Bit jealous of this c64 game

[Steve Mynott]

http://www.indieretronews.com/2017/05/wolf3d-supercpu-release-of-wolfenstein.html

[Rybags]

The resolution looks good but the colours are disgusting. The rotation movement looks somewhat chunky as well.

But what could we have? Consider that Project M almost matches that at standard speed, albeit with a somewhat smaller display window.

So, give us 8 times more speed, I think that we'd have a much better looking game.

The resolution is wasted since the movement is so chunky. Our 80 pixel mode doesn't seem so bad once you consider there's 256 colours for the using.

 

ed - actually, the Super CPU 2 for C64 is 20 MHz so it's more like a 20x speedup.

The game, it looks in places like they've ported the code line by line. End of level especially, the slowdown of the score update and the fact the graphics look near identical but just scaled down.

Edited May 26, 2017 by Rybags

[emkay]

Where is the C64 game? I don't see one .

[MrFish]

Where is the C64 game? I don't see one .

 

Here it is: Doom/Mood

[+CharlieChaplin]

Hmmm, think you could be jealous if this game would run on a standard C64, but thats not the case here (whereas Project M would run on a standard A8).

 

The Super-CPU2 runs with 20Mhz ? Alright then, install a 65816 (e.g. Rapidus) into your A8 to have the same speed. You want 16 or more colours ? Alright then, install a VBXE and you have much higher resolution than the C64 and still more colours available. Want a better sound ? Alright then, install the sound board and you have Pokey, SID and AY chips available.With all this extra hardware you can beat the C64 version of Wolf3D easily, I guess - all that is required then is a good coder who would program the game on the enhanced A8 and thats most likely the hardest part of it.

[The Usotsuki]

And you might be able to start from the Apple IIgs version.

[xxl]

game for 16-bit c64 ... nice

[+davidcalgary29]

I find Hans Kloss to be a great bridge between A8 Wolfenstein and Wolfenstein 3D (even if it is more like Impossible Mission than it is a true Wolfenstein game).

[+Philsan]

I would prefer Project-M on stock A8.

[+davidcalgary29]

While it doesn't share the same gaming environment, MIDIMaze is still to me the most impressive FPS (dungeon crawl) on a stock A8. And it has that real-time chat feature and ability to have multi-player games with players on the ST!

[emkay]

There is one point to be jealous ... somehow. It's the fancy drive of C64 people to do even the crappiest stuff, just to have it on the C64, at least looking and sounding like the aimed prod.

[Mclaneinc]

I had a play with it a few days ago and I was actually not that impressed compared to all the other Doom style looking software on the 8 bit, as was said, it does look like its running the wad and source which seems daft to do even with 20Mhz to play with.

 

And its one ugly mother bleeper too...

[popmilo]

One has to admire the energy and effort needed to produce something like that...

I wish there were more projects like that on Atari...

 

This one looks like a conversion from C code with custom asm coded gfx routines. Doing similar conversion for Atari with Rapidus or Vbxe shouldn't be too difficult. Blitter and colors in Vbxe or Rapidus speed would make it a proper competition for the best accelerated 8bit wolf

[emkay]

Yeah... if it helps to get a playable "Wolf 3D" for the real Atari, it could be helpful to see an accellerated Atari plus VBXE running that software ...

 

 

... learning by doing....

Edited May 27, 2017 by emkay

[_The Doctor__]

I didn't see anything to be jealous of... in fact I laughed at it, all that extra hardware and that's what it does... ugh....

[Mclaneinc]

The clever is the use of the REU file and the 20Mhz SuperCpu add on, sadly the end result does not impress when you have seen Project 2.0, Doom / Wolf games are not from memory overly seen on the C64 (struggling to remember one) so it seems to impress the C64 crowd more (wait, not row bait, I am a C64 person too). What is nice is to see add on hardware being used regardless of if its the VBXE, Rapidus or the SuperCPU on the C64, devs make nice extra's and sadly some get left to one side because they are not 'the norm'. I understand but its also a bit sad, better to code to a wider audience but I wish more stuff allowed for the hardware IF it was present or made a special version like Time Pilot.

 

The 65C816 isn't that different to a 6502 bar being 16bit (iirc), it can't be too radical as even I used to remove region protection on Snes images and cheat them because the code was understandable enough for a dork like me

 

Lets see more support Please

Edited May 28, 2017 by Mclaneinc

[Rybags]

Would be so nice to have the alleged free-rotating Alternate Reality: The City engine running to see how it compares.

 

The texture mapping is actually done fairly well. The problem with Level 1 of Wolf3D is the blue areas, they don't exactly look great in VGA and look shockingly bad on the C64.

But the grey areas where there's wall decorations are where it shines.

 

But as mentioned by Popmilo and myself - I get the feeling there might be a lot of line by line translation of code. That's a real effort in that it wouldn't be easy to translate C or '286 code to 6502. I've not seen the original source, I think they did release it years ago as well as Doom a bit later. Nice that at least some software companies have the public interest in mind, if it was someone like EA or Activision they'd probably try and sell it to you.

[Matej]

Wolf 3D for SNES (3,58MHz 65c816 cpu):

[popmilo]

Source is freely available on Github:

https://github.com/id-Software/wolf3d

 

It's a bunch of files in c and asm and I wonder who the f... even dared to enter into conversion process ?

 

16-color version doesn't look that bad at all on later levels. Most important thing is that it is a conversion from PC game. Scpu and fli mode were maybe the only option c64 coder had to make it at least playable ... No point in looking for an 10/10 fps on c64 from a project like this. Only a fully 100% new game (like project M on A8 or some new game on c64) can use machine to it's full potential.

[TMR]

The clever is the use of the REU file and the 20Mhz SuperCpu add on, sadly the end result does not impress when you have seen Project 2.0, Doom / Wolf games are not from memory overly seen on the C64 (struggling to remember one) so it seems to impress the C64 crowd more (wait, not row bait, I am a C64 person too).

Complete Wolf 3D style games aren't common, but there are a few joystick-controlled engines in demos which could be considered proof of concept; the end of Oxyron's Oneder springs to mind.

 

If Wolf 3D is impressive... yes from a programming stance because it's taking the original source code and shoehorning it into something that, by rights, shouldn't run it. i haven't sat down to see how it feels as a game personally...

 

I understand but its also a bit sad, better to code to a wider audience but I wish more stuff allowed for the hardware IF it was present or made a special version like Time Pilot

Some people consider it a good idea to only support add-ons in order to encourage others to do the same; you're essentially not showing off what the extra hardware can do if the code is being hobbled to run on stock as well.

 

The 65C816 isn't that different to a 6502 bar being 16bit (iirc), it can't be too radical as even I used to remove region protection on Snes images and cheat them because the code was understandable enough for a dork like me

i've only taken a limited look at the 65816 but, from my perspective at least, the memeory management is the most significant difference; it can access 16Mb directly rather than having to rely on memory windows or DMA.

[Mclaneinc]

 

 

i've only taken a limited look at the 65816 but, from my perspective at least, the memeory management is the most significant difference; it can access 16Mb directly rather than having to rely on memory windows or DMA.

 

 

Yes, obviously its all 16bit addressing but for the amateur hacker it was just fun cheating stuff and the odd region kill, nothing that anyone with half a brain could not do, I never got in actual programming side, that makes the half of my brain hurt a lot and at my age that is dangerous

 

You still Retro Gamer'ing, not seen your initials in the last couple of issues...

[TMR]

Yes, obviously its all 16bit addressing

Umm... sorry for the pedantry but it's 24-bit memory addressing. The registers can handle 16-bit rather than 8-bit values as well, though.

 

but for the amateur hacker it was just fun cheating stuff and the odd region kill, nothing that anyone with half a brain could not do, I never got in actual programming side, that makes the half of my brain hurt a lot and at my age that is dangerous

There are quite a few new opcodes (and some pseudo opcodes don't work, natch) and so on, enough that converting Wolf 3D to 6502 from 65816 would be a fairly hefty job and the results would be less optimal. That said, there's a bottleneck in the SuperCPU so a plain 6502 version running on an unfettered Turbo Chameleon would possibly be faster despite the code being less optimal.

 

i sort of like 65816, but it's a case of having to write specialised code to get the best out of it.

 

You still Retro Gamer'ing, not seen your initials in the last couple of issues...

Still doing the homebrew section yes, but i haven't had an opinion worth printing for the Retrobates section at the start of the mag recently. =-)

[TMR]

As regards what's going on in the code, i've just been looking through the readme:

 

The sources has been modified to allow building for 32bit targets like the MIPS CPU,

and then recompiled to 65816 code using my MIPS recompiler.

 

Some parts has been rewritten in 65816 assembler for better performance:

 

* Main raycasting loop

* Graphic scalers (compiled just as on i286)

* Chunky to bitmap conversion

So yeah... hoops were jumped through and there's bound to be some processing welly lost duringthat process. =-)

 

i've just had a quick play and it's faster than i expected, even when i turned on the FLI/samples mode and cranked up the play window!

[emkay]

Seeing Project-M on the stock Atari, with all those register and color adjustments, running at 20 fps.

I wonder if anyone could imagine, running the game "Wolf 3D" in Gr. 7 plus PM overlays and some DLIs...

 

Due to the nature of the PMg and using GPRIOR 0 , it can get more colors on the screen than people might expect.

 

Doors and/or brown walls could appear over the grey walls... Also, adding enemies with the belonging color by using PMg should be no problem.

 

The question still is, how to get coders interested in such project?

[Heaven/TQA]

20 fps? Never...