Catacomb 3D Amiga port, is anyone up for the challenge?

[BSzili]

Just a quick update. The chunky wall/sprite scalers are working, I also replaced the the block copy code for drawing the player hand. Now I'm at the point where at least half of the frame time is eaten up by WriteChunkyPixels patched with BlazeWCP. Before I'm going any deeper into this, I think I'm going to need some fast 4 bitplane C2P code for the 3D graphics.

edit: With some help I was able to adapt Kalms 6bpl routines for my purpose. Now the C2P is as fast as it gets, but the scalers still need some love.

[saimon69]

I know is premature but in case how the game is using sound? Do you have intention to replace songs and sound routines, in example 3 voices music 1 FX or similar? (i might volunteer to produce alternate soundtrack)

[BSzili]

Currently it does PC speaker emulation for the sound effects. I thought of pre-rendering the original AdLib sound effects at startup and playing them back as digital, or maybe replacing them completely.
I uploaded a test version here, that you can try for yourself. I haven't been able to try it on a real machine, but judging from WinUAE results you might have success with it on fast 030s:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0Bz...3gxUm5LVmNSOVU
http://www.classicdosgames.com/game/...omb_Abyss.html

[utri007]

Tested.

It needs to be started from shell?
Speed is OK with my 68040 40mzh
Sounds works
Background is flickering really badly, so that you should make a warning those who have epilepsia, so that they don't try this.

Black background color is flickering. Flickering starts immediately when I start to moving. If you want, I can do a small video of it and upload it to YouTube.

[BSzili]

Oops. It looks like I accidentally left in my debug rasterbars that I use to measure speed. If it flickers that means it runs slower than your monitor's refresh rate, which is expected.
Anyway, I'll replace it with a normal version ASAP.

edit: I updated the google drive link I posted above.

[Nobby_UK]

It needs to be started from shell?

Nope --- I just double-clicked the Pseudo Icon.

But it did not exit cleanly --- I had to quit WinUAE.

[BSzili]

Originally Posted by Nobby_UK

But it did not exit cleanly --- I had to quit WinUAE.

It will exit cleanly, you just have to you have to wait about half a minute before you can skip this screen. I'll remove this delay, so a keypress will work immediately.

edit: The wait is exactly 50 seconds, but you should have been able to skip it (it checks for a keypress every 5 second during this time). I'll look into this.
edit #2: Well it checks for keypresses and remembers them, but it's designed to only let you go after the 50 second wait. I fixed it so it now it can be skipped after 5 seconds.

[BSzili]

I created a 68k version of the compiled scalers, which gave at least a twofold increase in the wall drawing speed. Sprites are a bit trickier, the original game used self-modifying code, which is not very cache friendly. I haven't figured out what to do with it yet.
Besides Catacomb Abyss, I also compiled an executable for Catacomb 3D. That game has no shareware version, so I can't link for the data files. You can Google it, or grab the Catacombs Pack for just $6 to thank Flat Rock Software for open sourcing the game, making all this possible.
https://www.gog.com/game/catacombs_pack

Catacomb Abyss:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0Bz...3gxUm5LVmNSOVU
Catacomb 3D: The Descent:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0Bz...2c3NGNycl9mZXc

There's something awfully wrong with the automatic game version detection that broke Catacomb Armageddon and Catacomb Apocalypse. That will be the next thing to fix to have all 4 executables working.

[Nobby_UK]

Tried Catacomb 3-D: The Descent
From CLI nothing happens...
From Workbench = Freeze !
If run from Wb after CLI = Freeze with Corrupt Memory message.

[BSzili]

It looks like I managed to upload a broken executable by accident. I uploaded a new one, could you redownload it, and check if it works?

[Nobby_UK]

Now I get "No Compatible Game Found"

[BSzili]

You need all of the original game files, including the DOS executable (cat3d.exe) in the directory, which contains hardcoded lookup tables for the data files.

[BSzili]

Since the source port is called refkeen, I did some work to fix the scrolling, and got Keen Dreams to work. It's still a bit on the slow side, but here's a video:
[ Show youtube player ]

[Nobby_UK]

Originally Posted by BSzili

You need all of the original game files, including the DOS executable (cat3d.exe) in the directory, which contains hardcoded lookup tables for the data files.

The files I have (sort of) work on the PC.

(Although only 35-40 % of the screen is visible, same for Abyss)

Renamed 'juego.exe' to 'cat3d.exe' = makes no difference.

[BSzili]

The original game requires an 100% EGA compatible card, because it does a lot of poking with the hardware. Anyway, the files you need are AUDIO.C3D, EGAGRAPH.C3D, GAMEMAPS.C3D and CAT3D.EXE. I tested both 1.00 (The Third Dimension) and 1.22 (The Descent) and they both worked. I'd try to find a different archive, which has the unmodified game executable too.

[Nobby_UK]

You can see from the previous grab - those files are present:

Here is a Grab showing their CRC values...

[BSzili]

From the CRC values it looks like Catacomb 1.00, but the checksum for the executable doesn't match:
https://github.com/BSzili/refkeen/bl...ross_fs.c#L625

[Samurai_Crow]

GOG.com removes copy protection if present.

[BSzili]

There was no copy protection at all. I have the GOG catacombs pack, and it contains the original unmodified executables.

edit: I uploaded an executable to test Keen Dreams too. It should work with any version, except for the one which was CGA only (yuck).
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bzb...GdfcjF3RElYNzA
ftp://ftp.3drealms.com/share/keendm.zip

edit #2: Uploaded an updated version, which is more or less playable in A1200 cycle-exact mode in WinUAE.

[James]

Originally Posted by BSzili

Catacomb Abyss:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0Bz...3gxUm5LVmNSOVU

Broken link.