Sega Saturn does what sony wont and nintendont. The saturn wasn’t a behemoth of possibility IT IS the behemoth of possibility. And now with modern technology people are able to work and take advantage of its hardware better than ever.
#SegaSaturn#Doom#DoomII▸ Support the work: Ko-fi https://ko-fi.com/n0rt0n85 · PayPal https://paypal.me/N0rt0N85 Aguzzino is Doom rebuilt on SlaveDriver, the Lobotomy Software engine behind PowerSlave on the Sega Saturn. Every game image in this video was captured from a real console, except the few shots labelled MEDNAFEN, taken under the emulator. Six weeks ago the port ran a single map, E1M1 of the shareware Doom. Today 126 of the 132 maps of Ultimate Doom, Doom II, TNT and Plutonia run on the Saturn, one disc per game, 121 without the RAM cartridge. This episode follows the road between the two, one problem at a time: monsters too big for the memory, maps refused, monsters that did not shoot back, walls that slide, maps too big for any memory, and six maps that still do not fit. In this episode:
- the Saturn already had Doom in 1997: 59 maps, no Arch-vile, about 12 frames a second, the same courtyard side by side
- the Arch-vile, left out of the PlayStation and 1997 Saturn ports
- Doom II’s monsters weigh 2.5 MB at one byte a pixel, against 2 MB of work RAM on the whole console: a palette of 15 colors per sprite, 4 bits a pixel, 1.5 MB for every monster, and a map loads only the monsters placed in that map
- the steps: when a map still holds too much, the converter gives sprites up one step at a time, and the Imp goes from 53 tiles to 21; then every map of the four discs against the step needed
- September 14, one map: 88 Doom sectors cut into 208 convex pieces, because SlaveDriver paints rooms back to front and only understands convex rooms
- what a tile is: one 64 x 64 picture stretched over the four corners of a quad, the engine’s own format, and the reason some walls look softer than on PC; other ways are under study, including the RAM cartridge
- the tile budget: PowerSlave’s levels carried 33 to 101 tiles, E1M1 asks for 291, a level can name 255 at most, and the memory holds 198
- nine maps, then a whole game: lifts in 112 of the 132 maps, up to four players on one screen, deathmatch, the automap, CD music, saves, secrets
- October 3, a step back: twelve maps on the disc and two refused, Dead Simple back three days later, and 99 checks before any map reaches a disc
- the chaingunner, silent on October 7 and firing on October 8: 84 maps hold one, 9 of Doom II’s 18 species had empty attacks, and 35 functions were written from Doom’s own source, 7 KB of program and not one byte of data
- sliding walls: 532 in the four games, 63 in E3M3 alone; a quad has no texture offset, so the cells slide; stretched ends against the cut conveyor, the address trick of XL2’s Sonic Z-Treme engine, and why the cut conveyor fits this engine better: the 32 wall tiles of video memory are already full
- invulnerability rebuilt in inverted grey on every palette, and monster teleporters in 44 maps, 23 in Plutonia
- why one disc per game: the guns never leave the memory pool, 239 KB for Doom II against 134 KB for Doom
- maps too big for any memory, cut into sections: TNT MAP26 cut by hand along a single door, then a graph of rooms and passages where the cheapest border wins; on Plutonia MAP06 the two halves meet at two airlocks, and the other half loads from the CD behind the door
- how the maps run: 92 measured under Mednafen, one bot alone, Ultra-Violence; Ultimate Doom mostly smooth, Doom II, TNT and Plutonia with maps where more than a third of the images come slower than 15 a second
- still missing, named on screen: no intermission screens, a save restarts the level, no voodoo dolls, some crushers do no harm, cut maps for one player only
- the six maps left: openings over 1,000 units wide, where a door is 256 at most
Aguzzino is a fan project. Doom is id Software’s, 1993. SlaveDriver is Lobotomy Software’s, 1996. Not affiliated with SEGA, id Software, Bethesda or Lobotomy Software. #SegaSaturn #Doom #DoomII #FinalDoom #PowerSlave #homebrew #retrodev #gamedev
Its been a long journey concerning the Doom ports on Saturn. It was clearly and deliberately overshadowed by the playstation and obviously the PC ports. But now its actually gaining some traction and I am excited to see this come into fruition.
