My goal was to build a complete, shippable first-person shooter using techniques that were common in the early 90s, while allowing myself the luxury of using a modern compiler and a platform abstraction layer.
↫ Marko Stanic
It looks amazing already, and it isn’t even done. Stanic goes into great detail explaining how he created the various assets for the game, and it’s a joy to read through his creative process and problem-solving routines. The game’s called Catlantean 3D, and is expected to ship somewhere early 2027.
https://staniks.github.io/articles/catlantean-3d-blog-1/… is essentially a Wolfenstein ~ DOOM clone. The maps are Wolfenstein level, single plane, and vertical ray casting. The movement is more 3d aka DOOM
I remember reading tech docs… printed on paper back in the day on how these worked. Fascinating subjects, but writing them again by hand is still a challenge.
However the author specifically uses Mode 13h (320×200), expanded to 320×240 for better aspect ratio. Mentions Mode-X, however I think this is still linear not planar (unlike DOOM/Mode-Y). Is that “cheating”? Maybe. The older hardware would not run fast enough to process the linear buffers
However this is still a challenge today for a very specific case. Running a “Wolfenstein” clone on Amiga. A task still not fully achieved.
(They had made a massive mistake by laying off their hardware team during the era PCs moved to VGA but Amiga stayed with older AGA. I think think they could even compete for even the EGA)
Anyway, here is the best attempt so far, using all the tricks in the book, including massive preprocessing and very limited combination of textures:
https://pixelglass.org/#grind
Wolfenstein 3D didn’t have floors and ceilings, just some walls floating in a grey void (with some chandelier sprites trying but failing to give the impression there is a floor and ceiling),
So, this is something in-between: A textured floor and ceiling like in DOOM, but no sector partitioning with different ceiling and floor height per sectors (which allows for things like stairs and alcoves) that DOOM had.
Yes, it seems to be a mix in between.
Though their use of 256 color palette and detailed textures makes it closer to DOOM, but technologically this seems closer to Wolf 3d at basic level.
Yeah, I never liked Wolfenstein 3D’s colors, too cartoony for the WWII theme and too limited, the result of originally designing the game for EGA but switching to VGA later.
As an aside, I have a hard time believing that every color you see in DOOM (and DOOM II etc) fits in a 16×16 bmp file. That was some very careful palette selection. And yes, with the exception of some special modes (such as wearing the radiation suit, high-visibility googles, and taking damage), DOOM uses one palette for all levels.