DOOM screen resolution: When did it start supporting more than 320x200?

[Azafran]

I was wondering when it was first possible to play DOOM at a resolution higher than 320x200. I searched but couldn't find any info. I know that a preview for Doom95 was released in November 1995 and it was supposed to support 640x480 but I'm not 100% sure the preview included it.

Then, which was the first port to support that resolution and at what point in time?

 

This can appear silly and irrelevant, but I'm on a quest of experiencing Doom in a period accurate manner so I want to know at what point makes sense to use for example Crispy Doom to play some WADS released at the time.

Edited June 18 by Azafran
typo

[Gez]

26 minutes ago, Azafran said:

Then, which was the first port to support that resolution and at what point in time?

That was one of the very first things to appear in source ports once the source code was released.

 

For example, Doom Legacy v1.11 (February 1998) and DOSDoom 0.64 (June 1998) both boast high resolution, up to 1280x1024 in the case of DOSDoom.

[Blzut3]

Doom for the Macintosh also had high resolution support, so I guess that takes you back to June 1995 at least (according to the Doom wiki).  The wiki also mentions Doom95's predecessor WinDoom supporting 640x400 rendering in June 1994, although I haven't personally verified that.  But that would suggest there's a very narrow window of time where levels were being made and it wasn't possible to run at Crispy's resolution as long as DeHackEd wasn't involved.

Edited June 18 by Blzut3

[Redneckerz]

You have to look at WinDoom. The original one. There was also a stereoscopic fork of it pre-source code which tanked hardware back then.

 

I have the links, just not at home. @ me so i wont forget and can post it.

[Azafran]

Thank you for your answers. It's quite remarkable that Doom could be played at Crispy's resolution just one year after launch. Although probably the vast majority of people kept playing at original res at least until 1998.

Shocking how purist some people are about the vanilla res when 640x480 was attainable that early in Doom's history.

[NightFright]

And quite unstable. WinDoom wasn't exactly a shining jewel of software engineering.

[Redneckerz]

2 hours ago, Azafran said:

Thank you for your answers. It's quite remarkable that Doom could be played at Crispy's resolution just one year after launch. Although probably the vast majority of people kept playing at original res at least until 1998.

Shocking how purist some people are about the vanilla res when 640x480 was attainable that early in Doom's history.

 

2 hours ago, NightFright said:

And quite unstable. WinDoom wasn't exactly a shining jewel of software engineering.

Found the link. Turns out, i made a thread of this a few years ago. Stereoscopic WinDoom had resolution support up to 1280x1024, includes binary and source:
 

 

What i was wrong about is that it isn't based on the original WinDoom, rather, Bruce Lewis's WinDoom (Of GLDoom fame). Thus, this modification was post-Doom source code, from 1998. It was a system killer though, due to the VGA card writing two buffers (Thus rendering everything twice). You also need a specialized driver to use this, and a pair of 3D glasses.

[AnotherGrunt]

What? I'm not sure but I think official release (DOS) never supported anything other than Mode 13h. Look into source code:

===================
=
= I_InitGraphics
=
===================
*/

void I_InitGraphics (void)
{
	if (novideo)
		return;
	grmode = true;
	regs.h.ah = 0;
	regs.h.al = 0x13;
	int386 (0x10, &regs, &regs);
	screen = currentscreen = (byte *)(0xa0000 + __djgpp_conventional_base);
	destscreen = (byte *)(0xa4000 + __djgpp_conventional_base);
	outp (SC_INDEX,SC_MEMMODE);
	outp (SC_INDEX+1,(inp(SC_INDEX+1)&~8)|4);
	outp (GC_INDEX,GC_MODE);
	outp (GC_INDEX+1,inp(GC_INDEX+1)&~0x13);
	outp (GC_INDEX,GC_MISCELLANEOUS);
	outp (GC_INDEX+1,inp(GC_INDEX+1)&~2);
	outpw (SC_INDEX,SC_MAPMASK|(15<<8));
	memset (screen, 0, 65536);
	outp (CRTC_INDEX,CRTC_UNDERLINE);
	outp (CRTC_INDEX+1,inp(CRTC_INDEX+1)&~0x40);
	outp (CRTC_INDEX,CRTC_MODE);
	outp (CRTC_INDEX+1,inp(CRTC_INDEX+1)|0x40);
	outp (GC_INDEX,GC_READMAP);
	I_SetPalette (W_CacheLumpName("PLAYPAL", PU_CACHE));
	I_InitDiskFlash ();

 

Reason was speed of ISA bus as most graphic cards (and sound cards) were on ISA bus. If you're interested more details here.

I have here pretty much vanilla DOOM and on i80386dx and on Tseng Labs ET4000 won't give you much more than 20fps. Refresh rate was problem.

[Blzut3]

19 hours ago, Azafran said:

Shocking how purist some people are about the vanilla res when 640x480 was attainable that early in Doom's history. 

Little nit picky, but Crispy's resolution is 640x400 not 640x480.

 

I double checked a few things about WinDoom out of curiosity and the 640x400 mode was only in the earlier builds (the third one seems to only render at 320x200).  The earlier builds also lack basic functionality so even if someone had a copy at the time (it wasn't widely distributed from what I can tell), they likely wouldn't have used it (and I'm not sure how well 640x400 would have ran on hardware available at the time).

 

So from a practical stand point I guess the Macintosh version was the first?  Again, assuming no DeHackEd.  I suppose an interesting corollary to this question would be, when was the first version of a source port with DeHackEd support and 640x400.  It definitely wasn't long after the source code was released since the linked Legacy 1.11 release advertises it.

[Azafran]

21 minutes ago, Blzut3 said:

Little nit picky, but Crispy's resolution is 640x400 not 640x480.

 

I double checked a few things about WinDoom out of curiosity and the 640x400 mode was only in the earlier builds (the third one seems to only render at 320x200).  The earlier builds also lack basic functionality so even if someone had a copy at the time (it wasn't widely distributed from what I can tell), they likely wouldn't have used it (and I'm not sure how well 640x400 would have ran on hardware available at the time).

  

So from a practical stand point I guess the Macintosh version was the first?  Again, assuming no DeHackEd.  I suppose an interesting corollary to this question would be, when was the first version of a source port with DeHackEd support and 640x400.  It definitely wasn't long after the source code was released since the linked Legacy 1.11 release advertises it.

 

Yes, I only mentioned 640x480 because it was the highest resolution available in Doom95. But yes, Crispy is double the original (plus sides if widescreen).

 

I'm too interested in knowing when was first possible to use DeHackEd in higher resolutions. And when the use of double the res started to be widespread.

[No-Man Baugh]

On 6/19/2024 at 8:39 AM, AnotherGrunt said:

What? I'm not sure but I think official release (DOS) never supported anything other than Mode 13h. Look into source code

 

The original DOS release indeed never had support for 400p, but Azafran was asking when was the first time a port enabled the use of higher resolution, not if it's possible to get anything higher than 200p in actual vanilla Doom (which of course you can't)