Doom - alpha version is out
Steve B. Dang
The engine is much much faster than the previous. Especially with it's
handling of the lighting. The lighting is excellent. Much better then how
UW2 did it, and much much faster. Gunfire even affects the surrounding light.
My only problem is this: why is it so hard to just draw the objects large
and scale down from there instead of zooming up on the bitmap for close-up
view. The objects are still so "blocky" - just like in Wolf3d, UW's and WC's.
Can't wait when the final release is made available.
--
----------------------------------------+------------------------------
Steve Dang | "Matter is plastic in the
sd...@eis.calstate.edu | face of the mind."
sd...@nyx.cs.du.edu | -Philip K. Dick
cvad...@csupomona.edu |
----------------------------------------+------------------------------
Gary McTaggart
How could one get his hands on the alpha version of Doom?
Thanks,
Gary
William Hoffman
>The engine is much much faster than the previous. Especially with it's
>handling of the lighting. The lighting is excellent. Much better then how
>UW2 did it, and much much faster. Gunfire even affects the surrounding light.
Not to be a pain, but I reiterate an earlier post : how can I get
ahold of this alpha which everyone has seen but me?
>My only problem is this: why is it so hard to just draw the objects large
>and scale down from there instead of zooming up on the bitmap for close-up
>view. The objects are still so "blocky" - just like in Wolf3d, UW's and WC's.
Well, how large do you want them? You try storing and managing
multiple 256 color bitmaps in memory. The memory requirements are
astounding. My engine uses 128x128 tiles, and of course each tile
takes 16384 bytes to store (compression kills the speed completely).
And they still get blocky when you are up close. Sure, you could
store each tile as a 256x256 bitmap, and use 64000 bytes per tile...
and use 40 megs disk space... and require 8 megs ram...
George Hoffman
Philip Brown
>This game really looks good. Graphics are very smooth indeed on a 486/33.
>The engine is much much faster than the previous.
Now would this be the DOS or the Windows version?
--
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"Tea: a Noxious brew of various oriental leaves, containing toxic acids.
Personally, I rather like it." (paraprhased from Dr. Who: Peter Davidson)
ph...@cats.ucsc.edu ph...@soda.berkeley.edu
Ron Asbestos Dippold
>How could one get his hands on the alpha version of Doom?
Pirate it like everyone else who's seen it, with the exception of the
few authorized testers.
--
We interrupt this quote for an important announcement.
Steve B. Dang
> >This game really looks good. Graphics are very smooth indeed on a 486/33.
> >The engine is much much faster than the previous. Especially with it's
> >handling of the lighting. The lighting is excellent. Much better then how
> >UW2 did it, and much much faster. Gunfire even affects the surrounding light.
>
> Not to be a pain, but I reiterate an earlier post : how can I get
> ahold of this alpha which everyone has seen but me?
>
> >My only problem is this: why is it so hard to just draw the objects large
> >and scale down from there instead of zooming up on the bitmap for close-up
> >view. The objects are still so "blocky" - just like in Wolf3d, UW's and WC's.
>
do you mean the speed of the game itself or speed loading the game?
Steve B. Dang
> > g...@beach.cis.ufl.edu (Gary McTaggart) writes:
> > >How could one get his hands on the alpha version of Doom?
> >
> > Pirate it like everyone else who's seen it, with the exception of the
> > few authorized testers.
>
> It's gonna be released as a shareware game? Doesn't make sense! Why can't
> we game developers see this (CRUMBY?) game. I bet it's awfully slow in my
> old 386SX-16.
>
> WARNING: The above was not a flame. For it to be a flame, it has to flash
> on and off at a ridiculous speed that you can barely read it. Also, your
> monitor should be on fire.
>
> -George
> "Where can I get my hands on that alpha copy? How about the beta copy? How
> about the...?"
I think the testers are woried about getting their secrets/ideas
(maybe coding techniques) copied by other software firms that make similar
games.
since this game is out, I suspect everyone will have a copy within the
next few weeks. I don't think it will be ftp'd though since ftp sites
will restrict it (especially ftp.uwp.edu, since it IS the official ID
site, isn't it?)
sl...@cc.usu.edu
GASP! Ron!? How could you suggest such a thing!? I am sooooo shocked!
wReam...
P.S. THat is the only way you will see it, since Alphas and Betas are usually
not intended to be distributed... DUH! :)
P.P.S. So RON do you have a copy? :) Do I? ;-)
William Hoffman
>>The engine is much much faster than the previous.
>Now would this be the DOS or the Windows version?
I'm really, REALLY frightened. I didn't see a smiley anywhere in the
vicinity of that post. You're really not serious, are you?
George Hoffman
George A. Montemayor
> >How could one get his hands on the alpha version of Doom?
>
> Pirate it like everyone else who's seen it, with the exception of the
> few authorized testers.
You mean that we're not WORTHY enough to see the alpha version? Why not?
William Hoffman
>>>and scale down from there instead of zooming up on the bitmap for close-up
>>>view. The objects are still so "blocky" - just like in Wolf3d, UW's and WC's.
>>
>> takes 16384 bytes to store (compression kills the speed completely).
>do you mean the speed of the game itself or speed loading the game?
The game itself of course. The few seconds used to load from disk is
irrelevant. I'm talking about during the game, when you're drawing
20-30 frames per second. Ok, the images could be compressed on disk
and then uncompressed for the game, but that means either creating a
swap file on disk of uncompressed images, which would take even MORE
space, because the compressed AND uncompressed images would be stored
there, or load it all into XMS or EMS uncompressed - and I'm afraid we
just can't assume everyone has 10 megs of RAM free to store every one
of my 256x256 tiling bitmaps during the game. So I use data files
with uncompressed tiles, and swap directly from disk, or load as many
tiles into XMS as I can and leave the rest on disk. And that's
another thing - swapping 256x256 bitmaps is ALOT SLOWER, I'd imagine,
than 64x64 or 128x128.
Otherwise, if you have a real-time compression algorithm that gets a
1:10 ratio and let's me access each byte of the data with a single
instruction, let me at it. :)
George
Ron Asbestos Dippold
>> about the...?"
>I think the testers are woried about getting their secrets/ideas
>(maybe coding techniques) copied by other software firms that make similar
>games.
One thing they're worried about is that the versions which are
circulating are missing tons of nifty stuff - thus you get the idiots
who've seen the pre-alpha and actually complain to the net that DOOM
doesn't have everything they had heard it would have (yes, it's
happened).
--
Nanu nanu!
Philip Brown
In <Aug.5.12.26....@stingray.rutgers.edu> wmho...@stingray.rutgers.edu (William Hoffman) writes:
>>Now would this be the DOS or the Windows version?
>I'm really, REALLY frightened. I didn't see a smiley anywhere in the
>vicinity of that post. You're really not serious, are you?
There was a lot of blather about how DOOM would have a windows version,
was there not? Or was that another big graphics adventure game thing.
George A. Montemayor
--
How many megabytes of harddisk space does the alpha version eat up? Hwow
about the save files? Worse than Ultima VII I hope not.
-George
Duane Morin
>
>One thing they're worried about is that the versions which are
>circulating are missing tons of nifty stuff - thus you get the idiots
>who've seen the pre-alpha and actually complain to the net that DOOM
>doesn't have everything they had heard it would have (yes, it's
>happened).
Apparently, people are actually dialing in to Id's home board (Software
Creations) and asking about/complaining about Doom, even though they
ain't supposed to have it yet! Sheesh.
Duane
>--
>Nanu nanu!
Robert Schmidt
|> This game really looks good. Graphics are very smooth indeed on a 486/33.
|> The engine is much much faster than the previous. Especially with it's
|> handling of the lighting. The lighting is excellent. Much better then how
|> UW2 did it, and much much faster. Gunfire even affects the surrounding light.
|> My only problem is this: why is it so hard to just draw the objects large
|> and scale down from there instead of zooming up on the bitmap for close-up
|> view. The objects are still so "blocky" - just like in Wolf3d, UW's and WC's.
It's not hard at all. I bet they are only conserving resources. I think
the alpha is big enough as it is, without moster animation. If you
double the x & y resolution of the objects and monsters, they take FOUR times
as much disk space _AND_ memory.
What do you mean by 'faster than the previous'? Wolf3d was faster,
though much simpler of course.
|> Can't wait when the final release is made available.
Me neither... :)
--
Robert Schmidt - rob...@alkymi.unit.no - Buuud@IRC
Ztiff Zox Softwear: fast/tiny utilities, games/graphics programming on
the DOS platform (C/C++ & asm). Suggestions welcome!
Everything I write is my opinion only - go make up your own!
Robert Schmidt
On disk, about 4 Mb, requiring 6 Mb RAM to run.
Saving and restoring games is not yet implemented.
Carl Mueller
>On disk, about 4 Mb, requiring 6 Mb RAM to run.
>Saving and restoring games is not yet implemented.
6 MB of RAM to run, that's crazy! I believe in putting games out for high
end machines, but even now most machines only come with 4 MB!
--
Carl Mueller
Wayne State University
email: ca...@busop.cit.wayne.edu
Steve B. Dang
I doubt it requires 6MB of RAM to run. But what do I know, since I got
8MB to work with. Anyhow, the ALPHA version I have is about 950k zipped.
About 3megs unzipped. Can't really do anything in it, just explore the mazes.
As expected, tons of bugs.
Enjoy...
David Taylor
here that the longest conversation thread currently on
rec.games.programmer is based on the assumption that the participants
have seen or used an illegal copy of a game?
=-ddt->
Philip Brown
In <carl....@busop.cit.wayne.edu> ca...@busop.cit.wayne.edu (Carl Mueller) writes:
>6 MB of RAM to run, that's crazy! I believe in putting games out for high
>end machines, but even now most machines only come with 4 MB!
So? remember when 386's "only came with 1 meg"?
"Will this run Windows?"
"Why SUUURREE..."
HA!
Dr. Cat
: Not that I have seen it. But if I had :), and like the others of you who
: may have "not" seen it. I'm sure the feelings were more of "awe" than
: anything. Of course there are features and "nifty things" which are not
: in yet. But the technology which "may have been" viewed on a screen
: near me was quite impressive (to say the LEAST)
:
:
Feelings of awe aside, one has to remember that the shareware version of Doom
is intended to promote the full registered version, so the guys at Id can
make a (well deserved) living from their hard work. Does this alpha have the
information on how to order a copy of the game in it? Either way, it's a no
win situation for them. If the information is there, then they have to deal
with months of phone calls from people trying to order a product that isn't
available yet. Presuming there's an 800 number, this will cost them not only
time, but money. On the other hand, if there is no ordering information,
then when the release version comes out, they'll have to live with the fact
that there are two version floating around the net competing with each other,
and people that don't bother getting the official version because they have
the alpha will never see the ordering info. So anybody who has the alpha
version would really be doing Id a favor by not spreading it around.
Dr. Cat
Duane Morin
>Feelings of awe aside, one has to remember that the shareware version of Doom
>is intended to promote the full registered version, so the guys at Id can
>make a (well deserved) living from their hard work. Does this alpha have the
>information on how to order a copy of the game in it? Either way, it's a no
>win situation for them. If the information is there, then they have to deal
>with months of phone calls from people trying to order a product that isn't
>available yet. Presuming there's an 800 number, this will cost them not only
>time, but money. On the other hand, if there is no ordering information,
>then when the release version comes out, they'll have to live with the fact
>that there are two version floating around the net competing with each other,
>and people that don't bother getting the official version because they have
>the alpha will never see the ordering info. So anybody who has the alpha
>version would really be doing Id a favor by not spreading it around.
There's a counter rumor running around that Id deliberately leaked this
alpha version to keep people interested in Doom. Stop and think where the
opinion of that game was, just recently, in this group...people were busy
arguing about what it COULDN'T do, instead of what it WOULD do (i.e.
"They get 70fps" "No they don't!" "Yes they do!") By letting people get
their hands on it, public opinion will rapidly change, if for nothing else
than the fact that there's something tangible now. The existance of
alpha tells people lots of things: they can see what it's going to look like,
and they know it should be coming soon. People can get focused again on
looking at the technological achievements of the game.
>
> Dr. Cat
Duane
John Henders
>In article <1993Aug6.1...@wixer.bga.com> c...@wixer.bga.com
(Dr. Cat) writes:
>> On the other hand, if there is no ordering information,
>>then when the release version comes out, they'll have to live with the fact
>>that there are two version floating around the net competing with each other,
>>and people that don't bother getting the official version because they have
>>the alpha will never see the ordering info.
Unless there's 2 versions out there (yes, I've heard a rumour there
is), there's no way anyone could confuse the version I saw with a real
game. The monsters don't move.
> By letting people get
>their hands on it, public opinion will rapidly change, if for nothing else
>than the fact that there's something tangible now. The existance of
>alpha tells people lots of things: they can see what it's going to look like,
>and they know it should be coming soon. People can get focused again on
>looking at the technological achievements of the game.
The alpha was a great demo of some of the techniques we'll see in
the release version. I don't think ID leaked it, but a one level demo at
the stage I saw would have been great publicity if they did put one out.
Nothing like keeping anticipation high for your next release to improve
sales. Look at all the people who rushed out to buy Strike Commander,
even when many people on the net were slamming it's frame rate. At least
everyone now knows that Doom will live up to the hype, at least partly.
(ie, no 70fps)
--
John Henders GO/MU/E d* -p+ c+++ l++ t- m--- s/++ g+ w+++ -x+
John Henders
Well, I don't know about anybody else, but I saw a copy an a local
bbs, grabbed it, looked at it for an evening and deleted it. I was
thinking about running it through sourcer, changing the graphics and
releasing it a week before ID as my own game, but it occured to me that
that would be wrong.
It also doesn't surprise me as the second longeest thread recently
was on whether Doom would live up to it's billing.
William Hoffman
>In <Aug.5.12.26....@stingray.rutgers.edu> wmho...@stingray.rutgers.edu (William Hoffman) writes:
>>>Now would this be the DOS or the Windows version?
>>I'm really, REALLY frightened. I didn't see a smiley anywhere in the
>>vicinity of that post. You're really not serious, are you?
>There was a lot of blather about how DOOM would have a windows version,
>was there not? Or was that another big graphics adventure game thing.
The official press release stated that a Windows and Windows NT
version was forthcoming. But even if that version was in beta (or
even working) and it WON'T be for quite a while, I'd imagine, if at
all, do you think it will be anywhere near as fast or impressive?
Maybe if they use a 64x64 pixel window... :)
George Hoffman
nmspi...@ualr.edu
Well, with all this talk of alphas floating about--has anyone tried it under
OS/2? Windowed?
I, for one, would be interested in knowing whether or not it'll run decently
on my 2nd os of choice :-)
nate
Systems Programmer
UALR CS
nmspi...@ualr.edu
Shawn Green
writes:
[deletes]
|> There's a counter rumor running around that Id deliberately leaked this
|> alpha version to keep people interested in Doom. Stop and think where the
|> opinion of that game was, just recently, in this group...people were busy
|> arguing about what it COULDN'T do, instead of what it WOULD do (i.e.
|> "They get 70fps" "No they don't!" "Yes they do!") By letting people get
|> their hands on it, public opinion will rapidly change, if for nothing else
|> than the fact that there's something tangible now. The existance of
|> alpha tells people lots of things: they can see what it's going to look like,
|> and they know it should be coming soon. People can get focused again on
|> looking at the technological achievements of the game.
|>
|> >
|> > Dr. Cat
|>
|> Duane
The alpha of DOOM was not leaked purposely. It was quite a dissappointment when we found it was
mainly because the alpha runs nothing like the released version will. It is pretty slow and the levels
weren't really designed for playing, but more for testing.
As it stands now, John Carmack is completely rewriting the refresh for DOOM to make it about 50%
faster. As for the 70 FPS issue, that is pretty much null. The current alpha that is out will do 70 FPS
on a 486/50 with a good local bus card, but when the game is released the FPS will be limited to 35,
which is a little better than television quality.
--
-Shawn Green (sh...@idsoftware.com)
Id Software
Send questions about Id software to he...@idsoftware.com
(NeXTmail OK).
ftp.uwp.edu[131.210.1.4] Id "Official" anonymous FTP site /pub/msdos/games/id Id games
Ron Asbestos Dippold
>Well, with all this talk of alphas floating about--has anyone tried it under
>OS/2? Windowed?
>I, for one, would be interested in knowing whether or not it'll run decently
>on my 2nd os of choice :-)
ID has said that it will run in an OS/2 DOS Window. As long as this
works, OS/2 users won't be hiring disgruntled postal workers to visit
their headquarters.
--
Yeast is yeast and nest is nest and never the mane shall tweet.
Mark Ferris
>In article <1993Aug7.2...@schunix.dmc.com> so...@schunix.dmc.com (Duane Morin)
>writes:
>
>[deletes]
>
>
>DOOM to make it about 50% faster. As for the 70 FPS issue, that is
>pretty much null. The current alpha that is out will do 70 FPS
>on a 486/50 with a good local bus card, but when the game is released
>the FPS will be limited to 35, which is a little better than television
>quality.
>--
>-Shawn Green (sh...@idsoftware.com)
>Id Software
>Send questions about Id software to he...@idsoftware.com
>(NeXTmail OK).
>
I'm curious about the performance of the game on a 386sx/20. The
press release that you folks put out earlier in the year mentions that
386sx performance is "good," and I find myself wondering what exactly
that means. I find myself actually contemplating a motherboard upgrade
just for my gaming and Doom seems like it might be a driver for that.
However, Wolf 3d runs great (I can't see where I'd want it to run any
faster) on my machine (no idea what kind of FPS, but the movement is
fluid and quick) and I'd like Doom to as well. What kind of FPS have
you been getting on 386sx platforms?
--
Mark Ferris EMAIL: ma...@adcmail.atlas.com
Atlas Telecom VOICE: [USA] 1+503.228.1400 x242
4640 SW Macadam Ave. FAX1: [USA] 1+503.228.0368
Portland, OR 97201 FAX2: [USA] 1+503.225.5518
Shawn Green
[deletes]
|> I'm curious about the performance of the game on a 386sx/20. The
|> press release that you folks put out earlier in the year mentions that
|> 386sx performance is "good," and I find myself wondering what exactly
|> that means. I find myself actually contemplating a motherboard upgrade
|> just for my gaming and Doom seems like it might be a driver for that.
The performance on a 386SX will be better than we thought.
With the new refresh, DOOM (with no floor and ceiling textures)
will run faster than Wolfenstein 3D. The FPS will be hardcoded to 35 FPS.
--
-Shawn Green (sh...@idsoftware.com)
Id Software
Send questions about Id software to he...@idsoftware.com
(NeXTmail OK).
ftp.uwp.edu[131.210.1.4] Id "Official" anonymous FTP site /pub/msdos/games/id Id games
Andrew James BROMAGE
>So? remember when 386's "only came with 1 meg"?
>"Will this run Windows?"
>"Why SUUURREE..."
They did run Windows 2/386 all right, though, didn't they?
(*Sob* I've only got 2Mb...)
Andrew Bromage
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Andrew Bromage | "When the going gets weird, the
| weird turn pro."
bro...@mundil.cs.mu.oz.au | - Dr Hunter S Thompson
bro...@ecr.mu.oz.au | X <- You are here
If any opinions expressed here match those of the University of
Melbourne, I'll sue them for plagiarism.