Bad Mood : Falcon030 'Doom'

[nemodhs]

This should address a number of problems, including Zamuel's crash. It also adds some features.

Great! Now it also seems to run more smoothly under MagiC. It crashed during Attract Mode in the first beta, now it all works fine.

- adds a subtle crosshair in 'freelook' mode

Subtle, but greatly improves gameplay. I like it a lot.

[nemodhs]

On VGA, the game runs most efficiently with 'chunky columns' (F5 key, and default setting) in fullscreen mode. It will use a fancy Videl configuration for this case and draw half as many pixels - but only in fullscreen!. It may not be as fast as using a reduced size window, but you'll get more pixels filled for cycles spent. Enabling chunky columns in any other situation (RGB, or VGA in windowed mode) is a bit slower because it must be done in software. Still its faster to use it than hi-detail mode in all situations.

Nice! Just tried this mode. I much prefer the immersive feel over a smaller game window. Though, I'm not sure it'll actually work for long play sessions. Having no status info whatsoever will probably make it too difficult later. Is there a way to sneak status information into such a display mode as well?

[kristjanga]

what is the plan? An entire new Atari chapter of Doom?

Now that is a good idea. We could have a level contest

[viking272]

For anyone that missed the minor engine posted here on the 11 Dec 2014 I've added it to the website in the downloads area.
URL is http://devilsdoorbell.com/binary-downloads/

[dml]

I read on the BadMood website that you are looking for game levels among other things as project contributions, what is the plan? An entire new Atari chapter of Doom?

Yes, was hoping to do a new chapter just for F030 BadMooD. But its too much for me to do myself - working on many other things at once.

At one point I considered offering up one of my F030s as a prize for best contributed level design but soon realized it didn't make much sense as an incentive for people who probably already had one - and the best levels (or indeed, anything) are made by people who don't need an incentive except to do nice work

So while I have further changes & improvements pending for BM I'm not currently sure if it will include a whole chapter or just a level or two by me.

If anyone out there can contribute levels of a decent quality of course they would be included Same goes for new music.

[dml]

It's last commit before Nicolas did the major WinUAE CPU core update which broke a few things. Those are being fixed, but it may take a while. New CPU core should bring in much better cycle accuracy and MMU emulation (and TT-RAM support is in works).

I'm quite far behind with Hatari changes now so I don't even know which versions work and don't work with my code. BM now relies on some DSP fixes which were done since Hatari 1.6, and the newest UAE core changes may again break with it... eventually I'll find time to look at the new version.

[dml]

Great! Now it also seems to run more smoothly under MagiC. It crashed during Attract Mode in the first beta, now it all works fine.

Cool. That problem was just me being careless. Glad the MagiC thing turned to be the same cause...

- adds a subtle crosshair in 'freelook' mode

Subtle, but greatly improves gameplay. I like it a lot.

I had some requests to restore the classic gameplay mode (auto aim, with no freelook) so the crosshair doubles as a sort of indicator of which mode you're playing in (the classic mode doesn't need one).

It is a bit harder in freelook mode but I think it does add some new element of skill for playing through the episodes again. It's a lot harder to hit enemies at distance but OTOH you can now shoot them at any distance with a bit of luck (classic mode terminates auto-aim beyond some fixed distance)

[dml]

Is there a way to sneak status information into such a display mode as well?

You're probably right about that - essential text for health, armor, ammo could be drawn on top of the window but would need a new code path, alternate from the Doom game code for the HUD. I'll probably look at this when I get a chance to see what can be done. To minimize impact it probably needs a JIT compiled sprite path since drawing patches directly for fonts does cost a bit, which is moderate effort but certainly doable.

[kristjanga]

What is a good level editor for Doom?

[dml]

What is a good level editor for Doom?

I don't remember what I used in the past, but currently using DoomBuilder on Windows for level editing, and Slade for WAD editing.

If you're just making new levels without adding or changing textures and reorganizing other resources you can probably live without Slade.


There is also GEM-Deu on the Falcon which I did use at one point and does also work with BM.


[EDIT]

Note that DoomBuilder has a built-in 3D visualization mode - by hitting 'W' you can fly around the level and view it fully textured from any angle using a camera bound to the ESDF keys. Hit 'W' again to return to the editor mode. This saves a lot of export/testing turnaround time which used to be a serious productivity bottleneck when getting started

[Eero Tamminen]

essential text for health, armor, ammo could be drawn on top of the window but would need a new code path, alternate from the Doom game code for the HUD. I'll probably look at this when I get a chance to see what can be done. To minimize impact it probably needs a JIT compiled sprite path since drawing patches directly for fonts does cost a bit, which is moderate effort but certainly doable.

What if instead of text (numbers), you would have just thin horizontal bars for all the necessary items?

[NGF]

I read on the BadMood website that you are looking for game levels among other things as project contributions, what is the plan? An entire new Atari chapter of Doom?

Yes, was hoping to do a new chapter just for F030 BadMooD. But its too much for me to do myself - working on many other things at once.

At one point I considered offering up one of my F030s as a prize for best contributed level design but soon realized it didn't make much sense as an incentive for people who probably already had one - and the best levels (or indeed, anything) are made by people who don't need an incentive except to do nice work

So while I have further changes & improvements pending for BM I'm not currently sure if it will include a whole chapter or just a level or two by me.

If anyone out there can contribute levels of a decent quality of course they would be included Same goes for new music.

I still make Doom levels sometimes when I get some free time/inspiration. If I create a map, is it something special I should have in mind, other than it should be Doom 1? Can I add custom textures?

[dml]

What if instead of text (numbers), you would have just thin horizontal bars for all the necessary items?

Yes that probably makes sense, and certainly less work

[dml]

I still make Doom levels sometimes when I get some free time/inspiration. If I create a map, is it something special I should have in mind, other than it should be Doom 1? Can I add custom textures?

Mostly its the same as Doom1, but here are some things to keep in mind:

[1] Stick to Doom 1 for now (Doom2 will be supported but not by the current version). This mainly means monsters and textures from Doom 1.
[2] Levels will need to be saved into the BMT1.WAD if they are to be used with it, otherwise it will run in 'vanilla mode' - which should be ok for testing but doesn't allow software music or extra sfx etc. etc.
[3] BM can only load one PWAD at a time - which is the real reason for [2], since BMT1 is itself a PWAD. This will get fixed eventually.
[4] Keep an eye on the segs-per-subsector ratio and occlusion (% of level visibility from any one point in the scene). The episode 4 levels look nice but are generally a bit too slow for the Falcon. They were designed quite late, with 486 spec or better and some don't use visibility management very well. The first 3 episodes were designed with more occlusion and more segs-per-subsector. Corridors, rooms and clever design tricks.
[5] Fancy ZDoom, Boom stuff isn't supported. There are some extra things in BM but not really enough to affect level design much.
[6] Be a bit careful about monsters above/below the player, when freelook mode is active. You can't look up/down beyond a certain limit so some monsters might be un-targetable when too close so keep that in mind.

Notes:

You can add your own textures in the usual way, at least for wall textures and transparent wall patches. This is the same as Doom - clone and edit the TEXTURES? and PNAMES directories in a new PWAD.

You also can replace flats, or add new ones - but adding new ones needs to be done by adding them between two special markers (see BMT1.WAD which does this for UV light flats). Replacing is a bit rude if you want to make the level part of a future release because it zaps existing textures but adding new ones is easy enough.

Replacing sprites is troublesome - avoid for now. I'm still looking into issues with this.

Replacing textures with truecolour versions is quite easy and I can explain separately. (I'm aiming to simplify this further but it will do for now)

There are some special shaders which can be used by prefixing any TEXTURES? entry with @X where X= number from 0 to 9. It's possible to just clone the texture entry and rename it, without adding new patches. I haven't documented this feature yet because the shaders are not final.

I recently made a small hack to texture handling which treats any TEXTURES? entry with no patches assigned as a literal patch name - it will look for a single patch with the same name as the texture. This allows overloading of composite textures (textures with multiple patches e.g. walls-with-switches) using a single truecolour texture much easier, and eliminates the need to mix TC and bitmapped patches in the same composite texture. This feature will be included in the next release.

There is one new special behaviour (elevator) which allows the floor and ceiling to move up/down together. This isn't quite working 100% due to texture pegging conflicts but will be fixed at some point. The behaviour does work aside from this and can be used. I'll look out the specials number if you need it - just ask.

As mentioned before - any decent levels will be included in a future release (and I'll be happy to have them!) and I'll do any work required to include them in the BMTx.WAD so if you plan to spend some time on levels just spend your time making the level good as an independent PWAD and I'll worry about integrating the bits and pieces, including any texture changes

(Alternatively you can save the file into BMT1.WAD and return it to me with notes on changes made).

[dml]

I'll be releasing a more optimized version of BadMooD beta quite soon, with some extra features. It will remain compatible with the existing pre-built data etc.

[nemodhs]

What if instead of text (numbers), you would have just thin horizontal bars for all the necessary items?

Yes that probably makes sense, and certainly less work

I'd be perfectly happy with that.

[dml]

I'd be perfectly happy with that.

Done

Simon will put new builds on the site soon. The changes will include:

- a basic fullscreen-mode HUD showing approximate ammo, health, armor using coloured bars
- improved rendering optimizations
- builds for mono, stereo and HQ-stereo versions
the mono build is intended for 16mhz. stereo is intended for 16mhz or bus-boosted machines. HQ stereo is really meant for fast boxes only. stereo builds offer 'positional' (pseudo-3d) sound effects and separation of music instruments.
- some fixes and other stuff


I have not been able to test the most recent optimizations on accelerated machines so we'll have to see how that goes. There is a build for 040- and 060-based machines but I think more work is needed before those will run it. I just haven't had time or space for that yet.

[Eero Tamminen]

I have not been able to test the most recent optimizations on accelerated machines so we'll have to see how that goes. There is a build for 040- and 060-based machines but I think more work is needed before those will run it. I just haven't had time or space for that yet.

Hatari supports now 060 Falcon in addition to 040, but it's probably not accurate enough yet for using it for CPU<->DSP sync compatibility testing.

[dml]

Hatari supports now 060 Falcon in addition to 040, but it's probably not accurate enough yet for using it for CPU<->DSP sync compatibility testing.

If I can use it to find some non-timing compatibility problems then it will still be helpful. I can turn off or isolate all of the timing issues separately.

[viking272]

A bit later than anticipated but as Doug mentioned earlier today beta v0.32 has been released and is available for download from the website:

http://devilsdoorbell.com/

[jonord]

I'm probably missing something obvious. I downloaded the Dec 08 version and the December 11 patch. But I cannot get it to work. I use the free doom1.wad - file that worked nicely with the earlier version from the beginning of 2014. I got messages about "Could not locate entry in WAD: ...." and then it counted up lots and lots of names, like SW2_3, SW2_7 and so on. finally it got to
R_Init: Inti DOOM refresh daemon - [....Erro: R_InitTextures: Missing patch in

My Falcon has 14MB Ram and I use CBHD, same setup that used to work with the old version. Advice? Should I try to hunt down the DOOMU.WAD-file?

[viking272]

I'm probably missing something obvious. I downloaded the Dec 08 version and the December 11 patch. But I cannot get it to work. I use the free doom1.wad - file that worked nicely with the earlier version from the beginning of 2014. I got messages about "Could not locate entry in WAD: ...." and then it counted up lots and lots of names, like SW2_3, SW2_7 and so on. finally it got to
R_Init: Inti DOOM refresh daemon - [....Erro: R_InitTextures: Missing patch in

My Falcon has 14MB Ram and I use CBHD, same setup that used to work with the old version. Advice? Should I try to hunt down the DOOMU.WAD-file?

Yes, hunt down the DOOMU.WAD.

- Ultimate Doom IWAD v1.9 (12,408,292 bytes)
- this file must be named DOOMU.WAD, placed in BADMOOD directory

[viking272]

I downloaded the Dec 08 version and the December 11 patch.

Doug can correct me but I think you need just the 08 Dec and now the 05 Jan releases to be on the latest v0.32 of the engine. (i.e. the 11 Dec patch isn't needed)

[shoggoth]

Played another level on the new beta. This is fun, this is not a tech demo. I can't believe how fast it is.

[nemodhs]

- a basic fullscreen-mode HUD showing approximate ammo, health, armor using coloured bars

Fantastic! Thanks again for all your work.

Played a few levels this way and it's perfect.