Seriously impressive regardless of whatever benchmark you're comparing it against.

I've just accepted the new EAB account of the author KK/Altair, so hopefully he'll be able to offer further insight into his outstanding work.

Welcome to EAB KK/Altair :great

...please ignore negative comments; especially those from swinkamor12.

Well I'm impressed and hope to eventually play this game, looks like a lot of effort has gone into this in getting it to run on a standard A500.

from watching the video its more impressive than say Death Mask back in the day.

Well done and I look forward to seeing how it turns out.

He is trolling, and he is very successful, and he gets exactly what he wants.
After he posted, several us (including me), replied him.
What else could the troll wants?
He wanted to that we talk about his statements, instead of the demo, and he succeed (thanks to us).
Simple as that.

@Eab mods
I've never report anyone, and will not do anytime in the future (not my type of reaction)... but then again... I beg you to find solution for these situations (I've seen it earlier), when single person try to ruin the whole thread, and succeed!
I have not read the rules, but some of them could be extended to less democracy, because too much democracy equals anarchy (I am not trying to be a politician here).

Amazing news!
I am happy because all of the coders here (I'd hardly learn anything from him).
But anyway...
(drums)

Welcome EAB KK/Altair!

Let's all move on from swinkamor12... and not degrade this thread anymore than he has.

I've reviewed all his posts and it's not pretty; constant bashing of the Amiga and banging on about how good the PC was in comparison in the late 1990's. Swear he's joined the wrong forum :rolleyes

Anyway, I've sent him a PM, will be monitoring his account closely, and if it continues then a definite ban will occur :agree

Man, if you would only know how you are wrong :)
I don't (personally) like so much 3D shooters, but I like to watch their developments, and all (on old machines)

Death Mask was great, but it was 90 degree rotation, nothing close to even Wolfenstain 3D, let alone Doom.
The best (so far) I know 3D game for the plain Amiga 500 was Cytadel (also from Polish guys)... and that's it. It looks great, and all, but on A500, it strugles (on full screen), like... no.. fps is not good measure... seconds per frame is better measure.

This is equivalent, as running quake on 386 (with some limitations), or PacMan on handwatch calculator.

Incredible work!!!
It's an amazing week for Amiga. Ibrowse 2.5, Metro Siege and now this.

What amazes me is that not only the game runs very smooth on an Amiga 500, it also looks good! The sky effect, the enemies, the guns, the textures, they all look very nice. I hope it plays as well as it looks, from what I've seen so far it seems like it does.

I am more of a hardware guy but honestly what Amiga needs are software developers like Altair, pushing the machine to its limits.

PS, also excited about britelite's wolfenstein clone, inviyya and all the other nice developments. Keep it up guys, otherwise we will be running sysinfo and elite intro's forever ;)

Thought the Wolf clone was the most an a500 could offer, now THIS!
Is really making my jaw fall down the floor!!!
Is running at almost the same speed of Doom in my 1200/030@40mhz in Shapeshifter, really impressive!!! ^__________________^

I seldom get personal with people on here but you sir have very positive form for being voted as Amiga arsehole of the year.

Your game plan seems to be to turn up here, fire shit and forget.

You’re probably a c64 fanboy.

If the Doom engine/demo is real then it is very impressive.

Now, keep encouraging him.

I am very pleased that KK/Altair has joined EAB as I was not sure if my invitation mail would have any interest for him...

All we have to do now is wait for him to show up ;)

Thank you guys for all the kind words!! :) (and for the other kind of "kind" too - just ignore that)

If you have any kind of questions about this little thing, just fire away here. I will definitely check this tread, because of just how awesome your reaction was! :)

So, to address the more common questions...

1. The game DOES run on a stock A500 exactly how it does in WinUAE - if you watch my presentation closely, you'll see that I restarted the demo just because it was running too fast (it does in WinUAE in non-cycle-exact modes). The point of the presentation was just to give a few tricks away and not to show the game, so there was no actual hardware used. But if you ask anyone attending Decrunch 2049 party, they would confirm that it runs indeed because I gave a stealthy show there.

2. Don't compliment me on the art. All the graphics are converted from FreeDoom, which thankfully is covered by BSD license and I can focus on coding. Level design is done by me, because it has to adhere to the engine limitations.

3. This will be a "doom clone", so don't expect Doom port from this project. In no close point in the future the engine will be able to handle complexity of Doom maps. So, instead it's much better to design maps that allow acceptable gameplay (10+ FPS) on a A500 1MB and make a fresh thing. On the other hand, this also allows having features NOT present in Doom - like sliding doors, which are already implemented. But multi-floor buildings would also be something I'd love to have down the road.

4. The performance so far is roughly:
- 10-14 FPS - A500+1MB
- 24-25 FPS - stock A1200
- 30 FPS - A600 with Furia
But the A500 performance is the king here. Every possible optimization that could improve the framerate on A500 is a clear win for me, even if it would cripple the remaining configs somehow. Stronger configs have good FPS games already, and I really want to fill the A500 gap.

5. The demo features so far:
- 3 different ceiling heights + sky,
- 2 light levels (this is really a trick - I change textures and floor/ceil colors),
- angled walls,
- flat floor and fixed camera height,
- 4 weapons (pistol, shotgun, chaingun, rocket launcher),
- 3 types of monsters (shotgunner, chaingunner, flying monster),
- large map with keycards and (sliding) doors,

6. The fixed camera height is a limitation allowing several optimization tricks. In worst case scenario, the camera will move vertically in fixed steps - after all, moving camera is the same as moving rest of the map up and down. In best case - I'll figure a clever way to get around this. Right now, having limited number of possible drawing heights allowed me to bring performance to acceptable levels and focus on making a playable demo from what I got. We don't want just an another tech demo with no gameplay, right? :) But this is clearly a point I'll have to go back to.

7. Last, but definitely not least - I have not released binary so far. I have already spent a better half of the year on that and pretty burned my motivation by this point. But there is still SO much work ahead, so I'm still thinking about how to get the best motivational boost from what I have so far. Right now I'm considering releasing this (and any regular updates I make from this point) via Patreon and/or itch.io, but got kind of stuck in the decision because of how it would limit the availability, on the other hand. I'm already at the point where I can barely look at this code, so something should be done about that. In any case, community modding will be a big point in the process, so everybody interested could have as much fun as possible even with unfinished product, while, at the same time, helping me.

In any case, feel free to ask and comment here as much as you like! :)


Thanks,
KK/Altair

You've done an incredible job! The smoothness/framerate you got is so impressive. :bowdown
And you took time to produce a power point about it :)

Welcome on EAB KK/Altair !

It's funny as it looks like that everybody turned shy now that you are here :laughing

First I would like to congratulate you for the work done. It's clearly amazing :bowdown . And more now that you have written that a basic A500 can run it at 10-14FPS ! Whaou ! It is really very impressive.

I'm admiring the ideas you had to get the current result. It's very ingenious! :great

For the motivation, there are many good coders here on EAB (unfortunately I am not part of them since professional choices have distracted me from the code).

As I think your engine is really technical, maybe you can try to get in touch with 'ross'.
I am sure he may be of great help regarding technical and 'sharp' coding, if he has some spare time left of course. As many people here on the forum, he is a really nice person (trolls are not the rule ;)).

Now two questions :
- Regarding the maps : what is the size of the supported maps ?
- As Doom is more enjoyable in netplay : in the future do you plan to add such option ? (linked Amiga (à la Lotus) ? TCPIP ?)

Well, don't be shy. Just have a nice chat. :)

Technical coding is not a problem here. I have tons of ideas what to implement and (try to) optimize next at this point. My limited free time and running out of steam is.

Maps can be quite large, but there are other factors to consider. You have limited memory for all the textures and you need some in two variations (light levels), so the allowed map extents are big enough to make player bored with the chosen texture set already. You also have to plan carefully, so no location is overcomplex to cause a significant FPS drop and map doesn't have a lot of things visible at once (auto-closing doors are here to help with that).

Network play would be awesome, but at this point it would introduce more problems than add value, so I think it's best to focus on making single player experience as good as it can be.

Thanks,
KK/Altair

hi KK/altair,
one thing is for sure,you have in your hand the best amiga 500 3d engine ever and by far.
you perhaps could sell your development tool later, because, i'm sure many would be happy to try it.Or just a tool to create the stages, i'm sure some guys would be happy to be a part of history !
I really think that if you finish this, you'll have a place in the already big amiga history book.
Good luck with the game and with the motivation.
one question : if i'm not wrong i saw some kind of scanlines vertically on the gfx, is it done on purpose or is it a technical thing ??
2nd question : do you think that your dev tool could make a game like : monster farm jump ? if you could sell your dev tool, i think i would try to do this : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2hqInFL5LQ
3rd question : many talented coders tried the impossible to make what you have done, why do you think they failed, what they've got wrong ?

Thanks for all the extra information.

I think it's mind blowing.

I'd love to see this progress into a release on original floppy disks ;) :D

There seems to be a lot of BS and negativity on this thread for some reason :confused

I'm very impressed that you managed to get a humble A500 to run a FPS this well :D

We don't need to make pointless comparisons to a PC running DOOM back-in-the-day, just be happy to see something like this running so well on an A500 :spin

Hi KK/Altair,
welcome on board!

Amazing work you've done there!!! :great

I've watched footage for your presentation and I'm wondering if art specifically made and tailored for your engine would be possible to bring up the fidelity even further (like f.e. mask some of the scanline doubling or work alongside the engine's quirks and limitations).

Also do you think that having original art for the game would contribute to your motivation?

Agreed 100%

Comparisons to actual Doom on a PC was in defense of the work done here, due to other comments. That's the only reason a comparison was raised.

Moving on :)