Doom 3 & OG Xbox Ports

[LapizMina]

Hi, this is my first post and the topic I'm on right now is based on learning about editing the IDTech 4 engine (Doom3) and some way to create a compatibility with ports on the Xbox OG console.

In case you have any idea about either of the 2 things, I would be grateful for some answer.

[Edward850]

Doom 3 on Xbox uses a different, binary map format from the PC versions text based format (and is different again from BFGs archives which we have the complete specs for anyway). Said format has not yet been reverse engineered (at least no one has published any public information) so there's no way to decompile or replace the maps.

[OpenRift]

15 minutes ago, Edward850 said:

Doom 3 on Xbox uses a different, binary map format from the PC versions text based format (and is different again from BFGs archives which we have the complete specs for anyway). Said format has not yet been reverse engineered (at least no one has published any public information) so there's no way to decompile or replace the maps.

Such a strange decision for them to completely redo the map format just for the Xbox version... It's not like the original format wouldn't work well if they were ported, right?

[LexiMax]

1 minute ago, OpenRift said:

It's not like the original format wouldn't work well if they were ported, right?

 

On a console as resource-constrained as the original Xbox, it likely would've caused loading times to be significantly longer.

[Edward850]

Or impossible. On a console you don't the luxury of virtual memory paging, the RAM you have is all you have, which means your loading process has to minimize temporary memory usage as much as possible as you can't afford to fragment your allocation (remember that fragmented memory can actually be worse than limited memory, just because you have X amount of memory free, you only have X if it's one contiguous block).

 

Dumping in a text file and parsing it just for the purpose of allocating even more resources leaves a text parser sized hole in your memory usage you may no longer be able to use for anything else.

[OpenRift]

1 hour ago, LexiMax said:

 

On a console as resource-constrained as the original Xbox, it likely would've caused loading times to be significantly longer.

1 minute ago, Edward850 said:

Or impossible. On a console you don't the luxury of virtual memory paging, the RAM you have is all you have, which means your loading process has to minimize temporary memory usage as much as possible as you can't afford to fragment your allocation (remember that fragmented memory can actually be worse than limited memory, just because you have X amount of memory free, you only have X if it's one contiguous block).

  

Dumping in a text file and parsing it just for the purpose of allocating even more resources leaves a text parser sized hole in your memory usage you may no longer be able to use for anything else.

 

Oh wait, I think I misunderstood. I thought OP was talking about the ports of Doom 1 and 2 for the OG Xbox that came with Doom 3 collectors edition.

Edited July 1, 2023 by OpenRift

[Redneckerz]

There is a hack that allows playing the game at 720p on original hardware provided you upgrade the internal memory to 128 MB.