New Release: Doom

tokra · Post by **tokra** » Tue Nov 20, 2012 3:24 pm

Very nice to see the constant progress on this! I noticed you now restart at the level the player died in. Nice. I still did not make it to e1m4 though, even on "Can I play daddy"-setting. I also like how I can recognize the original doom level-layout

What I sorely miss is a small arrow on the map-screen telling you where the player is located and in which direction he's looking. It's great that scrolling the map is working. I can't believe how much you are able to cram in there. Keep it up. This is utterly amazing

[/end fanboy rant]

Kweepa · Post by **Kweepa** » Tue Nov 20, 2012 4:18 pm

You can also zoom in and out on the map screen by pressing I and K. I'll put an arrow in soon. It's on my to-do list. Also, spawning facing the right direction (eg e1m4).

I'll tweak the difficulty settings some more later. The soldiers' hit accuracy and damage need to decrease with distance. If you have any specific suggestions, let me know!

Are you playing on a real VIC?

tokra · Post by **tokra** » Tue Nov 20, 2012 7:18 pm

Oh, map zooming is nice. Didn't know that works.

I usually play this on VICE (sometimes PAL sometimes NTSC), but have also tried it on both PAL and NTSC-real machines with MegaCart successfully.

I agree hit accuracy should decrease for the soldiers the farther away they are. Also, (don't know if I experienced this correctly), it seems like demons can bite the player from afar? Or maybe it was a solider standing behind a demon that could still hit me (instead of the demon). I guess monster-infighting is too much to ask?

If there's any way to increase the frame rate I think that's what the game would benefit the most from. But I realize speed comes with unrolled code and large tables mostly, and with RAM being tight this is a hard decision to make. You should definitely not cut into any features the game has right now to keep it true to "Doom"

From a usability-standpoint I guess the initial menu-screen should work with the standard cursor-keys or at least include a hint to use W and S and Left Arrow for navigating the menu. I remember my first time trying this having to go online again to find this out.

Dramatically I think a different music for each level even if just 30 second-loops would highly increase the atmosphere. Having played the original Doom for hours and hours, having new background music with each new level subconsciously feels like a reward for completing the last level. Maybe the original menu-screen should be music-less and just have the original ominous 5 second "gong"-sound like the original as well to set the mood.

Kweepa · Post by **Kweepa** » Wed Nov 21, 2012 7:21 am

Map arrow is in.
Also the spawn angle.
You're right about the menu controls. It catches me out from time to time

Also about the music, although it took me about 8 hours to convert that one track and I don't think other tracks would be any quicker. I don't remember if there's space on the disk either.
I might do some level specific wall textures.

tokra · Post by **tokra** » Wed Nov 21, 2012 2:24 pm

When testing the map-feature, I noticed after going to the map for several times in a level, at some point it will just keep going to a black screen altogether. Also, I must admit I don't really know how to "read" the arrow. Probably due to the low VIC-resolution. Maybe it would be more practical to just have 8 (or 16) pre-defined angles for the arrow.

Did you up the difficulty? I could barely finish e1m1 just now.

Oh, regarding disk-space: you still have lots

just 190 of 664 blocks used by doom.d64 at this time.

Small bug report: I noticed I can leave the playfield-area in "Hangar" - after the first door keep right and some steps after the end of the blueish wall when I keep wall-hugging at about 60 degree I seem to slip through the wall and land in "hyperspace" if you will

Kweepa · Post by **Kweepa** » Thu Nov 22, 2012 12:23 pm

I didn't change the difficulty level, no. You must have gotten unlucky!

Hmm, I'll think about changing the arrow. It's a little T shaped thing, with the player facing along the long part of the T. Perhaps I could just draw it twice the size? Or an actual arrow?

New version up with added music for each level. Some tracks are better than others.

I tried to fix the map bug too.

Still collision bugs? Darn.

tokra · Post by **tokra** » Thu Nov 22, 2012 3:19 pm

Different level music, yeah! Very nice. Did you find a quicker way to do those? However I'm still unable to progress further than level 3, always die before. It always feels like I don't hit the enemies right

I'm a lamer and need cheat-codes... For now I just renamed e1m5 to e1m1 and so on, so I can finally see those later levels

The first time I reached level 2 one of the VIC sound channels played a continous tone. Only after I died and the level restarted this was fixed.

Finishing a level my brain was kinda expecting the short "level end"-music of Doom. I realize memory is tight, maybe this could be loaded from disc?

Didn't come up with any map-problem just now, maybe an actual arrow would help recognizing the facing-direction, instead of the "T". I think that confused me at first, because I was facing diagonally and wondering about the strange looking arrow.

darkatx · Post by **darkatx** » Fri Nov 23, 2012 5:11 pm

I touched up the face a little - might go over some more in detail later...

Kweepa · Post by **Kweepa** » Fri Nov 23, 2012 7:23 pm

Game is now playable start to finish! (There's no secret level.)
I added a victory screen, and the inter/victor songs.
Also tweaked the accuracy of the soldiers, and reworked the map arrow.
The projectiles the end bosses fire are way too weak. I need to fix that.

I suppose I'll have to start fixing bugs and optimizing now... Perhaps I'll add weapons first.

tokra, yes, I found a way to make the music faster. Actually, most of the eight hours for e1m1 was spent making tools, now that I remember, so I can knock out a track in ten-fifteen minutes. I've been loading all the music from disc anyway, so that's not a problem. The problem is usually deciding what to cut to make it fit in 800 bytes.

darkatx, thanks. I'm not sure it's enough of an improvement for me to change it. I kind of prefer mine. Maybe that's just because I'm used to it.

tokra · Post by **tokra** » Fri Nov 23, 2012 8:42 pm

Wow, the speed with which you're doing these improvements is amazing! The intermission-music is great. I miss music in the start-menu since you removed that. Maybe add the original intro-music from Doom as well?

Map-arrow works fine. I still have the occasional collision bug where I end up behind walls and the music-bug that keeps one voice running a continous not when reaching a new level/intermission-screen note as well.

I think the face you use is fine. Maybe darkatx wanted to do the "hurt" versions when you have less hitpoints (when the face is all beaten up)? I don't think that is really essential and if it takes up too much room, it should be sacrified for more important features.

Time to do a personal tally on what I think would be the most desirable improvements:

1. overall game-speed
2. overall game-speed (again, because it's the most important)
3. weapons: shotgun to do some real damage would be nice, chainsaw just for the WOW-effect - not sure about chaingun or flame thrower.
not sure if it's possible to show weapon action on screen in a recognizable manner
4. presentation: nice background graphics for menu, intermission ("you are here") and victory screens to lighten up the darkness of the game a bit. The small things that hold the game togerhter
5. cheat codes

Do you have memory-layout of the game somewhere on Github? I'd like to see how it all comes together

Kweepa · Post by **Kweepa** » Fri Nov 23, 2012 8:53 pm

The problem with the original intro music is that it I don't think it will translate well to my current music player. But I'll give it a shot to check.

Cheat codes, heh. IDDQD and IDKFA?

The memory layout is at the top of vicdoom.c. It's also in the file doom_cc65.cfg. It's not too detailed though.

darkatx · Post by **darkatx** » Fri Nov 23, 2012 11:02 pm

I was just messing around with the font - I redid the face a bit to add some more detail but less is more it seems

Looks great enough as is but if you want some custom graphics done let me know!

tokra · Post by **tokra** » Sat Nov 24, 2012 7:01 am

Yeah, you're right. The intro sounds pretty lame. I always liked that the music started already while loading the game. And the E1M1-music is really the one everyone knows. So maybe back to square one.

Kweepa · Post by **Kweepa** » Sat Nov 24, 2012 2:04 pm

Replaced the intro music with e1m9. It's not an ideal solution but at least it sounds good and adds some music in the menus.
Also freed up a bit of memory (by pushing some code up to $BCC0-$BDFF) and made the acid pools do damage.

darkatx · Post by **darkatx** » Sun Nov 25, 2012 10:26 am

I just beat the game (I'll admit I tried playing it at 200% speed in VICE)
I find that rotating is slow but rotating while moving forward or backwards was much faster (which makes sense). Is there any way for a key check where if the turn buttons are held down that the degree of turn doubles/increases?

Playing this game was incredible!!! Awesome job man!

Oh, by the way, nice sprite textures - took a look at a few of them and just marveled at your work!