Wolfenstein 3D and the T3100e/40

[TH2002]

So after getting the old hard drive in my T3100e/40 up and running I decided I would get some games installed on it. The Spectrum HoloByte version of Tetris works just fine but Wolfenstein 3D just gives me a blinking cursor and nothing more. The laptop has a 286 @ 12 MHz, 1 MB of RAM and internal CGA graphics. Has anyone managed to get Wolf3D working on one of these or are the specs just too weak?

 

[Eudimorphodon]

Wolf3d needs a VGA card. Full stop.

 

[GiGaBiTe]

While Wolf 3D requires VGA, there have been a few proof of concepts of recoding it to run in CGA mode. This is probably the farthest along:

http://sfprod.shikadi.net/games/wolf3d.htm

Obviously not a full game, but cool to see what can be done with such limited hardware.

There's also a port to the Sega Genesis, which is even more limited and doesn't even have a frame buffer.

 

[TH2002]

While Wolf 3D requires VGA, there have been a few proof of concepts of recoding it to run in CGA mode. This is probably the farthest along:

http://sfprod.shikadi.net/games/wolf3d.htm

Obviously not a full game, but cool to see what can be done with such limited hardware.

There's also a port to the Sega Genesis, which is even more limited and doesn't even have a frame buffer.

That looks pretty cool, think I'll have to give it a try today.

I do know that there are at least a few 3D games like Vette which will work on a CGA card.

 

[zoomer]

I have a T3100e/40 and was able to play Wolf with an 8Bit VGA card (the luggable has an 8bit ISA slot), on an external VGA monitor. Works fine albeit very slow (12Mhz 286...)

There's no port of Wolf3D for CGA and there will probably never be one as it's designed around various tricks for the VGA cards (just read Fabien Sanglard's Black book of the Wolfenstein engine and you'll understand why). It's as fast as it is because it writes directly to the VGA memory, and CGA memory arrangement is slower and more inefficient

Also color dithering (remember that CGA is 4 colors) would add even more (a lot more) processing, making it a slideshow on anything less than a Pentium most likely

And to add insult to the injury, it would look like cheese on the plasma screen of the T3100e as they're binary only (so pixels are on or off - the other 2 colors define blinking and "thick" characters in text mode)

the blinking cursor is just failure to initialize mode 13H

there are a few superb CGA mods for the Keen games though which work and play great - played them myself. Also for Prince of Persia, etc.

I couldn't find even one single FPS that runs on CGA - not even Abyss 3D or older things - if you ever find one, please let us know