Kweepa released DOOM64 on itch.io on 30 September. It’s free, it’s the final version, and it runs on a Commodore 64. Despite the name, this is a demake of the 1993 PC game and has nothing to do with Doom 64 on the Nintendo 64.
How it fits on a C64
The engine is sector-based raycasting with floor and ceiling height changes, light levels and sprite-drawn weapons. There’s no texture mapping. The itch.io page puts that down to the C64’s resolution. Lighting comes from dithered shading patterns on the 40×25 text display.
Sprites were rescaled from the PC shareware release, and the maps were built in a custom grid-based editor. The sound effects come from the PC speaker effects, which the creator describes as decimated. Paul Docherty illustrated the loading splash screen.
What you download
There are two 170 kB disk images. squaredoom.d64 is the standard build, for emulators and hardware with a fast loader such as the C64 Ultimate. squaredoom-krill.d64 adds the Krill loader and is meant for a stock C64 with a normal disk drive.
It runs on PAL and NTSC machines, though it was mostly tested on PAL. Controls are on the keyboard, and mouse look is listed as coming.
The AI label
The itch.io page labels the code ‘AI Assisted, Code’, and it does so up front, which at least lets you decide before you load the disk. DOOM64 is the second game in Kweepa’s planned run of id Software conversions, after a version of Doom on the VIC-20, according to Indie Retro News.
I haven’t played it. On paper the engineering is the interesting part, and the question I’d put to anyone who has: is it still Doom when the walls have no textures and the lighting is made of dither?
