Does it run Doom?
Wolfenstein 3D for Gameboy Color on custom cartridge (2016)
11–20 of 39 posts
Re: Wolfenstein 3D for Gameboy Color on custom cartridge (2016)
#12The GBC had astounding games such as the Cannon Fodder port (almost like a 1:1 port from the Amiga /DOS version but with 2 soldiers instead of 3), Alone in the Dark, Scooby Doo...
Re: Wolfenstein 3D for Gameboy Color on custom cartridge (2016)
#13Beautiful. The motivation and execution. Everything about this is why I come to HN. Related... for a native GB/DMG/Z80 take ... the original first person shooter for the Game Boy was Faceball 2000. (1991) The studio was full of coders who loved and admired Wolf 3D and everything that followed. By day, we were stuck coding variations of Z80 and 6502 assembly. I did the Sega Game Gear port. It was not good.
Faceball 2000 also the only 16-player GB link game
Re: Wolfenstein 3D for Gameboy Color on custom cartridge (2016)
#14Glad to see some love for Wolf3d. It was an important step in the development of the FPS genre, but has always been overshadowed by Doom. As someone who could not play Doom on my 386, Wolfenstein I have many fond memories of this classic. I'm sure I'm not alone!
It probably depends on how young one was, I was young enough to play it for a year or two before Doom appeared (also Doom was kind-of sluggish on my machine at the time).
Re: Wolfenstein 3D for Gameboy Color on custom cartridge (2016)
#15Really cool project! Since the hardware of the cartridge is fully customizable, wouldn't it be possible to port games that would normally not be playable on the GBC? You could add advanced hardware, that is nowadays so small that it fits on the cartridge, and the GBC would act more or less like a renderer of the pre-calculated output of those chips.
Essentially, yes. You could even go further and make it like a 32X style add-on with a pass-through connector if you wanted to really save money. I guess one of these carts with a micro SD card socket on it would be the ideal.
Re: Wolfenstein 3D for Gameboy Color on custom cartridge (2016)
#16Glad to see some love for Wolf3d. It was an important step in the development of the FPS genre, but has always been overshadowed by Doom. As someone who could not play Doom on my 386, Wolfenstein I have many fond memories of this classic. I'm sure I'm not alone!
I had a similar experience with Quake when it first came out... it felt more like a slideshow on my AMD 5x86 @133mhz w/ 64mb ram and large cache module. My computer was entirely lopsided for games, I got the AMD a few months before a crazy deal on the ram and cache module for it, so I maxed it out. I will say it tore through business apps with OS/2 and later NT4 ran like a champ on that little box.
I couldn't afford the jump to Pentium at the time. I had it for about 4 years or so, until I bumped up to an overclocked Duron at 1ghz around 2000-2001 or so.
Re: Wolfenstein 3D for Gameboy Color on custom cartridge (2016)
#17Also, on faux 3D gaming, one of the best games it's Supercross Freestyle. You should have seen it in action. Yes, Top Gear Pocket 2 overall had better variation but the ingame scaling of the cross racing one was incredible https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercross_Freestyle
Cruisin Exotica had better graphics/art maybe but that's it, Supercross did more credible jumps and perspective tricks under an 8 bit console.
On 16 bit racers, probably the patched Genesis ROMs for Road Rash I-III would be one of the best faux 3D games ever before 32 bit consoles and computers rendered (no pun intended) them obsolete. They add a far better framerate while being totally compatible for consoles. You can get thrown from your bike and "explore" the environment on your own with nice scaling tricks.
Lotus 3 for the Amiga achieved believable perspective based techniques too to simulate a 3D cliff in a pure 2D game, at leat racing aside. These were great too.
Now, once Road Rash 3D hit the PSX (and Ridge Racer among Daytona Usa, altough Daytona's render distance sucked and RR hided it far better) the 2D games' days were numbered. With Road Rash 3D you could totally free roam around on your own outside the circuit, go anywhere, do 360 degree turns and be sure that any town/road you would be seeing further in the horizon would be a rideable path. It was, and that was mind blowing, compared to the static screens from 2D games.
Imagine a pre-Street View world where video games would be almost the sole way (among movies and series OFC) to experience yourself the rest of the world, or America if you were an European. No, multimedia CD's were expensive and your parent's wouldn't buy you a "Virtual Tour CD" from Paris or the like, it had no actual use except if it were something like Italy or France showed from a touristical/historical basis. These first videogames gave me a roaming experience until GTA III was a thing. Later, yes, Street View killed it because, you know, you got the real thing in your computer, but the magic was lost a little.
Re: Wolfenstein 3D for Gameboy Color on custom cartridge (2016)
#18Most of the game runs on an external Cortex-M0 chip in the cart. GBC is incapable of this much computation per frame. This solution is elegant and not unlike what some of the fancier NES games did. Overall, very well done.
Re: Wolfenstein 3D for Gameboy Color on custom cartridge (2016)
#19Most of the game runs on an external Cortex-M0 chip in the cart. GBC is incapable of this much computation per frame. This solution is elegant and not unlike what some of the fancier NES games did. Overall, very well done.
The SNES does something similar with the Super Game Boy, and it is surprising to me that the SNES does not have the memory bandwidth to run Game Boy Color games at full speed using this technique. Super FX games worked similarly and never ran at full speed, albeit they had larger dimensions.
But somehow the Game Boy Color itself can transfer a full screen's worth of tiles and their color palettes at what looks like 60 FPS. Quite impressive, really.
Re: Wolfenstein 3D for Gameboy Color on custom cartridge (2016)
#20Most of the game runs on an external Cortex-M0 chip in the cart. GBC is incapable of this much computation per frame. This solution is elegant and not unlike what some of the fancier NES games did. Overall, very well done.
The SNES does something similar with the Super Game Boy, and it is surprising to me that the SNES does not have the memory bandwidth to run Game Boy Color games at full speed using this technique. Super FX games worked similarly and never ran at full speed, albeit they had larger dimensions. But somehow the Game Boy Color itself can transfer a full screen's worth of tiles and their color palettes at what looks like 6…
30fps as per TFA for fullscreen xfer
but GB's screen is shitty enough that 30FPS is aplenty