3 ms·

Look, I don't want to talk down on this beautiful thing...but let's be honest: it's barely more than a doom reskin. It's not trying to be, either.

badsectoracula 3y ago
I think the Bitmap Brothers mention is because the 2D graphics feel very Amiga-ish / BB-ish. When i read the comment i wondered "why the Bitmap Brothers reference?" but once i saw the screenshot i thought "ah, i see". Compare the textures/2D artwork of, say, Doom, Duke3D or Blood and then the sprites of something like Chaos Engine, Gods (even the DOS versions) or even some of their 90s PC games like Z and i think you'll see how the visual style of Grind is closer to that of Bitmap Brothers' games than to Doom/Duke3D/Blood/etc.
whizzter 3y ago
It's on a Amiga 500, it has about 3 MIPS of performance or about 4x less than a 486sx25 that has about 12 (yes, 68k had a couple of extra registers). On top of that the Amiga500 graphics chip placed all graphics in bitplanes, that was a great move for just copying 2d graphics in the mid 80s with the help of simple hardware acceleration, but it really became a pain for anyone wanting to do 3d graphics. To call it a reskin is quite a disparagement of the amount of work they've probably had to put in to get in running decently (unless they figured out a very clever way to make the hardware do a fair chunk of the work for them, kudos either way). And as others have pointed out, it's that they've chosen a more "amiga-y" artstyle.
- nxobject 3y ago
  My knowledge of the Amiga chipset is very cursory, but peeking at the source code, there are some blitter routines that look like they're used for texture scaling (i.e. stretching + drawing vertical strips/walls.) I don't know whether that (alone) accounts for the significant speedups needed. A good comparison would be to any bottlenecks the original NeXT engine, which had the 68k, but didn't have any of the accelerators... https://github.com/Krzysiek-K/Dread-source-drop/blob/master/dreadtool/src/blitter.cpp https://github.com/Krzysiek-K/Dread-source-drop/blob/master/...
  - whizzter 3y ago
    Hmh, browsing a bit it seems that the Dreadtool part of the source seems to be some kind of editor built with Visual C++. The Dreadmake folders seems to have actual Amiga sources. https://github.com/Krzysiek-K/Dread-source-drop/blob/master/dreadmake/src/dread_codegen.c https://github.com/Krzysiek-K/Dread-source-drop/blob/master/... (This feels reminiscent of the "generate-y-fillers" that ID did for Wolf3d) https://github.com/Krzysiek-K/Dread-source-drop/blob/master/dreadmake/src/dread_asm_draw.s https://github.com/Krzysiek-K/Dread-source-drop/blob/master/... (Browsing this reminds me of Fabien Sanglard's Doom/Duke3d walkthroughs)
- thomastjeffery 3y ago
  > To call it a reskin is quite a disparagement No it isn't! You just outlined all the reasons that a Doom reskin on the Anus is impressive! > And as others have pointed out, it's that they've chosen a more "amiga-y" artstyle. That's great! I wasn't replying to that.
  - PcChip 3y ago
    The Anus... they're really taking this "Doom runs on everything" quote seriously!
  - whizzter 3y ago
    A reskin within games is usually defined as using the same binary with different assets, even a shared source code lineage(Doom source used in Heretic/Hexen or especially Quake to Halflife) would stretch that definition. In this case I doubt there is any shared code at all other than conceptual ideas. If you are willing to go around proclaiming that Rust is just a reskin of Java then sure, I'll give that you're willing to equate wildly different things. (I didn't use C# and Java because those are probably closer in lineage due to J++ than this game and Doom)
Zardoz84 3y ago
in a Amiga 500! This is amazing!
vidarh 3y ago
Consider that Doom is sometimes blamed for single-handedly causing the downfall of the Amiga's position in gaming because of how long it took to get even a half-decent Doom-like game for it, as a result of how badly mismatched the Amiga graphics chipset was for 3D graphics. That is why is this is impressive. The number of gamers who switched to PC's just because of Doom was huge. After Doom everything was measured against it for a long time. Even many diehard Amiga fans suddenly decided the game was up and switched. That your reaction is that it is "barely more than a Doom reskin" demonstrates why it is incredible. To the extent that if a "barely more than a Doom reskin" had been achieved near the time Doom came out, computing history might have looked quite different (though Commodore was so badly mismanaged at this point that they'd probably still have managed to mess things up even if they'd been handed this kind of reprieve on a silver platter, but one can dream)
mock-possum 3y ago
It doesn’t have any of DOOM’s verticality though - this is far closer to a slightly upgraded Wolfenstein imo

badsectoracula 3y ago

I think the Bitmap Brothers mention is because the 2D graphics feel very Amiga-ish / BB-ish. When i read the comment i wondered "why the Bitmap Brothers reference?" but once i saw the screenshot i thought "ah, i see". Compare the textures/2D artwork of, say, Doom, Duke3D or Blood and then the sprites of something like Chaos Engine, Gods (even the DOS versions) or even some of their 90s PC games like Z and i think you'll see how the visual style of Grind is closer to that of Bitmap Brothers' games than to Doom/Duke3D/Blood/etc.

whizzter 3y ago

It's on a Amiga 500, it has about 3 MIPS of performance or about 4x less than a 486sx25 that has about 12 (yes, 68k had a couple of extra registers). On top of that the Amiga500 graphics chip placed all graphics in bitplanes, that was a great move for just copying 2d graphics in the mid 80s with the help of simple hardware acceleration, but it really became a pain for anyone wanting to do 3d graphics. To call it a reskin is quite a disparagement of the amount of work they've probably had to put in to get in running decently (unless they figured out a very clever way to make the hardware do a fair chunk of the work for them, kudos either way). And as others have pointed out, it's that they've chosen a more "amiga-y" artstyle.

nxobject 3y ago
My knowledge of the Amiga chipset is very cursory, but peeking at the source code, there are some blitter routines that look like they're used for texture scaling (i.e. stretching + drawing vertical strips/walls.) I don't know whether that (alone) accounts for the significant speedups needed. A good comparison would be to any bottlenecks the original NeXT engine, which had the 68k, but didn't have any of the accelerators... https://github.com/Krzysiek-K/Dread-source-drop/blob/master/dreadtool/src/blitter.cpp https://github.com/Krzysiek-K/Dread-source-drop/blob/master/...
- whizzter 3y ago
  Hmh, browsing a bit it seems that the Dreadtool part of the source seems to be some kind of editor built with Visual C++. The Dreadmake folders seems to have actual Amiga sources. https://github.com/Krzysiek-K/Dread-source-drop/blob/master/dreadmake/src/dread_codegen.c https://github.com/Krzysiek-K/Dread-source-drop/blob/master/... (This feels reminiscent of the "generate-y-fillers" that ID did for Wolf3d) https://github.com/Krzysiek-K/Dread-source-drop/blob/master/dreadmake/src/dread_asm_draw.s https://github.com/Krzysiek-K/Dread-source-drop/blob/master/... (Browsing this reminds me of Fabien Sanglard's Doom/Duke3d walkthroughs)
thomastjeffery 3y ago
> To call it a reskin is quite a disparagement No it isn't! You just outlined all the reasons that a Doom reskin on the Anus is impressive! > And as others have pointed out, it's that they've chosen a more "amiga-y" artstyle. That's great! I wasn't replying to that.
- PcChip 3y ago
  The Anus... they're really taking this "Doom runs on everything" quote seriously!
- whizzter 3y ago
  A reskin within games is usually defined as using the same binary with different assets, even a shared source code lineage(Doom source used in Heretic/Hexen or especially Quake to Halflife) would stretch that definition. In this case I doubt there is any shared code at all other than conceptual ideas. If you are willing to go around proclaiming that Rust is just a reskin of Java then sure, I'll give that you're willing to equate wildly different things. (I didn't use C# and Java because those are probably closer in lineage due to J++ than this game and Doom)

Zardoz84 3y ago

in a Amiga 500! This is amazing!

vidarh 3y ago

Consider that Doom is sometimes blamed for single-handedly causing the downfall of the Amiga's position in gaming because of how long it took to get even a half-decent Doom-like game for it, as a result of how badly mismatched the Amiga graphics chipset was for 3D graphics. That is why is this is impressive. The number of gamers who switched to PC's just because of Doom was huge. After Doom everything was measured against it for a long time. Even many diehard Amiga fans suddenly decided the game was up and switched. That your reaction is that it is "barely more than a Doom reskin" demonstrates why it is incredible. To the extent that if a "barely more than a Doom reskin" had been achieved near the time Doom came out, computing history might have looked quite different (though Commodore was so badly mismanaged at this point that they'd probably still have managed to mess things up even if they'd been handed this kind of reprieve on a silver platter, but one can dream)

mock-possum 3y ago

It doesn’t have any of DOOM’s verticality though - this is far closer to a slightly upgraded Wolfenstein imo