POOM - a Pico8 recreation of Doom

[TotalTS]

I'm surprised to see that there's no post about it here. 
Came out yesterday, It's pretty good, you should check it out.

https://freds72.itch.io/poom



I really like the color palette, wonder how it would look if a WAD had those. The levels are great.
You can play it on your phone, and with a mouse on your PC.

Update: Sources & Dev kit

 

Edited December 12, 2020 by TotalTS

[kwc]

Holy smokes...

[Kokoro Hane]

Yo, I was just gonna post about this but ya beat me to it xD

 

Just started playing it and it's so far a neat little game. I love the graphic style. So far only encountered shotgun guys though, so not sure if there's more enemy variety. Despite this though, I am enjoying it and look forward to reaching its end!

[TotalTS]

1 minute ago, Kokoro Hane said:

So far only encountered shotgun guys though, so not sure if there's more enemy variety. Despite this though, I am enjoying it and look forward to reaching its end!

I reached the final level, so far I saw:

*Shotgun guys
*Imps
*Cacodemons
*Lost Souls
*Cyberdemon

[Kokoro Hane]

6 minutes ago, TotalTS said:

I reached the final level, so far I saw:

*Shotgun guys
*Imps
*Cacodemons
*Lost Souls
*Cyberdemon

 

Cool! As I am progressing, I so far ran into Imps now! Can't wait to see how the others look!

[OniriA]

So it's like a specially designed  doom wad / modification for the phone?

 

I don't play games on the phone myself but this is still pretty neat, atleast its a better idea then to port the actual game imo.

 

Wonder how many levels it has.

 

 

[SOSU]

Ok so when we remaking Scythe 2 for this :O?

[Noiser]

Ok, this is right up my alley! s2

I love the visual style and palette used here. All textures seems to be made from scratch, which is very cool. Also big props for allowing a keyboard-only scheme together with mouse+ESDF. I have to get used to the movement that is a bit floaty, but that make the whole thing a bit more challenging which I actually like.
 

3 hours ago, OniriA said:

So it's like a specially designed  doom wad / modification for the phone?

It's a bit more than that (I'm not even sure if these games are optimized for phones)

Spoiler

"The Pico-8 is a virtual machine and game engine created by Lexaloffle Games. It is designed to mimic a "fantasy video game console," by emulating harsh hardware limitations of the video game consoles around the 1980s. The goal of this is to spur one's creativity and ingenuity in producing games, and avoid being overwhelmed with the many possibilities of modern tools and machines. Such a design also allows Pico-8 games to have a familiar look and feel." (Wikipedia)

 

Edited December 8, 2020 by Noiser

[MFG38]

Played it for a few minutes the other day. It's certainly a pretty neat little thing, especially for being made in PICO-8.

[Murdoch]

Never heard of Pico8 before now. But this is kind of adorable. It as if the NES had the same colour palette, display resolution and sound chip and yet was somehow powerful enough to push a 3D engine around.

[Kokoro Hane]

11 hours ago, OniriA said:

So it's like a specially designed  doom wad / modification for the phone?

 

I don't play games on the phone myself but this is still pretty neat, atleast its a better idea then to port the actual game imo.

 

Wonder how many levels it has.

 

 

 

You can play it on the browser (right on the Itch page) or download a Windows build. 

[TotalTS]

Updated the first post with @kwc gif, and the recently released Dev Kit and Source tweet from the dev.

Edited December 12, 2020 by TotalTS

[Job]

I just saw an article and tried it out. Fun! Just making sure there was already a post on it. Kind of weird control scheme, but I'm getting the hang of it. 

[taufan99]

Some fun curiosity. Impressive how the dev also gives away the sources and dev kit for us!

[leodoom85]

Funnily enough, the shotgun is the worst weapon of the bunch. Ammo balance is good enough but the shotty is easily eclipsed by the other weapons, which is quite a contrast to the shotty that we all know. Still, it's a fun game that anyone should try, especially on Ultra-Violence for a good challenge.

2 hours ago, Job said:

Kind of weird control scheme, but I'm getting the hang of it.

Yeah, it can take a while to get accostumed of the controls but doesn't take long anyway.

 

On 12/8/2020 at 2:11 PM, Kokoro Hane said:

You can play it on the browser (right on the Itch page) or download a Windows build. 

I suggest that you download the game for a better experience.

[ReaperAA]

This looks really cool. Even for limited colors, the art style makes it look aesthetically nice. I got through the first 2 maps. The ammo/health balance is pretty tight in UV. Unfortunately, the shotgun is weaker (or maybe the enemies are more durable), but that could be to make up for difficulty because there are less enemies compared to vanilla Doom.

Surprised that @Redneckerz hasn't seen this yet.

[Gez]

The shotgun's been nerfed to make up for it being the starting weapon. It only shoots three pellets instead of seven.

[ReaperAA]

Ok I just completed this on UV. Its quite fun and I really had to be on my toes. The 2nd and 3rd levels felt the most challenging to me and things started feeling easier after that mostly because there were less shotgunners and ammo was also a bit more abundant. It might also have to do with the fact that I got more used to the game at that point.

The Cyberdemon level would have been challenging if I had pistol started (well technically shotgun started) the level. But I entered that level with 150+health and 150+armor and full plasma/rocket ammo

[Redneckerz]

7 hours ago, ReaperAA said:

Surprised that @Redneckerz hasn't seen this yet.

Thanks for the mention :) I have seen it prior, and whilst it is really impressive for PICO-8 and it looks absolutely ace (And there is a Wiki page by it!) its very much a Doom-like. I dunno why it does not trigger my excites. Something like ATTE looks equally limiting, but yeah.

 

I dunno why, but Poom is pretty fantastic and the fact it has source code is great too. But why i am not as excited as the lot, i have yet to find out.

 

However, what does attract that visually it looks like a minified version of Retroblazer:

[ReaperAA]

14 minutes ago, Redneckerz said:

Retroblazer:

 

Never knew about this game. It looks really cool. But was it ever completed? Can't find anything other than an alpha version.

[DoomedFox]

25 minutes ago, ReaperAA said:

 

Never knew about this game. It looks really cool. But was it ever completed? Can't find anything other than an alpha version.

Far as I know the Kickstarter didn't reach it's target goal and the project was cancelled and abandoned without any news about it. 

 

Sucks too since the style looked pretty nice. 

[Gez]

It seems to have died years ago, so that alpha is all there it to find.

https://www.indiedb.com/games/retroblazer

Note that it's technically a Quake TC, running on the Darkplaces engine.

 

Anyway back to Poom: you can easily mod in your own levels and even weapons and monsters, it's basically like modding for ZDoom -- except, of course, for the stringent technical restrictions of the Pico-8. But you can create actors in DECORATE, you define maps in ZMAPINFO, and you create textures from a single texture atlas (or "tile") with the TEXTURES lump and SLADE's texture editor.

 

And yes, this means that you could very easily make a Poom TC for ZDoom, I suppose...

[Redneckerz]

1 hour ago, ReaperAA said:

 

Never knew about this game. It looks really cool. But was it ever completed? Can't find anything other than an alpha version.

Sadly was never completed. But so there are many interesting games that never got released or finished.

Retroblazer was going to iOS aswell.

31 minutes ago, Gez said:

And yes, this means that you could very easily make a Poom TC for ZDoom, I suppose...

Or lets port ZDoom to Pico8 :P

Or lets port Poom rendering to a ZDoom based source fork, becoming something like FastDoom but for ZDoom.

 

Gez, you literal librarian you, you actually make me all interested in this Poom...

[wheresthebeef]

Why you gotta remind me of Retroblazer and get me sad all over again :(

 

Poom is great, a fun little gem for the short time it lasts. The palette and custom textures were nice. The buck teethed imps, not so much :P

Edited December 14, 2020 by wheresthebeef

[Gez]

It managed to make the lost souls adorable with their little mouse squeaks, though.

 

8 minutes ago, Redneckerz said:

Or lets port ZDoom to Pico8 :P

The other way around is probably easier...

Edited December 14, 2020 by Gez

[Redneckerz]

20 minutes ago, wheresthebeef said:

Why you gotta remind me of Retroblazer and get me sad all over again :(

Because 2020 is a miserable year so its never not a good moment to remind people of all the good things that once were and never got finished, prolonging the misery that is our very existence.

Or something. :P

 

15 minutes ago, Gez said:

The other way around is probably easier...

I know but nothing screams more impossible than doing that. And, after all, aiming for the impossible resulted in things like Dread, Doom SNES, FastDoom and this.

[Solid SOAP]

What a cool little novelty! It's like if there was a functional Gameboy Doom available.

[Rudolph]

Just found out about Poom thanks to @pagb. Even though I do not like the control scheme, I am very impressed by the project. It is also kind of cool that it features original maps rather than just a recreation of Knee Deep In The Dead. I wonder if it would be possible to port those maps to vanilla Doom.

Edited April 9, 2021 by Rudolph

[1Destro3456]

Damn, this looks really good, I wish I knew about this before, the palette looks really good I need to play it

[Gez]

On vendredi 9 avril 2021 at 4:07 PM, Rudolph said:

I wonder if it would be possible to port those maps to vanilla Doom.

It absolutely would be possible; they're actually made as real Doom maps (UDMF) with normal map editors, and then compiled into the Poom format by a Python script. See information here and there:

https://github.com/freds72/poom-sdk

https://github.com/ParanoidCactus/poom-sdk