itch.io

Alrighty! I have questions. How on earth have you accomplished this? It's a perfect copy, down to even the exact same attraction mode recording (even wondered if it was a recording as a kid). It's like you have the source code to the original? Have you disassembled it somehow?
Anyway, here's my findings.

The gameplay look survived perfectly. :3

There are some slowdowns that I had not seen on the CPC 464, but they are not too terrible, and if they are simply because of the different CPU and speed, then I guess it cannot be helped.

There are graphics artifacts, such as leftover flying bits when monsters get smashed (like by an apple). The highscore table background is white, not black, like on the title screen. Name entry would normally also be done on black background. Also, the title animation here is considerably choppier than on the actual title screen, it's all good there.

The title screen, gameplay instructions are somewhat slower than I remember them. 

Some graphics might benefit from some manual touching up by hand (I know the pallette is more limited) as they look a bit flat compared to the original (maybe a direct conversion was used).

Real bug: For some reason I am asked to enter my name for a high score after the attraction mode played a few times, and a score is recorded. That shouldn't happen.

While the music is intact, it sounds a flatter than I remember it, but no big deal.  Some of it bleeds into the sound effects I feel. Wonder if that can be adjusted. Some of the sound effects go on for longer than they should, and turn into a permanent beep of sorrts, like the thowing ball. The sound effects themselves here don't have that clarity, loudness/crispness here, they used to be kinda funky and playful on the CPC. The bonus life and new life effects even had a sort of "echo" to them. The strawberry too, when it was smushed. No sound for anything being smushed in this, yet, I believe. It might be difficult to replicate these on a SID, might not be, I do not know.

I'm really looking forward to the future of this version.

I believe the original author passed away? I vividly remember seeing a web page he designed over 20 years ago, where he talked about this game. 

PS: I should read more. Like the text on the page. My apologies, I understand how it was made now. :) Anyhow I hope my points here are still alright to be made and I appreciate all the work!!

This is like, my childhood game ... gonna give this a whirl now. :3 

How I **longed** for a proper C64 port of this! Thank you for doing this, even if it's AI made (edit:not made, helped). Thank you again!! The sound effects on the CPC had a lot of coolness to them and I hope they can still be adjusted. As it is, this is a near perfect port, but could benefit from that. The music is fine really, it's basically same as on CPC, and maybe slight improvements to the graphics, but mostly it seems the game has survived intact! 

Quite exciting that we're getting dungeon crawlers now :3. I will say that I find the "music" quite horrible in a bad way ^^'  and I hope that's okay. There are barely ANY such games like this on the Commodore 64. This won't touch Eye of the Beholder, but what possibly could. But I like what I see very much!

For what it accomplishes, this is groundbreaking! I'll say that thee Wolfenstein version is more fun to play on a stock C64, only because it gets more frames per second, but with turbo enabled I'm really enjoying Square Doom a lot! Kinda wished it had the weapon bobbing, but especially a faster walking speed or a Shift-to-Run kind of speed, and that timed secrets would make usage of these speedier traversals. But I understand that the slower walking speed is probably necessary so people on a stock C64 can play it. But the levels are fun to explore like this! It translated to being squares very nicely indeed!

Now all we need is a proper modern but minimalistic office :3. Think GeoWrite, 80 column word processor, but with recognisable keyboard shortcuts, and a minimalistic spreadsheet. :3

Maybe alternating lines instead the scroller could be a thing. Like, fading out the text, fading in the new line ... feels smoother and perhaps less distracting.

Wow!!

Especially some of the more quiet and melodic ones still hold up very well today.

Would be cool if that worked. Maybe even with Score intact. I know the scoreboard is not in this, but one could still really write it down just fine.

Saving without a menu on the F-keys sounds great! 

Maybe one F-Key could cycle through savegame slots, even, but just one single savegame would be helping a great deal here.

BJ with Turbo mode looks like he has a serious case of the face twitches XD. I love the addition of the face animation, title screen and all that still, though!

I guess the final, only one thing that would still be a nice to have is some way of level selection. Since you can't save your game and continue. I know it's a fast pased first person shooter, but most people I talked to, seem to be replaying the first 3 or 4 maps, then get tired, and have to start over from the very beginning next time.

I'm hoping that, this will work just as well with Turbo Modes as Wolf64 did. 

Turning with the mouse also (even though the original Wolf3D and Doom booth had more than just turning with the mouse, you could use it to creep forwards and backward very carefully in both. But modern shooters did all away with that in favour of full mouselook later). :3 

Since DOOM Mapping tools aren't going to produce compatible WAD files, I wonder if your selfmade mapping tool could be bundled with this at some point. Of course it would be magic if such a tool was also a C64 tool but I don't wanna be crazy here. :3

Hope you are doing well!!

And working elevators ... and sector triggers, so secrets can work.

Yeah XD. You got me. Hahaha! What I greatly enjoyed in Quake back in the day, was a lot of the verticality. It was the first game where people permanently had mouselook enabled (initially it required entering +mouselook into the console). I have no idea how smooth this all plays, but I imagine a tiny, simple deathmatch bot could be great fun. Or even having two, and a spectator mode with external cameras that take any vertex in the game that's able to capture the action... or from their perspective. And you can just watch the show if you don't join. :3

I'm a dreamer, I know. :3 Just throwing in ideas. The base game is already great fun. No idea why I never suggested a bot in the DOOM version, but now I would. Even if it meant having a seperate program just for that kind of gameplay. Cooperative play with a bot would surely be too complex though.

Personally :3 if this would *ever* allow for such a thing, you could also make a version that has deathmatch bots instead of monsters. Maybe in an arena, or a few arenas. The classic Quake "Reaperbot" was the first of it's kind, "smart", tiny, and performant...

This one would benefit from Mouse controls even MORE now, because you can look up and down whilst moving with WASD .... :3 Love what you are doing here! Amazing! I wonder if a lot of CPU power could be shifted to the game if the gun had a visibility option (rendering it or not).

A loong looong time ago when I chilled with the floofs from exult and uwadv, I dreamed uwadv would some day be like this! <3 Thank you!! How did I not know this yesterday....

Yeah, it was simply to simulate you fighting the strong currents and being bad at swimming.

Wow -- and just when I thought you aren't doing amazing enough stuff on the C64, you're single handedly making a game like Ultima Underworld, which is like, my childhood game ... I'll really have to check this out when I have free time. I already love the visuals.... well, they just scream UW at the top of their lungs. Beautiful. I still wished back when Paul kickstarted Underworld Ascendant, they would have made something more like ... this. <3

The mouse is just working perfectly, mouSTer both, and internally on the C64U, and in 2Mhz mode it looks *very* smooth, and on this you can crank it up to a lot more. It literally plays identical to the DOS release, astonishing work, really! Yes, the doors (including "secret doors" (they are visible here) are locked in this speed though, and one more thing: the machine gun shoots the ammo way, way faster. You're empty almost instantly on max Mhz.

Looks fantastic! I'm also over the moon right here! :3 Mouse + WASD is *such* a big step for fps games.

Ah, thank you! So you already did some testing! I wouldn't even have a build yet (not sure if you were sent one or if it's in a repository already). Good to know it's working! 

(Sorry for double reply in a sense)

I would be able to test both having things sped up, and FGPA based 1351 mouse support (also 2nd test via MouSTer, but the actual 40 year old tank mouse and old 40 year old hardware I don't have anymore). Very confident in 99% the same test results as old hardware. 

Speed and Turbo toggles on the C64U are completely independant from all the software, they can be enabled and disabled at will, but on a C128 it's a register (unused on the C64) but might get overly complicated with any software that updates the graphics this much. It's a timing thing the only safe use of 2MHz is confined to the border/vblank time window. Like how Elite 128 does it. I'm sorry I didn't bring it up upfront, it was way in the back of my head and I know very little, all in all.

I've got one of the new C64U, which is hardware, but not the old 40 year old hardware, but I'd still be delighted to help testing with internal support for their USB mouse integration as well as original old style mouse (I have a MouSTer).

Ah! Thank you! So I could really use the DOS based "WolfEdit" and compress it. That is very cool, that it reads the original data files! In a simplified way, I might be able to conform the other episodes to the textures used in just the first one and replace some items. Not sure. Or I might do something completely original. I believe map making is a strong way to give a game a big push. Do something creative. Doom and Wolfenstein were already popular without those tools, but once people created these, like with Doom, making WADs was relatively simple, very enjoyable, and there was an explosion of new content for the game. 

Unending content, almost.

The mouse in the C64 works through the SID chip, funny enough. But yeah if you feel you're done with this, I understand, and I'm grateful either way. It's just astonishing what you did. Only reason I push for many new C64 games to use the mouse is the influx of new mouse-enabled C64U users we have now. Gone are the days where you'd have to have an adapter like the mouSTer. I still use it, but now, current C64 buyers can just plug in any old USB mouse and toy around with. Mouse controls never were popular in the past, but they could be in the future. Just looking at the all new Lemmings released yesterday. Wow! Compare that to the first version for the C64. Which also was impressive.

With that small a space left for anything in the game, the easiest and most simple enhancement I could see would be support for Turbo modes. It would be a world of a difference in Wolf64 already, and Doom especially. There is a version of Stunt Car Racer for the C64U in 20Mhz mode and ... yes, I know, it's not a "stock C64" of old, but it's a stock C64U we have today. And Wolf64 does run quite well on it, that is true. With with this small insert ... gameplay could adapt to these speeds. It's like having an Accelerator card for the Amiga.

This brings tears to my eyes :3. I love everything about this - the game itself, the music, the graphics! It's so fun and playful, and isn't afraid to just throw enjoyable little snippets of gaming around that any other Lemmings game normally wouldn't. :3

Amazing .... two of the games of the year for the C64 (if you ask me) on one day .... Wolfenstein 3D and the new Lemmings. 

Any chance for getting the other episodes on here? :3 Map editor? Mouse & WASD controls? Turbo for C64U or C128 2Mhz Mode?

Congrats you made an amaaaaazing port!! <3 This is nothing short of breathtaking, and words really just fail me! I have to stop typing and start playing now! :3

I am so ready-ready-ready for this! <3 Big Love!

Wow, that's like these old arcades back in Japan I think. :3 Quite fun to just have that doodling along and see what happens! Thanks for making this!

:3 I guess it's not for me because even with the manual I remain sort of clueless. But! This smooth interface, the mouse controls, everything is just so perfect, I hopes it gets a huge audience!

Personally I'm still hoping for mouse controlled games that the C64 has never seen, or never seen "like that". Real time and round based strategy (with units that move, war scenarios). I'm also mighty impressed how the mouse cursor moves super smooth. Even with my Mouster.

Cool! Mouse support is such a rarity, but now we have lots more potential users with the C64U and stuff like the Mouster. 

I'll have to test without later, but using JiffyDos I cannot load in music or even list the directory. Weird. :3 But thanks for making this!

Wow this is quite an ambitious take on the genre! I'll check back here when I'm done with my pneumonia... :3

Wow, this is about the most athospheric graphical representation in tiles that are still very plain and basic, but somehow make the cogs of my imagination get spinning. Beautiful world generation too! Wish there was a way to save the game, but I know I suck at these, but keep trying. Still wished I could take a break with savegames.

Ooh of course not every single one, but I'm maybe some future ideas would mesh very well :3. Sorry for the wall of text by the way, I'm just excitable ^^.

That sounds still great, to me. The option to have that many mouse users, I mean more than the Commodore 64 ever saw in the past, now that the Ultimate and the C64U are gaining in popularity, and even that TheC64 can do mouse, this all makes strong case, I guess. You've made amazing strategy games before, both turn based and RTS types, and perhaps some of those would greatly benefit from mouse controls. Some reminded me of the Battle Isle series, and I really enjoy those. But it's probably mostly the RTS type game that adapts the best to having a free mouse cursor, and icons/buttons. Every time I see a new game with that (recently we even got a new first person shooter on the C64 with tank mouse support), I know it's gonna be exciting. :]

This is amazing! Will have a blast with this. Just wanted to say, I hope you guys consider adding mouse support to it, because this games screams and begs for mouse support, now that we have thousands of C64U gamers who all potentially can hook up any USB mouse ...

PS: Playing more carefully and adjusting to the pace the game has, I have now happily finished the first and second map with plenty of health to spare, by the way. ;3 Haven't found the last bit of gold and somehow forget to pick up the double shotgun along the way, which I know is there, because I picked it up on the runs before. I'm only human and over 50. LOVED the second map by the way!

Roger, I'll do me best :3. In the forum I'm at (Forum64.de) most players so far are loving the engine. Feedback all in all was mostly about the first map being too challenging (in terms of secrets) where people sort of thought it would ease them in, like a tutorial. I'm completely in that space where I'm aware of all the little thing from Wolfenstein 3D and they mostly don't, so I guess that's why. But they enjoyed finding these secrets and noted that they liked how subtle hints were hidden, like the walls being a tiny bit "different" to suggest trying to push them open. One said they think sound could be better, although it was good enough. In the end, people had mixed opinions on the starter map, and praised the engine very very much. :3 And a few of them also enjoy the mouse controls. So that's definitely getting used!

And yeah, with all those varying opinions on map design, that's the thing: just like back then, there were maps that had a focus on action, on exploration, puzzles and secrets, or combinations of these, and not everyone likes every map the same, that's just how it is. From your earlier demos, I recognised the Shareware Wolf3D map, even visually just by seeing the rooms (and later in the editor). That's all to be expected. My old DOOM map was super convoluted (not like a labyrinth). Most people wanted action so they didn't like that, but enough people did, and I kept making them like that.

I wonder if it could be possible to move the cursor in the map editor with the mouse as well. The little block. Keep everything else as-is.

I kind of feel very proud now, thank you very much for the honor! :3 

Been playing for some hours now and I'm loving it even though I always seem to die in the game at the same point and I have a hard time figuring out how to actually destroy the baddies without trading too much damage myself. They take a lot of hits (not sure if I'm hitting them to be honest). I just always run out of health by the time I get to hunt for that last key. For a first stage this is ... very tough. On easiest difficulty anyway, peace mode aside. ^^ Do I suck at this?