oh hey how did I miss this!

what a cool project

I watched the gameplay video, and I think this version would greatly benefit from lower-resolution sprites and textures designed specifically for it. There is a project for making an Amiga game based on Doom code (or, at least, it was originally based on Doom code, IIRC) and using Freed∞m graphics as a base:
https://pixelglass.org/#grind

You can see that the project eventually came to use heavily modified graphics that work better with the target resolution.

Here's a video where it still uses mostly Freed∞m graphics:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhW3y62sFF0

What I want to say here is that I'd love Doom8088 to have a similar dedicated IWAD that could actually look like its own thing, rather than just heavily pixelated version of Doom (not to diminish the overall impressive quality of this project anyway).

To be honest, I'm not much of an FPS fan myself, but I think this achievement is impressive nevertheless. 😎👍

Doom engine was being popular for its countless WADs, I remember.
There had been games of other genres that used WAD format to create their own 2.5D environment.

If there's anything I can recommend it's considering to include 80186 instructions and see how it goes.
XT owners could install an Vx0 processor to make use of this, if there is anything to gain in performance.
If two pre-compiled binaries are being available (8088, 186), it simplifies things for the user.

Anyway, just an idea. Not a very creative one, I admit. 😅 Just came to mind because of Win 3 VGA driver, which also is using a few 186/286 instructions.

The compiler that I use, gcc-ia16, supports 80186, 80188, 80286, 8086, 8088, V20, V30 and V30MZ.
For now I make releases for the 8088 and 80286. And separate builds for Mode Y and Mode 13h.
For fun and testing purposes there's also a Mode Y build for 386 computers, compiled with DJGPP.

Haha it works great on my 5150.

(by "great" I mean something like 0.5FPS)

I will need to run this on my 286/16 and see how many FPS I get.

There are two ways to see the frame rate:

There's the benchmark way: run Doom8088 with the command line argument -timedemo demo3. This will run demo3 as fast as it can and at the end it will show the frames per second.

Another option is the IDRATE cheat: Instead of the ammo count, the status bar will show the frames per second. Divide this number by 10 to get the real frames per second. So when it says 349, the true frames per second is 34.9, which is the maximum by the way.

The latest release adds 80x25 and 40x25 16 color text modes. Thanks to dithering it looks like 136 colors.

Here's a video of the 40x25 version running in MartyPC emulating a 4.77 MHz PC:
https://youtu.be/uRGNkhplrtI?si=ZdEklizygkNDVN7J

Frenkel wrote on 2024-06-24, 07:09:

For now I make releases for the 8088 and 80286. And separate builds for Mode Y and Mode 13h.

What kind of performance can I expect on a 24mhz/0ws 286 with an et4k/w32i? Is there a measurable or even noticeable difference between the 808x and 80286 builds (both running on a 286)?

I need to give this a go as soon as I am done copying all my other games over to the machine :D

I ran some benchmarks in 86Box emulating a 286 at 25 MHz and it turns out the differences between the 8088 and 286 builds are minimal.
For example Mode Y 286 results in 10.845 frames per second and 8088 results in 10.549 fps.