the cool collaborative efforts they represent are one of my favorite parts about Doom.

My deal breakers are not having (in order of importance)

1. Support of native resolutions - 640x480 as offered by the entire 'Crispy'/'Retro' family doesn't really work that well anymore on a 4K display

2. Proper mouse aim - it's what I am used to from other games so I'd like to have it in Doom as well.

3. Modern sound support - I have my computer hooked up with my multi-$1000 stereo and those cheap-ass 90's 16 bit stereo mixers just don't cut it.

Things that annoy me but wouldn't break the deal

4. no hardware accelerated rendering - for properly looking up and down and for performance on very high resolutions this is important

5. hardware rendering only supporting paletted output . I'm not a fan of this look and only put up with it if unavoidable.

I think sound is the most underappreciated feature here. This isn't exclusive to Doom, but present in many other ports of older games as well, too many just keep the original sound code and then just write the output to an SDL stream.

No gamma control, for example I set Doom to 0.75 gamma where applicable, so only having the default brightness settings and the lowest still being too washed out on our modern displays annoys me.

No blood color support, it's such a cosmetic concern but I love when it's natively supported like in Crispy Doom, Woof!, Nugget Doom, Doom Retro and International Doom.

No respect for original behavior, I wanted to love Doom Retro and maybe it was addressed since because I played an older version from like four years back but infinite height being on so flying monsters won't stack cluster and I can abuse z-axis with rocket splash damage shouldn't now cause static objects like decor and gore to become solid and stop projectiles like in ZDoom, and similarly turning it off to avoid that now allows lost souls to fly over items instead of stopping in front of them. This indecisiveness irks me so much that I cannot play this port and I have reported this behavior before to the author and maybe it was addressed eventually maybe it wasn't, but there's my little tangent and it doesn't really matter now because I have other port options since.

No compatibility modes, especially for vanilla, since I find in my experience with limit-removing Boom compatibility settings monsters that are placed on platforms tend to break and get pushed off or they'll hit the edge and become stuck, trivializing them heavily like a Cyberdemon once. I've had Arch-viles resurrecting corpses around it and then trapping itself within the revived monsters and they all becoming stuck and unable to attack, the first time this happened to me near the end in Cleimos II when using Eternity Engine I found it really funny because it seemed like some rare yet potentially possible behavior to occur, but then I noticed it happening more and more and apparently it has something to do with the way the conveyer belt sector effect works and I guess there's an overlap that applies to monsters somehow. I don't know if it's a specific compatibility mode, someone more educated than me on this could explain what's happening here.

I can't think of anything else.

8 hours ago, CacoKnight said:

So, I actually couldn't get the line in the screenshot but it appears inside that yellow spot (and yes, this is Nugget, I changed the bar colors to make it look like DSDA).

As said before, I'm pretty sure that's a slime trail. E1M1 has a slime trail right in that spot: see the screenshot in this article.

On 11/2/2023 at 11:51 PM, Alaux said:

As said before, I'm pretty sure that's a slime trail. E1M1 has a slime trail right in that spot: see the screenshot in this article.

Ohh now I get it more thank you. Geez man, you know everything.

Don't think I have any absolute deal breakers but GZDoom is my port of choice due to the amount of options it has and wide compatibility.

Also being able to have a 8-bit palettelike look with hardware rendering but also have stuff like dynamic lights and ambient occlusion.

Oh and having individual control over the compatibility settings in addition to complevels. I use default as base and tweak a few settings from there as needed, usually:

monsters cannot cross dropoffs = yes

monsters see invisible player = yes

actors are infinitely tall = yes

I play on DSDA, Crispy, Retro too from time to time too and really am hyped about Helion given its performance!

By my subjective experience GZDoom has the lowest input lag too of ones I've used, but like said subjective observation.

My deal breakers are not having these as an option:

- 320x200 resolution support
- Accurate Dehacked support

- OPL emulation
- Software renderer (emulated or not)

Forgot one, I play in 320x200 unless it's GZDoom and thus it's imperative there's proper aspect correction and scaling so there isn't uneven pixels or that blurred look when going below a certain resolution threshold (that's a dead giveaway that it doesn't support low resolutions without turning into a smudgy mess.) Unfortunately last I checked Eternity Engine pretty much needs to be at least 800x600 for things to not look weird on my end, so a classic look is a no-go on this port.

10 hours ago, CacoKnight said:

That's exactly the spot yes! On E1M1 it's a vertical line to the left.

edit:

@AlauxI loaded it really quick to try to get that line but it only appears for a split of a second right when you turn around from running back there, I had to try a few times to see it and ..don't mind the cheats :)

So, I actually couldn't get the line in the screenshot but it appears inside that yellow spot (and yes, this is Nugget, I changed the bar colors to make it look like DSDA).

 

 

Also wait, Nugget doesn't use OpenGL? How the hell it's so damn fast?

https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Slime_trail

1 hour ago, Finnisher said:

I use default as base and tweak a few settings from there as needed, usually:

monsters cannot cross dropoffs = yes

monsters see invisible player = yes

actors are infinitely tall = yes

The ones I find most important is to disable vertical thrust from explosions and to reinstate the limit of 21 Lost Souls spawned by the Pain Elemental.

1 hour ago, Noiser said:

My deal breakers are not having these as an option:

- 320x200 resolution support
- Accurate Dehacked support

- OPL emulation
- Software renderer (emulated or not)

Hm...

Aside from the Dehacked support, if these were forced I'd never have gotten back into Doom recently.

Which just shows that tastes differ wildly and it is very important to keep all options alive, even the ones one might consider unnecessary for themselves.

It's a good thing we have so many ports that cover the whole spectrum. :)

Oh yeah there's something for everyone.

For me dealbreaker is when stuff doesn't work, otherwise I can use whatever port best fits for the wad. One dealbreaker that used to exist, but practically not anymore, is wrong aspect ratio (when sprites look squished). jDoom / Doomsday had that, but I didn't use this port in ages.

I come back to EE from time to time to try it out, only to be confused by how the video mode/resolution settings works/should be used

There are a lot of things in ports that I would probably categorize as "things that piss me off but I can deal with / work around them given sufficient incentive" so the main thing that would make me not even consider using a port is there not being any worthwhile mods that obligate it.  (You could possibly slot easier-to-set-up multiplayer in there somewhere on the rare instances when I care about multiplayer, most of the time I don't.)

4 hours ago, Professor Hastig said:

Which just shows that tastes differ wildly and it is very important to keep all options alive, even the ones one might consider unnecessary for themselves.

For sure! Different strokes for different folks. It's nice that ports like GZDoom are being used as a creative stepping stone and on that point I think it's good to keep the options as varied as possible.

[blanked]

14 minutes ago, amnion said:

the port not being named after a food or an aspect of a food

Well, GZDoom is sometimes nicknamed CheesyDoom, is that good enough? :p

A lot of my gripes with sourceports were remedied by a good launcher. After decades of drag and drop and ZDL I started using @hobomaster22’s Doom Launcher (which is frequently updated!) and a lot of annoyances went away. Easy to configure individual ports, perfect and beautiful library functionality, and idgames integration just made it a lot easier to have all the different strengths and features of different ports without the nightmare of folders and folders of wads for specific ports.

I think with complevels being far more important for “canonical” play in certain wads, I would love to see some kind of flag or lump detection in a sourceport that could auto-detect and set a preferred complevel for different wads.

10 minutes ago, Bank said:

I think with complevels being far more important for “canonical” play in certain wads, I would love to see some kind of flag or lump detection in a sourceport that could auto-detect and set a preferred complevel for different wads.

You have to be careful with this. Not everybody wants to play mods on the most 'appropriate' complevel, but if these get enforced you will get negative feedback from those who prefer to play with all options on.

Optimally a map should advertise which settings it needs and which it recommends, but experience has shown that modders often tend to conflate these two and enforce everything which then forces ports to implement countermeasures.

25 minutes ago, Bank said:

I think with complevels being far more important for “canonical” play in certain wads, I would love to see some kind of flag or lump detection in a sourceport that could auto-detect and set a preferred complevel for different wads.

dsda-doom, Woof, and prboomX support a COMPLVL lump that specifies vanilla/boom/mbf/mbf21 complevel if none is specified through the command line. The -complevel parameter takes precedence over it so players can still force a particular complevel if they wish.

13 hours ago, Bank said:

After decades of drag and drop and ZDL I started using @hobomaster22’s Doom Launcher

I personally prefer and use Doom Runner, you set the Ports, IWADs, PWADs, Mods folders and done. 100% portable.

On 11/2/2023 at 10:23 PM, pantheon said:

Tag finder to figure out what that switch did or what opens that door.

Just curious, do any ports besides prboomX and Nugget Doom support this feature?

I didn't see any ports named in the post so just wonder if there are more.

2 hours ago, JadingTsunami said:

besides prboomX and Nugget Doom

Oh nice Nugget too? Not sure I'm ever going to use it since puzzles are my favorite thing to do in Doom but it'll be fun to test, any idea how to enable/test it?

3 hours ago, JadingTsunami said:

 

Just curious, do any ports besides prboomX and Nugget Doom support this feature?

 

I didn't see any ports named in the post so just wonder if there are more.

Actually, I think it was first ported from prboomX to a cool Nugget fork called Cherry Doom. So, three ports that I'm aware of. It's such a cool feature! 

49 minutes ago, CacoKnight said:

Oh nice Nugget too? Not sure I'm ever going to use it since puzzles are my favorite thing to do in Doom but it'll be fun to test, any idea how to enable/test it?

There's a key binding (last page) for "Tag Finder". You just put the map pointer over, say, a locked door, hit the key, and it will flash whatever tags are associated with it. So, you might see the door, the switch across the map that opens it, and anything else connected to them (two other ambush trap doors? etc.) all lighting up. prboomX's documentation says you need either IDDT or the map powerup to use it but it seems to work fine in Nugget without either. I'm not sure of all the details on that.

1 hour ago, CacoKnight said:

Oh nice Nugget too? Not sure I'm ever going to use it since puzzles are my favorite thing to do in Doom but it'll be fun to test, any idea how to enable/test it?

30 minutes ago, pantheon said:

 

Actually, I think it was first ported from prboomX to a cool Nugget fork called Cherry Doom. So, three ports that I'm aware of. It's such a cool feature! 

Very cool! Thanks for the information, I did not know about Cherry Doom. I'm glad this feature is found useful; for me it's one of my favorites. :)

30 minutes ago, pantheon said:

There's a key binding (last page) for "Tag Finder". You just put the map pointer over, say, a locked door, hit the key, and it will flash whatever tags are associated with it. So, you might see the door, the switch across the map that opens it, and anything else connected to them (two other ambush trap doors? etc.) all lighting up. prboomX's documentation says you need either IDDT or the map powerup to use it but it seems to work fine in Nugget without either. I'm not sure of all the details on that.

Yes, this is correct; Nugget/Cherry implementations removed the guard around having the allmap or iddt cheat activated when using the feature. This is fine, it just means some "invisible" parts of the map may flash. I thought it better or less confusing to require the full map to be visible to use the tag finder. But, the other way can work too.