Cleaning up Wolf3D

I am starting this thread to document how to remove unnecessary code and free up more memory in Wolf3D. The intent is that I can make the game more efficient and make room for more things, like more than 64 walls, and maybe even be able to add alternate episodes. One of my ideas is to add the Spear of Destiny levels as a separate episode. I'm not sure exactly what is involved there, but I liked the Mac version's 3rd Encounter that used episode files to allow for more than one episode, and you could add more. Also, I think this could be beneficial since this alone could end up saving memory. I'm not sure how many things are currently loaded into memory that don't apply to the episode currently being played, and making it where only those things required for the current episode are loaded in, I think, would save memory as well. Please correct me if I'm mistaken here.

The majority of what I will be doing here is based on a list of things AyranWolf3D did some years back, so I will be getting his help in implementing these things. so, stay tuned cause we're in for a wild ride.

OK, so to begin this, I am going to go through AryanWolf3D's list from the top. To start things off I will ask the question, does the following mean this is what the game started with before making any of the mods you did?

Code:

//
// Initial build: 83 bytes near memory, 184 kb main memory
//

And to dig into coding, let's deal with the general changes:

Code:

///////////////////
//
// General changes:
//
///////////////////

Added a way to show the main memory before the preload: -32 near bytes
Wrapped #ifdef/#ifndef SPEAR directives around exculsive SoD code: 114 near bytes
Turned off Word Alignment: 436 near bytes
Turn off the Treat Enums as Ints option: 1434 near bytes

Total freed: 1984 bytes near memory

What exactly did you change, and where? This seems like a good amount of memory to get back. For the #ifdef/#ifndef directives concerning SoD, I see those everywhere in the code. You mean to say there are parts iD didn't do that with?

.

.

.

Another thing you can try is go here and search for KEEP_UNUSED

https://chokfiles.webs.com/diff.txt

It should show 92 entries with things that are not used in the code so far
Thanks to Aryan, Ripper, and a few others for helping me find many of them!
If you find some more or I missed any I'd love to know so I can update it even more.

.

.

.

So, what do the lines like this mean:

@@ -63,9 +63,11 @@

I'm aware of what #ifdef anf #ifndef directives do. My question was are there places where these directives should be but aren't? Wolf3DGuy did answer that in one specific instance. Finding them all will require me to know exactly what doesn't belong in Wolf3D that does belong in Spear, so be prepared for questions. Like this one. I don't recall where I read it, but somewhere in the source I think I saw it say that bo_gibs is Spear, not Wolf3D. I'll have to look again to be sure, but is it true or do I have it misremembered?

Also, will it have an impact on the game to re-order the list the way you did in your example above? If I should keep the same order, then there will be two #ifdef SPEAR/#endif's in that list. OK, I think I might have looked at your lists incorrectly the first time. It now seems as though they are two different code segments and I got confused by the similarity of item names.

.

Fridays and Saturdays are my days for getting videos uploaded to my YouTube channel. These videos are not Wolf3D related (well, not always anyway), so I won't go into detail about them here. While uploading them, I play Wolf3D. I am doing a playthrough I like to call "the god mode games", because I play every level in god mode just for the heck of it. I was just now playing through E1L4 when the game crashed. The error is:

Code:

SP_PlayDigitized: bad sound number

This is the first time I have ever gotten this error. I was picking up treasures in that big secret room accessed through the room with all of the dogs.

Edit: I replayed the level, since I am saving at each level I start, and played it again, and continued through the rest of Episode 1 without the error recurring. I'm guessing it was just a fluke and somehow a memory address got trashed.

I haven't really tried to change anything yet, but I was looking at the files that were in the downloads that I got from STEAM and GOG, and I noticed that the file size of the exe is 107K. I looked at the copy I have currently (after adding in the overhead map and making the noclipping cheat available again) and the file size is 482K. That's over 4 times the size of the unmodified 1.4 version! I can't believe that the few changes I made produced over 4 times the size of the unmodified app! I didn't make that many changes! What is going on here? Is the exe not compressed or something?

.

OK. That makes sense. I found and downloaded the lzexe program (both the 91 and 91e versions) and also found and downloaded the unlzexe program (16 bit and 32/64 bit versions). Not sure I'll ever need the unlzexe program, but figured I should have the de-compressor as well as the compressor.

OK, 107k again. That's more like it! LOL

OK, the fix for pushwalls isn't exactly a fix. It mostly is, but I have found one circumstance where it creates a new bug. Episode 3, Level 6, As follows:

From the front (after pushing it):


From the back (after pushing it):


From the overhead map (after pushing it):


I used noclipping to get past it when it didn't open all the way. Funny thing is, the sound was still the same as for opening the entire 2 tiles. and it still counted towards the pwall count at the end of the level. I am going to see if it does the same thing again by repaying the level.

Edit: OK, it wasn't what I thought. Apparently, if there are any enemies standing behind the wall it won't open. In the replay, it was giving the sound of a pushwall being pushed when it's against another wall. I used the overhead map and saw there were two enemies in the spaces where the wall had to move, and the game was refusing to move the wall. My guess is that in the first one, there was an officer in the second tile, but not in the tile immediately behind the pushwall, so it was able to move one tile before it had to stop.

Would that still be considered a bug? I did find a solution, though. If you go to the area you started in, where the officers are behind the columns, and fire a couple of shots, the ones blocking the pushwall will leave and you will be able to open it fully.

Is there a known fix for this bug?

E4L10 secret room view from the east side:


Same room from the west side:


I've also noticed many times that when you are fighting the officers, many of them are invisible until you turn to the left or the right. I find myself firing at invisible enemies for most of the time spent fighting them.

.

AryanWolf3D wrote:Change NUMVISABLE (yes, that's how they spelled it) to something higher than 50. It'll cost 6 bytes for every increment, so don't raise it too much.

LOL I can believe they spelt it that way. I've known many programmers that are great at coding but lousy as spelling. According to the map editors, E4L10 has 75 Officers in Death mode. So, I will see what happens when I change NUMVISABLE. 75 is 25 more than the default 50, so 25 x 6 = 300 extra bytes if I go for all 25. I will try going for 60 first and see what happens.

AryanWolf3D wrote:“We didn’t have spell checkers in our editors back then, and I always had poor spelling. The word "collumn" appears in the source code dozens of times. After I released the source code, one of the emails that stands out in memory read: It’s "COLUMN", you dumb FUCK! John Carmack - Programmer”

Now that is quite the quote. LOL

Anyway, the source code I have seems to be devoid of the word NUMVISABLE. I use TextPad as my primary editor, and it gives me the ability to create what it calls workspace files. I can group related files together and only have to open the workspace file to have them all load into TextPad, and they don't all have to be in the same folder. So, I created 3 different workspace files because there are so many files in the source to Wolf3D. One is all the .h files, one all the .c files and the third all the .asm files. An all document search in all three workspaces results in NUMVISABLE not found in any of the documents.

Please tell me where to find it.

.

AryanWolf3D wrote:Sorry, I meant to say MAXVISABLE. It's in WL_DRAW.C just above the DrawScaleds function.

I found it, and changed all 4 occurrences to MAXVISIBLE. I tried 60, and it still had many invisible, so I tried 75 to see what would happen. The game runs fine, but there are still invisible officers, and when I have defeated them all it still shows only ammo clips when looking from the west end of the room. Maybe it's not that big of a deal if it only happens on this level, but if it happens on any others it may be a problem.

I think I may have figured out why changing MAXVISABLE didn't work. It turns out that MAXVISABLE is the maximum number of items that can be displayed at once, including static objects and animated objects. So, I have to include all of the ammo clips in the count as well. I'm going to try this and see what happens.

Edit: There are 27 ammo clips in that room, so I made the count 99 to see what it would do. It's alot better, but because 99 is < 75+27 there were still some invisibles. I also got to thinking, what if the number has to include the ammo clips dropped by the Officers? It took me a little while, but spending one round and picking up an ammo clip that wasn't visible before tells me that I have to make it 75 for the officers, 75 for the clips they drop and 27 for the clips already in the room. That's a total of 177. The game hasn't had any problems so far, so I will see what happens, but is there a way I can tell how much memory I am using? I have no clue and it's like flying in the dark without instruments.

.

Interesting development. The game still plays, and you can see all of the officers now, but when they have you surrounded at the west end of the room, firing towards the east slows the game down very much. If you turn to the right, the game speeds back up to normal. This continues until nearly all of the officers are dead. I'm guessing that's why they made the visible object limit so low. It prevents the game from slowing down when you have that many enemies all in one room.

AryanWolf3D wrote:That's 762 bytes. Not that big of a deal if you've freed up plenty of space. To find how much memory you have left, open up the Wolf3D.map file in the output folder, scroll to the end of the file, where you'll see something like this:

Code:

3A39:EFAD       _bufferwidth

The 2nd hexadecimal number is the amount of space in the data segment that the program is using. To find out how much space you have left, subtract this number from 0xF000 (which will be 0x53 or 83 bytes left in a vanilla Wolf3D.exe.)

Code:

 39EB:EE57      _bufferwidth

Subtracting that from F000 leaves me 1A9 (425) bytes free. I guess I'm good for now, and that's with MAXVISABLE set to 177.

.

That is totally reasonable. It makes sense to reduce the workload for drawing sprites when it may overwhelm the drawing function. I'm thinking I will set NUMVISABLE back to 50. I'll just have to be ready for invisible enemies here and there. LOL