Download v0.1a Demo from here -> http://ssntails.srb2.org/srb32x Me and SSNTails have been working on this since June. Doom CD32X Fusion was still under development when we started. He approached me about doing this, and I gladly accepted. This is *not* a ROM hacking. This was created from the Fusion/Resurrection source code, with an effort to try and bring Sonic Robo Blast 2 version 2.2 to the 32X, to the extent possible. As everyone here knows, I've been around ROM hacking for a very long time now. I also happen to like Doom and used to make custom maps for it, include Sonic Doom 2: Bots on Mobius (also with SSNTails). SSNTails is one of the creators of Sonic Robo Blast 2. I had the opportunity early in its development to help out with that, but the Sonic ROM hacking thing had really taken off in a big way for me by that point, and I found two people working on the same source files at the same time was very difficult (we had no version control back then). So I basically bowed out of that. And meanwhile, he and Sonikku (the other creator) really built that game up in a big way. Seeing what it turned into made me have some regrets down the road. But we worked so well together in the past, and given our unique skill sets, this was a no-brainer for me. So anyway, those are just my personal thoughts. But I am very excited to be able to show you what we've been working on. And yes, it will work on real hardware (sort of -- NTSC perfectly; PAL apparently had sound issues that we only just discovered, so we'll have to address that going forward). Emulation-wise, it works best on Kega Fusion 3.64. Leave a comment and let me know what you think. More levels will come. Maybe a few technical things that didn't make it in this release.
You know I've seen people claim that SRB2 can't be ported to Saturn, Wii, etc because it's gotten too advanced, so it's fun to see that disproven with a 32X port of all things
This blown my mind! It´s an impressive port! Congratulations to eveybody who accomplished this. IO played on emulator, but I really want to test it out on real hardware when have the chance to!
Just wanted to say that this is incredible work. Thank you so much for working on this and your contributions to Doom 32x hacking in general.
I was going to say well done for making the best 32X game... but I think you might already have that accolade with those better Doom conversions. So well done beating yourself!
It looks great but my skeptical self can barely believe it. At first, when I noticed ssntails uploading 32x remixes on youtube, I thought it was sweet music that 100% beats out the Doom 32x ost. Earlier today I saw the gameplay on youtube and lost my mind. I thought the 32x was capable of Knuckles' Chaotix not SRB2! But then again it's capable of running doom better than the Saturn can (sorry I can't not express that I'm a doom nerd). All in all, this looks great.
People keep saying this but they don't really get the story, and that's not at all true. The Saturn can run doom just fine. The reason Saturn doom runs poorly is because John Carmack got personally upset that someone basically rewrote the doom renderer from scratch for the saturn instead of porting the existing one. Doom on the Sega Saturn says absolutely nothing about the Saturn's ability to run doom, and everything about the port. The original doom renderer works by scaling vertical strips of textures. This is completely opposite of how the Sega Saturn itself works, trying to write a renderer that works by scaling vertical strips of textures is batshit crazy on the Saturn not least of which because the Saturn can't do UV texture mapping, the saturn is not built to render only parts of textures. The correct way to draw geometry would be to calculate each BSP leaf as a quad and render the entire wall at once instead of doing it in strips. The original Doom port on the saturn did that, and it ran fine. Carmack didn't like it, because it didn't look the same as the original doom renderer did, and demanded they changed it. So Doom runs in a way on the Saturn that is completely counter to the way the Saturn is built to work. Carmack even admit now he basically ruined the port with his request. I can bring doom to its knees on the Sega Dreamcast by writing directly to the framebuffer. Talking minutes per frame, not frames per second. That doesn't mean the Dreamcast can't run doom (and I say this as someone who ported doom to the dreamcast). Saturn doom says nothing about the Saturn and everything about the port.
Had a playthough and it's it certainly is impressive for the 32X. But the low resolution and pixel doubling (and maybe added input lag? hard to tell, Sonic's meant to be a bit slidy) brings up some interesting design challenges. In SRB2, the (outside) walls of Greenflower Zone are all the same shade of brown, which means from a distance, it can be hard to determine the geometry of the stage: Not a massive issue on PC, but perhaps harder to get your bearings on the 32X. Doom rarely has this problem because it's more liberal with textures (and the levels are much smaller) - that's probably tricker to overcome with a fast-paced Sonic game. But I'm wondering - Wolfenstien 3D cheated to get past this issue: Granted, it only has 90-degree turns which makes this tricky to emulate, but essentially the parallel walls are "bright" and all the perpendicular walls are "dark", giving a better impression of 3D space, even if from a lighting point of view, it makes no sense (IIRC Doom might do this in some areas too - I can't remember). I'm thinking, if all the walls pointing north and east were a shade lighter (i.e. faking a sun position), maybe the levels would be slightly less disorientating. Maybe. The PC version might benefit from that too. Or it might look terrible. I also wonder if lowing the resolution of the grass texture would net you both more clarity and better peformance but idk maybe I'm overthinking it. But hey, it's the first time I've thought about SRB2 for years!
Doom on the PC and Jaguar has lighting, that's how it gets around the limitation you are talking about. Geometry in the distance is rendered darker. The levels shade in values which is completely stripped from the 32X version so everything is at the same lighting level. It's surprisingly hard to find a pic online to showcase this but here's a quick one I found: Additionally, in doom, walls that are north-south aligned are +16 brightness, and walls that are east-west aligned are -16 brightness unless overridden.
For reference on the SEGA Saturn's ability to run Doom, see the games running on the SlaveDriver Engine by LobotomySoftware: Duke Nukem 3D, PowerSlave/Exhumed and Quake. The Doom ports were simply terrible ports, nothing to do with the hardware. Anyway, this looks fantastic and I look forward to future developments.
On one hand, this is extremely impressive. On the other hand, it once again perfectly demonstrates just how transitory early 3D game hardware was in 1994-1995. It really wasn't ready for the types of experiences people wanted, especially from a sonic game. Mario 64 was the first game that really, really brought home that first true 3D adventure experience based on what people would want from a 3D platformer. Still, the gameplay is solid and matches the srb2 experience we know pretty closely, but that native low res just kills the experienced compared to SRB2 as we knew it from 2.0 onwards. I love that this project exists, but it reminds me that Sonic in 3D during the 32X/Saturn era was just not going to ever truly work as well as anyone hoped. It's no wonder the era was such a transitory mess. This is legit great gameplay and impressive polygon count for the era, but it looks awful at that low res. All that aside, what an amazing port. Truly well done. Edit: On the flip side, this reminds me of the crude early geometry of srb2 christmas, which I am again playing today as part of my yearly Holiday tradition.
The fact this even exists in any capacity is worthy of some praise. Job well done. Can’t wait to give this a shot on my everdrive.
So, just a quick clarification, because I don't want to take credit I never earned: That work goes largely to Victor Luchitz. Chilly Willy (who, by the way, got me going with 32X programming about 10 years ago) helped out. Any indication that I was involved with Doom 32X Resurrection is a misunderstanding. I believe this may be due to my name being in the credits for the first number of releases, but that is because I *did* create the Doom 32X WAD Converter tool (which was originally believed to be used for D32XR but was later realized to be incorrect, thus why my name was eventually removed). Also, I didn't mention it before, but Vic and his crew have been very gracious and supportive of us in a number of ways during these last six months. We had many questions along the way. And I can't begin to tell you how many engine optimizations we picked up and merged into our code. There's a lot of wizardry going on under the hood! ~~~~ On the topic of running on real hardware, I do want to point out that SSNTails has been running it on NTSC hardware with a Mega EverDrive X3 without a problem. Over at Sega-16, someone mentioned they tried to run using the MegaSD and couldn't get it working. So be aware of your options. On the emulator front, nobody has tested it with Gens using the special PWM via DMA code that was written for it and ultimately never included in Gens/GS. If someone has a compiled version with that code in it, I'd be very interested in having it so I don't have to build it myself. Since the game uses DMA transfers for PWM, expect sound to not work in a normal version of that emulator. And Ares also has PWM issues, though I did write an issue ticket on their GitHub page for that.
