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ROM Hack GBA Doom wad conversions (open for suggestions!)

  • Thread starter Thread starter Bazooka_Face
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Bazooka_Face said:
this is wolfensteins engine with a custom in house renderer for gba. i optimized the raycaster until we hit 60fps then ported the state machines, mechanics and wolf 3d data over one at a time. the font looks bad because its scaled from the full dos framebuffer to the small gba screen. Also I am going to post the update where I adjusted fifa timing for audio. It was incorrect and crackling.
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If you want to, I could rework the font to make it look better, I can do some sprite art, so modifying it to look better on the GBA screen could be something feasible on my end, both for Wolf3D and Spear of Destiny
 
FoTan432 said:
Ah man.. I'm sorry, I'm too much of a dummy, to figure this all out. I'd love to play those too, this 'smoothdoom' thingy and this new Wolfenstein... but I don't know how.

When I extract them, I get:
- smoothdoom gba.xdelta
- wolfd3d gba better.xdelta

Would anyone be so kind, as to tell me, what exactly I have to do now with those 2, to get them to run on my GBA ?

I tried patching them my original rom files at this address: https://www.marcrobledo.com/RomPatcher.js/ but it always gives me an error message.
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https://www.romhacking.net/utilities/704/

I recommend patching a clean "Wolfenstein 3D" GBA ROM using the Delta Patcher tool. The same goes for your ROM of "Doom."

The online ROM patcher last time I tried to use it didn't work.
 
Yes, I managed to do it :D Thx

It's so nice to have a good running Wolfenstein on the GBA. And also the refinements on Doom are really, really cool. It is still incredible to me, how this all runs so much better, than the retail releases ever could!
 
@capsulej actually yes, a lot in the case of DOOM 1, not so much with DOOM 2.

Doom1 is based on the Jaguar port of the old DOOM game but then adds in the missing stages. it is lacking some features, lacking some of the stages, has some changes to how much health, armor, etc pickups give. If you hit up gamefaqs.com and go to DOOM 1993 and grab the comparison guide here: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/524287-doom-1993/faqs/1774

You can then on the guide ctrl+f (Find) 6. ATARI JAGUAR DOOM this section. That will tell you the pros, cons, changes, and stages list. THEN go and Ctrl+F again for 19. GAME VERSION COMPARISON TABLES That one is very easy to check because PC and JAG are put side by side first unlike the rest since many ports are based on it. You can also check the GBA table on that too since they're basically the same.

If you check those out you can see how different Doom on PC vs GBA is through the Jaguar section and GBA section.

Now as far as Doom II goes, it's lightly edited, another far more competent company did that one (Torus Games) and they straight ported it and did so up to the memory limits of the hardware. ONE stage was broken into 2 full stages because it couldn't fit in memory, also has green blood for a T vs M rating to be more sellable. DOOM2 GBA has a section for itself and also has its table with other D2 ports showing how close it is.

Because of that a few years back some hacks were done on both games, though really Doom 1 needed it badly, that bring the GBA experience nearly up to the quality of the PC fixing so much lost content, lost detail levels, etc. I loved then so much I paid for a couple translucent red shells, rewriteable boards with save and labels and have my own to have it on real hardware.
 
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In regards to Doom 2, on the GBA, I think that the developer used another engine. I think it was the 'Ecks vs Sever'-Engine, which they also used in many other GBA First Person Shooters.

They basically used their own engine and rebuild all the Doom 2 maps in that engine. You can also kind of 'feel' it, being different from Doom 1 GBA. The shotgun has kind of a different impact pattern and textures blur, when farther away. Also, enemies go into an idle state, when too far away from the player.

That all didn't stop me from enjoying it, believe me, I played it a lot. But what always bothered me about Doom 2 GBA, was the awful input lag. I mean, you can kinda get used to it, a little bit, but still... it's bad.

But other than that, I still think it's an impressive port and it was jaw-dropping, back in the day. Hell, it still is, in my opinion.
 
Bazooka_Face said:
correct, it is to showcase that dehacked now indeed works. also
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Just needed to say that seeing Heretic running on a GBA might be the coolest thing I've seen in a long long time.

I'd imagine that getting it to run will be a feat as the Heretic engine has a lot of tweaks on top of the original Doom engine.
 
Last edited by ThatNukemGuy,
@FoTan432 They had a special engine called the southpaw engine.
https://www.doomwiki.org/wiki/Southpaw_Engine

In general for the time, but also for GBA it's a very very impressive engine. Doom 2, Duke Nukem 3D Advance, and Ice Nine only, Ecks used another one. I think the only more stunning GBA engine is blueroses, that one lifted all of Wing Commander Prophecy on GBA and a few others too like Smashing Drive.

Crawfish that did the Ecks games made their own raycasting engine done in machine code, not sure what the name is but IGN did an interview on it back in the day and they detailed it a little.
 
VmprHntrD said:
@FoTan432 They had a special engine called the southpaw engine.
https://www.doomwiki.org/wiki/Southpaw_Engine

In general for the time, but also for GBA it's a very very impressive engine. Doom 2, Duke Nukem 3D Advance, and Ice Nine only, Ecks used another one. I think the only more stunning GBA engine is blueroses, that one lifted all of Wing Commander Prophecy on GBA and a few others too like Smashing Drive.

Crawfish that did the Ecks games made their own raycasting engine done in machine code, not sure what the name is but IGN did an interview on it back in the day and they detailed it a little.
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Palmer Productions made Doom 1 on the GBA. They had a much better version up and running but Carmack forced them to use his Jaguar port for consistency purposes.

There were also some allegations from Palmer in a book that Torus Games lifted code for use in the Southpaw Engine, which powered Doom 2 on GBA. Never substantiated but it is fascinating.
 
ThatNukemGuy said:
Palmer Productions made Doom 1 on the GBA. They had a much better version up and running but Carmack forced them to use his Jaguar port for consistency purposes.

There were also some allegations from Palmer in a book that Torus Games lifted code for use in the Southpaw Engine, which powered Doom 2 on GBA. Never substantiated but it is fascinating.
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Interesting, the carmack part I forgot about, but the other is either immature saltiness or something to it, but you'd think by now with the internet as it is something would have surfaced. Palmer I think did Keen on GBC and that one though is terrible unlike the old DOS games so I'm not sure what to think of their work.
 
This is just so cool to see and play.

I played the original GBA Wolfenstein 3D back in the day, and it was certainly a mixed bag, to put it nicely.

This total conversion pretty much outclasses that original in every possible way. With maybe the shrunken menu/HUD elements being the only thing that has taken a hit, and maybe some of that audio crackling.
Also. The secret exit on level 1-1 doesn't seem to actually take you to the secret floor.

I first tried to run it on mGBA, but it kept hard-crashing the whole emulator when I open the first door xD
I then switched to Mesen where it worked fine, though there was one time when the screen went white and crashed when I opened that first door too.

But this is some really astonishing work, to say the least.

One question. Will saving and loading also be coming in a future update, or is that out of the question?
I remember the original game would only let you save between stages.
 

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