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Running Games and Apps.

Diablo Possible?page  1 2 

Daniel Sevo

Posts 299
02 Jul 2019 22:43


Just watched a video at VintageGamer where he ported this reverse engineered Diablo recreation
EXTERNAL LINK  ..to Nitendo Switch in a couple of nights.
Now Switch is pretty powerful compared to Vamp of course, but what do you think... at all doable on a Vamp or what?



Roy Gillotti

Posts 517
02 Jul 2019 23:27


The big sticky point of this ever working is that it's still a windows program. The compiled sources even on Linux requires WINE to operate properly.


Daniel Sevo

Posts 299
02 Jul 2019 23:47


Nintendo Switch OS is a small hybrid OS using components from FreeBSD and Android. Very compact too. Very(?) different to Windows.


Renee Cousins
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 142
02 Jul 2019 23:57


Daniel Sevo wrote:

  Just watched a video at VintageGamer where he ported this reverse engineered Diablo recreation
  EXTERNAL LINK    ..to Nitendo Switch in a couple of nights.
  Now Switch is pretty powerful compared to Vamp of course, but what do you think... at all doable on a Vamp or what?
 
 

  I believe Diablo is certainly possible on a Vampire.
 


Samuel Crow

Posts 424
02 Jul 2019 23:58


The Vampire could match a 60 MHz Pentium easily enough.  Diablo only required 8 Megs of RAM on that platform also.  Without DirectX, however, it might be tricky.  Diablo was always intended to be Windows specific and use conventional graphics capabilities instead of Amiga-like abilities.  How about a clone of Diablo instead?  One that uses Amiga chipset features.


Renee Cousins
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 142
03 Jul 2019 00:01


Samuel Crow wrote:

  The Vampire could match a 60 MHz Pentium easily enough.  Diablo only required 8 Megs of RAM on that platform also.  Without DirectX, however, it might be tricky.  Diablo was always intended to be Windows specific and use conventional graphics capabilities instead of Amiga-like abilities.  How about a clone of Diablo instead?  One that uses Amiga chipset features.
 

  The reverse-engineered source uses SDL.

What we really need first is a 68K and AMMX optimized SDL2. Although it might be possible to run this Diablo using SDL1.2.
 


Steve Ferrell

Posts 424
03 Jul 2019 00:03


Here's the YouTube video about the reverse engineering process of this game.  It's very interesting.

EXTERNAL LINK


Samuel Crow

Posts 424
03 Jul 2019 00:09


Renee Cousins wrote:
Samuel Crow wrote:
The Vampire could match a 60 MHz Pentium easily enough.  Diablo only required 8 Megs of RAM on that platform also.  Without DirectX, however, it might be tricky.  Diablo was always intended to be Windows specific and use conventional graphics capabilities instead of Amiga-like abilities.  How about a clone of Diablo instead?  One that uses Amiga chipset features.
The reverse-engineered source uses SDL.

What we really need first is a 68K and AMMX optimized SDL2. Although it might be possible to run this Diablo using SDL1.2.


SDL2 was redesigned from SDL 1.12.x so that it would require polygon-based hardware rendering.  Once the Polly core is complete, it will be practical to port SDL 2.  Until then...


Renee Cousins
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 142
03 Jul 2019 00:11


Samuel Crow wrote:

Renee Cousins wrote:
Samuel Crow wrote:
The Vampire could match a 60 MHz Pentium easily enough.  Diablo only required 8 Megs of RAM on that platform also.  Without DirectX, however, it might be tricky.  Diablo was always intended to be Windows specific and use conventional graphics capabilities instead of Amiga-like abilities.  How about a clone of Diablo instead?  One that uses Amiga chipset features.
The reverse-engineered source uses SDL.
 
  What we really need first is a 68K and AMMX optimized SDL2. Although it might be possible to run this Diablo using SDL1.2.

  SDL2 was redesigned from SDL 1.12.x so that it would require polygon-based hardware rendering.  Once the Polly core is complete, it will be practical to port SDL 2.  Until then...

Does the idea of SDL2 -> TinyGL/MESA -> SAGA not sound completely absurd? Maybe we can fake enough of the SDL2 API and avoid the use of 3D hardware.



Samuel Crow

Posts 424
03 Jul 2019 00:15


Renee Cousins wrote:
Does the idea of SDL2 -> TinyGL/MESA -> SAGA not sound completely absurd? Maybe we can fake enough of the SDL2 API and avoid the use of 3D hardware.

Backporting the source to use SDL 1.2 would be easier considering that SDL 1.2 is already AMMX accelerated.  From what I've seen of Diablo, it doesn't do rotozooming so we can assume it just blits with possible alpha blends.


Gunnar von Boehn
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 6207
03 Jul 2019 06:43


Renee Cousins wrote:

Does the idea of SDL2 -> TinyGL/MESA -> SAGA not sound completely absurd? Maybe we can fake enough of the SDL2 API and avoid the use of 3D hardware.

 
You are right this would be crazy.

The original DIABLO ran well on a 60 MHz Pentium
while the VAMP is surely twice that strong!

With this crazy SDL 3D abstraction - the game will need 10 times more power to run now.

As we know DIABLO does not scale textures, it just blits them like any old isometric AMIGA game. So all this is not needed.
 
Ideally the game should be "ported" to do the blitting "straigth" without using SDL.

If someone would to port DIABLO to VAMP this would be cool.




Steve Ferrell

Posts 424
03 Jul 2019 06:57


Gunnar von Boehn wrote:

 
Renee Cousins wrote:

  Does the idea of SDL2 -> TinyGL/MESA -> SAGA not sound completely absurd? Maybe we can fake enough of the SDL2 API and avoid the use of 3D hardware.
 

   
  You are right this would be crazy.
 
  The original DIABLO ran well on a 60 MHz Pentium
  while the VAMP is surely twice that strong!
 
  With this crazy SDL 3D abstraction - the game will need 10 times more power to run now.
 
 
  As we know DIABLO does not scale textures, it just blits them like any old isometric AMIGA game. So all this is not needed.
   
  Ideally the game should be "ported" to do the blitting "straigth" without using SDL.
 
  If someone would to port DIABLO to VAMP this would be cool.
 
 
 

 
Modern Vintage Gamer, the guy who produced the video on how Diablo was reverse engineered ( EXTERNAL LINK ) is a huge Amiga fan. He's ported a number of games to the Amiga and written several emulators. He also ported Diablo to the Nintendo Switch.  It would be cool if you two got together and produced a video where you worked together to port Diablo over to the Vampire.  Maybe he'd do it if you tempted him with a free Vampire!  He would certainly get a lot more views and you'd get a lot of free press!
 
EXTERNAL LINK 


Mr Niding

Posts 459
03 Jul 2019 07:03


MVG already got the Vampire v600.
 
  EXTERNAL LINK 
Hes done other games which has been shown running on Vampire (altho not converted to Apollo spesifically)

Im sure he could do wonders with a standalone.

Is he c++ or asm kinda guy? If C++, then GCC developments would help alot.


Steve Ferrell

Posts 424
03 Jul 2019 07:07


Mr Niding wrote:

      MVG already got the Vampire v600.
       
        EXTERNAL LINK       
      Hes done other games which has been shown running on Vampire (altho not converted to Apollo spesifically)
     
      Im sure he could do wonders with a standalone.
     
      Is he c++ or asm kinda guy? If C++, then GCC developments would help alot.
     

     
     
Yeah, that was 3 years ago!  EXTERNAL LINK     
It's time for him to produce an updated video with a newer Vamp running a newer core and Diablo! :-)
   
He's primarily a C/C++ coder who uses a cross-compiler on his PC.  Even without using a compiler optimized for the 080, an app such as Diablo should run very well when compiled using an existing compiler.  Diablo isn't very demanding, especially for a 200 MIPS CPU.


Saladriel Amrael

Posts 166
03 Jul 2019 09:46


Is it me or Diablo used also some Lighting features from DirectX (almost for spells effects)?

Don't know how advanced they were, but are they replicable with SAGA?




Gunnar von Boehn
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 6207
03 Jul 2019 10:01


Saladriel Amrael wrote:

Is it me or Diablo used also some Lighting features from DirectX (almost for spells effects)?
Don't know how advanced they were, but are they replicable with SAGA?

Yes, for sure.


Saladriel Amrael

Posts 166
03 Jul 2019 11:02


Well, that's cool


Roy Gillotti

Posts 517
03 Jul 2019 12:22


I have a feeling a lot of Windows garbage needs to be ripped out for this to work right. Below I linked the linux build and run info... notice on the bottom it requires wine to run the game.
 
  EXTERNAL LINK 
 
 
  Wine is able to be built on ARM, as I know for sure as I've used it to run Starcraft, Diablo and Diablo II that was reversed engineered by a different guy( Notaz ) for use on an ARM Linux handheld years before this guy did it... The sources were never publicly released for those ports.  I suppose WINE could be ported with a lot of work to 68k, but I think for a proper port, the windows garbage needs to be hacked out.
 
 


Marlon Beijer

Posts 182
03 Jul 2019 15:17


For all of you guys saying it requires wine/Windows, you’re looking at the sting thing! Look at devilutionx instead which requires SDL2. That’s hurdle one. Hurdle two is that all the code and assets are for little endian instead of big median that 68k is. I have already looked at this.


Roy Gillotti

Posts 517
03 Jul 2019 15:29


Marlon Beijer wrote:

For all of you guys saying it requires wine/Windows, you’re looking at the sting thing! Look at devilutionx instead which requires SDL2. That’s hurdle one. Hurdle two is that all the code and assets are for little endian instead of big median that 68k is. I have already looked at this.

Well others mentioned SDL2, so figured that hurdle was mentioned already. I know you have a bit of experience in trying to backporting an SDL2 program to SDL1.2 and likely a good voice on how complicated that would be.


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