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To my recollection: 3DO Doom has the best music of any version I think. I had a lot of fun playing this back in the day. Frame rate was always a bit low, but music made up for it. The original Playstation version used very different atmospheric sounds/audio but was a very good version. The Mac version of Doom was the highest resolution/quality and had a higher detail setting than was available on PC.

The PS1 version is my favorite console version. It was smoother and they also did some unique things with creepy ambient music, colored lighting, extra levels, etc. But yeah, the best thing about the 3DO version is it's music.

I was occasionally working on this since almost two years ago. Trying out stuff, learning how things work, benchmark the performance, rarely touching the source code and then back. I wish I'd do more about it, as I really want to manage to optimize it at some good level. Right now there are quality reduction options for the walls and floor rendering so that it might be more bearable. Additionally I have added lot's of gimmicks and fun stuff for this first release.

Here you can get archive with compiled binary executable (with tools and instructions to extract original CD/ISO if you own it and update back, I avoided giving a full ISO because I thought this would be more legit the way Doom community releases it's port without giving the full game data)
http://bugothecat.net/releases/3DO/optidoom/optidoom_main.html

Just see a video where I show off all the features.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_koZOUnEbfI

p.s. If one needs help with building ISO (consider they have ISO or real game CD from somewhere else) then I could help, or maybe in the future someone uploads it at other place, I don't mind.

I have recently finished a technical video on how the 3DO GPU renders walls in Doom (which source code was released and I compiled some time ago and try to experiment/learn from it). There will be another one in the near future (which I presume will take me 1-2 months to finish) and I am also planning to make more technical videos of this kind and detail, on various subjects, like exploring other retro hardware, graphics/demoscene effects, etc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Goq9ZIJFscE

So, this must be the first demoscene demo for the 3DO.
I am one of the programmers and I am happy to announce, after working secretly for it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UhHLPjJCWs
ISO here

I am new to the 3DO and I am also looking for more resources. I might either do more demos but thinking seriously about homebrew gamedev. I am really curious right now to see how much the hardware can be pushed, I identified many bottlenecks and faster ways to do things, burning many CDs on the real hardware (because the emulators do not emulate at all the bottlenecks of the GPU). There are still many things I don't understand, and I was thinking to join some of the forums and discuss about programming. I joined the 3DO Zone forum but I still wait for activation. Also the Freedo forum the same thing and I can't even read the messages there. So, anyone responsible for these forums that can do something about it?

I was just finishing an indie turn based RPG called Knights of the Chalice. The amount of rage quits in this game is too damn high! Probably after this, I will be more confident with other hard games. I found it much more insanely hard than other hard games. At least in some of the other hard games you can memorize how to play or take great attention in your environment, or some of them just let you play endlessly the same screen again and again.

But on KOTC it goes like this. Most of the time you are four against a quite bigger group with many mages/clerics that will cast all the debilitating spell onto you. Paralyze, confuse, dominate, death spells. So, even if you killed 80%, you might still loose the battle, because the last mage enemy cast a dominate on your strongest fighter which kills your cleric with 4 blows and then no way to resurrect or heal the others. Or, depending on the initiative rolls, maybe enemies start, and do their nasty moves and when you are finally ready to make your first move, your cleric is paralized, your mage dead, your fighter is either confused or dominated or with other ailment. So, I reload the game so that the battle gives me randomly initiative. Maybe I can cast fast a protection spell or a good fireball. But no, I try and I have concentration fail, or someone hits my mage with arrow before I cast, the arrow has death spell, I die with one blow.

The way the game plays (the AI is always too clever, hitting exactly your mage/cleric, avoid hitting your fighters with fire shields, pushing you into fire, it does exactly the most clever nasty moves), the amount of magic/skills, all that, so many choices. If you learn some secrets you can play better next time, but still some battles might need 10 replays, always dying till the odds are not against you.

Maybe it's the hardest game I have ever played, but I might try dark souls, I haven't played this one.

Although we have been through many many hobbyist consoles like this (from all gamepark handhelds to dingoo to pandora to gcw zero and ouya and gamestick and more more more) I am really curious to see how this goes, what will be the specs, how it will differentiate from other attempts like this. What will be th OS? What will be the specs? Will it be a typical powerful ARM soc with or without GPU? Or something less powerful and with some custom hardware for 2d?

I don't mind if it's not very powerful, I enjoy coding software rendering in low end stuff, and even devices most people would consider not too fast or not with many memory, can do a lot of impressive stuff if programmed well. Hell, people consider 1GHz or 256MB of Ram too little nowadays. As a retro coder, this gives you a lot of power if coding in C/C++.

But it remains to see. A low end ARM soc with Linux and SDL and such will be just another typical software rendering framebuffer for me, fun but not something new. Some 16bit/early 32bit with custom 2d hardware might be more interesting but not for the many. A high end ARM soc can be fine imho even for script coders. There used to be a script game engine or something, called Phoenix I think and a lot of nice games (even if not the most impressive or fast) where being released in this for the gamepark handhelds and others. Even Streets of Rage Remake is done in this language/game engine/whatever.

I am really waiting for the kickstarter where I hope to learn more informations on the specs and plans.

I prefer the 128k because most demos need that.
But 64k is great for most games. Most recent hobby game developers prefer to target the 64k. But few great stuff (Orion prime) need 128k I think. Also, there must be a 64k version of Star Sabre, I think it's missing the music and some bosses.

The Amstrad CPC 6128 was my first computer. I hold a dear love for it, follow the community, code for it, learn more of it's hidden potential. I must have three of them and they are still working. I love when a computer from 30 years in the past still works, and you can somehow make a use of it. Besides gaming, which has potential but spoiled from hasty spectrum ports, I adore how professional it is sometimes for an 8bit, nice sturdy dark grey case, it's own monitor, good keyboard, great basic, fast 3" disk loading, a highres 640*200 for applications that need many characters per line.

Some of CPC hobby games that show capabilities:
https://youtu.be/GX4TDduqOXs
(Shoot em up with smooth scrolling. There are more from the same author, but this I find more playable.)

https://youtu.be/yM1BSm3Bsho
(great adventure game on CPC (we miss those), with amazing intro)

There are also improved remakes of old games like
https://youtu.be/kHH1V-zOlZk

and

https://youtu.be/lT5-jpa4-DI

remakes.

To continue with this list, briefly, I will mention one CPC demo that is probably the best so far.
https://youtu.be/YJosZfm560Q

And one project that for me is the most impressive thing I have ever seen in 8bits, is the
https://youtu.be/Ish4ReOjdIw
operating system. More information here. Although it was created for CPC originally, it's been ported to MSX and might be ported for Enterprise 128 and maybe Sam Coupe and whatever computer has Z80.

Hehe, horror game on CPC with wolfenstein? Haven't thought about doing that. I am wondering if that would ever work with simple graphics and bleepy sound, but it's challenging to think about it.

Welcome to RVG fella, a Demo Scene coder? I'm a massive Demoscene whore, got any links to your work?.

Yeah, I am still really crazy about demoscene stuff. Watching new releases, also coding whenever possible. Since 1998. I wish it was even older than this, but I had no internet before, nobody of my friends knew this thing too.

Not all my stuff, but most important.
Modern demos
Retro demos

It's quite hard to find for cheap prices at ebay. Usually there is another burning rubber.

But some people suggested this, although I am not sure how to communicate (last time I didn't got responce)
http://www.tradeinpost.com/www.tradeinpost.com/gx4000.txt

I also have bought Burning Rubber 3 times, because at one point I might investigate something I read at cpcwiki. With an EPROM reader and a cheap cartidge you are not afraid to destroy, maybe I could burn some of the rare expensive games I still am missing. Or even burn homebrew for the cartidges. If the community starts making some.

Hi, I was just searching some discussions about SNES Mode 7 and found the topic.

Hello, I just joined this forum for the very interesting discussions.
I am both a retro gamer and also retro coder. Mainly demoscene coding for years, though I am hopefully planning to get more into gamedev cause it's gonna be interesting.

My childhood platform is the Amstrad CPC although later continue with retro PC 286/386/486. I am also a fan of openhandhelds like gamepark and all that, but also more commercial handhelds like nintendo ds and Gba and gameboy classic. Recently I also started collecting oldschool consoles, something I wasn't into before, it's all interesting and fun.

I came here because I was searching for that rumor that Amiga can do better mode 7 than SNES. I don't think that's the case, most examples of rotozoomers in games or demos are not highres enough, or with less colors (because of bitplanes format in Amiga) or not full framerate. I was looking at the game Brian the Lion, I really need to test it on emulator in normal A500 speed, because  in some videos some of the mode 7 tricks are slowing down the frame rate a lot, in some others it's better (but maybe it's the Amiga CD 32 version, the 68020 with some good programming could finally make good highres rotozoomer). But the comment of the programmer was about the accuracy in angle rotation and not speed or quality, which would make sense since the CPU is 32bit and it's coded (partially or not, I don't know, maybe they also use the blitter somehow) on the CPU, they can have more accuracy than custom chip which makes you stick with what the hardware gives. But that's just better accuracy, definitely not more highres, full color, fullscreen, 60fps rotozoomers. What I was seeing on the SNES at the time of it's release is nothing of speed and quality I have ever seen before.

So, I don't think it's correct to say that it was overrated and a marketing fad. It really was a unique chip producing mapping effects not seen before on other consoles (maybe with the exception of the lynx which I am not familiar with, but the resolution is very small), so well detailed background zooming and rotating so smoothly. Maybe after years, Mega Drive and others mimicked the effect, there are many nice examples, where they use different tricks depending on the game, for example racing roads where it curves but not rotates 360, you can blit very fast with DMA I believe horizontal bitmap lines of different scales. It's easier to do the single zoom, or a horizontally rotated cube, and such, since they can all be translated to blitting of different bitmap lines. But full highres rotate and zoom of big background, is another story.

Actually, I was wondering how the Mode 7 chip works and I've read somewhere that normally you have to send two vectors (and maybe some more) for transformation of bitmap per frame. This way you have simple 2d zoom rotate bitmap. But the tricks are resending new values every rasterline. And that's how floor/ceiling mapping, cylinder mapping and distortions and all other stuff are possible. I can understand this since I've coded rotozoomer and floor mapper on PC. It's only that the CPU has to calculate (unless it's precalculated in memory) which vectors to send per line to achieve different effects. Maybe that DSP-1 was helping into this, I don't know. But yes, I heard it too that more chips would be added to the SNES, but removed to reduce cost. I think Yoshi's island has additional chip in cartidge to also allow mode 7 on sprites. But yes, the original snes only had the plain background rotozoom chip. Which could also sometimes appear in the foreground as a fake big sprite, changing layers rendering priority I guess. And you could also add hardware blending, so you had highres bitmap rotating, mapping on floor ceiling, blending, and all just without extra chip on the hardware. People say most effects are because of extra chip on cartidge, but really the majority of the impressive stuff were done with a stock SNES.

Sorry for the rant, I just was a bit wondering why everyone says the Amiga500 can compete with snes mode7, and kinda furious most people thinking it's overrated.

p.s. I do admire though the whole tricks people invented on the Mega Drive could cheat some of these tricks. That Mode 7 flying video of that game, is the most impressive mode 7 floor on the machine I have seen.