We all know what the game “DOOM” is all about, killing demons from hell on Mars. Why is not on VB? Is anyone going to make this masterpiece of gaming on a system that is under rated? If not where’s a program so I can make it.

Virtual Boy 3D is achieved primarily through the use of parallax, whereas DOOM is a First Person Shooter which uses a different technology to accomplish its goal.

It would take a complete re-write of the game, and even then I doubt the system has the power needed to pull it off.

Buuuuuut even if you could pull it off you would never be happy with the result.

In order for 3D to really look correct the system would need to be able to adjust the focus based on what your eyes were looking at. If the game consisted of you staring directly at the center of the screen then there would be no problem, but the second you tried to look at something in the corner of the screen the entire image would totally distort and look confusing. That’s one of the main downfalls of the system.

colesonwilson wrote:
Virtual Boy 3D is achieved primarily through the use of parallax, whereas DOOM is a First Person Shooter which uses a different technology to accomplish its goal.

It would take a complete re-write of the game, and even then I doubt the system has the power needed to pull it off.

Buuuuuut even if you could pull it off you would never be happy with the result.

In order for 3D to really look correct the system would need to be able to adjust the focus based on what your eyes were looking at. If the game consisted of you staring directly at the center of the screen then there would be no problem, but the second you tried to look at something in the corner of the screen the entire image would totally distort and look confusing. That’s one of the main downfalls of the system.

I was thinking you could take the SNES version and just turn it to the graphics of the VB. The 32X version is a 32 bit version but has less to offer compared to SNES.

Virtual_Link wrote:

I was thinking you could take the SNES version and just turn it to the graphics of the VB. The 32X version is a 32 bit version but has less to offer compared to SNES.

Still wouldn’t work…

Think of it this way :

Hold 1 finger about 6 inches from your face. Cross your eyes and look at that finger. Notice how everything in the background is now dramatically doubled? That’s because your eyes are converging on a nearby point. Everything in the background on your VB would be similarly doubled if they wanted a realistic 3D effect, and if not then you would just get motion sick.

Oki..

When I first started looking at what might be possible on the vb..I was also wondering about ‘doom’..well not doom..but what came before it..wolfenstein 3-d. At first, I thought there was no way a game like this could be made to play on the vboy. Then one day..I saw a surprise entry in the Coding Competition in 2008.

VB racing.

http://www.planetvb.com/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=3381&forum=8

When I found out this game used a ray casting engine..I automatically thought of wolfenstein. I actually asked the question in the forum if he could use his engine to code a wolfenstein type of game. He said no..but he was working on a raycasting engine that might work. Actually had a demo of it on youtube.

I haven’t heard anything else about the engine he was working on….but then came another contest..and we saw:

Yeti3d (if i remember right, an entry to the 2009 contest ??)

http://www.planetvb.com/modules/games/?h058d

This is a raycaster that shows the VBoy can pull off a wolfenstein type of area.

http://www.planetvb.com/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=3727&viewmode=flat&order=ASC&type=&mode=0&start=0

But, I’m not sure if you could code enemies or what in this 3-d environment..because of the way it draws the rooms ect…it seems like anything drawn would actually be behind the lines of the room and you wound’t be able to see it.

It does give me hope that one day a first-person shooter might be made for the vboy. But, the work involved in being able to code something like that is just staggering.

Hope this clears up some of your questions..please follow some of the links..and download and try out the demo’s.

-Eric

I also think that a FPS would be possible on VB. However, a real game like Doom would be a lot of work, as there is now way to somehow convert a to the VB. There is no other way then reprogramming everything from the scratch. However, if you really want to program a game I would suggest to start with an easy project. Building a game is not as easy as it may sound.

I am thinking about making an onRail shooter for quite some time now. However, this is nothing that you can do on some weekends. You have to be willing to invest a lot of your free time.

FPSs aren’t good for the VB, because of the controller and also because of the depth of field.

You walk down a corridor, but the VB can’t portray that amount of depth that it needs to. This is the main obstacle in my opinion.

Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to see 3D Monster Maze or an old school first-person Dungeon Crawler on VB, but DOOM is misguided.

Technically possible (it’s done on ZX Spectrum even), but it won’t feel like DOOM at all and that’s half the point right?

I’m not a dev nor do I have the knowledge or authority to speak as one.

I thought Faceball 2000 was great in it’s time, and it made it’s way to VB. Was this only because of the corridor-like limitation like in “Shadow over Innsmouth” for VB?

I’m not sure where all this talk about the VB’s depth rendering being limited came from, but it has to stop. I am a VB programmer (on occasion…), and I can say authoritatively that the VB can produce more parallax depth than the human eye can handle, both into and out of the screen. Besides that, if you look into a great distance (like down a long hallway) in real life, you’ll find that stereoscopic depth is limited to about 30 feet because of the distance between (and resolving power of) the human eyes. This means the VB could even take shortcuts when generating the two images and it would still look fine.

@colesonwilson, your little “finger” demonstration just shows how stereoscopic vision works. Look at any VB game and you’ll see the same effect. It doesn’t detract from the game, it’s what the VB (and other stereo-capable systems) add to the game experience! No disrespect intended, but I seriously don’t have a clue where you came up with that…

I still think it’s a bad idea – the stronger the effect the more magical the headaches. This is also true of the 3DS, something we found when pushing images out of the screen, it’s very uncomfortable.

I didn’t realise the VB could have that much of an effect though. I thought the 256 degrees of depth amounted to pixel adjustments, in otherwise very precise but small iterations.

@colesonwilson, your little “finger” demonstration just shows how stereoscopic vision works. Look at any VB game and you’ll see the same effect. It doesn’t detract from the game, it’s what the VB (and other stereo-capable systems) add to the game experience! No disrespect intended, but I seriously don’t have a clue where you came up with that…

It’s a depth of field problem. Your eyes have trained your brain to only pay attention to what is being focused upon. 3D or Virtual Reality systems all suffer from the same problem – everything is in focus. This definitely detracts from the illusion because you are not showing the brain what it is expecting to see.

For example :

Look at something up close. Everything in the background becomes doubled and out of focus. Your brain ignores it.

Look at something far away. Everything in the foreground becomes doubled and out of focus. Your brain ignores it.

Look at a foreground “3D” image using a VR or other 3D display. Everything in the background is sharply focused, but doubled. Your brain *does not ignore it* and you get a headache.

Now try looking at a background image when the system is wanting you to look in the foreground. Your head will asplode.

The only way for a TRUE 3D environment to be displayed in a way which does not cause discomfort to the viewer is for the system to be able to determine what the viewer is *actually* looking at, and adjust the display to focus on that to the detriment of the rest of the scene. If there was some sort of pupil tracking, this would be possible, but this is a Virtual Boy.

Now go buy one of my Virtual Boy T-Shirts from the mart :
http://www.planetvb.com/modules/catads/adsitem.php?ads_id=236

Some games really don’t provide any 3-D element which is pretty sad.

There are a lot of Doom clones out there which do achieve the essence of Doom but perhaps change mechanics/gfx/simplify gameplay.

Consider the Amiga Doom clones such as Alien Breed 3D or my personal favourite Gloom. These are designed for simpler tech but have all the fun of a Doom-type game.

Could these not be considered as a basis for a game?

With regards to how the game/3D looks when introducing the HUD. Consider the fact that the majority of the functions are on the rather amazing VB pad. You have two pads, should buttons and function buttons on the front. The HUD would only need to have Health/Armour or some such thing…

How cool would it be(Ambitious but…) to have the Doom automapper as a separate screen called up with the SELECT function as an example?

I would even be well stoked to have Insmouse No Yakata with more guns and an item box every so often… lol 🙂

I think Doom direct onto VB would be an amazing technical achievement but I wouldn’t get passionate about it completely. For me I would want a game that made use of what makes VB good. Like something cool with the 3D but simplified mechanics.

Ok this is going to sound really dumb but has anyone played Duke Nukem 3D on the Tiger Game.com. Ok the screen update is terrible, ok the game is stupidly simplified. But it has something. It has a thing… Could that be the seed to get something first person related with ‘rapid’ fire and plenty to kill on VB?

I would pay cold, hard green to find out!!! 🙂

I’d rather see Heretic, its better then Doom but uses the same basic engine! Make Heretic instead, Doom is way overated Heretic had only one release.

http://doom.wikia.com/wiki/Heretic

The way I see it. If someone can do the amazing thing of building that type of a 3D FPS engine then it would make the possibility of Hexen/Heretic all the more realistic.

I don’t see a VB FPS as a straight up Doom clone. I would like to see something VB in style and feel. If someone was to go down the Medieval route and give us a Heretic/Hexen game then thats equally cool.

Naturally this is all just talk. The thought of something FPS on VB is just so appealing…