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Dragonsbrethren

PSX Doom: The Lost Levels - New Pre-Beta Available courtesy of Salahmander2

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^
I did that. I've gone back on the idea somewhat however, and am re-splitting them into three different maps due to the PSX limit guide making the combined map practically impossible to keep interesting*. Icon of Sin will be placed as the final level, the other two will be placed at the end of their respective 'episode' segments.

Yes, this is probably going to cause issues with the maplump/MAPINFO renaming unless I give them new names in a new format (e.g. LSTBSS01). I have no issue with the latter at all, in fact I think it's preferable given the current number of maps.


*I'm not ditching the current version completely, though. That can go in as some sort of bonus or something.

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Gez said:

The idea was that killing three boss shooters in a row would be tedious and annoying rather than fun and challenging.

Why not space them out over the whole campaign? They don't have to all be crammed together in a row.

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Last Call can easily be a "normal level". Icon of sin and Gateway of Hell would come right after each other following normal progression, so I imagine GoH is going to be a boss map. There really needs to be more of these, if only to give the Mastermind some more appearances. Outside of the combined "Last Gateway to Sin" map, theres only one mastermind in all of Lost Levels :/

I know there's going to be some exclusive levels made for this (in Midway style), but I'd also like a few new maps for bosses in places, preferably one for each "episode"

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Bad news, chaps - the monster limit calculated for this project is wrong. PSX Doom's "The Pit" is pushing 30 points.

Lost Soul (1)
Shotgunner (2)
Chaingunner (2.5)
Imp (2.5)
Cacodemon (3)
Hell Knight (4)
Demon (4)
Revenant (9)
Total 28pts

Maybe the Revenant should count for 6 instead of 9? And why is the Pink Demon (1 attack, ground-based) worth more than a Cacodemon (2 attacks, flies), for example?

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There's two limits at work for monsters: Loading the IMG file containing all of the level's graphics into RAM, and loading the actual sprite frames into VRAM. Each sprite on screen takes space in VRAM, there's no where near enough room to cache every frame. That limits the number of monsters that can appear at once, regardless of how many types are used. You can probably skirt the limit a bit by ensuring certain monsters can never appear at the same time, but you're still limited by the size of the frames in the IMG file. I'm hardly an expert on that, I just know how the game utilizes VRAM.

Nuxius came up with the "points" guideline, I'm not sure why he gave the demon more than the cacodemon, since most of the cacodemon's frames are larger. The revenant probably should be as high as it is, though, some of its frames (particularly the side-facing melee ones) are huge.

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I'd have found it sooner, except that The Pit sucks old man knackers (IMO), so I only discovered it through boredom. I'm not sure if there are also handgunners in that map. In fairness, this does seem to be the only map which crosses the limit. It's a big and complex level as well with lots of lifts and raising sectors. Probably stretching the limit, though.

In fact, isn't Twilight Descends a more complex map than Downtown?

EDIT: The 26 point monster limit gives tremendous variety if used well. It's quite impressive how many monster types the PSX maps seem to have, especially when they sneak a couple of Nightmare Spectres in there.

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MajorRawne said:

It's quite impressive how many monster types the PSX maps seem to have, especially when they sneak a couple of Nightmare Spectres in there.

I thought the Nightmare Spectre didn't use any additional memory if a regular Specter or Pinky Demon is used. Wasn't it just different blending modes during render?

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The specters were simply demons with a certain flag on them iirc, so technically they were all just demons. Thus, why theres a stealth caco in Tenements (Ive never noticed this before until someone brought that up, wonder if the TC is going to keep that oddity in time :p)

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Ragnor said:

Thus, why theres a stealth caco in Tenements (Ive never noticed this before until someone brought that up, wonder if the TC is going to keep that oddity in time :p)

I always thought he ate an invisibility sphere or something stupid.

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Ragnor said:

The specters were simply demons with a certain flag on them iirc, so technically they were all just demons. Thus, why theres a stealth caco in Tenements (Ive never noticed this before until someone brought that up, wonder if the TC is going to keep that oddity in time :p)

And maybe it's just my imagination, but it seemed like some spectres--at least in Attack--were more translucent than others.

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I think Nirvana also either exceeds the limit or gets very close to it. Depends how many points Pain Elementals are worth.

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Right, I tested on a GL PC and found some weird things:

The red key on TNT's first secret map is oddly inacsessible (the sky is too low?!)

Habitat's BFG secret has the first step too high, this cannot be escaped if you go back down the stairs after the ambush.

Mount pain for some reason has no red door (?!) also the stairs in the lower sections filled with lava raise too high and result in blocking off a section of the map and creats a HOM in the enterance to the lower levels.

Also all my sky HOMs were indeed due to rendering issues in non GL modes, sorry bout that.

Also many maps in Plutonia are broken for me, I don't remeber the map (courtyard or something) that starts in a grey brick area with Mancubuses, the lifts don't work making the map impossible.

I could be wrong about these though band sorry for the inaccurate descriptions.

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I fixed Pharaoh yonks ago. Did I really not upload it?
I'll root around my harddrive, I should still have it somewhere.

EDIT
This is all I have. The red key bug is fixed, but I don't know about anything else that was reported to be broken, it was so long ago.

Caughtyard needs the "Map07Special" added back into the MAPINFO, it was removed accidentally when this was being compiled.

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Yep, the maps I mentioned exceed the monster limit of 26 points by more than I thought:

NIRVANA
Demon - 4 points
Imp - 2.5 points
Sergeant - 2 points
Chaingunner - 3.5 points
Lost Soul - 1 point
Pain Elemental - 3.5 points
Hell Knight - 4 points
Revenant - 8 points
** TOTAL - 28.5pts **

THE PIT
Demon/Spectre - 4 points
Imp - 2.5 points
Trooper - 2 points
Sergeant - 2 points
Chaingunner - 3.5 points
Lost Soul - 1 point
Cacodemon - 3 points
Hell Knight - 4 points
Revenant - 8 points
** TOTAL - 30.0pts **

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You could probably break the limit even further, as long as there is 0 possibility of the monsters used being in view at the same time (Which probably causes some kind of catastrophic crash).

Also do decorations, obstacles, effects, projectiles, light sources or just sprites in general also take up some memory or are they loaded separately?

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Yeah, all sprites share the same space in VRAM. I think I deleted all my VRAM dumps from when I was looking into how the game handled it, but maybe I'll grab another and post it sometime.

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It's easily possible to offer a variety of monsters within the 26 point limit. At no point (until Nuxius discovered the limit) did I ever, ever feel Ultimate Doom or Doom 2 were in any way limited, repetitive or underpopulated.

It is sometimes noticeable that Final Doom shies away from Barons, Mancubi and bosses, but in general FDoom maps seem much more complicated or convoluted than in the original game. I do agree with the argument about FDoom being somewhat repetitive in monster use.

Using 7-8 monster types in a small to medium sized map should be more than enough. It keeps play focused, just like the somewhat limited texture choice makes maps look more coherent. The PC version of Ultimate Doom looks quite ugly at times due to apparently random texture use.

There's no need to cram every monster type into a map just because you can, just like there's no need to use 86 different wall textures.

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Some maps can only use three or four types though. You cant even have a cool boss fight in an arena at times (Hence why theres one map with a Mastermind in all the original maps, and one map with a Mastermind in LL)

I do notice the limits, quite often. One LL map had so many hell knights I got utterly bored by the end, there was no room to switch up the gameplay to be more varied because lol ram.

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Theoretically, we could have Nightmare Imps etc simply by setting flags. PSX Doom could have crammed more monster types in it this way. As for Masterminds, it's a shame we dont see them more often but it would only devalue them if they popped up in every other map, as boss monsters seem to in PC Doom 2 and Final Doom.

New maps based on the PSX rules would have to make boss maps into special encounters, which fits in with the focused, directed feeling of level progression on the PSX.

If there's a way to incorporate the spectre and nightmare spectre flags for all monsters, as opposed to introducing new types of actor, there are a ton of possibilities for Doom's future.

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Thx to my friend for idea. I just used Doom 64 EX Soundfont for original Doom 2 midi (Map 25). And I got this...I can't believe, this track doesn't sounds like original



But I thought...lol, to do special music from original midi for this project?

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Holy crap DeXiaz, that sounds absolutely amazing! We've got another Aubrey Hodges on our hands here :)

I'm planning on releasing a series of PSX style maps as a spin off to the PSX Doom TC. Can I use that track, and can you make any more, or tell me how you did it so I can have a go?

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Didn't he say in his post that he just took D_ADRIAN and ran it through a MIDI synthesizer with DOOM64 EX's soundfont, or am I reading things wrong?

It would be cool to have some extra tracks in this, though.

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Thanks! Yes, for D_Adrian I just took D64 Soundfont. But for other tracks we must change instruments and possibly music notes.

I'm working on E1M5 (lol), it's not so easy, it need more time and "ideas" about instruments.

And of course you can use this track :)

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Jaxxoon R said:

Didn't he say in his post that he just took D_ADRIAN and ran it through a MIDI synthesizer with DOOM64 EX's soundfont, or am I reading things wrong?

I meant to tell me how he did it in a manner I can comprehend and replicate, I am not looking for a general overview of "I just used some software and did some stuff".

How long did it take to make that track, DeXiaZ?

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30 minutes. [+2 hours for instruments identification (Aubrey didn't make list of instruments, so I did it by myself)]

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