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How could they mess up Doom for the 32X?


Ranger03

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And even with a powerful PC, back then you almost always had to use a boot disk and sacrifice things to get more conventional memory... Fortunately Doom didn't need a mouse.

 

Most of us never considered that a big deal. Even back then we knew we were pushing the limits of hardware and configurations. So it was not uncommon to require boot disks.

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Because nothing has changed. People like you still moan at PC prices, and still bring up the cost of playing GameX on SystemX, compared to GameX on SystemY. In 1994, the best way to play Doom was on a high-end PC. The best way to play a budget Doom was on console. Bitching about the price of that high-end 1994 Pentium PC, like I've tried to say, is irrelevant. If you could afford it, you bought it. If you couldn't, you got a console. Bitching about a Pentium PC costing over a £1000, in 1994, is/was irrelevant.

 

I bought the 32x at retail new specifically for Doom, Virtua Racing and Star Wars. Sure, doom wasn't as good as the PC version. But to have a PC rig capable of playing it, you needed to spend $1000+. The 32x was $150. It was a no brainer at the time. It's completely playable.

 

I would like to think it swung to the other way too. I got a fast 486 as my first (genuinely my own) PC for other needs and discovered Doom later. I was still somewhat green when it came to specs and stuff - only paying attention to processor speed and that was all. Blahh blahh..

 

Anyways, I booted it up the first time and was wowed for weeks and weeks. It like Doom opened up a whole new world that ALREADY EXISTED inside my computer. It's like I had the rig for while and discovered a whole new environment hidden in the circuits. And that was exciting.

 

What I'm sayin' is that there were thousands of folks already equipped with hardware that was just waiting to be put to task. And discovering what was possible was half the fun!

 

---

 

From what I heard even 386DX40 machines would play Doom reasonably well too. But, yes, the 486DX2/66 was the standard for DOS games for a long while.

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Most of us never considered that a big deal. Even back then we knew we were pushing the limits of hardware and configurations. So it was not uncommon to require boot disks.

 

Boot disks were so 1992. By 1994 when I was reading the DOS manual trying to get my config.sys and autoexec.bat streamlined, I was just booting off the hard drive and hoping for the best. I could use the Sound Blaster, the mouse, even the modem and still play Doom. That was a 486/SX 25MHz, though, so my PC gaming wasn't as sweet as most.

 

edit: that was the family's computer. I didn't get one of my own until late 1998, and by then what I could afford was ancient. Pentium MMX 166 MHz (in the days of Pentium II CPUs twice as fast) and an ATI Rage Pro graphics card (when the Voodoo 2 was getting old and crusty at the Voodoo 3 launch, I was still a generation behind that).

Edited by derFunkenstein
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I always thought getting the most bang-for-the-buck from CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT was a side game, a puzzle.. A real hacker's challenge. How many titles could I get to run without requiring a boot disk? And keep full system functionality with all the TSRs and drivers still loading.

 

Memmaker was cool, though I did outsmarted even that and I eventually got everything working except for 1 title prior to moving to a Pentium II and W95/98.

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  • 2 weeks later...

OK,so it's not Doom or 32X, but looks like Monster Manor on the 3DO could of been better..

 

From it's coder:

 

Generalized 3D rendering is a tough problem, and even tougher to do

quickly. Solving for the general case is usually far too slow, so you make observations about the world you intend to present to the user, and try to find ways to eliminate costly steps, like sorting.

 

Total Eclipse eliminates sorting by fixing the viewing angle

straight ahead; rotation about the viewing axis doesn't alter the sort

order. In this way, they can just set up a nearly static array with a

sliding offset and changing coordinates. Then they perform a rudimentary clip for polygons not within the view, project the thing, link all the cels

together and squirt 'em at the hardware.

 

They may not even eliminate

backfaces, choosing to let the hardware do that, or rely on painter's algorithm.

 

Monster Manor also eliminates the sorting step by observing that the

entire game is bricks on a grid, and scanning that grid in such a way thatneverything gets extracted in pre-sorted order (poof!).

 

However,it usually

extracts too much (especially on level 10), and the frame rate goes to hell.

 

 

I hit upon a new algorithm when I was about half finished which would have boosted the frame rate by about 50%, but we didn't have time to rip the guts out of a working program and replace it with something new.

Edited by Lost Dragon
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Probably should have made a new thread in the (often overlooked) 3DO forum then?

 

Still, interesting info.

3DO area does not get a lot of traffic at the best of times.

 

Personally didn't think it worth creating a thread just for a few soundbites on 2 3DO games..

 

Still glad people found the info of use,that was the important bit.

 

But apologies if it should of gone elsewhere.

 

I'm just finding i am getting more out of looking into unreleased FPS type engines that we never saw put to commercial use...

 

Coders talking about how games were done or could of been improved...on formats i personally never owned, than looking into the same games on platforms i did own, these days.

Edited by Lost Dragon
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:-D This is Doom related so it's going in here.

 

 

When i carried out my (crude) interview with Dave Taylor of I.D software, his dislike for the Jaguar did not go down well with all..

 

 

Well, it appears he was not fond of the 3DO either , describing it as an excellent machine with broad support, sizable market share etc, but it's '13 bit CPU W/Super Kludge ' (his words apparently) just did not fit well within I.D Software and it's long-range goals.

 

His comments generated a response :

 

While I am confused and dismayed as to why ID would prefer to write

for Jaguar rather than 3DO, I fully support ID's right to choose to develop for a machine based on whether or not they "like it."

 

I like the Amiga, and I like writing software for it. If I had

"business sense," I would "wake up" and write for Windows. So obviously I'm motivated by more than mere dollars.

 

While I'm curious to know the reasons behind ID's decision, I'm pleased to see that ID is willing to make a porting decision based on what they think is best, rather than taking the low-risk expedient

"good-for-business" option.

 

 

Leo L. Schwab

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