3DO ZONE Forums

avanteproject wrote:Totally! Doom is a game that will live on forever! People will still be playing and modding it when the Playstation 37 and XBOX 4,746,003 come out.

I wouldn't go that far.

NikeX wrote:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6OD6xDdfz0

Thanks for that little bit of gold.

Best Doom port discussion I've read in awhile.

Interesting fact, bringing up Doom for Saturn in a "but the Saturn was never properly programmed for" flame war is a bit of a sore spot in that camp.

Does anyone remember Chex Quest? That was the best free game in a box of cereal ever! It's the Doom of cereal-based shooters (although I think it was built on the Duke Nukem 3D engine).

IIRC

GameCubed wrote:Does anyone remember Chex Quest? That was the best free game in a box of cereal ever! It's the Doom of cereal-based shooters (although I think it was built on the Duke Nukem 3D engine).

IIRC

I'm not a fan of it but I guess it's cool for a cereal pack in.

It WAS based on the doom engine. It was decent for being free in a cereal. I think I still have the games somehwere. I think there was two of them.

Sorry for digging out this old thread.
Chex Quest is basically a total conversion for Doom (the first one). It even contains all the maps and other stuff from Doom, which are not replaced, but they are only available through cheats.
Chex Quest 2 is the same, but it replaces the second episode, and it was not included with the Chex cereals, it was downloadable only from their website.

And finally Charles Jacobi built Chex Quest 3, based on ZDoom. It contains the two slightly improved episodes from CQ and CQ2 and a new episode, and a new boss.
This is downloadable via his website: http://www.chucktropolis.com/gamers.htm

Wow, we are really looking for some stuff to discuss here, yeah? Biggest problem with DOOM for the 3DO is the same thing with the 32-X version: it was rushed. The music was outstanding and even though I am a huge Jaguar fan, I am pretty sure that the 3DO could have handled a version comparable to the Jaguar version of DOOM. The 3DO had everything it needed to get a close to perfect version of JagDoom running on it. It's a shame too because the Soundtrack made for the 3DO DOOM is still my favorite of all of the original DOOM games. I own the game JUST for the music, to be honest.

little tidbits here on JagDOOM. The biggest problem with it that made it not as good as it could have been was that it is only on a 4mb cart. Tremeil wasn't willing to give Carmack a 6mb cart because he didn't want to spend the money. Had thy gotten a 6mb cart, you would have had a few more levels as well as a couple more enemies and the music that was written for the Jaguar version of DOOM that p-lays between the levels would have been put into the levels as well. Chalk it up to Atari for limiting their own console because whether you want to admit it or not, the Jaguar was an insanely powerful machine for it's time limited by greedy owners that didn't want to give the developers the ability to do what the system really could do.

The power of the ARM 60 CPU at 12,5MHz is said to be
comparable to a Motorola 68030 CPU at 25MHz.

Doom worked out in a good playable way fullscreen on AMIGA computers
equipped with a 68030 CPU at 50MHz - but without any 3D accelerating
co-processors the 3DO actually has.

Due to all this I am convinced, that it would be possible to create
a 3DO doomport (including all details and monsters) that works
fullscreen in a satisfying way.

Jones wrote:The power of the ARM 60 CPU at 12,5MHz is said to be
comparable to a Motorola 68030 CPU at 25MHz.

Doom worked out in a good playable way fullscreen on AMIGA computers
equipped with a 68030 CPU at 50MHz - but without any 3D accelerating
co-processors the 3DO actually has.

Due to all this I am convinced, that it would be possible to create
a 3DO doomport (including all details and monsters) that works
fullscreen in a satisfying way.

Yup. Like I said, it would seem that Art Data had the tools, but screwed the pooch on DOOM. I'm not sure who was cracking the whip on this, but there is no way they believed that this was the best they could do with the game. It had to be a rushed project.

I've read some interesting things over the years on this subject.

Obviously, Art Data got in way over their heads. This is quite apparent to anyone who has played the game, but it is also something that is brought up in some interviews that I've read.

Art Data apparently had to re-write the entire Doom engine to get it to run on the 3DO which is one of the big reasons given for its incredibly delayed release. They also had big turnover in their engineering department as people gave up on figuring out how to make it work on the 3DO.

Some other interesting things to consider about the 3DO port:

"Anyways, the game as I mentioned before Doom 3DO is very ambitious, which is its downfall. First of all, it's the ONLY early port of Doom to feature full 3d view of the characters. So you see the enemies at all angles, not just the front. Next, this port is the ONLY early port to features invisibility effects in the way of the Spectre enemy, which was cut from the other versions."

This is a quote from a 3DO Doom review by Elbryan42 on GameFAQs.



Here are some pics from an article about 3DO Doom explaining some of the issues:










According to the article, the 3DO also does a better job with the environment than the Playstation.

T2KFreeker wrote:I'm not sure who was cracking the whip on this, but there is no way they believed that this was the best they could do with the game.

And finally, here is a face to associate with our anger.

Randy Scott, President of Art Data Interactive.
It is a little difficult to hear what he is saying over the Japanese translation so I have transcribed his words to text below.

I was laughing hard at one point. Right around the 30 second mark in my YouTube clip he says "... and six levels of speed." You can see it looks as though even he has a hard time swallowing that load of crap LOL

Transcription:

"Hi, I'm Randy Scott, President of Art Data Interactive in the United States.
I'm here in Tokyo visiting my new friends at 3DO Magazine.

I'm here to tell you some really great news. That uh, Doom, for 3DO will be released in Japan soon.
It features um, twenty four raging levels, CD quality audio, six screen sizes, and six levels of speed. So it's time to load up the rocket launcher, go down to your retailer and get your, and purchase your ticket straight to hell."


Click on picture for link to YouTube clip.







-----------------

I grabbed the above info from some earlier posts I made in another thread we had discussing what went wrong with Doom.

I'm no programming genius, but I think one step to making it run better was using lower-resolution textures much like the 32X version.

Another issue was, that the developers had to used the 3DO APIs, instead of the direct hardware access id Software had to the jaguar.

Another side note: they planned to insert FMV sequences in Doom, i have three screenshots found some years ago. It was a really ambitious project, but in the end, they rushed out a less than medium port out.

bitrate wrote: First of all, it's the ONLY early port of Doom to feature full 3d view of the characters. So you see the enemies at all angles, not just the front."

This statement right here is not true. The Jaguar release of DOOM also has the characters at other angles than just the fronts. This inspired one of the best jokes at Atari at the time. When Atari was working on the port for NBA Jam, yes Atari handled the port, they put in a cheat that changed all of the characters to a forward facing mode and it was the only direction they could be seen at as a jab at Sega for their version of DOOM on the 32-X being that you only saw the characters from the front. DOOM on the Jaguar does indeed feature the 3D views of the characters. Play it and see.

T2KFreeker wrote:

bitrate wrote: First of all, it's the ONLY early port of Doom to feature full 3d view of the characters. So you see the enemies at all angles, not just the front."

This statement right here is not true. The Jaguar release of DOOM also has the characters at other angles than just the fronts.

Yeah, this was talked about in the other thread. That was a quote I grabbed from GameFAQs.

I believe it's true that the 3DO was the only early port to feature invisibility effects.
It's also said that the 3DO version tries to display more of the environment than its counterparts. I never looked to see to what degree this is true.

bitrate wrote:

T2KFreeker wrote:

bitrate wrote: First of all, it's the ONLY early port of Doom to feature full 3d view of the characters. So you see the enemies at all angles, not just the front."

This statement right here is not true. The Jaguar release of DOOM also has the characters at other angles than just the fronts.

Yeah, this was talked about in the other thread. That was a quote I grabbed from GameFAQs.

I believe it's true that the 3DO was the only early port to feature invisibility effects.
It's also said that the 3DO version tries to display more of the environment than its counterparts. I never looked to see to what degree this is true.

Yes, the Invisibility Effects comment is true though. Still, Carmack has said in the past that if Atari would have just given them one or two more Megs of cart space, we would have gotten this on the Jaguar version as well. Again, it was like Trameil was trying to sabotage the Jaguar.

cybdmn wrote:Another issue was, that the developers had to used the 3DO APIs, instead of the direct hardware access id Software had to the jaguar.

I wouldn't be surprised if that was the problem. Back then most games used a lot of low level hardware access and assembly language because of how slow processors were and how little RAM there was to waste. That API aspect was undoubtedly a bottleneck for most 3DO games... Using high level APIs and languages was not at all optimal for '90s consoles.

It's likely that the Doom engine didn't fit the API at all and really needed a rewrite to work well on 3DO. Doom on the PC runs 90% on the CPU. It spews finished frames at the video card and does all the sound mixing too. Only music is offloaded, to a FM or MIDI synth chip on a sound card. Perhaps that is what the 3DO version is doing too and it's just too slow. I would think that the 3DO CPU is similar to a 386 and those do not run Doom well on PC.

You can actually see this kind of thing in some other ports of games using the Doom engine. The N64 version of Hexen seemed to be purely CPU bound other than using the graphics processor to bilinear filter the outputted image. It was blurry and not entirely smooth even on the 90 Mhz VR4300. You could disable the blur and go back to pixelation but it didn't really change speed much.

I thought the 3do was equivilent to a 486 SX 25? which used to run doom pretty good. Or areyou saying because of the need to use APIs it ran like it was a 386?

I think if Carmack hadn't been so trapped in the past, and had embraced the 3DOs fine developement model, I wouldn't be so bitter now. It's all his fault [cough]

I used to have a 386. No way in hell would it have played DOOM.

3DO Experience wrote:I used to have a 386. No way in hell would it have played DOOM.

What a girl Do you have any idea how erotic this kind of language is to male geeks?

Is it as hot as when people talk about prototypes?
I tore it apart. I know the ram is history but I might still have the power supply and floppy drive. If I come across them while cleaning I'll take some dirty pictures for you.

3DO Experience wrote:I used to have a 386. No way in hell would it have played DOOM.

oh it would but it would run poorly obviously. but so does the 3do version.

3DOKid wrote:I thought the 3do was equivilent to a 486 SX 25? which used to run doom pretty good. Or areyou saying because of the need to use APIs it ran like it was a 386?

a 386 40 can be faster than a 486 25.

But ya the API thing was absolutely an efficiency killer. I think that 3DO Doom probably needed a rewrite for the console and they didn't have the time or money for that (or maybe skill) so we got perhaps just a bit of optimization but it was a lost cause.

I think Dreamcast had this kind of problem too. It got some really awful ports to its WinCE mode that clearly didnt take advantage of the hardware properly. Thats just another sort of high level OS/API. It had some sort of Direct3D API in that case. It made ports from Windows easier, a precursor to the modern 360 world actually.

swaaye wrote:But ya the API thing was absolutely an efficiency killer. I think that 3DO Doom probably needed a rewrite for the console and they didn't have the time or money for that (or maybe skill) so we got perhaps just a bit of optimization but it was a lost cause.

When it seems that ADI pretty much did bugger all for a protracted period* before giving one programmer ten weeks to port the game, and then mastered a beta version rather than the final code, it's no wonder 3DO Doom was a mess.

*Ok, perhaps that's not entirely fair as they did contribute the kick ass music. However, perhaps they should have been spending their money on actually hiring more developers and giving them more time rather than producing videos that amounted to nothing. Ah, the dangers of giving a small developer/publisher a high profile license.

I first played Doom... on a 386DX 33mhz, 512kb graphics card. It was just as bad as the 3do, I'd dare say identical.

Silanda wrote:
When it seems that ADI pretty much did bugger all for a protracted period* before giving one programmer ten weeks to port the game, and then mastered a beta version rather than the final code, it's no wonder 3DO Doom was a mess.

If they mastered a beta version, did the final code ever get released (PAL version, beta release etc.), such as with Killing time?

Is there any difference between releases in various regions?

sparker wrote:If they mastered a beta version, did the final code ever get released (PAL version, beta release etc.), such as with Killing time?

Is there any difference between releases in various regions?

Not as far as I know on both counts. IIRC in old usenet posts the programmer mentions that the final code he had ran slightly better but not much but I can't seem to find that post on google groups anymore, only the one mentioning the ten week development time. I'm pretty sure that I didn't just dream it though.

I have what I believe is the PAL version (new old stock from a UK seller, but I can't be sure if it was UK stock originally) and it's just the US long box release.

Too Good to Miss
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M31lFFyoGJc

NikeX wrote:Too Good to Miss
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M31lFFyoGJc

It took me a bit to realise what was goin on in that video. But now I say wow.

NikeX wrote:Too Good to Miss
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M31lFFyoGJc

Okay, I have to admit that is pretty cool for what it is. Nice little hack. Now all we need is for it to show up on 3DO.

GameCubed wrote:Does anyone remember Chex Quest? That was the best free game in a box of cereal ever! It's the Doom of cereal-based shooters (although I think it was built on the Duke Nukem 3D engine).

IIRC

I remember seeing a commercial that showed you got Chex Quest free in a box of Chex. I think I got a box of Chex that same day lol. Best marketing campaign ever!