Yep, the Master Levels came with DOOM-IT. Maybe you could rename the FastDoom executable and use this launcher. I haven’t tried it myself (and it’s essentially not supported).

ViTi95 wrote on 2025-01-08, 11:07:

Yep, the Master Levels came with DOOM-IT. Maybe you could rename the FastDoom executable and use this launcher. I haven’t tried it myself (and it’s essentially not supported).

For that to work, I think FastDoom would have to be able to launch an arbitrary WAD file, but I can give it shot.

EDIT: I tried to rename FDOOM to DOOM2 and DOS frontends will use the FDOOM executable, but it ignores the maps changes applied by the frontend and just starts Doom2 normally.

New release! FastDoom 1.1.0:

* Add hicolor/truecolor support for VBE2 backbuffered modes (15-bit, 16-bit, 24-bit and 32-bit)
* ASM optimized routines for linear VBE2 backbuffered modes (hicolor and truecolor)
* Better initialization for VESA modes (use linear modes whenever possible)

https://github.com/viti95/FastDoom/releases/tag/1.1.0

Support for HiColor/TrueColor VBE backbuffered modes is mainly intended for newer systems with modern GPUs. For example, AMD GCN+ cards do not support 8bpp modes at all.

ViTi95 wrote on 2025-02-27, 09:41:

Support for HiColor/TrueColor VBE backbuffered modes is mainly intended for newer systems with modern GPUs. For example, AMD GCN+ cards do not support 8bpp modes at all.

Ah interesting, so it's less about adding coloured lighting (or whatever), more about increasing compatibility?

Yep, this release doesn’t add native hicolor or truecolor rendering; it simply converts the original 8bpp backbuffer to whatever bit depth the video card supports. I assume this also applies to newer NVIDIA RTX cards, though I haven’t tested it since I don’t have one.

ViTi95 wrote on 2025-02-27, 11:41:

Yep, this release doesn’t add native hicolor or truecolor rendering; it simply converts the original 8bpp backbuffer to whatever bit depth the video card supports. I assume this also applies to newer NVIDIA RTX cards, though I haven’t tested it since I don’t have one.

Thanks very much for having the insight into doing this. This now makes FastDoom playable in bare metal DOS on Ryzen systems with its (horribly crippled) onboard GPU, since it doesn't support either 8-bit VESA or any VGA resolution or bitdepth below 640x480x32 bit. Now at least system a system is able to play at least *one* game in bare metal DOS: FastDoom! (The original 1993 release of course fails miserable since it only uses 320x200x8bit VGA.

Now AMD Ryzens aren't any longer "useless" for DOS games in bare metal, thanks to your going the extra mile in "circumventing" the needless bastardization of its GPU's lack of 8-bit support and VGA resolutions in DOS.

ViTi95 wrote on 2025-02-27, 11:41:

I assume this also applies to newer NVIDIA RTX cards, though I haven’t tested it since I don’t have one.

I was able to run original dos doom on an RTX3080, I don't know if that counts as a "newer" card - https://youtu.be/MQR2LxR7VdM?t=417

Here's a crazy idea:

A PC booter port of FastDoom. 🤭

PC booter games only really were prevalent in the early IBM DOS PC and PCjr days, and in terms of graphics and sound, most of them didn't support anything beyond CGA or PCjr/Tandy graphics, let alone anything better than 3-voice sound.

Of course, in the later DOS gaming era, games became too big to fit on a single floppy, requiring hard drives, which pretty much necessitated that they run on DOS.

But there is something charming and almost "console-like" about a game on a floppy with its own low-level access to its data written on the disk in some proprietary way, being directly bootable without any OS, and only targeting a narrow range of hardware.

In the case of a booter edition of FastDoom, it would probably be practical to offer just VGA and Sound Blaster support, with a subset of levels crammed into a single high density boot floppy, perhaps with decompression routines to make the most of the limited space on such a floppy, and being able to boot and start completely independently from DOS. So no dependence on any INT 21h or other DOS API calls.

And as a "386 booter game", it would be perfectly okay to switch directly into 386 flat protected mode, without having to worry about EMM managers, DPMI hosts, etc. (It would probably complicate BIOS interrupt calls though, but by accessing VGA, Sound Blaster and the floppy controller through direct register-level access, BIOS calls from protected mode would technically not be necessary.)

It might just be a crazy idea, but it seems kind of fun to explore. Perhaps as a FastDoom fork? And perhaps something in that vein already exists? 🙂

I know Doom has already been ported to run as a UEFI payload, which technically could be considered a booter, but what I'm suggesting here is a 386 booter game that hypothetically could have been made and released back in the day.

digger wrote on 2025-02-28, 14:48:

Here's a crazy idea:

A PC booter port of FastDoom.

I don't think that's crazy at all. I look forward to updates on your PC booter Doom digger!