by Enjay » Sat Dec 20, 2008 7:17 am
One of the interesting things for me with this little project was trying all those different ports with it. As I said, it gave me an opportunity to try a number of different ports and compare them side by side. Not that anyone is interested, but here's my summary (not in any particular order):
Zdoom, GZdoom, Skulltag
Not too surprisingly, given how much time I spend here, the Zdoom based ports stood well above the others as my favourites. They play how I like, are solid, look good, have good features etc etc. Some of that will be due to my familiarity with the port(s) but, yeah, Zdoom ports were the best for me.
Risen3D
I know that Risen 3D isn't the most popular port, but I like it. I think it has a good solid feeling and it plays well. I quite often use it to play older, simple levels but with hi-res textures and models. So, playing this little WAD in it was ideal IMO. Of course, Sitters' maps, IMO, are worth installing Risen3D for alone (especially Genetic Disaster and Doom Dragon).
PRBOOM (and PRBOOM+)
Worked well enough but, IMO, was showing its age and didn't seem to have the sophistication of more recent ports. PRBOOM(+) just felt a little "rough around the edges" like it had been made at a time when the best way to alter and compile the released source to feel "right" hadn't quite been figured out. Perhaps, to a certain extent, that's true.
EDGE
I played with 1.31. I didn't used to be very keen on EDGE. To me, it felt clumsy, had awkward editing features and didn't seem to work very well. Increasingly, however, I like EDGE. The current version works well, plays well and feels very solid. Also, although I'm still not convinced by it, I like to sometimes load up a file and see how it looks with the HQ filters on. It almost gives the level a cartoony cell-shaded kind of feel, in quite a good way IMO. I wouldn't want to always play like that, but it's nice for a change. So, yeah, EDGE, I like it.
Doomsday
Despite the obvious similarity and family relationship between Risen3D and Doomsday, I personally prefer Risen3D. I prefer Risen's features and the way it looks. I don't like the default graphics options in Doomsday very much and, generally, I just find Risen3D better. What's more, with Risen3D, even though I still had to through a launcher to get the map loaded, the current Risen launcher is pretty straight forward. This is in marked contrast to Doomsday and Snowberry which took me a full 5 minutes to simply work out how to get the file running. It still beggars belief that something that should be one of the simplest operations in Dooming, loading a file - one of the most common things a user wants to do, and which is simple in most ports: even doom.exe was about as simple as you could get in 1993 - can be turned into the convoluted mess that is required to play files in Doomsday. Doomsday is, though, still a very reliable, solid port and, aside from the launcher issue, my preference for Risen3D is purely based on personal taste.
Chocolate
OK, time to confess. I have often been quite dismissive of Chocolate Doom (personally rather than publicly). I didn't really see the point. I didn't really get it. I have to confess, that I was very pleasantly surprised with it. It served as a brilliant reminder of why Doom is so good. It really is little more than doom.exe made to work reliably on a modern OS and that is the key to its success. OK, so for my day to day gaming, I don't want the blockier graphics, the often very restrictive engine limits, the fact that the Doomguy's neck has been welded stiff etc etc, but Chocolate Doom gives a very good, authentic reminder of just why Doom is so much fun. A surprise thumbs up for Chocolate from me.
Vanilla
Well, what can I say. It's the original. I can't play it properly without going through DOSBox, I can't configure a mouse with it the way I want, it runs at an appallingly low resolution etc etc. But it's Doom dammit.
Vavoom
I want to like Vavoom. I really do. But, IMO, it just doesn't work as well as it should. It was the only port that gave me any problems with this WAD (they were minor graphical glitches that didn't affect gameplay but they should not have existed, yet Vavoom managed to mess them up). Also, the sound is just... odd. I can't quite put my finger on it, but it's not right. Same with how it feels to me. It's just not "right" IMO. Like I said, I want to like it. It has some very cool features. It introduced some stuff long before other ports adopted them and still has some powerful features that other ports do not have. It is an excellent editing environment and it genuinely brings some of the more modern game features into Doom. I want to like it, but it isn't making things easy for me.
Legacy
Oh dear. Oh dear oh dear oh dear. This was awful. It looked bad, sounded bad (very), played bad, had obtrusive "features" that altered the way the game played in a not-good way and simply didn't work as well as it should have. The only reason I have Legacy on my machine is to play the very occasional WAD that comes out specifically for it. Usually, when playing such a WAD, I give up at some point because Legacy likes to crash - a lot. This didn't happen on two play throughs of the map but boy was it painful. At least not crashing actually allowed me the "pleasure" of playing with Legacy for a full 30 minutes or so. I guess my summary is that if there was a joke or Mock category for ports, then Legacy would win the award hands down. It couldn't do much more to convince me that it was a Mock port unless it had a built in "randomize textures, create HOMs and put a Cybie in every level" feature. In fact, given that such complete awfulness has to be intentional, I'm pretty convinced that if I looked through the docs, I would find such an option. And I used to like Legacy way back in the dim, distant past when it was a DOS port.
However, I was enjoying comparing the merits of different ports - not something I do very often - so that was fun in itself.
