What aspect ratio was Doom originally?

[SonicIce]

Most monitors are 4:3. Doom ran at 320x200 which is 16:10. But most monitors in its day were 4:3.

Were you supposed to squeeze the image to add black bars to keep the pixels square, or let the game fill the whole screen with rectangular pixels?

(Is there any way to add resolutions to Doom above 320x200?)

[HotWax]

Most monitors are 4:3. Doom ran at 320x200 which is 16:10. But most monitors in its day were 4:3.

Were you supposed to squeeze the image to add black bars to keep the pixels square, or let the game fill the whole screen with rectangular pixels?

I don't believe they intended for you to do this, no. I think the image just ended up a bit skewed, and the reason they decided to use 320x200 was for the faster rendering time over 320x240.

(Is there any way to add resolutions to Doom above 320x200?)

Apart from using ZDoom or another enhanced port? I believe Doom 95 supported 640x400 (or 480?), but other than that, no.

[TheDarkArchon]

Doom95 did supported 320x200, 320x240, 640x400 and 640x480. Each and everyone looked like ass.

[leileilol]

320x200/640x400 were meant to fill the whole screen. Modern video cards support these old resolutions less and just letterbox it by default going by 60hz or some other refresh rate.

320x200 was preferred back then because 320x240 was non-standard (ModeX ) and also appeared VERY flickery and bright at 60hz on old monitors. New monitors have no problem with 320x240 of course.

[Enjay]

Yup, as others have said, 320x200 filled the screen. If you looked closely, you could see that the pixels were not square.

[Phobus]

And now we all know why the sprites are so squat. In that aspect ratio, they looked taller and slimmer.

[Graf Zahl]

In case this is related to the nonsense that has been repeatedly posted on the Doom Wiki's Skulltag page, let me assure you that the information is completely bogus and was possibly initiated by someone who was trolling on the Skulltag forum for some time and totally unwilling to listen to explanations up to the point where he started calling names and got banned.

The correct aspect ratio in which Doom should be displayed is 4:3 - which is what all the source ports out there (except for Vavoom I believe) are doing.

[Phobus]

I wasn't being entirely serious, by the way

I just thought it makes a nice little explanation And, just to be proud of myself, I thought of it all on my own as well

[BFeely]

DOS DOOM used a non-standard 320x200 mode, which is just about the highest resolution that fits in a 64K RAM space, so it could be double-buffered. That is why on DOS DOOM, if you turn on no clipping and move outside the map, the screen flickers.

[LogicDeLuxe]

DOS DOOM used a non-standard 320x200 mode, which is just about the highest resolution that fits in a 64K RAM space, so it could be double-buffered. That is why on DOS DOOM, if you turn on no clipping and move outside the map, the screen flickers.

Oddly enough, it doesn't flicker in Hexen.

[Graf Zahl]

Intertestingly, the page flipping mode required some hacking around with the VGA registers - and if you did that it was quite easy to get a 320x400 mode with the same properties.

[DoomRater]

320X400... where have I seen that resolution used......

Oooh! The Win9x boot screens!

[Matt]

Out of curiosity, why on earth did they ever use that bizarre resolution for that?

[DoomRater]

I'm not sure, but at least their 256 color palette had color palette animation that could be abused really well.... Which reminds me I should make some wicked animated 9x boot screens.

[LogicDeLuxe]

320X400... where have I seen that resolution used......

Oooh! The Win9x boot screens!

Also some DOS engines can use it: Quake, all Build engine games and Normality. Probably more I didn't play.

The drawback, those are chunky modes (aka Mode X), more complex when it comes to pixel calculation. That usually makes them a little slower than VESA modes. However, those are available on standard VGA which was limited to 256 kB video RAM.