Optimus

I don't like most JRPGs. I prefer certain even janky western RPGs, like yesterday I was playing Eye of the Beholder on GBA version, or Fighting Fantasy on DS, or previously I played Dark Spire and skipped Etrium Odyssey even if the later is more beautiful in colors but first one is stylistic b&w and grim. I look at new or old RPGs to get into and somehow I am not attracted on the style and mechanics of many JRPGs even if I try few of them. Strange also to make that FromSoft a Japanese company does Dark Souls or newer series that all feel more of a western RPG with dark themes rather than JRPGs. It's the only exception of RPGs from Japan that I love to play (although it's more like an action RPG rather than retro turn based).

Tried timedemo 1 on my beefy 386DX 40mhz with ISA Tseng Labs. Also tried against commercial Doom. Full screen high detail then half detail High detail Doom: 7.03 FDoom: 9.247 Fdoom13h: 10.842 Half detail: Doom: 12 FDoom: 16.379 Fdoom13h: 15.602 Finally tried the new FDoomH: Full detail (320x100): 13.938 Half detail(160x100): 23.693 Interesting results matching my expectations. I am curious of Fdoom13h as it doesn't use the mode-x and have to write bytes in columns on slow VGA, but writes on the buffer and I guess fast 32bit copy of the buffer to vram on last step. So it ends up being even a bit faster than regular FDoom unless you go for half detail. Funny I tried at some point before on 486 or Pentium crippled with ISA gfx card and mode13h really paid off, but with Vesa Local/PCI card results were different. On 386 of course because CPU is main bottleneck, there is improvement but slight. You might prefer to play half res anyway, where again as I guessed now the FDoom instead of the 13h is advantage (16.379 against 15.602) because I guess the double pixel mode-x trick is utilized here. Finally was FDoomH or half-res FDoom advantage? Was 320x100 or 160x200 better? And to my guesses the less columns were better than less vertical rendering. FDoomH may be better if you want to go for the 160x100 experience. My favorite is Half Detail FDoom when I play on 386 and Full detail on 486 (I think FDoom13h didn't give or it did in the Pentium with PCI but lost on 486 slightly with VLB). I am also surprised even full detail fullscreen on 386 is less choppy than old Doom and kinda managable. Maybe with a bit of smaller window it's ok.

That's cool btw. I always was curious about an 100 lines version, with low detail to test an 160x100 version on my 386. Might be even better than if I don't prefer the potate 4x1 for pixel sizes. Pitty the player bar is not readable.

Even if I am a Nintendo fan, I only recently tried to play games in either a N64 or PS1 and I somehow prefer the visuals of PS1 in most cases because of crispy instead of blurry textures. Even if N64 has the superior GPU with proper perspective correction. But really, I tried some games side by side and I like the crispiness of PS1. I also find more PS1 games I would be very interesting to invest time to.

I want to join again!!! Count me in.

I just realized after replaying Dark Souls 2 SOTFS that they shouldn't have remade this version. There is some discussion about which is better, and most people do agree SOTFS is the definite edition, but many times I prefer to play the original and say this should have been it and nothing else. But the issue is not that I prefer one over the other, but the enemy placement is so vastly different that it creates a schism in my brain. I can play either of the two versions and enjoy my time with both, but now in my memories of what enemies to expect or where do you find certain sould item are split. Imagine if ID did two vastly different versions of classic Doom where the enemy/thing placements are so vastly different that you didn't recognize which is the original and which a pirate bootleg of the original where a kid vastly altered things in a WAD editor. Or a better phrase to put it, it's like I am stuck in a double mandela effect world, where both Berenstein and Berenstain Bears exist.

Wow, I didn't know someone other than me tried to do maps for OptiDoom :) The lighting level, I didn't know it was possible to put over 255. Probably the current code reads higher values but casts them to uint8, so it wraps around. I can very easily fix this by clamping to 255 first if so. I need to see if I really read 16bit values from the wad, I don't remember. I will check some of the other issues. I don't think I ever tested the cheat codes as I added them on the menu (I found the console ones awkward). Maybe they are disabled by accident or choice. I was planning to make a write up on my page for modding. Haven't started. Some of the types in my page are weird, because I combine. If I want to enable fog and color lighting and others, I OR certain bits in the type to get a final number to put in sector type but it's like a magic number, but I don't know how to Doom Builder to output the combined type. I think it's a hack the way I do it and not sure if it's the proper standard way. Finally, I recently was working on a big framework that emulates in a way some parts of the 3DO SDK, I have another big project where I call 3DO API functions, and I emulated on PC code with an SDL2 window, parts of the CEL renderer, screen output, input, few other things, so that I can port 3DO projects on PC, without changing any line of code. I plan to use this to port the OptiDoom code running natively on PC and not just emulator. It could become a PC port of sorts, with all that extra functionality but the 3DO code running natively without any changes. I know also there is another port Phoenix, but I am planning to port my own too.

Most remember Doom for run and gun. Rather than also level design, exploration and secrets. My thrill when playing oldschool FPS is to explore that hidden room, dark corner, other area I forgot, cautiously expecting something to jump at me, then find some obscure room that doesn't make any sense but makes me wonder what that all was. There was something in that. Now most people remember run and gun, rip and tear, must always arena, arena with monsters,. so a lot of modern indie FPS recreations are delivering something different. Anyway, what was Doom all about was the qeustion?

Just finished it, short and sweet. I am uploading a video. Interesting idea, although too flashy for my brain, haha!

Easily before 2010.

I haven't kept my first attempts but it went through 3 steps: 1) Open E1M1 in the editor and add Cyberdemons on the outside and Cacos all over the place. That's the only thing that makes sense to me at this stage. 2) Learn the editor, learn what a sector is and how you manually relate linedefs to it in DEU2, make small rectangular room and wonder "how the f*** can I make a door?" 3) Getting really good and excited and be like "let's make the most realistic Doom map ever", start making some details of broken rocks on the floor and pseudo sector shadows. Getting my first "visplane error" crash on DOS and rage quit for few years :)

Even though there are a lot of programming goals outside of Doom, I'll write some resolution even if half of them might be lower priority. - Definitely will do one more map, but the goal would be to now not use the Doom stock textures, but try to make my own. I need to check what tools are available, but one idea I never started was to write some procedural generation code tailored to the original Doom palette, to make my own. - I have an idea for a map called The Shrinker, where I'd need to create extra textures and maybe monsters. - Last time I wanted to make some WAD tools, as I was looking at the WAD format while I was working on OptiDoom 3DO. One would be the procedural texture generator tool tailored for Doom palette. Other was some global WAD searcher, damn,. I am never gonna start this early but I was thrilled. - New OptiDoom 3DO version? Unlikely because of other priorities, but if so then try to optimize certain functions with ARM assembly or replace part of the visplane engine with something more effecient. - I wish I did a more serious episode/megawad, I started many times but..

My entry: Name: Cementine Author: Optimus File: Cementine.zip Format: Limit Removing Difficuly Settings: Yes Build Time: 6 days Tested in: GZDoom, PrBoom+ No new textures, just stock Doom 2 Screenshots:

Someone should make a WAD that makes this true :)

I have to start from a lame ass boring cement room and see where it goes from there. Planning to finish my map for Doomworld Maximum project 2023 and I only have few days lol.