Dread Ep 03 - "Doom" clone for Amiga 500 - Knee deep in the mapping...

Third episode of making of "Doom" clone on an Amiga 500.
Managed this to get done fairly quick (by my standards), but don't hold your breath for a next videos in another two weeks (although I might still try).
Thoughts? Leave them in the comments!
Intro soundtrack courtesy of Mr. Quiet:
- soundcloud: / chiptonizee-for-futuri...
- KZbin: / @mrquiet-tn3js
This game uses assets by FreeDoom project:
- freedoom.githu...
Have fun!!

[@imadyazigi3079]

For those criticizing: you don't seem to realize the technical achievement of this engine on a stock A500. That was the holy grail of so many developers: run a decent wolf3d/doom like on Amiga, which seemed impossible. Great work KK! Can't wait to see the full commercial release!

[@KKAltair]

Don't hold your breath for a commercial release, but rather expect this project opening up for the community to join the process of making it happen. :)

[@SomeOrangeCat]

No joke. The Amiga architecture dates back to 1985 or so. The fact he's reverse engineering something from almost a decade later that ran on a wholly dissimilar, more powerful architecture is astonishing.

[@realpeterjack]

Actually, it is hard to believe it is really possible to run this on an Amiga 500. It goes beyond impressive.

[@SomeOrangeCat]

@@realpeterjack Coders don't know the meaning of the word "can't".

[@Nor_Bee]

@@KKAltair It would be great to see it working on real HW. Could you please provide an adf or an executable file? Many people are quite sceptic. They simply don't believe real 7MHz Amiga can provide such high fps. :-)

[@grongy6122]

Not gonna lie, I'm hyped for it much more than for other future FPS games.

[@KKAltair]

I'm not really paying attention to future FPSes (maybe except Doom franchise and some retro-themed ones), too.

[@0xABADCAFE]

True. I haven't been this excited to see Doom since the 2016 reboot.

[@Ryslaw]

Krzysztofie, as an old Amiga fan, I'm simply mesmerised by your work. Absolutely magnificent. I can't help, but to wonder, what would happen if your engine had been available back in 1992. The history would be different. Wielkie dzięki za Twoją pracę. Naprawdę fantastyczna robota!

[@KKAltair]

Dzięki. :)

[@Ryslaw]

@@KKAltair Kilka razy wspominałem pobieżnie o Twoim projekcie w moim podkaście, ale chyba trzeba będzie poświęcić mu znacznie więcej miejsca :)

[@KKAltair]

@@Ryslaw Miejsca? Gdzie?

[@Ryslaw]

@@KKAltair Chciałbym powiedzieć więcej w mojej audycji, czyli w "Grysławie". No i dałem znać o Twoim projekcie ludziom z Digital Foundry. :)

[@KKAltair]

@@Ryslaw Miło. :) Jak czegoś potrzebujesz, to daj znać. :)

[@kuro68000]

Are you planning to cover for the engine actually works? For me the most interesting part is how you managed to render that on an A500.

[@KKAltair]

Definitely. I just need to get better at animating stuff and that's why I was asking about recommendations for a proper software. Editing screen captures is one thing, but making animated explanatory videos is completely different stuff. And sadly, DaVinci Resolve fails a bit when it comes to the latter (adding three postprocess nodes to make an animated line?? really??). But I will get there, hopefully with one foot by the next video. Meanwhile, I have already given a presentation about this at Xenium (video recording is on my "Live!" playlist).

[@MrTomFTW]

I was an Amiga using teenager through the Doom years, and this would have blown my mind back then. Excellent work!

[@KKAltair]

Mine too. :) And funnily, the name of this project now is still the one me and my brother envisioned how our dream game could be called (we were both into programming even back then, but of course at basic level).

[@LeftwingSFX]

I was never a fan of DOOM, but this is impressive! I would love to see a remake of Hired Guns, IMO this is a much better game! OK I know it's more like a RPG. However, it would be cool to have the possibility to look around in the same way as in DOOM. Probably would be impossible to achieve with four players though! And yes, that is a challenge ;-)

[@valenrn8657]

RPG with Altair's fast Doom clone engine would be nice e.g. Dungeon Master remake.

[@KKAltair]

Altair is name of my demoscene group, and I just go by "KK". It's common in the demoscene community to introduce yourself as "nick/groupname", especially on party name tags/ids or on the Internet. But yeah, RPG would be quite cool (although I never was a huge fan of Strife, though).

[@MrMarianoamigo]

Świetna robota, czekamy niecierpliwie

[@a1exh]

Your hard work is much appreciated. I for one would like to see this continue. If there's anything we, the community, can do to keep you interested let us know. Patreon or similar?

[@KKAltair]

I'm considering Patreon, but don't want to do it before I: - get into a habit of making regular videos (monthly is absolute minimum, every 2-3 weeks should be reasonable) - AND release something small and playable for people to actually try on their own (which I'm making right now)

[@paulkocyla1343]

Oh man, you deserve a DeLorean that takes you back 35 years, so you can release this game!

[@KKAltair]

Would love to! :)

[@contenidoap]

it s easier to build a de Lorean than making doom run on an A500!!!

[@KKAltair]

@@contenidoap I definitely should try the former one day. ;)

[@someguy872]

Hey, i don't know much about these computers. but would a doom port run on a ST? anyway, great work!

[@KKAltair]

Doom port - probably not. This clone - probably yes.

[@alexisread5325]

There's already Wolfenstein for the ST, not as sophisticated as this though (kzbin.info/www/bejne/hpbMp3aqepqJg7c). It might be worth looking at the doom hybrid code that this guy produced as it's got some nice tricks (variable height floors, look up/down I think, 64 colours fully mapped floors and ceiling, movable backgrounds, all on ST and STE) - kzbin.info/www/bejne/h3TZqWWFarJpb6c

[@valenrn8657]

Impressive game for Amiga 500 with 1MB, original graphics chipset, and 7 Mhz CPU.

[@KKAltair]

Because OCS is awesome. Thanks!

[@titinmire]

Awesome work !!.Have you one idea how your engine will be accurate on A500+ with ECS chipset ? with 1MB or 2MB of chip ram?

[@KKAltair]

It will work just the same as in these videos. OCS or ECS doesn't make difference here, and the same goes with extra 512k being chip or slow RAM.

[@loicdupuy4425]

Hi, first, let me thank you for this impressive engine (a dream come true, nearly ^^). Otherwise, have you access to an original OCS computer (yours or a close friend one) with a composite monitor (or a composite capture device) to see the effect of the column dithering smoothing on the analog hardware ? We see only 16 colours on the UAE capture, but could be thousands with the analog dithering (ex DCTV style). Thanks in advance if you can do it.

[@KKAltair]

I have Amiga 500 with 1MB, but no suitable CRT monitor.

[@rekkimaru7]

Imponująca robota. Do tej pory Za Żelazną Bramą było najszybszym FPS-em na gołej A500, ale i to bez tekstur i ze ścianami pod kątem prostym. Niesamowite ile z tej maszynki można jeszcze wycisnąć.

[@KKAltair]

I really respect Behind the Iron Gate for how well it ran on A500. Too bad I can't say the same about its gameplay. :)

[@SylkaChan]

What is Amiga 500? Can you make this mod for gzdoom too?

[@KKAltair]

Amiga 500 is an old computer from 1991, which everybody believed was not powerful enough to ever run such a game. This is not a mod, but a standalone game, completely separate from Doom.

[@Pentanteles]

No reason to buy Vampire then ;)

[@KKAltair]

I never owned any Amiga beyond a 2 MB A600 without a harddrive. But this never stopped Amiga from being tons of fun. And shouldn't stop here either. :)

I'm amazed. Such a brilliant engine! I hope that soon people will get to play with Dread and start making content for it.

[@natwilson3133]

Is it possible to dither the scene using every other scan line offset? Like the pixel scatter on CGL/Glint... Maybe soften the vertical dithering without CPU cost?

[@KKAltair]

Entirely possible, but I didn't do it because it blurs all edges as well, making picture less recognizable in the end. But I'd like to include that as an option once I have menu implemented.

[@nadeembackus2741]

Amazing work, well done, please finish it! i cant wait to play it!

[@KKAltair]

That's the plan!

[@Roy88772]

Simply amazing. I think u already accomplished impossible.👌

[@KKAltair]

Thank you so much 😀

[@ultraswank]

Awesome! That's a very impressive engine, I am still amazed of what can be squeezed out of the Amiga 30 years later! Makes me think about what could possibly be squeezed out of the modern hardware we are using these days. For one thing, I hope that data compression and optimisation will be utilised much better, so we don't have to deal with 100+ GB downloads for the latest AAA games. Keep up the good work! :)

[@KKAltair]

A lot can be achieved with modern hardware, and for once, some of that performance is just used to speed up development speed - by writing suboptimal code. It's not wasted - just used. This way, instead of being caught in tiny details, developers can go on and make huge worlds like Witcher 3 (and get back to optimizations and port it to Switch later).

[@DB-ck8vn]

Cheats for all weapons and immortality IDDQD IDKFA

[@KKAltair]

It was "IDFA"! ;) I never really liked idKfa because it gave keys as well, breaking flow (and fun) of every single level.

[@clffreak]

To jest NIEMOŻLIWE! Jesteś dla mnie półbogiem. Nie wyobrażam sobie, jak pięćsetka może to uciągnąć. Swojego czasu pisałem namiastkę wolfopodobną na a500, nazywało się to "Blask", ale to było w Amosie a na asemblera brakło mi umiejętności, więc wyszła kupa. Jeszcze raz biję pokłony i podziwiam. Rewelacja!

[@KKAltair]

"Blask" szanuję MEGA i fanem jestem. Wystarczyło by gameplay trochę podkręcić i gra była by naprawdę fajna. Także działaj! :)

[@hunterericson6782]

WOW amazing work, you should have worked for those guys back in the day ...

[@KKAltair]

You mean working on Doom back in the day? I personally find their chances of hiring a 10yo from Poland back then pretty slim. ;)

[@robertstaszko6844]

Brawo Panowie zajebista sprawa kiedyś nie do pomyślenia żeby DOOM chodził na A500. a tu proszę.

[@KKAltair]

Może nie do końca Doom (bo zawsze wolałem robić własne rzeczy), ale liczy się wrażenie. :)

[@Revilerify]

More videos coming soon? :)

[@KKAltair]

Definitely. A lot of work was already done on the converter and some graphics were improved. Including sprite-based weapons animating at smooth 25 FPS independently of main rendering framerate. It all just waits to get covered in next video(s). :)

[@d_vibe-swe]

This is amazing! How will this run on faster amigas? Any difference? Btw. It would be fun to make 3 channel music for this one (sparing one channel for fx). I'm up to it if you're interested :) Maybe not all music, but at least some levels :)

[@KKAltair]

As you would expect - it runs faster. :)

[@d_vibe-swe]

@@KKAltair 😊 Would it be possible to add an option for higher graphics resolution for faster amigas?

[@KKAltair]

@@d_vibe-swe Should be possible and it sounds tempting to see how far this engine could push a stock A1200. But there are already decent FPSes for A1200, so A500 is my priority.

[@d_vibe-swe]

@@KKAltair sounds fair :)

[@KKAltair]

@@d_vibe-swe Still, the gameplay on a stock A1200 is silky smooth at this resolution (over 20 FPS), so that's probably even better than higher resolution. And if I could bring in the AGA color as well (textures are already 8bpp for dithering) without slowing it down too much, then I think it would be perfect for that platform.

[@RabidGerry]

This is amazing. Still following the progress of this on your channel and on the EAB board. I'm sure you hear this all the time but what your doing is so impressive and I can only admire the skills you have to do such things. Fantastic job, keep the work going and some day there might be a full game at the end of it!!

[@KKAltair]

Thanks! :) I'm glad you like it!

[@JohnnyWednesday]

I'm developing a 2D polygonal engine for the Amiga at the moment and I feel I can appreciate the sheer skill and huge amount of work that you've put into this - doubling the pixels with the copper blew my mind! you have inspired me to learn how to :)

[@KKAltair]

The easiest way is to have Copper switch BPL1MOD & BPL2MOD in every scanline between -40 and the original value. BPLxMOD is the value added to the bitplane pointers after every line, so -40 will make the pointer go back to the start (40 bytes x 8 bits in byte = 320 pixels), effectively drawing the line again.

[@JohnnyWednesday]

@@KKAltair - Thank you! I shall experiment tonight :) I've posted screenshots of the engine on the "Commodore Amiga" and "Amiga Code" FB groups if you care to see it. I'm NOT a hot-shot assembly coder but I've hit upon a cool idea and its working well - if somebody with your skills were to implement it? the idea could see its true potential on a 500. Thank you again for the advice :)

[@KKAltair]

@@JohnnyWednesday Good luck! :)

[@JohnnyWednesday]

​@@KKAltair - Same to you - not that you need it! the colour correction work you've recently done is looking sweet! Your engine is being discussed on "commodore amiga" on FB atm as somebody posted your latest video - somebody raised the suggestion that hand drawn, palette focused art (for the first person guns) could look better than conversion from the high colour source. If you had the inclination? I'm sure you'll find lots of willing artists there - everybody is excited lol

[@jobo9906]

I get great pleasure from playing a game that is pushing the system it is on. And also playing a newly developed game for an old system. I am really looking forward to this game and I think what is being done here is really special. Well done!

[@KKAltair]

Thanks!

[@ColpoRosso]

Incredible stuff! And it's pretty fast too

[@KKAltair]

Glad you like it!

[@daishi5571]

I believe this would in fact run just the same on an A1000 from 1985, seeing as the hardware is basically the same. After so many bad attempts at recreating Doom on the Amiga, seeing this is such a high point.

[@KKAltair]

This requires 1MB of RAM to run (extra 512k slow will do), so A1000 will definitely need an upgrade, but in general - yes.

[@ihavesoomanyplaylists428]

why cant you create different light levels by palette swapping?

[@KKAltair]

I could, but this would change everything you see. I already swap palettes for item pickups and player pain red.

[@UltimatePerfection]

You should try running it on a real hardware, it may work on an emulator, but not on a real Amiga. Also I wonder how big of a performance hit would it take to add textured floors and ceilings and have stuff like stairs in.

[@KKAltair]

I already did that. Works exactly as in emulator. :)

[@UltimatePerfection]

@@KKAltair What about the second part of my comment?

[@KKAltair]

@@UltimatePerfection The game is on the edge of playability right now, and floors/ceilings are more complex than walls, so I didn't even bother checking. But I'm completely sure it would make the game unplayable.

[@UltimatePerfection]

@@KKAltair I see. Well, worth checking out though - you may be surprised. If it turns out to be like you said, you can always roll it back.

[@ddniUK]

Looks extremely promising! Excitement builds with each episode. Is there any video of it actually running on real A500 hardware?

[@KKAltair]

Should I do one next time? :)

[@ddniUK]

KK/Altair That would be great to see. Thanks. 😄

[@KKAltair]

@@ddniUK I'll see what can be done, then. I don't have proper CRT for Amiga, just an A520 modulator and a 5" LCD TV, but could probably make a signal splitter and capture both the platform running with this TV and capture the signal directly to PC (I have a capture device somewhere, let's see what it's worth).

[@OSH0891]

Krzysztofie, jesteś mistrzem nad mistrzami kodowania. Krzysztof, you are master of code masters!

[@KKAltair]

Thanks, but there are much, much better than me out there and I'm still learning. E.g. I never knew how to count 68000 CPU cycles before this project. :)

[@per-olaeriksson2589]

Great work with this , How many enemy at the same time on the Screen so the Ram memory not running out ? Coming this to have stairs ?

[@KKAltair]

There is no fixed limit on enemy count (well, it is, but can be raised in the code easily). It's just drawing and processing each enemy costs time and performance will drop accordingly. But still it can fun quite a few before becoming unplayable, so don't worry. Stairs will be coming after I'm done with the demo and toolset will be brushed up enough for everybody to be able to create own maps and graphics.

[@mariobianchi2313]

i dont understand .. this is a new map or the engine is new..........

[@KKAltair]

The engine is completely made from scratch (as well as the map). This allowed using Amiga 500 hardware efficiently, as well as using rendering algorithms much, much better than used in Doom. With all due respect, Doom was pioneer on the field, but much algorithmic progress was done since then.

[@Jammet]

Keep up the great work! There are some excellent DOOM mappers over on doomworld, why don't you see if you can get some extra talents to help you? :)

[@KKAltair]

Once I get toolchain in shape for public use, I definitely will. And once floor levels are implemented, I won't even hesitate to give a go at contacting John Romero (worst case scenario: I get fragged, and that will be the last time you hear from me - still worth it). ;)

[@C64Lover]

Last year I've been running Doom on am386dx40 with 8 megs of RAM and it was playable thought by today's standards it was probably not, I've upgraded it to 486dx2/66@80 Here we have proof of concept that machine which was not believed to be able to run Wolf3D runs stripped Doom engine - that's wonderful! Are you going to go toward SNES port (no floor/ceiling, monsters facing front side at all times, limited monster "AI") or original engine? BTW SNES port written from scratch using homebrew cartridge hack, using Amiga(!) as crossdev tool and gaining info only from Doom FAQ is also impressive :)

[@KKAltair]

Definitely this will be going the SNES port way, but at no point I considered this project a port. It's a completely new game.

[@basicforge]

Very good stuff. Have you considered trying to make a demo port of DOOM's E1M1 map?

[@KKAltair]

I'll definitely do that as soon as floor levels will be in.

[@alien9737]

2 dislike? I would have had my mind blown if I saw this as a kid!

[@KKAltair]

I guess they just don't believe it. Rightfully, I'd say. But I don't want to release until techdemo evolves into a game demo. (and this is my childhood dream as well - even I came with this name 25 years ago) :)

[@blakespot]

This is staggeringly impressive.

[@KKAltair]

Thanks! :) By "staggeringly" are you referring to the frame rate? ;)

[@ingenicczwal2120]

Na polskim portalu amigowym pozwoliłem sobie na stworzenie wątku o pańskim projekcie. Może w wolnej chwili zajrzy Pan :) www.ppa.pl/forum/strefa-gier/41521/nowy-material-na-temat-klona-doom-dla-amigi-500#m684506

[@KKAltair]

Na bycie "Panem" w Internecie to trzeba mieć zamek i cztery wsie. ;) Netykieta sugeruje bycie "na ty" bez dodatkowych formalności, chyba że ktoś sobie tego nie życzy. Mi osobiście to nie przeszkadza. Pozdrawiam! :)

[@ingenicczwal2120]

Wybacz, starej daty jestem. Mięso i wyroby czekoladopodobne kupowałem na kartki, a Amigę z RFN przemycałem :)

[@32Bits]

Another great video keep them coming love to see the progress. This looks Awesome! cant wait to play it :)

[@KKAltair]

Thanks! Will do!

[@pessimisticnihilist7338]

That became GRIND, right ?

[@thedopplereffect00]

Instead of a separate "darker" wall texture, could you multiple by a factor on render or use a look up table for pixel brightness levels? Not sure what the trade off is between memory and CPU for that.

[@KKAltair]

This would totally kill the performance. Drawing a pixel is a simple copy.

[@thedopplereffect00]

I understand. I think a video describing any kind of programming assembly language tricks or techniques you used to get it to run as fast as you have would be fascinating!

[@pottuvoi2]

Amazing work. Would mipmapping be doable?

[@KKAltair]

I have already considered it and will definitely return to the topic. But that's not very high on my priority list right now - there are more important things still missing.

[@kiwischolz9811]

I am wondering if you could use a lookup table to determine a pixel's color instead of lighter/darker copies of textures for lighting to conserve texture memory and have more flexibility with lighting? Although I have a vague suspicion that you are using pre-scaled slices of the textures to speed up rendering and not drawing it pixel by pixel, so looking up the colors while rendering would probably not be possible

[@KKAltair]

I'd love to have a lookup, as it would allow fully dynamic lighting, fake 3D effect and depth shading, but that would cost too much. I'm not using prescaled textures - I'm generating over a hundred unrolled drawing loops, which copy certain pixels to the render target. In general, the core drawing code functions more or less like this: uint8_t *tex = texture + 64*xoffset + yoffset; *dst++ = tex[0]; *dst++ = tex[2]; *dst++ = tex[4]; *dst++ = tex[6]; ... And on 68000 each such pixel copy can be done with just a single instruction. Adding extra lookup would probably make it twice as slow and use 50% extra RAM for the unrolled code (which takes quite a lot by itself).

[@kiwischolz9811]

@@KKAltair Interesting. I assumed your "magic" would be more complicated than that (it probably is anyways).

[@KKAltair]

​@@kiwischolz9811 In fact it's a bit more complicated and more like this: *dst = tex[4], dst+=2; And that's still a single instruction. The +2 helps a lot with chunky 2 planar later. But other than that, this part is simple and is supposed to be: simple and fast. But we are still looking at a single subroutine, missing all the "magic" that's around. :)

[@lecturesalternatives8421]

Could the hand and gun be drawn just like the HDU instead of using the same filter as the level ? The game would look a lot more impressive if these vertical red lines on the hand weren't there. And it's just a 2d animation that is always on the foreground so I suppose it doesn't need to be integrated inside the 3d. Anyway, impressive work and very interesting.

[@KKAltair]

That is already fixed now. Just have to make a video update about all the new stuff.

[@lecturesalternatives8421]

That's good news. :) I'm curious to see how it'll look.

[@lecturesalternatives8421]

@@KKAltair Oh, sorry, I've just realised that you talk about this at 3:56. "sprites are on the way."

[@kcolbinyar]

This is amazing. I've subbed and, like others here, are waiting and willing to try any demo you want playing. I'm stunned you've managed to get that look, feel and frame rate with that hardware. Can't wait for more news.

[@KKAltair]

Thanks for the sub! :)

[@kcolbinyar]

@@KKAltair I'm up for some play testing at any time on my A600 Furia 020/40 with fpu if it's any help at any time.

[@KKAltair]

@@kcolbinyar Thanks, but right now I don't anticipate any specific problems when testing vs WinUAE. It's mostly a question of implementing next features... and recording/editing the videos.

[@theatheisthammer]

If you were born sooner. By now you would be in a mansion by your pool on your private island👍👍 this could have revolutionised the games scene in 1990'a for the amiga. So many good programmers these days learning to grab old tech pump it full of steroids and testosterone and pushing it past its limits👍👍👍

[@rustymixer2886]

Great video !

[@KKAltair]

Thanks! :) Can I already go boasting that MacGyver likes my videos? ;D

[@rustymixer2886]

@@KKAltair yes 😆

[@0xABADCAFE]

This is seriously nice. Any chance we could see it running cycle exact on a bare A1200 configuration?

[@KKAltair]

I'll do some comparisons next video! :)

[@0xABADCAFE]

@@KKAltair Looking forwards to it. I dare say there is some optimisation potential for 68020 too. As it is, your engine already runs as fast if not faster than many AGA Doom clones did out of the box on a stock A1200.

[@KKAltair]

@@0xABADCAFE Possibly. :)

[@0xABADCAFE]

@@KKAltair Do you use chunky 2 planar, copper list tricks or some other technique ? I had lots of fun trying to write better c2p routines on AGA but was ultimately seduced by the BVision card and after that it fell by the wayside.

[@KKAltair]

@@0xABADCAFE Chunky 2 planar using interrupt-driven Blitter, so CPU doesn't almost have to care about it. I also use some tricks to make this C2P much easier and faster.

[@SomeOrangeCat]

On a stock 500 no less.

[@KKAltair]

Actually it needs +512k slow, but still!

[@seba123321]

this is really impressive!

[@paul2062]

hey im still dreaming of this game so i hope you havent forgotten about making this!

[@KKAltair]

Still on it! It's just that I'm much better coder than youtuber and video editor. :)

[@paul2062]

Yeah please keep going i think you could probably sell this game, you should look into maybe doing kickstarter and do it all boxed. Also maybe do an a1200 aga version that would be amazing. Id pay for this game and lots would too!

[@KKAltair]

​@@paul2062 Reality calls and says pushing for a full boxed release would be completely pointless - probably 2-3 more years of development to sell maybe 100 boxed copies, if I get lucky... Personally I feel that I should better focus on getting the engine and tools ready, and let the community just have fun with it, maybe starting a patreon to stay focused and motivated (because we all love procrastination and starting new side projects).

[@paul2062]

Ha indeed, well yeah maybe thats the best thing to do. Im sure everyone would love to mess about with the engine making levels and im sure there will be some sort of doom conversion of the levels which basically means doom on amiga thanks to you haha

[@valenrn8657]

​@@KKAltair With a fast Doom clone engine being available for the Amiga community, content art designers can run with it.

[@PacAnimal]

Holy shit. Never thought I'd see something like this on the A500

[@joeedmunds8414]

Very impressive stuff!

[@KKAltair]

Thanks a lot!

[@mattbland2380]

Super impressive on the original A500 hardware. The sprite of the hand could do some touching up with the vertical red lines being broken up with some dithering. I think once a pixel artist can have a go at touching up your wall textures to break up some of the vertical lines it will look amazing. I believe the minor issues with the graphic elements down the the conversion algorithm that has reduced them to fit in your palette, a different dithering algorithm could probably do much better. Still, a magnificent achievement on such limited vintage hardware. Kudos 👍

[@KKAltair]

Pixel artist already had a go at some of the weapons. I just have to implement it in the engine (and make a video about the process - it could be fun).

[@zo1dberg]

I have a suggestion - when you finish this game, take it back to 1986. A game like this could have saved the Amiga!

[@KKAltair]

Guess I should start a Patreon for buying a Delorean now. ;)

[@zo1dberg]

@@KKAltair When you come back, might be an idea to skip past 2020 :)

[@KKAltair]

@@zo1dberg Even better: jump forward 10-20 years to check if it's worth returning at all. ;) Although it still might be a lot better than being a grown-up in 90's in a post-PRL Poland, I guess. (and don't even start with 80's here - I'm glad I was just a child back then)

[@SomeOrangeCat]

Amiga's problems were at the corporate level. An amazing game would not have saved them.

[@zo1dberg]

@@SomeOrangeCat Very true, but something like this still could have pushed it so that it wasn't an issue.

[@37Retro]

This is amazing work. I had an A600 and remembered seeing some tech demos of doom clones back in the day but the actual view window was the size of a postage stamp. Gloom was a good commercial release but now I think about maybe that was only released on A 1200 and CD32? Not sure. To get this up and running on a bone stock Amiga 500 is freaking sorcery! :)

[@valenrn8657]

Gloom was released for OCS/ECS with 68020 CPUs such as Amiga 2500/3000 and 68020 accelerated Amiga 500, but these machines weren't mainstream Amiga config.

[@KKAltair]

Thanks! :) I always read in the mags back at the time that Gloom was only for A1200 and up, so I just looked in envy at the screenshots. All I've got back in the day on my A600 was Citadel, Behind the Iron Gate and Death Mask, which are still lovable games (well... maybe not BtIG for its gameplay ;) ). And there were of course the beautifully drawn RPGs like Ishar 3. But nothing really comparable to Doom on PC, sadly.

[@CommonSense-hy2sn]

5:13 Creative use of textures! since games from this era already look very abstract due to color and resolution limits, the brighter concrete texture is pretty effective of conveying a lamp or such. Probably a bit confusing for level design, but how about using the yellow door light strip from DOOR_KEY as a light texture? Maybe it could be less confusing if the lightsource is on a different height, like dividing the lower height as a regular wall texture and the upper height as the yellow door light? As the yellow door light texture then is above the player and out of reach, it doesn't convey anymore that there's a yellow key door.

[@KKAltair]

Good thinking, but yellow door strip won't work due to a number of reasons: - door strip texture is 64px high, and I needed 128px (or was it 96px?) texture here; there is no vertical wrapping in the engine for performance reasons - yellow door strip is much more recognizable than blank part of concrete, and some players would believe it has something to do with yellow key - the light is not colored, so it makes more sense for the lamp to be white

[@CommonSense-hy2sn]

@@KKAltair Didn't know that vertical wrapping isn't supported, then the yellow door texture is out of the question. how many height offsets are supported? multiple of 32 pixels to 128 pixels by the sounds of it? Perhaps if it is possible, instead of using a texture, drawing it as a plain white rectangle? Not very pretty but it could convey a blindingly bright lamp that you need a HDR monitor to see it. But as you said in the video, no one will notice anyway :) Who cares about a stupid lamp when there's zombies to shoot!

[@KKAltair]

@@CommonSense-hy2sn I'm planning a massive rework of how texture addressing works, so it's not worth messing with them right now too much. :)

[@contenidoap]

this is totally great

[@KKAltair]

Thanks!

[@amigaboy]

knee deep in the mapping :D .. anyhow, as I said before, khm , BIG BOX AMIGA GAME WITH HD INSTALLER :D . Imagine that this game came out in like 1990 . how would the computer landscape look now?

[@valenrn8657]

FYI, both Amiga 600 and 1200 have IDE HD support.

[@amigaboy]

@@valenrn8657 yeah, so what? i meant a big box amiga game. like you know, games from the 80-ies with huge carton boxes

[@KKAltair]

I would love it to come in a big box... but nowhere soon, too much work for one person (update: it's actually 3 now!). So I decided to take it slow, work steps by steps and document everything so we all could have some fun. (but FDD swapping is higher on my list than HD... because I never owned a HD)

[@Ryanfox1981]

Keep up the awesome work!

[@KKAltair]

We will!

[@Tekknological]

Amiga forever!

[@KKAltair]

Definitely!

[@darkfalzx]

Since the screen ends up so pixelated anyway, perhaps the game could use 1/2 resolution textures, or would that degrade the visuals too much? It sure would've been nice to have more visual variety for walls. I'm sure a good pixel artist could make the lower resolution stuff look just as good as the current 64x64 stuff. Another question is colors. Is the entire screen limited to a single 4-bit palette, or can more colors be used? Any chance to use a copper palette shift for the HUD panel, or to simulate wall or darkening toward the top of the screen, or floor darkening toward the vanishing point? Lastly, I see the ability to make ceiling overhang doors at about half-hight. Is there perhaps a way to make half-height walls to create stand-alone crates, and not two-crate stacks? If your pixel artist is also doing enemy sprites, I hope they are making them nice and colorful with a distinct silhouette, since as is, the one enemy you have there gets lost among pixels of the same color. Either way - AMAZING work so far! I am super hyped for where this is going.

[@KKAltair]

1/2 resolution textures look a bit too lowres up close, but we will see. But non-power-of-two textures, like 48x48, can also be considered. I have also one more trick to try, which would introduce separate indexing table for texture columns, so textures could be spliced from various patches of data, and that should both introduce variety and save RAM. But I left all this for later right now. HUD already uses separate palette, and weapon will have another 15 colors available when I switch it to sprites.

[@darkfalzx]

@@KKAltair Awesome! Can the hand/weapon palette be used for other things too, like enemies or VFX (explosions etc), or is it only reserved for non-scaling foreground elements? Either way, I'm sure this will look amazing.

[@KKAltair]

@@darkfalzx Sprites are a bit limited on Amiga. They will all be used up for the weapon, so no such effect could be drawn in the same scanline as the gun. Ans since some of the gun frames are quite big (shotgun reload), it will prevent any other such use.

[@andrewvato491]

Please make one small level with one gun, with few monsters and trigger in exit, and make ADF file for free :)

[@KKAltair]

You are watching me make that level right now. Once this map is done, and some missing elements are added (menu, sounds, better weapon gfx) - it will be out. :)

[@KKAltair]

I'm also looking for a software suitable for making animated explanatory clips (import some pictures, draw some lines and text and animate all that). Any suggestions? (preferably ones that aren't Synfig Studio - I stopped trying to use it after a 10th crash or so)

[@chrisxdeboy]

Maybe OpenToonz? And yeah, I remember trying Synfig back in '08 and had the same experience.

[@KKAltair]

@@chrisxdeboy I'll definitely check it. Too bad they didn't fix Synfig in these 12 years, as it looked perfect... from the distance. :)

[@chrisxdeboy]

@@KKAltair no probs. There's also opentoonz morevna edition, and tubitube which is much simpler. All three of them are open source.

[@KKAltair]

@@chrisxdeboy All I need it ability to put images and basic geometric shapes on a canvas an animate that on some kind of timeline. I'll give OpenToonz a try, but if all will fail, I might just try to code that directly as well (programming moving things is obviously something I do).

[@chrisxdeboy]

@@KKAltair tubitube is probably the easiest way to do that as it's geared towards amateurs and would be easier to use whereas opentoonz is more professional oriented.

[@LorenzoVDH1996]

This is SUPER impressive! I can't wait to play this

[@vitaliklavka]

I didn’t get will be a floor and a ceiling textured in a final version? Thanks for your great work!

[@KKAltair]

Sadly, no. That would be way too much to handle for A500 and dynamic gameplay will become impossible. Note that textured floors/ceilings are harder, because they require 2D texturing, when walls are just 1D scaling of a certain columns.

[@vitaliklavka]

KK/Altair and no tricks for that? like making them also 1D? I am not a specialist, maybe it’s a dumb question. Nevertheless it’s very cool.

[@Ehal256]

​@@vitaliklavka The reason walls are a 1D texturing problem is because they're perfectly vertically oriented, and if you draw a single column, you only ever have to change the texture coordinates in the y axis, and there's a lot of tricks you can do to make that fast. For floor texturing, you need to keep track of x and y (aka uv) coordinates in the texture. There's a lot of negative performance implications in that, and no easy way to get around it.

[@AdamKlobukowski]

Is different floor level possibe?

[@KKAltair]

Not yet, but in due time it will be. Gameplay first, features next.

[@AdamKlobukowski]

@@KKAltair once you design levels, it will be a lot of work to ad stairs, steps etc.

[@KKAltair]

@@AdamKlobukowski That's why I don't want to make too many maps right now. But on the other hand, I still want to show what I have already.

[@terraartur]

Hej. Wyglada obiecujaco. Robilismy wczesniej Cytadele. Jakis namiar? na ppa - arturB

[@KKAltair]

Zagrywałem się w Cytadelę za nastolatka - przynajmniej na tyle, na ile można było się zagrywać na A600. Mega szacun za robotę! :) Sprawdź wiadomości na PPA. :)

[@Kazuo1G]

Try making a computer terminal, or core, with some items around it in that room with the computer walls.

[@KKAltair]

You mean the new structure, or the previous room with several computer blocks? If you mean the new one, adding a core could be nice idea indeed. Also you made me wonder if I should try adding actual functioning computer terminals, like in Doom 3 (preferably running Workbench ;) ). Could be a nice twist.

[@Kazuo1G]

@@KKAltair The first room that you changed from a storage area. If you had a terminal decoration, it might give it more purpose than just looking like a computer server area.

[@KKAltair]

@@Kazuo1G True. Too bad I have to save RAM on textures.

[@Kazuo1G]

@@KKAltair Well, nothing says that you have to use a completely new texture. I think the one that is second (or third) from the right at 7:03 would work.

[@KKAltair]

@@Kazuo1G Yes, that might work. I'd have to use another sector and light it, though, as this texture is full bright.

[@GirolamoReadyToPlay]

very good job, keep going man ;)

[@KKAltair]

Thanks, you too!

[@KKC78]

Incredible work!!!!

[@JiuTiup]

Nieźle. Z którego miasta w Polsce jesteś? Jakieś namiary na Ciebie ? No i czy można lub czy będzie można ściągnąć jakieś działające demko do odpalenia na swojej Amidze 500 ? :)

[@KKAltair]

Gdańsk. Jak będzie zrobione demo, to będzie można sciagnąć, ale jeszcze parę szlifów potrzeba. :)

[@JiuTiup]

@@KKAltair Jakbyś napisał książkę o programowaniu na Amigę takich cudów to chętnie bym kupił :) Ostatnio mam fazę na asemblera i chętnie bym łyknął taką książeczkę ;) Sądząc po tym silniku i innych Twoich demkach na Amigę do doświadczenie w programowaniu na Amigę masz spore jak mało kto w dzisiejszych czasach ;)

[@KKAltair]

@@JiuTiup Trochę planuję powyjaśniać tych "cudów" tu na kanale. Książek obecnie kompletnie nie opłaca się pisać, zwłaszcza tak niszowych.

[@KKAltair]

@@JiuTiup Co do doświadczenia w programowaniu na Amigę - fakt, to jedna z platform, od których zaczynałem, ale wtedy wszystko prawie robiłem w AMOSie. Potem był długo długo PC i dopiero po latach powrót do retro. Mam może jakieś ogólne otrzaskanie w embedded, ale sama Amiga na poważnie to właściwie od paru lat. I to też nie aż tak poważnie, bo ekipa The Black Lotus mojego skilla w temacie to by na śniadanie zjadła. :)

[@JiuTiup]

@@KKAltair Skoro nie książka to może chociaż blog ? :) Kwestie programistyczne lepiej chyba wyjaśnić na blogu niż na filmiku, chyba, że gdzieś już się udzielasz ? No i przydałaby się wersja po Polsku też. Dla Ciebie to nie byłby duży problem, bo język Polski to Twój natywny język, a mnie no i innym Polakom, by się łatwiej "natywnie" przyswajało wiedzę :)No i pytanko. Gdyby robić klona Wolfensteina 3d zamiast Dooma na Amigę 500 to jaki byłby procentowy uzysk wydajnościowy ? Prostopadłe ściany, wszędzie taka sama wysokość ścian, brak "cieniowania", kwadratowe tekstury, brak nieba itd.

[@greedygreggor]

looking great :)

[@closedeyevisyals]

As much as I love watching the mapping and the running in-engine, I think you should really feature a demonstration of some of the basic wall-rendering code and show how you got it fast :) that's the most interesting thing to me about this. Are you planning on open-sourcing this on release?

[@KKAltair]

That's exactly why I'm asking for animation software recomendations. I would love to show technical details as well, but hopefully in a way comprehensible for any mildly technical person. Opensourcing: at one point - definitely.

[@closedeyevisyals]

KK/Altair check out the channel of OLC / OneLonelyCoder - he just records the screen and has the code he’s talking about ready to go on the clipboard. Watching his style of programming tutorial has felt very natural and easy to follow

[@KKAltair]

@@closedeyevisyals I'll definitely check it. Just be aware that I don't want to just show myself doing things, but explain everything in a way easy to understand. Which means a whole lot of graphs e.g. when I explain chunky 2 planar specifics, rendering methods, visibility algorithms and such.

[@closedeyevisyals]

KK/Altair OLC uses Quick Notes for drawing stuff to demonstrate rendering concepts and stuff like that

[@AaronEins3]

Interesting stuff! Really enjoying this series!

[@KKAltair]

Glad you enjoy it!

[@zrrion6the6insect6]

for pickups, I would put an outline around them to make them easier to see at that resolution.

[@KKAltair]

That could be a nice idea.

[@zrrion6the6insect6]

@@KKAltair if you need sprites or textures let me know, I have a few from a project i never got around to finishing that could be useful

[@KKAltair]

@@zrrion6the6insect6 Right now I just want to finish the demo, but later - definitely! :) Let's keep in touch.

[@UltimatePerfection]

I'd suggest you to drop Doom Builder in favor of SLADE3 as it is a complete WAD editor - you can edit maps, you can edit scripts (in all languages supported by GZDoom), you can edit textures. It's objectively better than Doom Builder.

[@KKAltair]

You are making incorrect assumption that I need something more from the WAD file than the map. I already have my own custom asset converter and my own custom scripting language, both created with the target platform in mind. Even more, I'm considering lowering resolution a bit and using small trick to compose textures from other textures real-time, and neither can be done with a WAD editor.

[@Leeki85]

This map is totally flat. Is it possible to make stairs and floors at different heights in this engine? If so, does it impact performance much? Ceiling is at different height in few places. On maps with one floor height like in Wolf3D, you could use single dedicated color for a floor and then use COPPER to write a hard-coded lightning gradient. Since floor is flat, light fade on floor same way at every camera angle, so single pre-calculated gradient would be enough. Color changes should be subtle, because walls won't be affected by light, but anything that makes flat single-colored floor not single-colored should improve overall look. Also Toy Story for Genesis had Wolfenstein 3D like bonus stages which ran at almost 60 fps full screen: kzbin.info/www/bejne/f5mwfn5phrGria8 the most unique feature is that screen was mirrored horizontally with textures designed in a way to be symmetrical. Of course in this game camera was equally at half height of walls, so mirroring of full screen was possible. It's not the case with Dread, but maybe something like this could be used to some extent. Anyway Toy Story is very similar to how Wolfenstein 3D worked, they even generated unlooped assembly code in memory to save CPU power like Wolfenstein 3D did. This is why changing screen size in Wolf3D takes time, because program generates new unlooped assembly code for given screen size while in DOOM screen size change is instant. It's very impressive to see Dread running such well on Amiga 500 hardware. Adding new features must be hard, because everything slows it down. I think that enemy sprites will be the biggest issue. If you benchmark Doom on older hardware you will clearly see that different difficulty levels run at different speeds. Ultra Violence has 3x more enemies than easiest difficulty. On 386 PC DOOM was playable only at lowest difficulty. On higher difficulties framerate dropped to 1-3 FPS even at small window size when there were 5 or more enemies on screen.

[@KKAltair]

Stairs - not yet. I have this part figured out, but once I've got acceptable results with just walls and ceilings I have 100% focused on gameplay. I didn't want to burn all motivation and end up with a perfect engine and no game. But I will return to this and it's very high on the list - and that's the reason I'm not going for gradients. Also note that this is OCS with 4 bits per color component, so sadly, no subtle color changes here.

[@Leeki85]

@@KKAltair Amiga had a unique feature that it could change palette entries every frame thanks to copper. Many games used it to make gradient backgrounds displaying over 100 colors on screen despite using 4-bit or 16 color palette. The simplest way was to use a single color just for background and then change palette entry every horizontal line. If you plan to implement stairs and variable height floors it's irrelevant, but with flat floors I think this might a viable and also give a game that distinct Amiga look. As for the gameplay itself. Keep in mind, that DOOM is still so great game to play, because it had different monster types and different weapons. Doom 2 extended this even further. Each enemy setup makes unique fights. DOOM has hitscanners, both slow and fast shooting. There are monster that shoot projectiles that you can avoid. Some monsters have melee attacks and tend to block player's way (making rocket launcher splash damage very dangerous). And of course monster infighting, when monster could attack each other. This could be triggered by lining-up monsters that shoot at you. This was very important mechanic in Doom. That made huge battlefields even more interesting and in the same time easier, because when monster count rose, many of them were attacking each other. Doom gameplay is simple on the surface, but such small details build it's high replay value. I don't encourage you to make a Doom-clone, but those old shooters were more complex than we think. Which actually shows how great game design they had.

[@104d_3rr0r_vince]

I will make a sacrifice for you cause you are an Amiga God and stuff

[@KKAltair]

There are clearly better people than me. I've just managed to piece together the correct parts and algorithms with some touching up.

[@104d_3rr0r_vince]

@@KKAltair I don't care, my simple mind judge this as supreme coding and brings justice to the Mighty Amiga. TAKE THAT John Carmack. Thanks again for your time and effort.

[@KKAltair]

@@104d_3rr0r_vince Ok, just take notice I don't accept any human or animal sacrifices and we should be fine. ;)

[@104d_3rr0r_vince]

@@KKAltair Oh pity, I will slay a melon then.

[@tedeusz83]

Why these vertical lines are visible, for example on the hand (red vertical stips) upscaling distortion?

[@KKAltair]

That's effect of dithering, to fake some more colors than 16. And it did a really bad job on the hand.

[@MegaMasa2000]

Not gonna lie, the hand graphics is equally crap as before. Is it that difficult to remove the vertical bars from it? The graphics look crap and not much impressed with the rest of the engine either.

[@amcadam26]

You realise this is running on a 7mhz single core machine with 1mb of Ram right? A thousand times slower than a typical modern PC with 4 thousand times less memory.

[@grongy6122]

I guess that in current state graphics serve as a kind of a placeholder, and it's easy to hire artists and redraw it. Either way, it does its job okay. As for the engine - it's hard to describe how impressive it is for Amiga 500. For comparison - there's Wolfenstein 3D (a game with more primitive engine overall) homebrew port for Amiga CD32 (with better tech specs), and it still lags and runs in a small window. Not to mention 90's attempts at making Doom-clones.

[@piotrkozka9151]

@MegaMasa2000 dude, it runs smoothly on a stock A500. That's one helluva achievement. Many have tried to do this and failed.

[@uncooked_ham]

@@amcadam26 He knows, he's been commenting on Amiga videos for years. Always Debbie downer comments too, he just comes across as a bit of a negative and depressing person :)

[@KKAltair]

I agree. Hand graphics are crap, but much better are in the works. Vertical bars are quite easy to remove, but doing so would slow things down a bit, and since we are so close to the edge of playability, I have gone for dynamics and just had to accept the bars. As for the rest of the engine - you really need a good understanding of what was done before on this platform to judge it. For anyone not familiar with the platform it can be crap indeed. :)