Doom for atari 8bit

[spider-ham]

I don't buy it, but who knows. Its Doom for Atari 8 bit

http://atariarea.nostalgia.pl/vector

[Callipygous]

I'd buy it . Polish programmers have done some amazing things with the 8-bit. In the 90's, all they could afford was the old machines and they invented all sorts of things.

 

a half-Polish poster,

[Ze_ro]

Hmm... I dunno... looks a little too good to me. I played a demo of an FPS for the C-64 a month or so ago, and it wasn't too bad... but it definitely did not include looking up/down, standing on top of things, or any of the great stuff this game is promising (Although it did have graphics on the walls instead of solid colors...).

 

Of course, if this game actually comes out and is as good as it looks, then.. awesome! It's still amazing what people can manage to crank out of old 8-bit machines.

 

--Zero

[Gunstar]

I haven't seen the game yet, just posting something first. I've seen some amazing games or even demos from the Polish and other eastern european countries as well. Stuff like inventing entirely new graphic modes by interlacing, DLI's and VBI's...fantastic stuff. I also remember an Atari dealer having a "8-bit Doom clone" in their catalog, one of three dealers I know for sure; B&C, Best or Video61 (they all produce new carts or prototype burns for Atari systems). This may be the same or a different game, I'll check out this one you guys are talking about and see about finding the one I read about. Get back to ya' soon...

[Dan Boris]

This seems possible, it's not actually that far a jump from the game Wayout, which did a really nice smooth first person persepctive maze.

 

Dan

[Gunstar]

It's totally possible to have high quality fps games on the 8-bit. They've been done before; Rescue on Fractalus, The Eidelon, Koronis Rift and even Ballblazer. These Lucasfilm games are all FPS games. Just take away the cockpit in all of them and put a hand and gun in their place, maybe be moving on the ground instead of flying over the top (like in ROF), and you have a first person shooter with fractal landscapes. Koronis Rift and The Eidelon are already on the ground...fractal, vector, or even sprite based 3D engines are quite common even on old 8-bits. Companies like Lucasfilm pioneered the concept to some degree (although Star Raiders is the real FPS game). Another fine example is Datasoft's Mercenary:Escape from Targ game, 3D vector (old school name for polygons basically) graphics done very smoothly-just add a gun out front and ammo laying around to pick up. Even if this particular game, "Vector," is a fake, it's certainly possible. I used to have a graphics package for my 8-bit that was a 3D cad program that even allowed filled in polygons with hidemasking, it was called Super 3D Plotter by Elevensoft (or something like that). In low res, gfx mode 7, it was very fast and smooth, and had a world large enough to easily create corridors and such that you could set the camera to "walk through."

 

By the way, I couldn't find that Doom clone I saw before, it was a "coming soon" thing, and probably got canceled, unless they changed it's name. It was called something like "Extreme!."

[liveinabin]

the difference with this is that its filled vectors for floor, walls and ceiling.

This has been done before, very expertly on the c64 and spectrum by Incentive software (their 'freescape' system) in games like Driller in the late 80s.

But the freescape games, which had a playfield about as complicated as those Doom shots, moved at about 0.5 frames per second. OK for an adventure, no good at all for a fps.

[liveinabin]

Mind, though I'm convinced this is fake (or at best VERY slow), there's no reason why a decent version of Doom with a good frame rate couldnt be done in line vectors with hidden-line-removal, as in Novalogics' Mercenary.

[Gunstar]

I still think it could be done with filled polygons in a lower resolution like mode 7's 160x92 four color or as this "Vector" game claims, mode 9 or 11, nine color or shade. Super 3D plotter (II actually) used filled polygons with the hidden line removal or as I called it before: "hide masking," and in graphic mode 7 it ran at about 10fps. Of course with the added processing of an actual game; a.i., objects, movement, etc., it might not run as fast, but Super 3D plotter II allowed for a fairly large "universe" for the CAD designs to be done in, and this could be downsized to smaller levels in a game, just loading new levels when needed. With the 8-bit's capabilities of using multiple resolutions and graphic modes at the same time, some high-quality sprites or other bitmaps could be included for enemies and power-ups, in different colors&resolutions( of course enemies on screen at a time would be a lot less than Doom). It may turn out to only do 3-5fps, but that's about all the Lucasfilm games do with their fractal landscapes and they were/are fun to play. Also, the smaller the window that is used, the faster the frame rate can be, the Lucasfilm games used about 1/2-2/3 of the screen for the "World," the rest was the "dash." In any case it would take some very creative and innovative programming to accomplish even if my view of it being possible is correct.

[Callipygous]

The programmer, Piotr Fusik, has been answering a few questions in CSA8:

 

Doom Thread

 

Says its an 80x48 9 color mode. If I am reading it right, he is using character graphics and no P/M?

 

not a 8-bit programmer,

[DanBoris]

The only statements that the author (I assume that's who it is) makes about the game in this thread is that the resolution is 80x48 and the Player-missiles are not used for the weapon that appears in one of the pictures.

 

The 80x48 res confused me for a minute since there isn't an 80x48 mode on the 8-bit. What I bet they are doing is using a higher resolution mode (maybe one of the GTIA modes) but only using 80x48 of it to display the game. With a screen that small rendering the 3D display wouldn't be to hard.

 

Dan

[atari70s]

i want onei wnat a doom 8 bit game

[Heaven/TQA]

dan:

 

fox aka piotr is one of the best 8bit coders. he pushed our crew to the limit. if i could show you the stuff he coded for our not yet released demo then you would be off your seat... he is also doing improving atari800win 2.8 as he has done the "plus" version in a way...

www.s-direktnet.de/homepages/k_nadj/main.html there you find informations about the "mode9" gfx mode 80x60x16

 

the only reason for using this "vga"-styled mode13 is

 

- less memory to adress

- pixels are quadratic in 1:1 aspect ratio not 4:1

- antic can help you to stretch the picture

- less dma time consuming building the screen...

 

heaven

coder in the atari 8bit demo crew taquart

[Heaven/TQA]

and if you download atari800win 2.8

there should be an intro of fox

included when he was in the crew "infinity". the demo is called "drunken chessboard" which is now a little bit oldschool but the vector gfx is quite fast...

 

and check out other taquart releases

 

-"really unreal" by myself

-"ultra" by eru

- other stuff you find on www.s-direktnet.de/homepages/k_nadj/taquart.html

 

these work perfect in atari800win 2.8 but dont forget to switch into stereo-soundmode (2 pokeys) and 256k machine.

[liveinabin]

yeah, maybe at 80x48 you could pull it off with a respectable frame rate.

[Gunstar]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Heaven/TQA:

dan:

 

fox aka piotr is one of the best 8bit coders. he pushed our crew to the limit. if i could show you the stuff he coded for our not yet released demo then you would be off your seat... he is also doing improving atari800win 2.8 as he has done the "plus" version in a way...

www.s-direktnet.de/homepages/k_nadj/main.html

there you find informations about the "mode9" gfx mode 80x60x16

 

the only reason for using this "vga"-styled mode13 is

 

- less memory to adress

- pixels are quadratic in 1:1 aspect ratio not 4:1

- antic can help you to stretch the picture

- less dma time consuming building the screen...

 

heaven

coder in the atari 8bit demo crew taquart

---

 

People, if what Heaven/TQA has posted here is correct, that means that the programmer is using GTIA modes 9, 10 or 11 which are both 80x192 resolution, one is 16 shades of one color, one is 16 colors with one shade and one is 9 colors of any shade selected from the 256 color pallet. This also means that the "window" that the game is running in, at 80x48 and strechable by the antic chip, that it will most likely be full screen or close to it in the end result. Because these modes are already 80 pixels across, and 48 pixels down is exactly 1/4 of the screen, which quite possibly could be stretched to a 1/2 screen or better letterbox display if not entirely full screen. I would also guess at about 5fps in this mode going by what I've seen these graphic modes pull of in other games&demos. This is a respectable frame-rate for an 8-bit and reletively smooth if you have not been spoiled by the 15-60fps games of the 32-128-bit machines. If your here though, chances are you will enjoy it.

[Callipygous]

Congratulations and admiration to the east Europeans who have squeezed so much out the 8-bit. I am seriously considering upgrading to the PAL Antic to play some of the games.

Have only a partial understanding of this material, but the techniques are obviously new relative to 1980s reference books (De Re Atari etc). Although the information exists on various websites, an online book documenting all the new stuff in one place would be great .

[Heaven/TQA]

i dont think germany is easter europe...ok for some americans... ;=O

 

but again

 

80x48 means that we double or double & double each scanline...

 

f.e.

 

displaylist could look like this:

 

$4f scanline1

$00

$4f scanline1

$00

$0f

$00

$4f scanline1+40

$00

$0f

$4f scanline+80

...

 

i hope you got it...

 

and adressing pixels is so easy:

 

lda #color1

ora #color2

sta scanline1

 

f.e.

 

and as we are using 40x48 bytes in vector we can adress this screenram nearly in 1 vbl to draw in a long unrolled code...

 

but to draw it more flexible you can shoose (thanks antic...) f.e. 256 bytes long scanlines (hiho atari 7800 ;=))

 

$4f scanline1

$00

$4f scanline1

$00

$4f scanline1+256

$00

$4f scanline1+256

$00

...

 

so you can be more flexible in your drawing routine because adressing of pixel is now more easier...

 

i hope you got it...

 

;=)

[Gunstar]

I believe I understand the concepts very well, even if I could never actually program it! I can't wait to play it! Although it's to bad it isn't being done in APAC mode so we could have 256 color graphics for it...looks good anyway.

[Mindfield]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Mario's Other Brother:

The programmer, Piotr Fusik, has been answering a few questions in CSA8:

 

Doom Thread

 

Says its an 80x48 9 color mode. If I am reading it right, he is using character graphics and no P/M?

 

not a 8-bit programmer,

---

 

From the look of it I'd say he's using ANTIC mode 10 with a very small playfield (ala Alternate Reality) and no VBIs. Notice the wide, chunky pixellation in the character closeups (middle row, far right of the screenshots on the homepage) -- that's a pretty good indication of mode 10's 80x192 resolution. Additionally, mode 10 is monochrome and you can change the colour of the screen, but it is still only one colour with 16 luminance settings for each pixel, so I don't get this 9 colours thing. It's concievable that he's using mode 12, which can display 9 colours at once in 80x192 resolution, but then that doesn't explain why they chose to use 9 shades of one colour; they could have gotten more out of mode 10 if that's all they wanted to do.

 

As for the plausability of such a game with a decent frame rate -- it's very possible. I've seen numerous demos on the 8-bit that do real-time 3D and though they're relatively slow, they're usually also doing it with music playing and scrolltexts moving about, which all eat up precious CPU cycles. If they cut out background music and had SFX only they could squeeze a pretty respectable frame rate out of an 80x48 viewport. It probably won't VSYNC with each frame, but at the very least it's entirely possible you might see 12.5/15FPS (half scan rate) come out of it.

[Heaven/TQA]

the music replay routine is not the time consuming thing in the vbl...it is the calculation and the redrawing of the screen i would guess...but we have to ask fox...

 

if you stay a little longer with the mouse over the vector screenshots you get more hints...

 

fox uses definitly 80x48 and this is fullscreen no small viewport like alternate reality. as i mentioned earlier...we use antic and the displaylist to stretch the picture to fullscreen.

 

i think fox played around with the prior register and has checked how the game could look like in mode9 or 10 (16 shades / 9 colors). for the grafic engine it does not matter because you just have to alter the PRIOR register of GTIA to switch modes...

 

hve

[Gunstar]

I figured that was it, just change modes when needed. But isn't graphic mode 10 a GTIA mode and not Antic? I thought all of those 80x192 modes came from the GTIA chip. Anyway, I'm not sure what Mindfield is talking about with ANTIC mode 10, for one thing there is no possible way to get an 80x48 display out of an 80x192 pixel screen and end up with a window like Alternate Reality.That(AR) was done with one of the Antic med-res modes of 160x192 where a window that small IS possible as the horizontal resolution could be reduced to a small window. I believe AR used about a third of the horizontal resolution and 1/3-1/2 vertically, wich would make it about a 53x64 sized window. An 80x192 resolution mode could only be reduced vertically and still have 80 pixels across.It would have to be less than 80 pixels wide to have vertical edges within that modes resolution.Also, the Antic modes only have four colors or less, only GTIA modes go above that (without DLI's). Maybe I'm backwords though as far as which modes come from which processors? It's been a while...

 

 

[ 12-01-2001: Message edited by: Gunstar ]

 

[ 12-01-2001: Message edited by: Gunstar ]

[Heaven/TQA]

to mario's other brother...

 

don't take it too seriously ;=). i am the only taquart member. the rest are all polish students... and i am 10 years older than the rest in TQA...

 

i thought you have read my origin in the stats... :=)

[Heaven/TQA]

oops... missing: i am the only Taquart member from Germany...

[Jetboot Jack]

All graphic mode lines are generated by ANTIC.

 

The display list can only consist of valid ANTIC modes.

 

Modes 9/10/11 - the GTIA modes - are simply mode 8 with the appropriate bits of GPRIOR (623) set to use 4 bits of a mode 8 display (320 pixels) to create a colour indexed mode (80 pixels).

 

You can set the GTIA mode bits in mode 0 or mode 8 graphic modes - try mode 0 and poke 623,128 - you get 2 pixel wide characters with upto 16 shades/colours (mode 9/11). Mode 10 with the memory usage of mode 0 and redefinable chars (I did create a characterset editor with a toggle on the GTIA bits).

 

To do an 80X48 mode is pretty simple using existing GR modes with GTIA bit settings and using Antic to manage a DL to repeat each mode line 4 times is quite trivial, thereby creating a custom mode from mode 8...

 

sTeVE

 

[ 12-01-2001: Message edited by: Jet Boot Jack ]

 

[ 12-01-2001: Message edited by: Jet Boot Jack ]