Difference between revisions of "3DO"

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A screenshot from the 3DO version of Doom

Doom for the 3DO is an official port of Doom to the 3DO Interactive Multiplayer game console, published by Logicware and Art Data Interactive, and released in the US on April 26, 1996. The level set is similar to the Atari Jaguar version. This version is single player only.

Many fans consider this one of the worst, if not the worst, of the Doom console ports. It runs in a small screen at a low frame rate. The game offers six screen sizes, the largest two only being available via a cheat. The largest screen sizes suffer from a frame rate so poor as to render the player sometimes uncontrollable.

Its soundtrack, considered the port's one redeeming feature, consists of arrangements of the original music performed by a live band, recorded in high-fidelity CD-quality audio.

Development

According to Rebecca Ann Heineman, the game's sole developer, the blame for the port's quality rests mostly on the highly constrained schedule of ten weeks given for its development.^[1] This led to a lack of time to fully optimize the game for the 3DO hardware, which was challenging to program both from an essential standpoint and in particular for a demanding application like Doom.

Publisher Art Data Interactive was under false impressions with regard to the ease of porting a game like Doom from the Atari Jaguar to another console, believing that simply recompiling the game would be sufficient, and that features such as new weapons could be added simply by providing new assets for the game engine to consume.

While game code is largely shared with the Jaguar version, the rendering engine is completely customized to draw walls through the 3DO's hardware "cell engine." Floors and ceilings are drawn in software, however, due to difficulties in drawing perspective-projected graphics through the cell engine. Heineman states work on piping that drawing through the hardware was in-progress but had to be abandoned due to unresolved bugs at launch time.

The decision to replace the MIDI-based PC soundtrack with live recorded music was made by Heineman on a whim due to lack of time to write a music driver for the 3DO. A band hired by ADI was used to do the recordings. With digitized music, it was possible to use simple streaming playback with minimal coding effort. Heineman states this was the best decision made in the process, as the music is the one aspect of the port almost universally praised.

The game was at one time scheduled to be published by Electronic Arts, but the deal fell through.

Music

The complete soundtrack is as follows:

Song	PC Doom equivalent	Where it is used	File name in game	File name in source release
		Gamestart	Song1	doomlogo.aif
Demons on the prey	E1M7	Title screen, Credits, Menus, Map 7, Map 18	Song11	e1_m7.aif
At Doom's Gate	E1M1	Intermission, Map 1, Map 12	Song5	e1_m1.aif
The Imp's Song	E1M2	Map 2, Map 13	Song6	e1_m2.aif
Dark Halls	E1M3	Map 3, Map 14	Song7	e1_m3.aif
Kitchen Ace (And Taking Names)	E1M4	Map 4, Map 15	Song8	e1_m4.aif
Suspense	E1M5	Map 5, Map 16	Song9	e1_m5.aif
On The Hunt	E1M6	Map 6, Map 17, Map 22	Song10	e1_m6.aif
Sign Of Evil	E1M8	Map 8, Map 23, Victory screen, Casting	Song12	e1_m8.aif
I Sawed The Demons	E2M1	Map 9, Map 19	Song13	e2_m1.aif
Donna To The Rescue	E3M2	Map 10, Map 20	Song14	e2_m2.aif
Untitled	E2M9	Map 11, Map 21	Song15	e2_m9.aif
Hiding The Secrets	E1M9	Map 24 (Secret map)	Song29	e1_m9.aif
Sweet Little Dead Bunny	D_BUNNY		Song3	bunny.aif