Re: [stella] doom

Subject: Re: [stella] doom
From: Glenn Saunders <krishna@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 29 Oct 1997 21:04:51 -0800 (PST)
On Wed, 29 Oct 1997, Jim Crawford wrote:
> curious.. what do you think is the closest the 2600 could come to doom?

Escape from the Mindmaster, which is a little like Wolfenstein without the
rotation.

> i would think some sort of chunky 3d game could be implemented, drawing
> the image in the playfield, possibly using sprites to smooth it out.

Not only is the playfield only 40 pixels across, it is also only 1 bit in
color depth.  Although you can get lots of different colors in bands down
the screen, you can't get more than two colors per scanline.

Because of this, getting any detail for a Doom clone would be problematic.
You could try using sprites to make up for this, but again, even these are
only monochrome (per scanline) and are also limited in number.

Beyond that, there is the issue of calculations.  Doom requires a lot of
CPU power to calculate the rotations of the 3D polygonal walls.
Mindmaster gets away with it because all the walls are the same and you
are just going through a series of tunnels so it simply has to calculate
some simple diagonals.  Mostly table-driven or algorithmically driven.
Once you step up to real 3D space, you realize the 2600 doesn't have
enough "think" time to calculate the next frame during vertical blank.

Some great pseudo3D games have been written for the 2600 that take
advantage of altering sprite data, shape, and width (Robot Tank,
Battlezone, Solaris, Radar Lock, Starmaster, Super Football, etc, Phaser
Patrol, etc...) but I don't think the 2600 can really do any realistic 3D
calculations.




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