(Dread not dead, now Grind and with source) Dread - A Doom clone for Amiga 500 and... Atari ST/STE.

[Redneckerz]

Tagging @InDOOMnesia because this is equally impressive as DOOM SNES.

 

Latest:

Update time: Dread is not dead, but in comes the Grind!

 

Plus: Source code! - https://github.com/Krzysiek-K/Dread-source-drop

 

DREAD Patreon is ending... and long live GRIND!
 

Quote

Due to certain obligations I have now, from now I must work on Dread alone ("solo") and it must be a strictly non-commercial (not monetized) project. Hence, I'm putting this Patreon page on hold (you will not be charged again) and I'm forced to thank John Tsakiris ("Tsak") for his help.

But John is not going to give up quickly on this vision.
Instead, welcome project Grind!

From now on, I'm passing all Dread code and stuff to John, who will be working further towards our initial vision, but under a different name - Grind. And since you will never be charged again for Dread Patreon, please really consider moving to the John's Patreon of Grind - he really needs your support now!

---> https://www.patreon.com/Grind_Amiga  <---

And while you support Grind, I will work solo on Dread engine and game as much as  my new obligations allow me.

Wish us luck! :)

Due to certain obligations I have now, from now I must work on Dread alone ("solo") and it must be a strictly non-commercial (not monetized) project. Hence, I'm putting this Patreon page on hold (you will not be charged again) and I'm forced to thank John Tsakiris ("Tsak") for his help.

But John is not going to give up quickly on this vision.
Instead, welcome project Grind!

From now on, I'm passing all Dread code and stuff to John, who will be working further towards our initial vision, but under a different name - Grind. And since you will never be charged again for Dread Patreon, please really consider moving to the John's Patreon of Grind - he really needs your support now!

---> https://www.patreon.com/Grind_Amiga  <---

And while you support Grind, I will work solo on Dread engine and game as much as  my new obligations allow me.

Wish us luck! :)

 

 

And from @tsak:

 

Quote

Hi guys, I'm John Tsakiris from Pixelglass (aka Tsak) and I've been working the past few years alongside Krzysztof Kluczek (aka KK/Altair) on Dread: a retro - first person shooter for Amiga 500 and Atari ST! I've been responsible for the current looks of the game as well as helping with the game's level design, sfx, music and gameplay.

Enter project 'Grind':

By becoming a Patron you'll be funding me to create the best (I possibly can) visuals, audio and gameplay content needed, in order for 'Grind' to become a complete, well polished, Dread-engine powered game, with a story, level progression, unique weapons, looks and gameplay mechanics. The whole work I'll be doing will be a direct continuation of what we had planned with KK for a complete game (in regards to assets and content needed), while on the technical side the game will make use of whatever features are (or become) publicly available with the engine, as it's developed by KK.

As well as working on this goal, I will also try to continue supporting SDK releases (in the form of contributions or seperate asset packs), whenever I've got stuff that are share-worthy, or if there's a special request from the community. Also worth mentioning is that I plan to keep the totality of the public assets as they are and freely accessible to our map makers and contributors.

Finally, in regards to Patrons coming from KK's page, it should be noted that second tiers and above will keep having access to new Patron exclusive executables (mostly focused on the new game moving forwards), plus all Patron exclusive Discord channels will be moved to a new 'Grind' dedicated server (feel free to join!) https://discord.gg/QXGQbkRCxN

With these closing words, I'd like to give a huge and sincere THANKS to everybody that has supported the project! This (already) feels it has been a dream come true really! Extra shoutouts and respect to all the wonderful Patrons for their own support so far, as well as our amazing Discord community (with all it's talented and creative people)!

 

Update:

 

See Doom E1M1 re-created in Dread Engine, height differences and all!

 

Starting from 1:08:13 see Dread render a recreation of E1M1.

 

 

People have also been chipping away at the Dread Engine and been making several custom levels for it, so here are two video's showing that off, including a Wolfenstein 3D level:

 

 

Play Dread: Dread demo is available for Amiga 500 and Atari ST. Links in the video below:
 

 

Update:

KK/Altair released tools to make Dread levels, using Doom Builder.

 

The Dread mapmaking SDK ver. 1907 links:

• The SDK download - http://devkk.net/files/dread/Dread-Mapmaking-SDK-1907.zip
• Documentation wiki - http://devkk.net/wiki/index.php/Dreadtool

 

Note:

You can't use these directly in the Dread engine, but you can atleast preview them on PC and prepare your levels. Since KK uses Doom Builder 2 for Dread, the SDK contains the needed data and information to create Dread levels using Doom Builder 2 (Or UDB, most likely)

 

Original post:

 

No, you aren't looking at an unreleased Doom SNES shot. You are looking at something that's equally impressive. Enter Dread.

 

 

Introduction:

Doom on Amiga was not a marriage between two lovebirds. Due to the inherit nature of the engine and the machines it had to target, Doom for Amiga only made sense on a 68020 or higher processor and 4 MB RAM. Basically an Amiga 1200. See the DoomWiki page on Amiga for a list of ports that existed for this.

 

The Amiga 500 was the smaller and earlier released brother of the 1200. Hugely popular, it sported an 68000 processor and OCS graphics (Instead of AGA). This thing was woefully underpowered for any shooter - In fact, the most impressive thing is Citadel/Cytadela, which has floor and ceiling texturemaps on a mere A500. But in order to get it playable, you need a postage stamp sized screen. See also this review.

 

Introducing Dread.

 

Dread is done by a demoscener named Krzysztof Kluczek. It is a Doom clone and it does not actually use the Doom engine (Similar to SNES Doom). However, you can use Doom Builder to make maps for it. In KK's own words:

 

Quote

''This will be a “doom clone”, so don’t expect Doom port from this project. In no close point in the future the engine will be able to handle complexity of Doom maps. So, instead it’s much better to design maps that allow acceptable gameplay (10+ FPS) on a A500 1MB and make a fresh thing. On the other hand, this also allows having features NOT present in Doom – like sliding doors, which are already implemented. But multi-floor buildings would also be something I’d love to have down the road.

The performance so far is roughly:

• 10-14 FPS – A500+1MB
• 24-25 FPS – stock A1200
• 30 FPS – A600 with Furia

But the A500 performance is the king here. Every possible optimization that could improve the framerate on A500 is a clear win for me, even if it would cripple the remaining configs somehow. Stronger configs have good FPS games already, and I really want to fill the A500 gap.

The demo features so far:

• 3 different ceiling heights + sky,
• 2 light levels (this is really a trick – I change textures and floor/ceil colors),
• angled walls,
• flat floor and fixed camera height,
• 4 weapons (pistol, shotgun, chaingun, rocket launcher),
• 3 types of monsters (shotgunner, chaingunner, flying monster),
• large map with keycards and (sliding) doors,

The fixed camera height is a limitation allowing several optimization tricks. In worst case scenario, the camera will move vertically in fixed steps – after all, moving camera is the same as moving rest of the map up and down. In best case – I’ll figure a clever way to get around this. Right now, having limited number of possible drawing heights allowed me to bring performance to acceptable levels and focus on making a playable demo from what I got. We don’t want just an another tech demo with no gameplay, right? But this is clearly a point I’ll have to go back to.''

 

In other words, what we are seeing here is nothing short of pure magic given the limitations of an Amiga 500. The first video appeared in a tweet, but KK has since released a video detailing the mapping process, showing he uses Doom Builder to get things going using a custom mapping format. Currently Dread heavily features FreeDoom textures, and Krzysztof cannot thank the team behind it enough as it was essential into getting this project off the ground.

 

 

Video:

 

 

All in all, Dread (Working title) is something that bests Doom SNES, venturing into the ''This should not be possible'' realm... especially on a machine as limited as the A500.

 

PS:

Be also sure to check out Silas Adventure, A Wolfenstein 3D esque dungeon crawler also made by KK that runs on the Atari Lynx!

 

Edited October 31, 2022 by Redneckerz : Updating main post

[taufan99]

These are impressive - both Dread and Silas' Adventure. I'll contact Kluczek to have those in my hands, and perhaps even a li'l bit of documentation!

[Redneckerz]

10 minutes ago, InDOOMnesia said:

These are impressive - both Dread and Silas' Adventure. I'll contact Kluczek to have those in my hands, and perhaps even a li'l bit of documentation!

Regarding the bolded: Silas Adventure is already out and about - Just google.

 

As for Dread and the Documentation - Please do not - Due to his demoscene work, Kluczek is swamped in work, and i'd rather not have him be bothered by such requests for the time being - First lets see if Dread comes to fruition. I simply made this for more recognition as its an impressive piece of code as it stands.

[cambreaKer]

this is really cool! also, are those freedoom graphics?

[Redneckerz]

5 minutes ago, cambreaKer said:

this is really cool! also, are those freedoom graphics?

As is stated in the OP, yes.

[elend]

Certainly a nice project and very cool. There are plenty of Doom clones on the Amiga 500 already, though.

[Redneckerz]

3 hours ago, elend said:

Certainly a nice project and very cool. There are plenty of Doom clones on the Amiga 500 already, though.

I take up this challenge:

• Are those as impressive as this?
• Which others besides Citadel would run on a Amiga 500?

Technically speaking you could run a lot of the other Amiga titles on OCS (Which is what Amiga 500 has) but they all really require an 68020 to get any playable performance out of the machine. So these are usually A1200.

 

Here is a list of Amiga shooters nicely categorized.

[Gez]

I'm thinking the limitations of this engine could be an interesting starting point for a limited mapping project. All map heights must be multiples of 64. Doors must be sliding (use DotB trick for that), and elevators must be instant effects (lower to highest/raise to lowest) to prevent non-64-multiple heights from appearing.

[VGA]

Can a game be considered a Doom clone if there is no height variation? Isn't this more of a Wolf3D clone?

[elend]

Redneckerz: Yeah, fair enough. Not to take anything away from it, it is very impressive and awesome. The fact that he makes maps with Doom Builder even more so. If I'd still have my Amiga I'd actually map for this.

 

VGA: Good point actually. Back then it might have been okay to call everything a Doom clone, but now it seems a little bit silly maybe.

[Redneckerz]

13 hours ago, VGA said:

Can a game be considered a Doom clone if there is no height variation? Isn't this more of a Wolf3D clone?

What is a Doom clone anyway? We have quite literal clones like Quiver, but we also have something like Klooni (Which is actually Wolf3D based)

I think this is halfway, and similar to the SNES version of Doom. Retroactively, because of its different engine, we could ask that version the same question.
 

13 hours ago, elend said:

Redneckerz: Yeah, fair enough. Not to take anything away from it, it is very impressive and awesome. The fact that he makes maps with Doom Builder even more so. If I'd still have my Amiga I'd actually map for this.

I do wonder how he is going to do this with his engine - Clearly he already has a custom map format that Doom Builder accepts, so it adhers to some Doom map referential data. Is it going to be open source? Who knows.

 

Nevertheless, projects like these are infinitely and interesting - and couldn't exist if other efforts from the community were never made (in this case Freedoom).

 

Love to see how this develops.

[Gez]

57 minutes ago, Redneckerz said:

What is a Doom clone anyway?

An enjoyable pile of secrets, items, and kills.

[Boaby Kenobi]

Zero Tolerance on Mega Drive/Genesis was excellent in 1994. 

 

 

[Redneckerz]

Update:

Episodes 2 and 3 have been released:

Episode 2: Laying out the map:
 

Episode 3: Knee-deep in mapping:
 

 

[Redneckerz]

Update:

Episodes 4 and 5 are done and up for grabs. The title is slowly coming to a finish!

Episode 4: Revisiting the graphics:

 

 

Episode 5: Weapons and pixels:

 

 

[VGA]

Amazing work ... is it finalised? Maybe a DW Community map pack project is in order?!

[Redneckerz]

On 10/5/2020 at 12:01 AM, VGA said:

Amazing work ... is it finalised? Maybe a DW Community map pack project is in order?!

The weaponry is it seems, but still some work to do. The performance is amazing given the platform it runs on.

[Maes]

What really killed FPS performance on the Amiga computers was the planar display -simply put, from a programming point of view, you could not just write a pixel where you wanted to, which was essential for this kind of games, especially with texture-mapping into play. That meant that even at absolute CPU power parity with a Pee-Cee, you would still lag behind somewhat, in order to produce a pixel-per-pixel similar display. That is, if you could not use the inherent advantages of planar displays like tile-based graphics, bitwise masking, rapid color fills etc. Good for 2D games and even plain 3D polygon-based graphics, not so much for textured 3D graphics.

 

With solid-colored floors/ceilings you could exploit the blitter/Copper chip and do rapid area fills, but stuff like textures just doesn't "fit" into how the graphics on these machines worked. Not even AGA chipsets solved this problem -AFAIK only the Amiga CD32 had built-in hardware to do planar-to-chunky conversion without killing the CPU.

The same problems more or less existed on platforms like the Genesis/Mega Drive, but I guess they used similar programming tricks -in particular the "striped" look of textures looks very similar, though I'm not exactly sure what does that mean from a programming/technical point of view.

[Zillah]

Already bet that there's a recreation WAD in the works... or soon will be, and I'm not a gambling man.
There's as much an obsession with console ports as there is with needlessly porting them back to PC. That would be interesting to see.

[Intrepidis]

On 10/8/2020 at 8:46 AM, Maes said:

-AFAIK only the Amiga CD32 had built-in hardware to do planar-to-chunky conversion without killing the CPU.

Actually I was just looking into this and apparently the A500 had C2P hardware built-in all along!

It's possible to get the blitter to do it. 😲

http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=91257&amp;highlight=C2P

[Redneckerz]

Dread has seen some extensive help by Tsak from Pixelglass, illustrating the new layers of texturing, custom made for the Dread engine. There is also a 3D level previewer in Altair's tool, and they are even saving on RAM.

 

So here is a comparison slide: Alien Breed 3D, Dread, and Fears. Can you guess which one is which? :)

 

[TheGreenZap]

I used to have an Amiga 500 back in the day. I was into it big time. Alas, I no longer have it though.

This is a really cool project! Glad to see it, thank you for posting.

 

[Redneckerz]

Kepy you waiting, huh? So here are Episodes 6, 7 and 8 which released yesterday. DreadGuy has some smooth weapon animations and enemies are in, courtesy of Pixelglass.

 

It keeps being impressive considering this is running 15 FPS on a Amiga 500.

 

 

[tsak]

Hi guys! I'm one of the developers of this project.

Let me first start by thanking @Redneckerz for this thread! It's really interesting to see Dread being discussed in Doomworld and outside the small boundaries of the Amiga community :)

A couple replies: 
 

On 3/3/2020 at 5:22 PM, cambreaKer said:

this is really cool! also, are those freedoom graphics?

Indeed they are. I'd like to give a HUGE thanks to the FreeDoom team! As the project lacked an art team early on, KK had to find some way to prototype and test. 
And he opted to go with Free-Doom assets being accessible (and close to what he had in mind). The recent total gfx replacement still features a lot of Free-Doom stuff but all of them are heavilly repixeled/retouched and custom made for this engine. I'd be happy to donate back to the Free-Doom project all of these reworked assets once we're done with the demo (though realistically 1x2 res assets and other downscaled gfx ain't going to be much useful anyhow). 
 

On 3/4/2020 at 3:51 AM, VGA said:

Can a game be considered a Doom clone if there is no height variation? Isn't this more of a Wolf3D clone?

Sort of, minus the fact that the Dread engine can do sloped walls, floor shadows, variable wall heights (limited for now), outdoors locations and genearlly a lot more complex geometry. So practically whatever Doom can do, except staircases and floor/ceiling textures. Good news is that KK has already prototyped staircases and variable floor heights (spoiler section in the latest video) so this will bring the engine several steps closer.
 

On 3/4/2020 at 5:42 PM, Redneckerz said:

I do wonder how he is going to do this with his engine - Clearly he already has a custom map format that Doom Builder accepts, so it adhers to some Doom map referential data. Is it going to be open source? Who knows.

Yes, we use a custom format for Doom Builder. Once the demo is out and the dev tools are in shape we'll be releasing them to the public. Code will probably be closed source (not entirely sure about that) but the custom map format and the UI (which we use to setup the assets) will be freely available. I'm really curious to see what the community can come up with, plus we'd love to attract some experienced map builders to the project as well :)
 

On 10/5/2020 at 1:01 AM, VGA said:

Amazing work ... is it finalised? Maybe a DW Community map pack project is in order?!

Currently the plan is to release the tech demo and the toolset (this might come quite soon). Following that we'll focus to bring-in the missing engine features (like staircases and music support) as well as work towards a completely original title (replacing all Free-doom refferences and assets in the process). 

[Nikku4211]

Is this Doom clone PAL-only, or does it work on NTSC Amigas?

 

I'm asking because NTSC artefacting can help smooth out vertical stripe dithering on composite.

 

 

I know this video is about the Mega Drive, but I'm sure the same thing can apply to other NTSC systems with a horizontal resolution of 320 or more.

[Redneckerz]

6 hours ago, tsak said:

Hi guys! I'm one of the developers of this project.

Let me first start by thanking @Redneckerz for this thread! It's really interesting to see Dread being discussed in Doomworld and outside the small boundaries of the Amiga community :)

I keep close track to the Abime thread and am delighted by the progress it holds :)

6 hours ago, tsak said:

Yes, we use a custom format for Doom Builder. Once the demo is out and the dev tools are in shape we'll be releasing them to the public. Code will probably be closed source (not entirely sure about that) but the custom map format and the UI (which we use to setup the assets) will be freely available. I'm really curious to see what the community can come up with, plus we'd love to attract some experienced map builders to the project as well :)

I assume the format for Doom Builder comes in the form of a plugin, or are you using a customized Doom Builder build?

 

Because Dread mapping could well be interesting :) It really takes into account what an A500 is capable of at playable framerates*

 

* There are more impressive (demoscene) productions including clever usage of 3D, but those aren't games. Dread is, and its quite a work of art (As is Silas Adventure for the Lynx, also by KK :))

6 hours ago, tsak said:

Currently the plan is to release the tech demo and the toolset (this might come quite soon). Following that we'll focus to bring-in the missing engine features (like staircases and music support) as well as work towards a completely original title (replacing all Free-doom refferences and assets in the process). 

If a How to Dread mapping can exist, perhaps this community can assist in creating new levels - Heck, maybe even a megawad? The Doom Community plays host to several megawad series focussing on small size, limits on the amount of lines to be used or sectors and more. I am sure utilizing such a concept could result in a Dread megawad to be made that still fits within size constraints of the A500.

[Murdoch]

Incredibly impressive work.

[Muusi]

I really need to get something that's able to write Amiga software on disks. 

[tsak]

 

8 hours ago, Redneckerz said:

I keep close track to the Abime thread and am delighted by the progress it holds :)

I assume the format for Doom Builder comes in the form of a plugin, or are you using a customized Doom Builder build?

 

Because Dread mapping could well be interesting :) It really takes into account what an A500 is capable of at playable framerates*

 

* There are more impressive (demoscene) productions including clever usage of 3D, but those aren't games. Dread is, and its quite a work of art (As is Silas Adventure for the Lynx, also by KK :))
 

If a How to Dread mapping can exist, perhaps this community can assist in creating new levels - Heck, maybe even a megawad? The Doom Community plays host to several megawad series focussing on small size, limits on the amount of lines to be used or sectors and more. I am sure utilizing such a concept could result in a Dread megawad to be made that still fits within size constraints of the A500.

It's a plugin, yes. Other than that we use the standard Doom Builder. I think the game doesn't do automatic partitioning yet but that might change. Also KK keeps documentation with any feature added, so there will be instructions for any limitations and keeping the frame rate playable. Basically so far (and from what I've seen myself) the engine is able to render pretty big rooms (or multiple rooms with a clear line of sight) with quite large render distances which are somewhat comparable to vanilla Doom. But the limitations are there and you can't just go wild (not if you want the game to be playable with unexpanded a500s that is).  

As for a Dread megawad (with the assistance of the Doom Community) we definitely would be delighted to see one!
 

6 hours ago, Muusi said:

I really need to get something that's able to write Amiga software on disks. 

You mean get an ADF to a physical disk? There are various programs on Aminet which can do exactly that. You need to do this from a real Amiga though.

 

13 hours ago, Nikku4211 said:

Is this Doom clone PAL-only, or does it work on NTSC Amigas?

 

I'm asking because NTSC artefacting can help smooth out vertical stripe dithering on composite.

I know this video is about the Mega Drive, but I'm sure the same thing can apply to other NTSC systems with a horizontal resolution of 320 or more.

Screen size the game is NTSC compatible, though I'm not sure KK has this tested on NTSC Amigas yet.  So I'd (safely) say here: perhaps. This will be cleared when the demo is out.

As for the dither effect you've mentioned (with the Genesis example above), this has nothing to do with NTSC but rather with the composite video output and CRT monitors/TVs. I.e. even with a PAL Amiga the results will be pretty much the same (in regards to color blending) if you use Amiga's composite and a CRT monitor. And even without composite (using just the RGB output which gives MUCH better picture quality) you'd still get a good amount of blending on a CRT.  

In any case this doesn't really matter because (from the last video and the full gfx upgrade we did) we've completely abandoned the old, full vertical dither, in favor of doubling the horizontal resolution (thus displaying extra detail with textures, enemies e.t.c.). We can still use dither manually if we want (baked into the assets) which will yield the same blending results in CRTs.
 

Btw here's an example of how the game used to look (below) and how it looks now (above)

[Muusi]

20 minutes ago, tsak said:

You need to do this from a real Amiga though.

That's exactly the problem. It's not like I can just plug a null modem into my PC and transfer files🤔