Truecolor software ports?

[Doom_user]

Have there ever been any truecolor software ports? If not, is such a thing possible?

[Graf Zahl]

It is possible but the interest to create one is understandably low. Those who are interested in better graphics will tend to go the hardware way before investing all the work required.

[Siggi]

Not only is it possible, but I believe something like this is already in development. ;)

[leileilol]

vavoom

[Graf Zahl]

Vavoom doesn't count because it's not a real vanilla-style software renderer. Although it doesn't use hardware acceleration it's still polygon based and subject to all the same problems as its hardware renderer.

[DaniJ]

Vavoom doesn't count because it's not a real vanilla-style software renderer. Although it doesn't use hardware acceleration it's still polygon based and subject to all the same problems as its hardware renderer.

Of course it counts. His question makes no reference to the method of rendering employed, only that it should output in truecolor.

[Doom_user]

I probably should have been more specific. What I was thinking of, is something that would look, basically, like the PSX Doom. True color, but with the vanilla-style light levels and light diminshing effect still intact.

[Koko Ricky]

PSX Doom was far from true color, it was subject to the same incosistency in "bands of color" that any other 32-bit game was. It had MORE colors, but I wouldn't say it was true color.

[Bungleist]

"True colour" is the name for 32-bit and 24-bit colour, just as "high colour" is the name for 16-bit colour. So yes, if a game is 32-bit then it is true colour.

[Koko Ricky]

I don't know if that's true, considering 16-bit games didn't have 16-bit color (the SNES and Genesis supported 256 and 64 simultaneous colors, respectively). If you look at most any PSX game, there's usually a lot of dithering and color band inaccuracies. I wouldn't say that's 32-bit color.

[leileilol]

GoatLord said:

I don't know if that's true, considering 16-bit games didn't have 16-bit color

The SNES was capable of only 256 color palettes for artwork, but it was really rendered in 32k colors allowing for additive/subtractive blended effects as well as gradients.

[david_a]

There was a version of DOSDoom (precursor to Edge) that supported 16bit in software. I'm guessing the feature was kept around in the older versions of Edge that still had a software renderer.

[leileilol]

Also another thing to note is that Doom was going to have a high-color video mode in it's early alpha stages (some options reveal this), but it was totally dropped since it never worked.

Oh, Prboom has 16/32bit color too.

[david_a]

leileilol said:

Oh, Prboom has 16/32bit color too.

I have never heard of this before. Are you sure this isn't a case where the game is rendered in 8-bit but technically shown in 16/32-bit as a workaround for some driver problems? I thought ZDoom had an option to do that as well.

[Bungleist]

GoatLord said:

I don't know if that's true, considering 16-bit games didn't have 16-bit color (the SNES and Genesis supported 256 and 64 simultaneous colors, respectively). If you look at most any PSX game, there's usually a lot of dithering and color band inaccuracies. I wouldn't say that's 32-bit color.

Okay, you're confusing computer architecture with image storage information - they're two different things :).

32-bit architecture refers to how many bits can be stored in the processor register and bus. 32-bit graphics are those with 16,777,216 colours and an 8-bit alpha channel.

[RjY]

david_a said:

I have never heard of this before. Are you sure this isn't a case where the game is rendered in 8-bit but technically shown in 16/32-bit as a workaround for some driver problems? I thought ZDoom had an option to do that as well.

I guess it's not very well known, because the only released version that has it is the abandoned 2.3.x series. Here it is drawing 8-bit and 16-bit versions of the same scene from CC2 map29. As you can tell the extra colours are only really noticable with translucent objects.

There is a high- and true-colour branch of 2.4.x; I believe it's pretty much ready to be merged in, save for some minor configuration issue.

[Graf Zahl]

RjY said:

I guess it's not very well known, because the only released version that has it is the abandoned 2.3.x series. Here it is drawing 8-bit and 16-bit versions of the same scene from CC2 map29. As you can tell the extra colours are only really noticable with translucent objects.

If you want to do a meaningful demonstration you should use E3M7's red walls. And if those look the same as in 8 bit one can safely say that the renderer doesn't use True Color properly. To get the full color resolution all colormaps have to be recreated so that they don't use the standard palette. I have done some tests long ago and I'd post some screenshots but unfortunately I can't get the thing to run anymore.

[david_a]

RjY said:

I guess it's not very well known, because the only released version that has it is the abandoned 2.3.x series.

Now that you mention it, I think I actually remember using 16-bit in 2.3... Glad to see it wasn't abandoned.

[kristus]

leileilol said:

Also another thing to note is that Doom was going to have a high-color video mode in it's early alpha stages (some options reveal this), but it was totally dropped since it never worked.

I read in an interview with Carmack that the reason they dropped the hi-color was cause they didn't expect people to play the game long enough for computers to actually have the processing power to take advantage of the feature.

And in 5 years of Doom Romero sais:

I believe it was a decision made because of compatibility issues. The hicolor mode was not something initialized the same way on all graphic cards at that time and it also halved the resolution. We would rather have more resolution with less colors.

[ultdoomer]

RjY said:

Here it is drawing 8-bit and 16-bit versions of the same scene from CC2 map29. As you can tell the extra colours are only really noticable with translucent objects.

I agree that it is most noticeable with translucent objects, but does anyone notice a change of color with the opaque walls (like from gray to green)?

[Graf Zahl]

That's a classic 16-bit problem which has one bit more color resolution for green. If you use 15 or 24 bit you won't see that. I can remember this issue well from the time when 16 bit was the most one could do. Back then I always used a 15 bit mode to circumvent it.

[leileilol]

Voodoo cards went to purple instead of green as well

The Kyro cards are the least affected and look awesome in 16-bit color, nice color balance :)