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%% A letter to ID Software                      By: George Sanderson    %%
%%                                     aissande@kraken.itc.gu.edu.au    %%
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With games like Wolfenstein and Doom out for the PC, debate has raged over
the Amiga's capability to pull off such graphics and effects, spawning
loads of texture-mapping demos.  Someone put the "No Amiga Doom" question
directly to ID and got an answer that has made many people unhappy...

From George Sanderson's letter on comp.sys.amiga.misc:


#22901 comp.sys.amiga.misc 4k
From: aissande@kraken.itc.gu.edu.au (George Sanderson)
Subject: Id Software (Doom) responds!
Date: 4 Sep 1994 19:27:31 +1000
Organization: Groom Lake Testing Facility

Yo...  I wrote a plea letter to Id software for them to port Doom to
Amiga and got the usual "can't be done" response.

I would appreciate people out there who have coded anything texture
mapped and/or chunky2planar routines (or even copper screens) to convince
them otherwise...  Their main concern is the speed of the game (they
say the 68040 is just enough) and that the c2p process would totally
kill that anyway.

The porting doesn't seem to be a problem ( 99% of Doom is written in C )
as they recently did a port to the SGI (Silicon Graphics) machine
(the market there isn't that great), and Doom was developed on the
NeXT...  (btw, contrary to popular belief, Doom is still playable on a
40MHz 386 - not exactly a speed demon).

It would be good if your responses were mailed to me - i'd like to mail
as many responses to Id as possible in one hit, but if you decide to
mail Id software directly, be polite and explain your point of view
thoughtfully.  The last thing we need is some Amiga fanatics abusing Id.

Anyway, below is my original letter to Id, and after that is their response.

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[original letter to Id Software]

Hi.  I would appreciate an answer to this letter from you or someone
who is able to do so...  I noticed that you have recently released a
version of Doom for SGI, meaning that porting isn't a difficult task.
Perhaps a port of Doom for Amiga would also be a good idea ?  I
realize that the Amiga lacks a chunky graphics mode and it is a
relatively limited market compared to IBM clones, but the game market
for Amiga is quite large.  The lack of the chunky graphics mode has
been solved via fast conversion routines (which can be found in
ftp.wustl.edu:/pub/aminet or any other Aminet mirror) or as in the
case for Amiga CD32, the conversion routine is provided in hardware.
There are numerous texture mapping demos available showing that a
Doom-type game is possible on the Amiga.  The market for Doom on Amiga
is also fairly large.  The Amiga CD32, which is basically a games
console with a CD drive built in, together with the SX-1 expansion
unit could provide sufficient memory and speed requirements.  Many
owners of Amiga 1200 have upgraded their systems with high speed
accelerators, bringing their machines performance similar to the
A4000, which has more than enough horse power to handle Doom.  These
machines mentioned are the ones equipped with the AGA chipset, and by
including the old generation, (but still fast) A3000, the market is
large enough for a port of Doom to take place.

If you have any further specific questions, I would be happy to answer
them.

g.sanderson@ais.gu.edu.au

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[response from Id software]

From johnc@idcube.idsoftware.com Sun Sep  4 02:52 EST 1994
From: John Carmack <johnc@idcube.idsoftware.com>
Date: Sat, 3 Sep 94 11:50:23 -0600
To: G.Sanderson@ais.gu.edu.au
Subject: amiga doom

The amiga is not powerfull enough to run DOOM.  It takes the full
speed of a 68040 to play the game properly even if you have a chunky
pixel mode in hardware.  Having to convert to bit planes would kill
it even on the fastest amiga hardware, not to mention the effect it
would have on the majority of the amiga base.

John Carmack

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