Dread Ep 02 - "Doom" clone for Amiga 500 - Laying out the map... 

Some more info about your engine? You made me curious. :)

@@KKAltair I have a couple videos on my channel. There's still a lot of bugs but it's a similar kind of renderer although using doom style BSPs and running on the Sega Megadrive. Any questions in particular?

@@Ehal256 Nice. :) I'll definitely watch it and comment if anything pops in my head. :)

Do it! the more development the better.

Awesome, just subbed. I love seeing people develop for the Genesis/Mega Drive

That's why I don't plan making the game at this point. Rather just a working engine with some demo maps and a toolchain for other people to mod it. Then we could think of putting it all together in a form of a complete game.

Thanks! :) Make sure to watch the other episodes as well, because this thing is still growing. :)

True. I still remember how cross-hatch patterns back in the day created really nice transparency. And it should mask the vertical dither quite a bit. Sadly, I don't have a real CRT at hand, and my A520 converter + LCD TV combo is too good at color reproduction to blur things this way.

@@KKAltair Tańsza opcja - zrobić lekkiego zeza:)

@@MrMarianoamigo To by i można stereo 3D zrobić. ;)

​@@KKAltair You can always try to run the game through a Retroarch amiga core. if you run the emulator in "integer scale" and add a shader like Blargg's NTSC RF/RCA you should get a simulated RF or RCA signal with color bleeding/pixel blending, subtle scanlines etc. It actually looks quite close to the real deal. :) If you are curious of course. I have an Amiga 1200 here at home and a Commodore 1084. I'm very excited to test the game on that setup eventually. :)

​@@PixelShade I probably could do something similar in WinUAE, or postprocess it this way in Resolve. I'm not going to switch from WinUAE because I grew to trust it enough in matters of performance and compatibility (except for the missing emulation of Blitter/Copper bug). Also so far I have gone for crisp pixels to show the ground truth. But the idea is well worth considering and I think I'll present both options in the next video, run a public poll and stick with the result.

It's still a constant struggle to keep that little number in the corner below 5.00 (==10 FPS). And preferably around 4.50.

@@KKAltair Will having several sprites on screen slow down the frame rate much? Do you plan the enemies to have hunting mechanics (searching through sectors, opening doors)?

@@dmasct1 Related question, can it handle big open spaces and large number of enemies on the screen at once (let's say a dozen)? Or will it always be limited to fairly small areas visible at once? That was one of the things that made DooM on PC the experience that it is; not saying that this isn't the coolest thing since flying toasters (just a random reference thrown in) already, because it is =)

Good luck! :) Hopefully in time my engine will be modable as well. :)

A few more episodes (writing from Ep05's perspective) and we should have something for you. :)

I didn't imagine this in my wildest teenage dreams back in the days too. I did dream of making a good FPS back then (the project name dates 25+ years back!), but it was more like a Wolf3D clone with some extra cheats for vertical levels (e.g. flat shaded holes in floors and ceilings). It was still way beyond my level back then, but the dream never quite died. :)

@@KKAltair Great to know you kepted this dream this long, keep going, looks amazing and great that your getting extra help with pixels.

Glad you like it!

Thanks! :)

Thank you! You keep me motivated! :)

Thanks! :) Amiga 1200 and above already had some nice FPSes, so it's time for A500. (better yet, this engine is a beast on A1200)

Thank you so much 😀

Polak. :)

@@KKAltair 😃

Thank you! Cheers!

Yeah... bi-monthly updates are definitely not enough. Bi-weekly would be perfect at this moment, but let's see if I can manage this (real life is calling!).

Thanks. :) Amigas stayed popular quite long in Poland, because after freshly escaping soviet block we had a bit of catching up. People here could barely afford 8-bit Commodore or Atari when the West moved to 16-bit. And we caught up with 16-bit when almost everybody stopped caring and moved to PCs. And then Doom happened catching lots of people still with Amigas.

@@KKAltair True, I was one of those people, who stayed with Amiga until late 1997 or early 1998, when together with my brother we sold the Amiga and bought Playstation. Got my Amiga 600 in late 1993, then traded it for A500 (because of popular opinion that more games worked on that model, which was true, however this move allowed me to use perspective brushes in Deluxe Paint IV - A600 lacked numeric keyboard). It was a remarkable family of computers, enjoyed it, however pretty quickly moved away from gaming and shifted towards creative tasks - mentioned Deluxe Paint, a bit of Real 3D, great Fantavision (this one made possible to make a few minutes long 'movies' with sound, with just 1MB + 512 kB, remember going through all the disks I had, looking for sound samples to use there; DPaint was screaming 'out of memory' way too often to make anything more serious), ProTracker. Amiga was one of the big steps on my path, learned a lot there and today I'm into filmmaking and animation and right now working on first serious animated short. It's a shame that such a great piece of technology died because of bad management.

Thanks a lot!

Thanks. Varying height floors are definitely planned. It's just after initial failed attempt (too slow) I've decided to go for the minimal feature set and once that started to look cooler than anything I've seen on A500 (I don't want to sound narcistic, but I really havent) I've focused on getting it playable before risking being burned out by the project and leaving it in the state of "yet another engine". But in the meantime I've been really thinking about floors and have come up with a few ideas that should work - and of course require a major rewrite of some key engine parts. So really better to get something playable out to you guys first, then go for the floors. :)

@@KKAltair No, no man! This is an amazing achievement, and you should absolutely do what you think will be the most fun and rewarding thing to do at any given time! Also, do you have an artist for the project?

@@darkfalzx Two graphicians contacted me and one of them is redoing the weapons into sprites. But in general I'm relying mostly on ready FreeDoom graphics, because that's all I need to get it to playable state, open for modding and build some creative community around that.

@@KKAltair If you manage to get stairs into this engine and still run nice on A500... that would be astounding! It's the difference between being a Doom clone or just Wolfenstein.

@@intrepidis1 That's already planned.

Thanks a lot 😊

It will be done with exactly this map you are seeing being made. That's the whole point.

@@KKAltair OK! But when? Do you have any estimation? It looks almost complete. But whatever, it is a great job, noone expected to be even possible!

@@iamweasel_ Probably few more months for the demo. Still a bit of work to do and making these videos...... sheesh...

Unfortunately, there is no colour "nearer to skin" in the current palette.

Well, I probably could use all help I could get. I was mostly focused on coding, and now shifted to (learning) video making to get everybody interested on board for this journey. Also, one pixel artist already started helping me with the sprites - not just conversion, but literally taking everything apart, hand-pixelling and animating, all with OCS restrictions in mind. So hardware sprites will definitely be IN at one point. But if you'd still like to help somehow, this would be appreciated.

​@@KKAltair I would love to. I could help with a lot of things since I am a multi-talent person. One immediate thought was that there a certain risk starting with asset creation too early. From personal experience I think the most important aspect at this early stage is to have a vision/concept of what this game should be. then starting to create fitting OCS palettes that offer good/natural color blending, as well as aiding the vision of the game, once that is done It's much easier to create a cohesive game with multiple people involved. I'm a game developer/artist myself (I only have one old video on my channel though xD), unfortunately I have zero experience developing on the amiga (although I have some experience of assembly language). but due to my geek interest in Amiga hardware I believe I have good knowledge of the OCS limitations, and I have owned amigas since late 80's early 90's, which is always a plus. :D Do you have slack/discord for the project? It would be awesome if we could have a tool to communicate with people getting involved. :) e-mail me at dennis@pixelshade.se Unfortunately, like many at this age I don't have endless amount of time, and I already work on a game project of my own. But I think this would be an awesome side project, and if we could become a community working with the same goal in mind I actually think that this could become a really awesome game.

@@PixelShade Email sent. :)

Yes, but the TV show was "Bones". Episode was called "Boy in the Time Capsule" (S3E7). Was an Amiga 1200 painted black (probably due to yellowing lol). The game looked fake or "pre-render" animation. Anyway, very interesting since it's an US TV show and in the US the Amiga is quite unheard of in terms of gaming.

We will have to wait until the game can actually load external maps. Right now it's quite a dirty hack and map is compiled into the executable.

@@KKAltair Oh, so that was just a temporary implementation :) Never mind if you already haven't answered my question about this specific thing on the first video :) I posted quite a few comments there I believe :)

Thanks! :)

It should be more or less similar. Also, the larger indoor rooms mean that there's no sky to copy and more untextured floor/ceiling is visible, which also helps.

The resolution of the render is 160x100, so the logical pixel is 2x2. But its halves can be colored separately for dithering. Pixel resolution of the entire final image (including stat bar) is 320x233.

ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-wPdrJtrCi3U.html Unlike the KK's demo, Duke Nukem 3d for Genesis lacks geometry detail between floor and ceilings. Duke Nukem 3d for Genesis is a Wolfenstein clone.

The video footage is from emulator in cycle-exact stock A500 mode (+512k slow). But I've already tested this on real machine. So my specs are: Amiga 500 Plus (ECS), 512k chip + 512k slow RAM, ~7MHz

@@KKAltair Its really unbelievable :) Grats!!!

@@andrewvato491 When demo is out, you won't have to just believe. :)

​@@KKAltair The official "Amiga 500 Plus" with Rev 8A motherboard has 1MB chip ram and trap door expansion slot can have an additional 1MB chip ram. A500 Rev 6A has ECS Agnus with 512KB chip ram and trap door expansion slot can have an additional 512 KB slow ram (the easy mod for chip ram config). A500 Rev 7 motherboard is rare. A500 Rev 6A's Denise chip can be updated to ECS Denise. I have both A500 Rev 6A (jumper setting to 1MB chip ram) and A1200 (motherboard revision unknown since I haven't removed its metal shield). My A500 Rev 5 was gutted to re-populate A500 Rev 6A motherboard, hence I have a spare A500 Rev 5 mobo. I have purchased ECS Agnus and KS1.3 ROM for Rev 6A's re-population.

@@valenrn8657 A500 OCS + 512k slow is all I need. :)

We didn't get as far as discussing any narratives. We have some ideas, but focus on the basic missing features first to make a solid game demo.

Once demo map is done and a couple of missing features implemented (sfx, menu) it will be out. And it requires 512k CHIP + 512k SLOW. But if you really have Fast there, it will really fly.

@@KKAltair Hm, now that I think of it, I'm not sure if it is actually Fast Mem. It's more likely it's Slow mem.

@@kiwischolz9811 And that's the standard configuration I'm developing for.

@@KKAltair Hi KK, looking forward to playing this big time. I'm also looking to do a video based on the demo once it's released if that's ok?

@@thesegaguru It will be completely OK (and a link to my channel in the info would be especially nice, in such case).

Stock Amiga 500 with extra 512k slow RAM.

That was already the plan. Once the demo is out, I will actually focus on making this thing modable.

Sound FX will come next after the map, together with some finishing touches (menus and stuff). I'll be probably using whatever FreeDoom effects I'll find suitable, but looking elsewhere or making some is not out of the question either.

Dzięki!!

A1200 has some decent FPP shooters already. It's A500 that's a bit lacking in this regard (with all due respect to all who tried). But this project will run VERY smoothly on A1200 as well. (also I don't have A1200 myself and never had)

@@KKAltair For stock A1200, borderline playable frame rate for Gloom with about 80% full screen with 2x2 pixels. The smooth frame rate at near full-screen FPP on stock A1200 would be nice. A1200's 68EC020 CPU improves its performance with a cheap fast RAM upgrade.

@@valenrn8657 This still uses 2x2 pixel, and has no floor/ceiling textures, but framerate should be much more than playable on a stock A1200.

@@KKAltair It's a balance between playability frame rate vs graphics detail. Your demonstration has lower door entrances with an overhang geometry and temple-like geometry. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-tHnIfbzI4Ts.html Stock A1200 running Gloom at near full screen with 2x2 pixels and the frame rate is not smooth enough i.e. slide show. Also, Glooms 2x2 pixel render quality is not as clear as your demonstration. For stock A1200, the default setting for Gloom wasn't plug-n-play i.e. PC like presentation. In terms of wall geometry, Gloom is like a well made Wolfenstein clone.

@@valenrn8657 Then it looks like my engine will eat Gloom for breakfast (minus the floors/ceilings).

WinUAE...

It runs on a stock CPU according to his older talks.

Ehal256 That’s extremely hard to believe. I’ve been using accelerated and unaccelerated Amigas for 35 years. Hard to believe.

Blake Patterson hard to believe in a good way?!, but don’t worry he is planning to release a demo soon so you will be able to believe it yourself!

CastleFamilyThe Yes, I’d love to see a 7MHz Amiga running a DOOM-alike at this level of smoothness. But even if the Amiga had a chunky pixel mode, I just can’t see how this level of smoothness could happen. I’m hopeful and anxious to see a demo running on my Amigas.

There isn't enough to sell yet, but in time... I hope so! :)