new amiga 500 doom like !

[Tigerskunk]

@KK/Altair:
Honestly, this is the craziest thing I have seen in a while, technics wise.
I can't believe that you pulled this off, this is literally hardware wizardry.

Maybe you should take a month or two off of the project to reset your brain, but then please come back. This achievement is simply too amazing to vapour off..

I'd love to see some kind of network connection where I could deathmatch against other guys with Amiga500s. Imagine the possibilities here..
Also, I think it would be nice if you could make a youtube video playing your game, so more people can see this...

Anyway, thanks again for this amazing effort..
Crazy times for the Amiga right now..

[Amigajay]

Again amazing job, i did comment on Twitter, i think in general the main thing as the creators motivation is pretty low is the game gets finished as quick as possible as a version 1 without suggesting other ‘features’ or even other games get made from the engine!

Get the basic game engine complete, a decent number of maps and enemies, play-test and put it out there for a decent price, then as i said to him if sales are good this will inspire to add more features for a possible sequel, the last thing we want from this is to end with another Doom clone tech demo that never went anywhere!

[roondar]

This is an extremely cool project. I think it's pretty amazing to see an engine like this on an A500 and am looking forward to seeing more

I've seen several rather negative posts in this thread. The key thing I'd like to point out here is that the 68000 in the A500 is, well, really rather slow. Quite a bit faster than the 8-bit processors used in home computers before the Amiga, but not nearly as fast as any of the processors PCs used in 3D 'wolf/doom clones'.

This low CPU speed is exactly what makes the program so darned impressive. It requires real technical know-how and more than a bit of creativity to create something like this on a machine like this. So, I'm impressed. A lot.

Great stuff!

[Mathesar]

Originally Posted by KK/Altair

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!

<snip>

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


Thanks,
KK/Altair

Welcome to EAB

Ah, so the usage of freedoom artwork explains the "doomy" look . I really like it. Even though the floors are not texture mapped the use of multiple heights, partly ceilings and real sky give it a very nice atmosphere. Very much alike the real doom.

Some (technical) questions:
1) Did I get it correctly from the livestream that the whole map is basically divided in sectors aka triangles where each triangle corresponds to a one or more visible walls? Thus avoiding costly raycasting altogether?

2) When you say A500+1MB you mean a 512K+512K Amiga 500 right?

3) You already mentioned that level and texture design is important given the limited resolution and color depth. In the video some parts look really good while others have some vertical lines in them (like a trellis). Is this a result of the horizontal pixel doubling or an effect of the textures used?

4) You say that your motivation is diminishing after working on it for so long. So recognizable . What is needed at this point to make it a complete game? From what you've shown it looks like the engine and game features are there. Even the levels you made look like fun. Music? More level design? Artwork?

Once again: Great work and very inspiring.

[malko]

Originally Posted by NovaCoder

[...] I'm very impressed that you managed to get a humble A500 to run a FPS this well [...]

If with your skills, the portages/adaptations you've made you are "very impressed", imagine that the average Amiga user is already in orbit

Originally Posted by KK/Altair

[...] 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. [...]

Of course.

Originally Posted by KK/Altair

[...] In no close point in the future the engine will be able to handle complexity of Doom maps. [...]

Does it mean that the existing PC wad editors could be used (considering, of course, the restrictions of the 'engine') ?
or does it means that a new editor has to be used ?
If the second, do you already have developed something, and if again so, do you plan to release it with the 'playable demo' you mentioned ?

By the way, I also do believe that making a game with your engine will find his audience (not to be rich but... )

Originally Posted by KK/Altair

[...] 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. [...]

I don't know if it was mentioned on the stream, as I was not able to watch it entirely, so what is the maximum colour depth that the engine is accepting now for the textures ?
I think it should not be huge depth and part of the reason you are using actually 'dark' textures ?
(Maybe @Tsak, @Invent, and many others could help you as they are really talented and great artists ! - of course again, everything is a question of available spare time...)

Originally Posted by KK/Altair

[...] You also have to plan carefully, so no location is over-complex 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). [...]

I don't know how fast is the loading process of the textures, but maybe while the player is using an elevator/lift (high?), this could allow the loading of new textures ? (and thus can prevent the player from getting bored with textures). Of course, no windows should point to part of the map that the player left (as the textures would not be the same ).

Originally Posted by KK/Altair

[...] 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. [...]

It's understandable.
Nevertheless, in a second or third step, I think that a "Lotus-style link" game option should be considered. I may be wrong but it seems to me that it should be one of the most "easy" net-play to implement.
(At the same time I say that, and it's not me who does the job )

[trixster]

Just watched some of the Xenium video. This really does look amazing, it’s a great achievement so far. It really reminds me of the work DML has done with Doom (BadMood) and Quake2 engine on a stock Atari Falcon.

[dlfrsilver]

Fabulous work. Really, the Amiga 500 is neverendingly surprising.

I guess that the 1200 following this rule could also go further than what we know yet.

[vulture]

@KK/Altair

It's beyond impressive what you've achieved there m8!

[Seiya]

Fantastic engine!

[Marle]

*mic drop*

[vroom6sri]

Jaw drop!

[d4rk3lf]

Welcome KK/Altair!

For inspiration, I suggest to look at some other impressive works done by other coders, and participate by helping/learning.
There's not much of that unfortunately, but here's the one made by britelite coder:
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=90115

As other suggested, it seems that you done most of the job already. If you can pack it all in one (challenging) game, quickly, that would be awesome. Later, with patches, you can improve it, or even create a sequal.
I also loved the idea of selling engine, or rather then engine, a map creator/ game creator, where people can build their own levels, and use different textures.

Keep up the awesome work!

[Glen M]

So I'm obviously dreaming since there is no way an A500 is running that but then I ask myself why am I dreaming of sitting in work on EAB forums when there are plenty of other options....

Impressive doesn't do it justice and to read 25 fps on a stock A1200 makes me wonder if I'd get 60fps on my 40mhz 030. Makes me all fuzzy just thinking about it.

[Megol]

Originally Posted by swinkamor12

Only 12 FPS at 160x100.
No textures on ceiling and floor, so it is still Wolf not real DOOM.
Waste of time, and yet another proof that for 3D Amiga need graphics with chunky pixels.

You are a waste of time.

[saimon69]

I already commented on that but swinkamor12 seems the kind of person that would have said to the inventor of the car "we have horses for this, waste of time" :/

[Tigerskunk]

Just ignore him.

[swinkamor12]

I rather try to tell inventor of horse (bitplanes) to use cars (chunky pixels) as rest of world.
At end of 1993 I play original DOOM in 320x200 resolution in 256 colors.
Original DOOM was revolution because it has angled walls, levels on different height, textures on ceiling and floors.
Without textures on ceiling and floors it is not DOOM, it is only bad clone of Wolf.
And of course four times worse resolution (160x100) and only 16 colors after more than twenty five years after original DOOM looks bad.

[tolkien]

Only a little thing. Do you know what an Amiga 500 is?
Know its limitations and specs? It's not a 199x machine...
Come on guy. See it with perspective.

[eXeler0]

Originally Posted by swinkamor12

I rather try to tell inventor of horse (bitplanes) to use cars (chunky pixels) as rest of world.
At end of 1993 I play original DOOM in 320x200 resolution in 256 colors.
Original DOOM was revolution because it has angled walls, levels on different height, textures on ceiling and floors.
Without textures on ceiling and floors it is not DOOM, it is only bad clone of Wolf.
And of course four times worse resolution (160x100) and only 16 colors after more than twenty five years after original DOOM looks bad.

You still hold a grudge 35 years later towards the ppl who opted for bitplane graphics, fine, that can be your thing, I don't mind.
But don't you get the thing about a challange of doing something thats supposed to be impossible on a certain hardware?
If your life is $$-centric then all hobbies or stuff that don't earn you money are a waste of time. (Like this thread-trolling for example.) Give it a rest, go have a beer instead.

[Overmann]

Do you peeps (the programmers) have any tips on how to get into programming for the amiga. I've not programmed for anything but I've always wanted to. Is it best to learn something modern (python) and then go to the amiga once the concepts of programming are clear, or would you reccomend a different route?

I've spent years looking at the contributions of great coders thinking to myself "I whish I could do that..", and If I had just started when I first had that thought I would probably be contributing by now. It's never too late to start