Jump to content
Search In
  • More options...
Find results that contain...
Find results in...
BlueFireZ88

Recent attemps at a portable Doom?

Recommended Posts

I've had the urge to play some GBA Doom again recently, and it makes me lament that I don't know of any serious attempts to bring Doom to portable platforms. Does anyone know if there have been attempts to bring to portable game systems like DS/3DS, PSP, and the like?

Share this post


Link to post

It's a damn shame Doom for the iPhone doesn't have iPhone 5 support :(
I hope they release the entire Classic Complete collection for iPhone at some point or at least something other than the original.

Share this post


Link to post

Porting any of the major/reasonably standard ports like LinuxDoom, Chocolate, PrBoom etc. should be a one-afternoon job for any aficionado, provided the target platform has at least a decent C compiler and a sane way to access graphics/sound and libraries to use them in your own programs. Also, the less external dependencies or platform-specific libraries a port uses, the better.

That being said, even if you do everything correctly on most portables you might just end up with a portable Doom demo player: none so far has found a satisfying control scheme, so most portable ports never get much playtesting, let alone form a community of regular players in order to justify experimenting/research.

Share this post


Link to post
BlueFireZ88 said:

A 3DS version of Classic Complete would make me a happy man.

I remember, ages ago, Carmack talking about wanting to port Q3A to the original DS. I'd prefer Doom, but any of id's older stuff on the 3DS would be awesome.

Share this post


Link to post
Maes said:

That being said, even if you do everything correctly on most portables you might just end up with a portable Doom demo player: none so far has found a satisfying control scheme, so most portable ports never get much playtesting, let alone form a community of regular players in order to justify experimenting/research.

Vita has twin sticks, and the 3DS can with an optional (and disgustingly uncommon) add-on. It's not mouse-and-keyboard or anything, but twin sticks has been shown to be playable enough in the past...

Touchscreen-only controls on the other hand, a-friggin'-men.

Share this post


Link to post

I couldn't see wanting to use a second stick on the DS when the touchscreen is prefect for aiming already. As long as the developers implement a left-handed option, anyway. Who needs analog movement?

Share this post


Link to post

While touchscreen aiming would be nifty, it would necessitate using a stylus, which makes hitting buttons with the stylus-holding hand too awkward to consider, and would limit your ability to do actions kinda severely.

I mean, assuming a right-handed gamer for maximum flexibility, analog would move, D-Pad could select weapon, L would should, touchscreen would aim... now how about opening doors? Okay, maybe D-Pad should take that; should the weapons go on the touchscreen, then? What about the automap? I'll just assume the run button is covered by the analog sensitivity of the analog pad.

Lefties would have it even harder. All you get are the face buttons and R. The face buttons would inevitably be used for movement, but since they're digital, you can't do running (I suppose you'd just have autorun on, anyway?). R would shoot, I guess. That leaves nowhere for weapon selection, automap or the Use key.

Bleh.

Share this post


Link to post

And yet Metroid Prime Hunters pulled it off just fine. R for fire, double tap touchscreen for jump (probably the worst bit of the control scheme, but it worked well enough), touch buttons for weapon switching/ability toggling that were smart enough to not activate if you just dragged the stylus over them while aiming.

It's more than doable if you're willing to invest the tiniest amount of effort (which I'm guessing the DSDoom devs aren't, considering their save code still randomly locks the game up). The Quake port for the DS gives user configurable touchscreen buttons and is more than playable left-handed.

Share this post


Link to post

Well, here's your killer: which portable platform should you consider? GB32 or DS? What about the likes of GP32? PSP? What about pure stick or pure touch controls? The only ones that seem workable (DS/GB32) already have an official Doom port, if that's any indication.

Without some sort of control middleware that harmonizes the different input methods, any portable port will be a one-trick pony.

Share this post


Link to post

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×