MrFlibble

This one? https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/graphics/bny3dwad It's indeed from 1994, you have a very good memory! @galileo31dos01, that's some pretty cool stuff, thanks! System Vices indeed looks like very mid-90-ish custom art.

That's not Roald Dahl's BFG!

Can you give a rough estimate of how much one would need to sacrifice in terms of level geometry's complexity (and/or internal structure of the data) for a speed improvement? Or would it be just "easier" to write a completely new rendering engine from scratch that'd be optimized for the 386 architecture? If we just put Doom aside, do you think that it is possible to create an engine that would be more advanced than that of Wolf3D and replicate at least some of Doom's features, but run better on a 386DX at least? BTW, have you considered rendering distance as a detail level variable? For example, both Bethesda's Arena and Daggerfall have this "detail" slider that actually controls the viewing distance, which affects the frame rate quite notably.

Apologies for what is probably a really dumb question, but I was wondering. It appears that on a 386, the only way to have a decent frame rate is the potato mode, which lowers down the resolution very significantly. On the other hand, the admittedly much more simple Wolfenstein 3-D can play on a 386 at a decent speed with almost fullscreen and everything drawn at the max resolution. @viti95, if you had control both over the game engine and the content, do you think it would be possible to achieve playable frame rates on a 386 without the need to lower the resolution/detail? Let's say you'd not only turn off the rendering of floors, ceilings and skyboxes, but all sprites and textures would have half of Doom's resolution, and you could make any simplifications to level geometry you'd find necessary to achieve playable speeds. Of would you just need to go back to Wolf3D's limitations of 90 degree walls and no height differences to achieve this?

NVM, found it on my own and it was POVDoom by Ikka Keränen: https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/graphics/povdoom The date stamps on the files are from 1995-1996, and the sprites are very nicely done, albeit in a rather distinct style.

Thanks to JS-DOS, this is now playable in browser as well: https://www.dosgamesarchive.com/play/hacx BTW, I noticed that the v1.2 HACX.WAD seems to no longer play 100% accurately in recent GZDoom builds. For example, the samurai statue found early on in MAP09 does not morph into a Monstruct, although it does so both in HACX 1.1 under DOS and in HACX 1.2 with ZDoom 2.8.1.

Doom 64?

I've checked this with the original (freeware) DOS version too. Body Armour indeed gives you 400 health and this is done via the DEHACKED patch (so it works in MBF without any need for code changes), and picking up Centrophenoxine ups you to 200% health like the regular Soul Sphere. But picking any MicroKits will not increase health beyond 200% -- neither do Health Bonuses in Doom 1.2, where the Soul Sphere actually gives you +100 health to a maximum of 199 (which is cool in a certain way).

This is a DOS port of HacX 1.2 based on Gerwin Broers' MBF Maintenance Release 2.04, with additional sound code for GENMIDI/OPL3 playback by @ludicrous_peridot. You will need the HacX 1.2 IWAD to play: hx12dos.zip -- binary executable package (alternate download: hx12dos.zip) hxmbf_s.zip -- source code (alternate download: hxmbf_s.zip) The port takes full advantage of MBF fixes and performance improvements. I've also made a few other, mostly cosmetic changes: restored the original title screen with a subtle change that it now says "made for DOOM II engine" instead of "made for DOOM II) restored the original invulnerability palette a custom automap colour scheme, based on that from Strife but with green instead of blue I think it works pretty well with HacX' status bar design. added full support for HUD font palswap to enable working menus and help screen The non-blue font colours (and the background tile) match the fonts used in the original HacX installer. since HacX does not have custom par times, I removed their display from the tally screen altogether I had to make a few other code tweaks to match HacX behaviour and logic. For example, while the original DOS version is based on DOOM II v1.9, player armour can go above 200% when you pick armour bonuses ("dampeners"), like in DOOM v1.2. This is reproduced when you play HacX v1.2 in ZDoom, although I've not found where exactly it is modified, but does not work automatically in MBF. Thankfully, MBF 2.04 has a v1.2 compatibility mode, so I only had the alter the code a bit to make it work. I also turned off item translucency (applied when translucency is enabled in MBF options) for pickups that are meant to be solid objects, such as the Body Armour (Megasphere) or Force Field (Invulnerability). Global translucency is still turned off by default to give the game a more vanilla look. Since neither the v1.1 nor v1.2 demos worked properly in MBF, I recorded new demos taking place in the same levels. The port takes advantage of @ludicrous_peridot's modified Allegro library that enables the use of the GENMIDI lump (DMXOPL is included) for OPL music playback. And yes, you can turn on the optional helper dogs to play around. The port uses the libre versions by @Nash from GZDoom. I also included multiplayer drivers IPXHACX.EXE and SERHACX.EXE, which are modified IPXBOOM.EXE and SERBOOM.EXE from the original BOOM 2.02 distribution that recognise HACX.EXE as a valid executable. I was able to start up a co-op multiplayer game using IPXHACX.EXE using two instances of DOSBox running on the same computer (as described here).

Does anyone remember that toy dinosaur wad I mentioned above?

Your credits include id Software, does this mean that some part of the sprite is derived from id's artwork? That would make the entire thing un-free.

Oh yes, most definitely! How could I not? I'm afraid my case was that I wasn't exactly in the back to the 90s nostalgia mood ;)

The reds in Earhbound remind me of Duke Nukem 3D, was that intentional?

Nice! Do you release these under a particular license, or just free to use?

I'm by no means a movie-goer, but this is one of the few films that I watched in the theatre when it was released. We'd just passed out Masters degree entry exams and went to see a cool movie to celebrate. It was indeed very impressive on the big screen and I had some good memories of it, but as I stumbled upon it on TV somewhat recentish, I felt that it was no longer as cool when I knew all the plot twists. The cast delivered some pretty solid performances overall, always nice to see Cillian Murphy and Michael Caine, and also I think it was one of the last roles of Pete Postlethwaite? While the idea of multiple dreams-within-dreams is rather original, I don't feel that the themes in this film are particularly deep or philosophical (something that Nolan seems to get "accused" of pretty often, as far as I can tell). The tone just makes a good contrast with the increasingly intricate action scenes to make the whole premise sound more intellectual than it really is.