Doom on SoftPC on an SE/30?

rplacd

rplacd

6502
This isn't a recap troubleshooting thread, I know, so I'll make it worth your time. Would someone have the capacity to run Doom on SoftPC on an (extremely tricked out) SE/30? I don't have enough RAM to do so myself, but I do have this morbid curiosity to see how well it would run. I wonder how well it would run with a machine with an '040 accelerator and a Micron Xceed grayscale adapter...

 
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Hi,

Short of basic DOS applications, anything graphical x86 (be it a VGA game or Windows 3.x) is glacially slow when emulated on an 030 or 040.  I recently got quite excited running the 68K version of SoftPC (Windows 3.1 and DOS 6.2 installed) on my Quadra 840AV and it was pretty much unusable.   As proof of concept it'll probably run and I'd love to see it displayed but it will be unplayable; I think the 68K version of Doom is also pretty unimpressive.

JB

 
ymk said:
Why not run native 68K Doom?
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It's a fairly unoptimized port in my experience. Both Wolf3D and Doom seem to need far more powerful hardware on the Mac, than compared to PC. Doom even edges towards needing a PPC for good performance, and Wolf3D at least a fast '030, though I find it still struggles a bit on an '040.

That said, emulating the PC port won't help much, I'm afraid. The only real solution would simply be a new, more optimized port, and the 68k Mac platform is probably too niche to receive such attention from Wolf3D/Doom community port programmers.

 
Wolf 3D on an 040 is awful. I remember hating to play it on my dad's Quadra 660 back when. No good until it was on a Power Mac.

 
LaPorta said:
Wolf 3D on an 040 is awful. I remember hating to play it on my dad's Quadra 660 back when. No good until it was on a Power Mac.
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Yeah, the box does mention it's optimized for PowerPC hardware, and it sure feels that way. But it shows how badly optimized the port is for the 68k platform, given on the PC side, Wolf3D ran fine on 386 class machines. I know comparing 68k and x86 CPUs is not an apples to apples comparison (pun not intended), but you'd figure an optimized port would run better on 040s, if not fast 030s.

 
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Should have said that in the first place, this is the native 68k Mac version.

I don't see the DOS version running at all in SoftPC.

 
LaPorta said:
I’m amazed it actually runs.
Click to expand...
Not only that, I'm amazed that it can even keep up a smooth audio experience while struggling to render more than 1 FPS...

(I stole a little screenshot from that for my avatar, if that's alright @Bolle?)

 
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rplacd said:
(I stole a little screenshot from that for my avatar, if that's alright @Bolle?)
Click to expand...
I can get you a nicer one as well if you want ;)

Doom title screen in grayscale on the SE/30? Just let me know what you're looking for.

 
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Doom was actually coded on C on a 68k NeXT station computer, why it runs so poorly on the Mac 68k machines has always been something I've wondered about, like was it just a bad port or was there a technical reason as to why the Mac port is so terrible? 

 
It's not exactly a fair comparison.  Macs couldn't paint the entire screen with 320x200 like PCs could.  Slow Macs had to either play in a tiny 320x240 window or use pixel doubling, which still had a cost.  Unlike pixel doubling, the every-other-row rendering in Duke Nukem 3D actually reduced video bandwidth, speeding up the game significantly.  On the other hand, 640x480 meant when Macs got Command & Conquer, four times the battlefield area was visible, making it a far better experience.

 
This is the 2nd of 2 threads I’m posting this on (the other was 14 years old) because they were the few search results I found before embarking on this project. Sorry for what is basically a double post across two old threads.
——
I posted my own port of doom specifically for the SE/30 earlier today.

Primary discussion thread over here and the git repo is over here.
There I have posted the .sit with the binary for those who don’t want to bother compiling and building themselves, down in the “Releases” page. I welcome all feedback but prefer to hear back in the tinkerdifferent thread I posted above.
Really hope it makes some SE/30 dreams or mac Doom dreams come true.


I will add the frame rate is rough (3 to 10 fps range) and there’s no sound yet but hey - it’s doom on an se/30 with no cpu upgrade or xceed card. Yes it currently takes up tons of RAM by design (any tradeoff I could make of RAM in exchange of CPU I just went with it. But it doesn’t really need that much so it’ll probably come way down when I take a closer look at how much I’m even really using now.)

Enjoy and happy Macintosh.
Edit: happy *MARCHintosh! New tech and it’s autocorrect…. :-P
 
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