Doom for Sega Genesis

[taufan99]

Damn, and that's even better than the 32X port.

[Dark Pulse]

6 minutes ago, Dimon12321 said:

What? Genesis runs a nearly original version of Doom and at a decent framerare!??? I have 2 ideas on this one. Either the technologies jumped extremely high these years and the author is an true master of porting and optimizing, or it's a fake video, because it looks TOO optimized!! A homebrew version of Wolfenstein 3D with interlaced textures runs at ~20 fps which is great comparing to, let's say, Zero Tolerance, but at least it's plausible comparing to this video. 

It's using an FPGA to accelerate the graphics. This is not the speed it would get unassisted.

[Vic]

I hope you realize that the FPGA chip in the Everdrive is powerful enough to emulate a 386 or a 486 CPU and is basically dumping tiles or pixels at Genesis's VDP, basically using it as a pass-through device.

[Death Egg]

1 hour ago, Dimon12321 said:

What? Genesis runs a nearly original version of Doom and at a decent framerare!??? I have 2 ideas on this one. Either the technologies jumped extremely high these years and the author is an true master of porting and optimizing, or it's a fake video, because it looks TOO optimized!! A homebrew version of Wolfenstein 3D with interlaced textures runs at ~20 fps which is great comparing to, let's say, Zero Tolerance, but at least it's plausible comparing to this video. 

It's using an FPGA chip on the Everdrive Pro to speed up processing, which is similar to how the SNES used an onboard chip to achieve what it did. I sincerely doubt that it's fake given that this is the Twitter for the creator of the Everdrive series.

[Noiser]

4 hours ago, Vic said:

I hope you realize that the FPGA chip in the Everdrive is powerful enough to emulate a 386 or a 486 CPU and is basically dumping tiles or pixels at Genesis's VDP, basically using it as a pass-through device.

aww :-(
I would like to see it on a stock genesis, with all the intended cuts to work on hardware.

 

What's the matter with the colors though? It seems to be the actual Doom playpal, not the 512 palette. That's a shame imo, since the Genesis have some beautiful hues that could bring more personality to the port (like this PICO-8 fangame that seems to use a very limited palette in-game). At least it doesn't seems to be restricted to 61 colors on screen anymore, which is actually great.

Edited January 17, 2021 by Noiser

[Dimon12321]

9 minutes ago, Death Egg said:

It's using an FPGA chip on the Everdrive Pro to speed up processing, which is similar to how the SNES used an onboard chip to achieve what it did. I sincerely doubt that it's fake given that this is the Twitter for the creator of the Everdrive series.

 

So, basically, it makes regular Genesis work 2-3 times faster?

If there was some kind of a Genesis SuperFX chip back in the days, then it would be pretty fine to see someone utilize its full power, but this device is unknown to most of people. Was it used in any Genesis games before?

Edited January 16, 2021 by Dimon12321

[Death Egg]

1 hour ago, Noiser said:

aww :-(
I would like to see it on a stock genesis, with all the intended cuts to work on hardware.

I agree, would love to see how much of this could be cut down to see what the bare Genesis itself is capable of.

[Dark Pulse]

2 hours ago, Dimon12321 said:

 

So, basically, it makes regular Genesis work 2-3 times faster?

If there was some kind of a Genesis SuperFX chip back in the days, then it would be pretty fine to see someone utilize its full power, but this device is unknown to most of people. Was it used in any Genesis games before?

There was one. It was called the Sega Virtua Processor.

 

It also made the only game it was used in (the Genesis version of Virtua Racing) cost $100.

 

See if you can figure out why it was the only game it was used in.

Edited January 17, 2021 by Dark Pulse

[Vic]

6 hours ago, Dimon12321 said:

 

So, basically, it makes regular Genesis work 2-3 times faster?

If there was some kind of a Genesis SuperFX chip back in the days, then it would be pretty fine to see someone utilize its full power, but this device is unknown to most of people. Was it used in any Genesis games before?

It's a modern day chip that's tens of times more powerful than the 68k CPU found in Genesis and infinitely more versatile.

 

This is basically MiSTer running on the Genesis's power supply and blasting its video output through the VDP. Although I agree it's kinda suspicious that the output isn't limited to 256 colors, maybe it somehow completely bypasses the Genesis VDP altogether.

[Death Egg]

26 minutes ago, Vic said:

It's a modern day chip that's tens of times more powerful than the 68k CPU found in Genesis and infinitely more versatile.

 

This is basically MiSTer running on the Genesis's power supply and blasting its video output through the VDP. Although I agree it's kinda suspicious that the output isn't limited to 256 colors, maybe it somehow completely bypasses the Genesis VDP altogether.

If I were to guess it's using this from the same developer. Seems the VDP can be manipulated somehow, but it's still the Genesis itself. Curious as to how any of this works, but it does explain how it looks so good. I wonder if it still has to convert everything to the 512 color palette the Genesis is capable of?

Edited January 17, 2021 by Death Egg

[Dark Pulse]

On 1/17/2021 at 2:09 AM, Death Egg said:

If I were to guess it's using this from the same developer. Seems the VDP can be manipulated somehow, but it's still the Genesis itself. Curious as to how any of this works, but it does explain how it looks so good. I wonder if it still has to convert everything to the 512 color palette the Genesis is capable of?

Probably not. It likely just maps to nearest equivalent color, as the Genesis VDP is basically 9-bit BGR color.

[Vic]

On 1/17/2021 at 10:09 AM, Death Egg said:

If I were to guess it's using this from the same developer. Seems the VDP can be manipulated somehow, but it's still the Genesis itself. Curious as to how any of this works, but it does explain how it looks so good. I wonder if it still has to convert everything to the 512 color palette the Genesis is capable of?

No, it's not really the Genesis itself. A real m68k port of Doom is barely able to run the game at 1fps link

Like I said, it's an FPGA chip that's capable of emulating an intel 386 cpu with a lot of RAM onboard, blasting pixels at the Genesis VDP. And yeah, it's sorta like playing back a video through the VDP in real time as demonstrated above.

Edited January 24, 2021 by Vic

[A Nobody]

I feel that it should be a overheaded view game or 2D one on the Mega Drive, but that's impressive.

Edited January 24, 2021 by The Strife Commando

[P41R47]

1 hour ago, The Strife Commando said:

I feel that it should be a overheaded view game or 2D one on the Mega Drive, but that's impressive.

that would be a new game, not a port :/

[A Nobody]

1 hour ago, P41R47 said:

that would be a new game, not a port :/

It would make for a great playable game though.

[P41R47]

2 hours ago, The Strife Commando said:

It would make for a great playable game though.

there are games of that style you already suggested, to name a few:

-Chaos Engine

-True Lies

-Demolition Man combine plataformer with some segments of top down view.

-Super Smash TV

 

[Maes]

On 1/17/2021 at 1:33 AM, Noiser said:

What's the matter with the colors though? It seems to be the actual Doom playpal, not the 512 palette.

 

EverDrive issues aside, with just 512 total colors (which are derived from a 9-bit RGB colorspace, to boot), you really aren't gonna see any improvement in Doom visuals. For one, you'll have trouble using more than 9 colormaps for anything, at least if you want them to look truly distinct. You are gonna see much flatter shades, garish colormaps and even more horrible dark transitions than the current playpal (which at least is defined on a 24-bit colorspace).

 

Some context:

 

Even with a 12-bit RGB space (essentially 4-4-4 RGB) in most cases things will still look fugly:

 

https://www.doomworld.com/forum/post/1028361

 

while even the 5-6-5/5-5-5 RGB colormaps initially meant to be used with Doom's Alpha HiColor mode don't look all that great either.

 

In such cases, the best strategy is to map the original 24-bit colormaps to the closest 256 (or less...) colors your native hardware can offer in paletted mode. In most cases it looks just as good as a full RGB processing approach, and is usually more efficient in terms of bandwidth, especially when we're talking about such low RGB depths.

 

 

Edited January 25, 2021 by Maes

[Death Egg]

On 1/24/2021 at 1:54 AM, Vic said:

No, it's not really the Genesis itself. A real m68k port of Doom is barely able to run the game at 1fps link

Like I said, it's an FPGA chip that's capable of emulating an intel 386 cpu with a lot of RAM onboard, blasting pixels at the Genesis VDP. And yeah, it's sorta like playing back a video through the VDP in real time as demonstrated above.

Yeah I've seen this; it's a shame it requires the Everdrive Pro to run the build because I'd love to mess around with the source code using an emulator.

[M2m]

There seems to be an update

 

https://youtu.be/UGbrrrLdmrk

 

Edited March 19, 2021 by M2m