Proving Doom can truly run on something, one programmer has made a working construct for Commodore 64

You may play Doom on a vape, a printer, an oscilloscope, a being pregnant check, an ATM, and inside Doom itself, however are you able to play it on a Commodore 64? The previous 8-bit powerhouse was discontinued only a 12 months after Doom’s 1993 launch, and whereas it was able to small miracles for its time, it was not a pure dwelling for first-person shooters.

Engineer and programmer Steve McCrea has labored on a number of Metroid video games and Resident Evil 4’s VR port, however his present venture is inarguably extra necessary: he is constructing Doom for Commodore 64.

It is a removed from easy port, and it is technically not 3D. In accordance with McCrea posting on X, it is based mostly on code for The Preserve, a first-person dungeon crawler he created for the Commodore VIC-20. The VIC-20 is an ancestor to the Commodore 64 with inferior specs, although it solely launched a 12 months earlier than the Commodore 64’s 1982 launch. McCrea writes that his C64 Doom is “utilizing ray casting in a tile grid”.

However in contrast to The Preserve, which was extra just like one thing like Wolfenstein 3D—primarily a flat, grid-locked maze—McCrea’s Doom C64 has variable ground and ceiling heights and elevators. It additionally has opening doorways and “seen weapons” (versus The Preserve which did not).

It truly is spectacular, particularly this most up-to-date work-in-progress video which reveals variable lighting (!) and a skybox. In accordance with McCrea he is constructed ranges E1M1 by to E1M8, however is at present on the lookout for assistance on music. Chris Hülsbeck, are you round?

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Apogee Software program founder Scott Miller, who printed Wolfenstein 3D, is impressed. “Again once we launched Wolf3D I begged Id to make a C-64 model they usually mentioned it wasn’t attainable. Now I am crying.”