Wolfenstein 3D on Marty

[MAZter]

I tried to run Wolfenstein 3D on Marty without success. Problem cause port author hard-coded EXP to use only with full game version files *.WL6, instead of allow it to use *.WL1, witch could potentially fit 4Mb limit. Sources available to download as well, so maybe someone could build properly port especially for Marty? Now it's just stuck on boot screen 🙁 

Of course, editing WL6 to WL1 in the HEX editor will not help, because the author of the port did not put the necessary files for the shareware version when building the build (MAPSWL1.H, GFXV_WL1.H and possibly something else)

Port and sources available here:
https://bcc.hatenablog.com/entry/2023/04/09/235722

ISO I used to boot on Marty:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ST6nHZ_GH-UKNTIUXiCJuwivAmxeFZiT/edit?fbclid=IwAR1ySWGMx5W8hAiAGpcUg3FZkASq8TN7Bqa4fVVXanzy_Zp51yqggTBnWVo

[bcc2528]

Don't share WOLF4FMT including full version files (WL6).

[NFG]

@MAZter - It seems that @bcc2528 is the author of the Wolfenstein port you're working with.  If your linked ISO has the full version files, it would be good to remove it.

[MAZter]

Thanks BBC, he released  new version for FM Towns Marty in March, looks great!

[bcc2528]

@MAZter

I told you not to share WL6.  you don't DL and play Wolf3d on FMT.
f**k you.

[kamiboy]

Interesting that the port runs so slowly on a Marty. On an old fashioned 386 SX IBM compatible PC Wolfenstein runs in full speed, no problem if I remember correctly. I am not sure if it would run on a 286 as well, or how well.

I guess the Marty lacks a mode 13h like direct access to writing specific pixels to the screen by just writing to a specific memory location? Not having fast direct access to write pixels to the screen would kill performance of any old school 3D PC game of the era. Crazy how those games were more less made possible by this feature being a part of IBM PC graphics hardware functionality.

[bcc2528]

@kamiboy

It's FM TOWNS, not Marty.
VGA has a bank function that allows you to write the same value to four adjacent addresses by simply writing one byte, but FM TOWNS's CRTC and VRAM do not have such a function. At this point, the VRAM access load is 2 to 4 times higher.

[kamiboy]

Yeah, console hardware was constructed so differently. But you know what, I'd take support for sprites and background layers any day over VGA's capabilities.

So it is FM Towns that it runs on. Since the bottleneck is VRAM access does a beefier CPU even help?

Not sure if a higher clock speed will speed up VRAM writes or not. If so then I guess it might run full speed on a 486/586 Towns.

The Towns has a pretty good support for sprites and background layers, right?

I wonder if utilizing them could speed up rendering. I don't know whether writing to sprite/tile memory is too slow to work.

I wonder if one could render to memory then copy to a bunch of sprites laid out horizontally in succession then move them down when the raster has passed them and copy the rest of the framebuffer to them.

Of course rendering directly to background tiles would be even better, but I assume it is too slow.

Oh well, old console style gaming hardware was just not made for these kinds of games.

[bcc2528]

FM TOWNS is not an game console, it's a personal computor.
The sprite hardware in FM TOWNS serves no purpose of Wolfenstein 3D. it is a function that transfers a sprite of size 16*16 or fixed scaled 8 pixels with 16 of 32768 colors or 32768 colors directly specified to a 256*256 32768-color bitmap screen.
Wolfenstein 3D is displayed in 320*200 256 colors (FM TOWNS version is 640*480 256 colors screen mode, scaled twice), which is different from 256*256 32768 colors screen mode. and Wolf3d textures and sprites are also scaled 64*64 256 colors. TOWNS sprites can only be fixed scaled 8 pixels.
The graphics were drawn entirely by the CPU, and i already known that it runs fast on the 486 TOWNS because other people have reported that.

[kendrick]

FM TOWNS is not an game console, it's a personal computor.

So I don't think anybody would dispute that, but one of the joys of having the 8-bit and 16-bit computing hardware in homes at the time was to be able to abuse them to enjoy games on. More relevantly, your very accurate and reasonable explanation of the FM TOWNS graphical limitations aren't also an argument against attempting to make a game go on the hardware anyway. This is like making Doom run on a coffee maker, which people are going to do anyway because they want to see what's possible.

Put another way, nobody is being harmed or being robbed because somebody is trying to make game software go on the FM TOWNS. I'm not going to tell anybody how they should have their fun with this technology, and I'd like to politely suggest that maybe nobody else should think that way either.