Yesterday Kweepa launched the final version of DOOM64 on Itch.io, an ambitious demake that marks the second entry in his planned id Software conversion trilogy for the Commodore 64. Having previously squeezed a version of Doom onto the even more limited VIC-20 using off-axis walls, Kweepa shifted focus this time around. By ditching off-axis angles, he managed to redirect the C64’s processing cycles toward rendering dynamic height changes for floors and ceilings. To capture the look of the 1993 classic, the game implements lighting changes by refreshing the system's 40x25 text display with dithered shading patterns. Full texture mapping was explicitly abandoned to prevent a muddy, low-resolution appearance, a rather interesting optimization choice that freed up precious system memory for custom lookup tables, enemy mipmaps, and a native soundtrack.
The technical wizardry continues, where maps were crafted frame-by-frame on a grid using a custom editor equipped with instantaneous preview tools to balance elevation and shadows. The game's weapons utilize hand-tweaked, re-paletted, and rescaled sprites originally sourced from the PC shareware release. On the audio side however, the creator has said that sounds are taken from the original PC speaker effects and have been decimated, which worked for the VIC-20 version. Commodore 64 owners looking to test their mettle against the forces of Hell can grab the game in two distinct flavors: a standard version optimized for modern emulators or hardware fastloaders like the C64 Ultimate, and a Krill-powered alternative tailored specifically to maximize disk speeds on a bone-stock, unmodified C64 setup. The package is topped off with a sleek loading splash screen illustrated by digital artist Paul Docherty (d0kk!).
AI Disclosure AI Assisted, Code
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Ooooh. I think this is prolly made first and foremost with the turbo function of the C64U in mind ... :3 Gonna give this a while. Doom Lite!
ReplyDeleteI remember seeing a video about the struggle to make it for the system, it's nice to see that they have been able to take it this far.
ReplyDeleteHow terrible stuff, also AI-assisted and terrible PC sounds.
ReplyDeleteSo far there's not many negative views such as this - from the itch and yt channel :D "Wow. Just wow... 🤯👍👍👍" " surprisingly not bad!
Delete" "This is crazy and impressive at the same time ... well done. Is this running on stock C64?
" i cannot believe that i see this.
" - Although there are some comments calling it AI slop ;)
He's an Atari fan – he's simply jealous!
DeleteNo I'm an Amiga fan (of course). I owned a C64 in 80's, and know what it can do. 3D texturemapped games like Doom, should not be attempted on a C64. Doom is a joke even on an Amiga 500, without a modern Pistorm accelerator. This game is so far from the capabilities of 8-bit computers that it doesnt make much sense.
DeleteIn this version of DOOM, the title screen is the best part
ReplyDelete