GBA Doom Deluxe? Concept thread

[Kippykip]

I've had this fork idea for a while now, its a lot of work but:

+Find a way to combine doom, doom II, final doom into a single wad then make a selector and put it on the GBA Doom ROM.
+Convert all music from both games, evilution and the unofficial plutonia midi pack to the impulsetracker format
+Coloured PSX lighting
+Improve the PLAYPAL GBA palette so not only is dark shading better, but so the above sector lighting can be improved. Since the PLAYPAL graphic in doom has a few reused colors and some underutilised ones.
+Add the nightmare spectre in the port

+Maybe port the PSX Fire Skybox in the game somehow, maybe if there's romspace just have it prerendered?

How DOOM fire was done

+Fix the controls
+Make a save prompt at the end of a level?
+Manually optimise maps that cause trouble

 

[Kippykip]

Some demos, showing it's more than possible:

 

[Chris]

Some demos, showing it's more than possible:

you can really see the gba's limitations when it comes to colors, specifically when it comes to adding specific colors to the COLORMAP that aren't just black
Doesn't the GBA only have like 1/5th of the 256-color-pallete most DOS games and in extension doom had? you can really tell in the blues.
With that low of a color-pallet and aspect ratio I wouldn't even dare to try to port the PSX fire graphic, you'd be able to mimic that chaotic randomized look pretty easily, it just wouldn't look as good because it's running on a GBA
You could probably get a low graphical interface for the wads, and somehow manage to fit them down into a single gba file. This would be impossible to run on a native cartridge though, without taking heavy limitations that the GBA games already have
Actually update, Doom I is 3mb, Doom II is 8, and it may be possible to add Final Doom is the size is the same, GBA cartridges can hold up to 32!, they truly didn't use up as much detail as they probably could

 

[Kippykip]

you can really see the gba's limitations when it comes to colors, specifically when it comes to adding specific colors to the COLORMAP that aren't just black
Doesn't the GBA only have like 1/5th of the 256-color-pallete most DOS games and in extension doom had? you can really tell in the blues.
With that low of a color-pallet and aspect ratio I wouldn't even dare to try to port the PSX fire graphic, you'd be able to mimic that chaotic randomized look pretty easily, it just wouldn't look as good because it's running on a GBA
You could probably get a low graphical interface for the wads, and somehow manage to fit them down into a single gba file. This would be impossible to run on a native cartridge though, without taking heavy limitations that the GBA games already have
Actually update, Doom I is 3mb, Doom II is 8, and it may be possible to add Final Doom is the size is the same, GBA cartridges can hold up to 32!, they truly didn't use up as much detail as they probably could

GBA graphics hardware has a limit of 256 colours, which is great exactly the same as the original DOS version when it comes to colours, which has a palette of 256. However those can be defined as anything.
The original game switches the palettes on the fly and quite a few variants, which is why when you get hurt the entire screen tints red including the status bar.

The PS1 and N64 versions are the only official ports to use proper 16-bit colour modes, giving you a max of 65,536 on screen at once. So they added sector lighting.

The PLAYPAL palette actually has a few duplicate colours as you can see, so it's possible you can add a few more colours but all existing WAD graphics will have to be converted to the new one.

 

[Chris]

GBA graphics hardware has a limit of 256 colours, which is great exactly the same as the original DOS version when it comes to colours, which has a palette of 256. However those can be defined as anything.
The original game switches the palettes on the fly and quite a few variants, which is why when you get hurt the entire screen tints red including the status bar.

The PS1 and N64 versions are the only official ports to use proper 16-bit colour modes, giving you a max of 65,536 on screen at once. So they added sector lighting.

The PLAYPAL palette actually has a few duplicate colours as you can see, so it's possible you can add a few more colours but all existing WAD graphics will have to be converted to the new one.
View attachment 2211

Did you ever plan to format the colors a bit better to where the one's in GBA and DOS were 1:1? I noticed the colors (not just the blood) are a bit brighter in the GBA port

 

[Kippykip]

Did you ever plan to format the colors a bit better to where the one's in GBA and DOS were 1:1? I noticed the colors (not just the blood) are a bit brighter in the GBA port

The colours are exact, but the PrBoom GBA port initially lacked distance fog, just like the retail ports because of speed or something.
Funnily enough, this is actually how I was able to add the sector colours in the first place and repurpose the colourmap. I basically just made them hidden sector brightness levels.

The colourmap, is what lets you have darker areas in doom, it precalculates the PLAYPAL palette into the next nearest darker colour. It's why pinky demons turn brown when it gets dark in the original non-gl ports.

But PrBoom GBA actually has distance fog now, as you can see it's exactly like the PC version now.