7 ms·

The Polygons of Doom: PSX

181 points by anyfoo 6y ago

wtt604 6y ago
This entire website is fantastic. There is so much detail to be had and the articles are very readable.
- jdkee 6y ago
  Agree. I learn so much about programming by reading how he dissects old game programming techniques on relatively limited hardware. His piece on the Doom flames is incommensurate.
  - skocznymroczny 6y ago
    If you don't know it yet, https://www.flipcode.com/ https://www.flipcode.com/ is also a great source of information. It comes from era of early 3D realtime graphics, when everyone was making their own engines using early Direct3D, OpenGL and Glide APIs. A lot of those articles aren't relevant anymore, but they show many algorithms that were used in that period of time.
    - deaddodo 6y ago
      > A lot of those articles aren't relevant anymore, but they show many algorithms that were used in that period of time. I would actually argue the inverse. There are many articles that are still very relevant, some just don’t realize it since modern engines abstract the logic away. But there are some developers that work in engines that still need that knowledge. BSPs, VFSes, raytracing, 2d blitting techniques, 3D mathematics, etc are all still very useful. This is one of the reasons I’m so glad these archives have stayed online for so long.
      - mysterydip 6y ago
        I first wanted to make a raycaster for fun and to learn more about it, and now I'm making a game enhancing the Rise of the Trian engine (itself an enhancement over the Wolfenstein 3D engine) while still meeting original system requirements (386, 4MB RAM free). Fabien's site and flipcode have both been essential in my journey, I appreciate them both immensely.
    - 1_player 6y ago
      Awesome! I just got into game programming, and I've been looking far and wide for a resource like that one. Google has only provided a ton of blogspam, but I knew there was some old 90s looking website somewhere filled with code and handcrafted images about vector math and other game engine tricks.
    - wtt604 6y ago
      Bookmarked and I will visit later. Thank you!
pjmlp 6y ago
Another piece regarding PSX, it was the first console SDK to really push for C and C++ based SDK, finally making the pure Assembly cross from previous console generations.
mschuster91 6y ago
> That’s a stupid idea, Sony doesn’t know how to make hardware. They don’t know how to make software either. Why would we want to do this? They know how to do hardware now, but software? cries in Sony Alpha firmware
bluedino 6y ago
Another great PSX 3D engine would be the Quake II port done by Hammerhead. It's more of it's own engine rather than a port, but it looked amazing for the time, and still does.
- Narishma 6y ago
  Alien Resurection is another one. It came at the tail end of the generation and was technically impressive.
- djmips 6y ago
  Is Doom PSX a 'great' PSX 3D engine? Or is it just a decent 3D engine with a popular game attached.
  - andrewf 6y ago
    IMO it's just very well executed. The job was to get Doom's sprites and level geometry onto the PSX, and this happened in time for 1995's holiday season. PlayStation Doom had fewer framerate issues than most console Doom ports, and some nice extras (colored lighting). It preserved the aspects of the engine that Carmack valued most: subpixel correctness, perspective correct texture mapping, and diminished lighting.
pvg 6y ago
Recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22699439 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22699439
lholden 6y ago
Just about everything Fabien writes is fantastic reading!
- anyfoo 6y ago
  If you haven’t read it yet, I suggest his game engine black book series (mentioned in the article). If you like his writing online, you will likely like the books.
  - lholden 6y ago
    Good call out. I own physical copies of both the books :D. Really enjoyable stuff!
jeremycw 6y ago
> The major argument is somewhat philosophical. I don’t like what people expect out of CD games. Does anyone think that the cheeseball dialog in crash and burn is a GOOD addition? It turns my stomach. People expect CD games to have tons of digitized speech and video, and the 3DO is going to be strongly associated with it. The joke here is that if we ever do a CD version of DOOM, you are going to get the game and “The Making of DOOM” a one hour feature film. Companies spend hundreds of thousands of dollars putting all this media into their games, and it often actually detracts from it. We don’t want to be part of this crowd. > I would rather cut down to the essentials and fit on a cartridge than uselessly bulk up on a CD. I have a minimalist sense of aesthetics in game design. It's kind of surprising to see John Carmack have what amounts to a "640k ought to be enough for everyone" moment here. As a guy that I see as somewhat of a futurist, developing on the edge of technology, it seems strange to see him be so dismissive to the potential of the massive storage space of CDs at the time.
- anonymousab 6y ago
  It seems more like a stylistic choice and preference of prioritizing gameplay over other elements of a game. It's in line with similar other comments he's made, e.g. "Story in a game is like story in a porn movie. It's expected to be there, but it's not important." It's not so much that he didn't think CDs brought advantages and new options to games, but that the aspects of games that they were commonly used for were, at that time, unappealing to the kinds of games he liked to play and make.
- CyberDildonics 6y ago
  That quote not being true aside, john carmack seems to be focusing much more on interactivity instead of mixing so much passive entertainment into a game just because it is newly possible. I think he was absolutely right and it is impressive that he didn't get distracted from the what made video games desirable just because there were new possibilities.
- tomc1985 6y ago
  Most of the voice acting of that time was terrible. It does sound a bit "old man yelling at clouds" but if you were there, you might understand
avmich 6y ago
> Ever since he had witnessed his daughter play on a Nintendo Famicom, Ken had been advocating for Sony to enter the market. He had even designed Nintendo’s audio chip (the SPC700) for their SNES against the advice of Sony VPs. A man who's engineer enough to design an audio chip, and also advocating for entering the market to Sony? Sunny world of bright opportunities.
dusted 6y ago
Is this not a repost? I seem to distinctly remember reading this, and I'm fairly sure it was here on HN.. But it's a good read nevertheless :)
greggman3 6y ago
The game "Disruptor" by Insomniac is arguably way more "technically" impressive than DOOM on PS1. It has million polygon levels where as IIRC DOOM's levels are on the order of 2k to 3k polygon https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umZg7RFVm-A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umZg7RFVm-A Gameplay-wise though it was missing someting.
- sixothree 6y ago
  Interesting title. I would argue the level design is better than DOOM as well.

181 points by anyfoo 6y ago

wtt604 6y ago

This entire website is fantastic. There is so much detail to be had and the articles are very readable.

jdkee 6y ago
Agree. I learn so much about programming by reading how he dissects old game programming techniques on relatively limited hardware. His piece on the Doom flames is incommensurate.
- skocznymroczny 6y ago
  If you don't know it yet, https://www.flipcode.com/ https://www.flipcode.com/ is also a great source of information. It comes from era of early 3D realtime graphics, when everyone was making their own engines using early Direct3D, OpenGL and Glide APIs. A lot of those articles aren't relevant anymore, but they show many algorithms that were used in that period of time.
  - deaddodo 6y ago
    > A lot of those articles aren't relevant anymore, but they show many algorithms that were used in that period of time. I would actually argue the inverse. There are many articles that are still very relevant, some just don’t realize it since modern engines abstract the logic away. But there are some developers that work in engines that still need that knowledge. BSPs, VFSes, raytracing, 2d blitting techniques, 3D mathematics, etc are all still very useful. This is one of the reasons I’m so glad these archives have stayed online for so long.
    - mysterydip 6y ago
      I first wanted to make a raycaster for fun and to learn more about it, and now I'm making a game enhancing the Rise of the Trian engine (itself an enhancement over the Wolfenstein 3D engine) while still meeting original system requirements (386, 4MB RAM free). Fabien's site and flipcode have both been essential in my journey, I appreciate them both immensely.
  - 1_player 6y ago
    Awesome! I just got into game programming, and I've been looking far and wide for a resource like that one. Google has only provided a ton of blogspam, but I knew there was some old 90s looking website somewhere filled with code and handcrafted images about vector math and other game engine tricks.
  - wtt604 6y ago
    Bookmarked and I will visit later. Thank you!

pjmlp 6y ago

Another piece regarding PSX, it was the first console SDK to really push for C and C++ based SDK, finally making the pure Assembly cross from previous console generations.

mschuster91 6y ago

> That’s a stupid idea, Sony doesn’t know how to make hardware. They don’t know how to make software either. Why would we want to do this? They know how to do hardware now, but software? cries in Sony Alpha firmware

bluedino 6y ago

Another great PSX 3D engine would be the Quake II port done by Hammerhead. It's more of it's own engine rather than a port, but it looked amazing for the time, and still does.

Narishma 6y ago
Alien Resurection is another one. It came at the tail end of the generation and was technically impressive.
djmips 6y ago
Is Doom PSX a 'great' PSX 3D engine? Or is it just a decent 3D engine with a popular game attached.
- andrewf 6y ago
  IMO it's just very well executed. The job was to get Doom's sprites and level geometry onto the PSX, and this happened in time for 1995's holiday season. PlayStation Doom had fewer framerate issues than most console Doom ports, and some nice extras (colored lighting). It preserved the aspects of the engine that Carmack valued most: subpixel correctness, perspective correct texture mapping, and diminished lighting.

pvg 6y ago

Recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22699439 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22699439

lholden 6y ago

Just about everything Fabien writes is fantastic reading!

anyfoo 6y ago
If you haven’t read it yet, I suggest his game engine black book series (mentioned in the article). If you like his writing online, you will likely like the books.
- lholden 6y ago
  Good call out. I own physical copies of both the books :D. Really enjoyable stuff!

jeremycw 6y ago

> The major argument is somewhat philosophical. I don’t like what people expect out of CD games. Does anyone think that the cheeseball dialog in crash and burn is a GOOD addition? It turns my stomach. People expect CD games to have tons of digitized speech and video, and the 3DO is going to be strongly associated with it. The joke here is that if we ever do a CD version of DOOM, you are going to get the game and “The Making of DOOM” a one hour feature film. Companies spend hundreds of thousands of dollars putting all this media into their games, and it often actually detracts from it. We don’t want to be part of this crowd. > I would rather cut down to the essentials and fit on a cartridge than uselessly bulk up on a CD. I have a minimalist sense of aesthetics in game design. It's kind of surprising to see John Carmack have what amounts to a "640k ought to be enough for everyone" moment here. As a guy that I see as somewhat of a futurist, developing on the edge of technology, it seems strange to see him be so dismissive to the potential of the massive storage space of CDs at the time.

anonymousab 6y ago
It seems more like a stylistic choice and preference of prioritizing gameplay over other elements of a game. It's in line with similar other comments he's made, e.g. "Story in a game is like story in a porn movie. It's expected to be there, but it's not important." It's not so much that he didn't think CDs brought advantages and new options to games, but that the aspects of games that they were commonly used for were, at that time, unappealing to the kinds of games he liked to play and make.
CyberDildonics 6y ago
That quote not being true aside, john carmack seems to be focusing much more on interactivity instead of mixing so much passive entertainment into a game just because it is newly possible. I think he was absolutely right and it is impressive that he didn't get distracted from the what made video games desirable just because there were new possibilities.
tomc1985 6y ago
Most of the voice acting of that time was terrible. It does sound a bit "old man yelling at clouds" but if you were there, you might understand

avmich 6y ago

> Ever since he had witnessed his daughter play on a Nintendo Famicom, Ken had been advocating for Sony to enter the market. He had even designed Nintendo’s audio chip (the SPC700) for their SNES against the advice of Sony VPs. A man who's engineer enough to design an audio chip, and also advocating for entering the market to Sony? Sunny world of bright opportunities.

dusted 6y ago

Is this not a repost? I seem to distinctly remember reading this, and I'm fairly sure it was here on HN.. But it's a good read nevertheless :)

greggman3 6y ago

The game "Disruptor" by Insomniac is arguably way more "technically" impressive than DOOM on PS1. It has million polygon levels where as IIRC DOOM's levels are on the order of 2k to 3k polygon https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umZg7RFVm-A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umZg7RFVm-A Gameplay-wise though it was missing someting.

sixothree 6y ago
Interesting title. I would argue the level design is better than DOOM as well.