We'll I guess iD Software didn't care to port it to Amiga / Atari ST not only because of the planar video layout, but also because the 68030 wasn't fast enough compared to the 486. Those system's didn't have any kind of cache, which it's basic for Doom to perform well (I know the 68030 has 0.5Kb total cache, which it's ridiculous compared to the 8Kb of the 486). Only the Commodore A4000 had the more powerful 68040 along with multiple Macintosh, that's why I think only Macintosh got a port of Doom.

Maybe I'll have to port FastDoom to the 68k 😏

Today i tried adding CMS / Game Blaster music support to fastdoom:

https://youtu.be/3HsqiehKW3s

Unfortunately, music cannot work with PWM sound effects at the same time, so you have to choose only one - either CMS music or sfx
So, not great not terrible =\

Tronix wrote on 2022-10-17, 11:32:

Today i tried adding CMS / Game Blaster music support to fastdoom:

Cool!

What is it using as the source of the notes? MIDI or Adlib?

Uhhh really interesting!! With two SAA1099 chips available maybe it's possible to use one for sound effects (mono) and the other for music although with only 6 channels available. The mono CMS PCM is already available since I programmed it first, and then added stereo support.

FastDoom works so beautifully well on my U5S-33 PC..

ViTi95 wrote on 2022-10-17, 12:17:

Uhhh really interesting!! With two SAA1099 chips available maybe it's possible to use one for sound effects (mono) and the other for music although with only 6 channels available. The mono CMS PCM is already available since I programmed it first, and then added stereo support.

Hmmm, i have the same idea - use only 6 channels for music (one saa1099 chip) and second saa1099 for PWM sfx (mono). But this breaks the existing code for the stereo output of sound effects...
Or maybe if MusicDevice != CMS then SFX=stereo else SFX=mono. And if SndDevice != CMS then music_channels = 12 else music_channels = 6. But this will require serious editing of the existing code.
While I created a pull request for the current implementation https://github.com/viti95/FastDoom/pull/112

ViTi95 wrote on 2022-10-17, 12:17:

Uhhh really interesting!! With two SAA1099 chips available maybe it's possible to use one for sound effects (mono) and the other for music although with only 6 channels available. The mono CMS PCM is already available since I programmed it first, and then added stereo support.

you could make .mod versions of all the doom tracks and output everything over PCM. 🤣

At somepoint I'll have to add some kind of soft synthesizer for music on devices that only can play PCM audio.

I saw on your youtube channel you're working on a way to output to a second monitor MDA automapping. I'm wondering if it could be done through DOSBox? I've never tried to run a second monitor in DOSBox, I suppose it's unlikely.

Automapping on a second monitor requires an Hercules card, which is a combination not supported on DOSBox. But you can try with 86box 3.7 upwards, it supports pretty well this configuration.

Would it possible to implent miles sound system for music playback ?

This would allow to play music on tandy, pcspeaker, covox, mos6581 (ssi2001) etc.

http://www.ke5fx.com/

ViTi95 wrote on 2022-10-18, 07:17:

Automapping on a second monitor requires an Hercules card, which is a combination not supported on DOSBox. But you can try with 86box 3.7 upwards, it supports pretty well this configuration.

I tried so hard to get an 86box machine going, but can't seem to get it to recognize a VHD I create in Windows. There doesn't seem to be any guides to this stuff and their documentation absolutely sucks. Any idea where I can get help with it?

matze79 wrote on 2022-10-18, 14:28:

Would it possible to implent miles sound system for music playback ?

This would allow to play music on tandy, pcspeaker, covox, mos6581 (ssi2001) etc.

http://www.ke5fx.com/

That would require insane amounts of work, right now the Apogee Sound System is directly integrated and optimized onto FastDoom codebase, but could be a good inspiration for adding support for new music devices. I've seen that it uses *.ADV files for the device drivers, but they seem to be compiled and the source code not included, is this true?

7F20 wrote on 2022-10-19, 03:36:

ViTi95 wrote on 2022-10-18, 07:17:

Automapping on a second monitor requires an Hercules card, which is a combination not supported on DOSBox. But you can try with 86box 3.7 upwards, it supports pretty well this configuration.

I tried so hard to get an 86box machine going, but can't seem to get it to recognize a VHD I create in Windows. There doesn't seem to be any guides to this stuff and their documentation absolutely sucks. Any idea where I can get help with it?

I think it's easier to create a new machine with an HDD inside 86box, and do all the process of installing DOS like in the old days. I'm pretty sure there are tutorials on YouTube explaining this process.

Thanks very much for this, especially the continued optimisation of Hercules. I now get a frantic 2.1fps on my 386sx/25 compared to around 1.7fps with one of the previous versions! Might finally upgrade this system to a DX/40 and see if I can hit 5fps.

At this rate Fastdoom's supporting as many video modes as CompuShow 2000 😀

What's left? EGA 640x350x4 / VGA 640x480x4 dithered?

Alex_C wrote on 2022-10-20, 14:58:

Thanks very much for this, especially the continued optimisation of Hercules. I now get a frantic 2.1fps on my 386sx/25 compared to around 1.7fps with one of the previous versions! Might finally upgrade this system to a DX/40 and see if I can hit 5fps.

Well those modes are more for 486 processors, since it's rendering at 320x200 (aka High Detail) and require additional cpu cycles to convert the backbuffer (in glorious 256 color) to any other mode. The only thing you can do to speed up is downsize the game screen, and hope for improvement 😅

leileilol wrote on 2022-10-20, 18:23:

At this rate Fastdoom's supporting as many video modes as CompuShow 2000 😀

What's left? EGA 640x350x4 / VGA 640x480x4 dithered?

Rare cards with rare and cool modes. For example I want to add IBMs PGC, 8514 and XGA support, but the main issue is that I don't own that hardware. XGA MCA support is partially done, but without hardware to test it's basically impossible to continue developing it.

And I'm pretty sure I'm not going to add VGA 640x480x4 support since the original mode is much better, and doesn't have to deal with planar layout. And the same for EGA 640x350x4, the 8-bit EGA ISA cards have so limited bandwidth (~500kb/s) that it's impossible to update the whole screen at more than 5 fps. Also there is the aspect ratio issue, I really hate when non-integer scaling is required.

What I really wan't to do is kinda unify some executables and cleanup the source code, it has become a complete mess. And somehow try to reduce the memory footprint by not loading all the sound card support at the same time, just the required "drivers".

BTW! I've made a video with the C/MS card playing Doom music ingame, @Tronix has fixed some issues and it's sounds incredibly good right now (even on my very noisy MUS-1099)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyhTluOBVbA

leileilol wrote on 2022-10-20, 18:23:

What's left? EGA 640x350x4 / VGA 640x480x4 dithered?

ANSI from hell 😁

rasteri wrote on 2022-10-21, 11:07:

leileilol wrote on 2022-10-20, 18:23:

What's left? EGA 640x350x4 / VGA 640x480x4 dithered?

ANSI from hell 😁

I think I've found a way to use this technique on FastDoom, if I use a precalculated LUT (128Kb) I can bump the CGA resolution to 320x100 16-color with little CPU usage (although will require lot's of RAM bandwidth). Will not be 100% perfect, as some combinations won't be 100% close match and it will suffer from color clashing.

ViTi95 wrote on 2022-10-21, 13:19:

I think I've found a way to use this technique on FastDoom, if I use a precalculated LUT (128Kb) I can bump the CGA resolution to 320x100 16-color with little CPU usage (although will require lot's of RAM bandwidth). Will not be 100% perfect, as some combinations won't be 100% close match and it will suffer from color clashing.

If you didn't care about CPU usage you could do some fancy pattern-matching code and go the full 640x200. I bet that would struggle to run on contemporary processors never mind ones from DOS times, though...