Code Review of Doom For the iPhone

Developer Fabien Sanglard has written a code review for id Software's iPhone port of Doom. It's an interesting look into how the original 1993 game (which he also reviewed to understand its rendering process) was adapted to a modern platform. "Just like Wolfenstein 3D, Doom was rendering a screenframe pixel per pixel. The only way to do this on iPhone with an acceptable framerate would be to use CoreSurface/CoreSurface.h framework. But it is unfortunately restricted and using it would prevent distribution on the AppStore. The only solution is to use OpenGL, but this comes with a few challenges: Doom was faking 3D with a 2D map. OpenGL needs real 3D vertices. More than 3D vertices, OpenGL needs data to be sent as triangles (among other things because they are easy to rasterize). But Doom sectors were made of arbitrary forms. Doom 1993's perspective was also faked, it was actually closer to an orthogonal projection than a perspective projection. Doom was using VGA palette indexing to perform special effect (red for damage, silver for invulnerable...)."

Re:Already done

[Anonymous Coward]

When in slashdot, nerds dont RTFA.

Re:Already done

[VShael]

did you even read the article?

You must be new here...

Re:Pushing pixels

[pananza]

Nah, too easy and direct approach.

Bloody Hell

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought it was "Code Review of Doom" for the iPhone not "Code Review" of "Doom for the iPhone".
I've seen some "code reviews of doom". I was looking forward to some juicy ApplePain.
Oh well.

Re:Already done

[sznupi]

What makes articles slashdotted anyway?...

Or is that some mystery not approachable "even" by 6-digiters?

Re:Classics never die

[Hadlock]

DOOM was a good game but it wasn't ground breaking in the same way that Quake was a few years later. It was the first FPS to do real 3D, and gave birth to real FPS competitive play, based on the groundwork that DOOM did with FPS LAN play. Aside from that, the Quake engine led to all sorts of interesting gamemodes and mods that live with us still (Team Fortress was originally a Quake mod), and the physics of Quake 1 still has a legacy today (rocket jumping, bunny hopping).

You sir, have a career in video game blogging! Let me sign you up for a 3000 word "Top 10 Groundbreaking games of the 1990s" blog entry.

I'd like to read this article

[drinkypoo]

But it won't fit on a 800 pixel wide screen. WTF? I thought it was a code review, not a flash game.

Re:Already done

[JosKarith]

10,000 geeks hitting a server designed for 1000 connections max. Simultaneously.

Re:Classics never die

[imakemusic]

it's story line is simple and not drug out

Unlike, say, Pacman in which the main character spends the entire game eating pills.

I think the word you're looking for is 'dragged'.

Re:Already done

[buanzo]

.\ is the MS-DOS oriented slashdot, right?

Re:What's with this CoreSurface licensing restrict

[Anonymous Coward]

What was that RMS was saying again?

I don't remember, I was too busy watching him while he was talking [youtube.com].

Code Review of DOOM

[asylumx]

I think this is how I'll start referring to ALL my code reviews ;-)