DOOM 32X Resurrection

Considering how banking was almost never used on the Genesis at all on retail, it feels a bit like cheating. Everdrive X7 has been discontinued since the war started, and the Pro is prohibitively expensive. A version for those with stock hardware would be nice, but the aforementioned technical shortcomings make it unfeasible.

 

Don't forget it's only the newest version that requires advanced banking support. All previous versions are fine and work on everything.

 

not necessarily the point of the topic, but i replayed Doom and Doom II in their entirety for the first time since the 90's a few months back and they completely hold up. Still some of the best games ever made. The updated remaster of Doom 64 is also great, but I still think Doom and Doom II are better, especially Doom. The first Doom is basically perfect without a single dud level as far as I'm concerned. I also think original style doom without mouselook is still the best and most fun way to play, because it feels like many of the maps were built to exploit the autoaim in fun ways. I would totally be down to replay this on my 32XCD.

 

What if there were a new Saturn version using this as a basis? Perhaps it could be sped up even more by using the quads to draw the columns rather than do it all in a software buffer.

The new map conversions are really good, but there are a lot of things I would have done differently. Still, much nicer than just the plain old Jag maps.

 

Even if we had to render the video in software like the 32X, the Saturn is faster, so it would only get faster compared to the 32X. But I do plan to see what VDP1 adds to rendering.

Well, the CD32X version allows you to put together your own maps using standard Doom map editors (we tend to use Slade). We're hoping that people actually do make Fusion wads. It's a way of making your own game for the CD32X without actually knowing anything about programming the CD32X. It would be awesome to see things like Batman Doom for the 32X.

 

Worth noting that the blockmap was seemingly edited by hand in a few cases in the original maps, meaning that monsters couldn't see the player from certain spots. Not sure if that's carried over here or not. A good example is down the halls from the central room in E1M9.

One trick you might want to look into for a potential Saturn version is something similar to a little rendering trick that the Dread engine on Amiga does: "HD" texture columns. What that game is doing is they essentially have width-doubled textures that are then offset to the left by one texel, and each column is two pixels wide, using those unique second set of colors for the illusion of 320 res rather than the true 160 size. Dunno how much performance gain that would really net, but it is cutting the amount of columns in half that the SH2s have to deal with while letting hardware handle a little more, without going too far because affine would be awful if the whole thing were polygonal.

You certainly wouldn't need to double the width (and thus memory consumption of) textures. Instead, you could do 160 columns that are two pixels wide each, but the Y positions of the corner vertices needn't be lined up (so slanted walls are doable), and you could UV map it however you need to select just the right two sets of texture columns.

I also suggest making use of the SNES style hardware planes for bulk floor and ceiling rendering (like Sonic R). Might be able to skip a few visplanes, like for instance E1M1 courtyard you could just do a hardware FLOOR7_1 instead of rendering those subsectors out as true flats. Yeah, only one "free" floor and ceiling at any given time and the rest are software rendered, but still, if you could precalculate which visplanes to substitute for one contiguous surface, you might be able to speed stuff up more from there.

 

While there's merit in having full fat PC Doom on the Saturn, bringing it (at least) up to par with the PlayStation version would be interesting too (i.e. with all the coloured lighting).

Because unlike the 32X where they clearly had to compromise, there were actual design choices with the Saturn and PlayStation versions. The aim clearly was to provide a different experience to vanilla Doom (which lest we forget would have been around for a couple of years by then, on multiple platforms).

 

Actually, the Saturn version was meant to be as close to the PC version as possible, originally. The developer was working on a really fast hardware renderer, Carmack told him to scrap the whole thing and try to cram the already finished PSX Doom onto Saturn.

 

Yes, I'll have to look into that. It would be VERY handy for a bunch of patch wads I like. Obviously, it can't apply DHE files on the fly... not nearly enough ram for that. But applying it at build time should be doable.

 

One thing to keep in mind is that the Jaguar version uses very different timing. PC Doom runs at 35hz, Jag runs at 15. Generally, id cut the state durations by half, and would round non-integers and not always consistently. For monsters that moved every 3 ticks, in Jag they are set to move every 1 and 2 respectively. Due to this alone, it is not a simple matter of just applying the changes to the state table. You'd either have to manually retime every state duration yourself, or rely on a potentially dodgy conversion formula. Projectile speeds should be taken into account as well.

 

Jim said himself that he had Saturn Doom up and running at 60 fps whilst also looking better than the PS version, but I bet he was being economical with the truth (I doubt the Saturn version was running at a constant 60 fps ) Until John told Jim, he couldn't use VDP1 to handle all graphics for fear of warping. It would have been nice, to see the version Jim had running before id/John refused to approve that version mind. Even if, it wasn't running at constant 60 fps, It would have been nice to see a better looking version on the Saturn to the PS1.
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I have to say mind that while I will not downplay the technical impact of Doom. I found it and Doom 2 very overrated as games. For me the games got boring very fast with each level looking and feeling much like the last, was far more impressed with Dark Forces when that came out a little later, even if I had to go down to my mates to play it because my PC wasn't up to the task LOL

 

Me, too. I LOVED Dark Forces! Back in the day, I played Dark Forces and Duke 3D a LOT more than Doom, but then the source came out, and as a programmer, I was heavily involved in work on the Doom source (finding all the places that needed macros for endian issues, and eliminating the last few places in the rendering where low-res (320 width) was hard-coded, fixing low-detail rendering, and a few other things). I wound up working on a lot of ports of games of that generation - Doom, D3D, RotT, etc.

 

I agree mate.
I'll not overlook the technical achievement of what Doom did. But I was far more impressed with Dark Forces. I liked that DF had an introduction, story and script to get you into the game and it also had far more variety in its levels and how they looked. My mate and I used to play it for hours down his house back in the day. That game really laid the groundwork for all other FPS to follow and it was amazing at the time. Duke Nukem 3D and Exhumed (Power Slave) then took FPS to the next level.
Still to this day Exhumed remains my fav FPS, Lobotomy were GODs

I did enjoy that Aliens mod for Doom with all the sound samples taken from the movie mind LOL

Keep up the great work in the mod community too and its a shame we'll never get to see Jim version of Doom on the Saturn with Jim saying he's got no back up of that version

 

It would have been interesting, but not very useful with fish-eye like Kileak. People would have ragged on that incessantly no matter how good the frame rate. The did for Kileak. The work needed to remove the fish-eye would have probably dropped the frame rate down quite a bit. Doom was designed from the ground up for lines of constant z rendering, not polygons. PC ports use polys anyway because such an old game is easy to brute force the 3D. It will probably be better trying to get textured lines going rather than polys on the Saturn. Won't know for sure until we got it running, and given the rates we get on the 32X at 320x180, I kinda think software rendering on the Saturn might be fine.

 

I got John's worry over using a console VDP and issues over warping, but for me if you're going to grant a console version then it should be allowed to use the console chipset. In the end, John's way worked out terribly for Doom on Saturn and did far more harm, than if we had Jim's VDP1 Doom on Saturn.

Not that one saw crazy amounts of polygon folding or warping in most Saturn 1st person shooters. Genki also did Deadlus on the Saturn and it didn't suffer the issues of Kileak on the PS, apparently, the game was only using one SH-2 and a very early Saturn title, I would have loved to see what Genki could have done with that engine making full use of the Saturn and dropping that silly random level generation with a 2nd gen effort. Playing the likes of Alien Trilogy and Shinning In the Holy Ark show no warping and are very doom-like in that graphical look.

Would have liked to seen Jim's original version myself, if it was true what he said about it looking and moving better than the PS version (yes, it's all anecdotal)
compared to John's requested version on the Saturn, which pleased no one and was slated by the press and Saturn users alike.