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Doomkid

Hacking/Modding SNES Doom?

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Hey fellas, I was just wondering if anyone has made any tools (or any efforts whatsoever) and modifying SNES Doom?

Now, I know this sounds ridiculous, but hear me out. I would love an SNES fps that wasn't just a butchered version of Doom, but rather felt more like it's own game. Simplified level architecture for a better framerate, monster/weapon placement that takes the new behavior into account, pehaps even modified gun sprites, and so forth.

I know some of us have those awesome cartridges where you can put an SD card full of roms in and play it on real hardware. The thought of using such a device for a Doom-like game on the SNES sounds awesome to me personally, and it's definitely not the most 'out there' suggestion by a Doomworld user that's based mostly on nostalgia.

If there's no such tool(s) availible, I would at least like some info. From what I've read I haven't been able to determine if the SNES levels were recreated ultra-accurately from scratch, or if they were ran through a simple converter and edited afterward? The latter seems more likely, which would suggest that such a thing IS possible. However I have my doubts that anyone has made such a program, but hey, a guy can dream.

Anyone have any leads that might be helpful for me?

(Sodaholic created a thread about this, but it's about 4 years old.. I think it's worth starting fresh.)

EDIT: If there's nothing for SNES Doom, perhaps something for SNES Wolfy?

EDIT 2: This idea was inspired by this capture of an old ad for a "Doom 3" on SNES that Linguica posted on IRC earlier. It was just screenshots of the normal Doom release, but the thought of a unique Doom-like game for SNES seemed amazing to me.

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Doomkid said:

EDIT: If there's nothing for SNES Doom, perhaps something for SNES Wolfy?


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I have made some minor in-roads in trying to identify SOME of the data in SNES Doom. I can tell you that vertexes are completely unmodified - I found the vertexes for E1M1 very easily (they are slightly altered from the registered IWAD version of Doom's E1M1 due to alterations that remove mid-textures, but they're still a ~90% match in the hex editor).

I also visually identified what MAY be thing data, which appears to be a smaller structure than it was in vanilla, linedefs, which do not store textures by name, sectors, which likewise do not store flats by name (likely replaced with a color index of some sort), and subsectors (indicating the game almost definitely uses a BSP algorithm).

Some data structures I could NOT visually find in the ROM were REJECT and BLOCKMAP. REJECT being missing is a no brainer given the totally different way that monster sight checking works, and I assume collisions are probably handled in an entirely different and much simplified manner as well given how "sticky" everything in the game is.

I believe if somebody put their mind to it (possibly disassembling some of the 65816 asm, for example) we could modify or at the least extract the maps from SNES Doom.

As for textures, sprites, and other graphics, I haven't the platform architecture knowledge necessary to even *try* to find those, and it's likely they're compressed in the ROM anyways (the level data does not appear to be compressed).

IMO, the coolest project to do would be Doom II for SNES, though coding in new enemies probably represents an insurmountable challenge.

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@Maes: Wisdom Tree was actually given the source by id, in all likelihood.

VGA said:

Has anyone begged for a source code release?

I tried tracking down the original coder but it appears he's not been too active on the web for some time.

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VGA said:

Has anyone begged for a source code release?

Never going to happen. Nintendo is extremely paranoid and strict about their SDKs, even for consoles as old as the NES.

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@Maes, I'm not looking for a ready made mod, but the fact that this crap seems to be the only one is kinda sad. I don't think they could have come up with anything more farfetched.. It coulda been ANYTHING, even if they wanted to keep it "child friendly".. A kid going around a school starting foodfights, a cheap nonviolent clone of Blake Stone or something, but nope.. Just had to be Noah shooting animals in the face with food!

Sodaholic said:

Wisdom Tree was actually given the source by id, in all likelihood.

Didn't Romero dispel that rumor recently? I might be wrong..

@Quasar, thanks a lot for all the information. It's interesting to know the levels are virtually unmodified. If someone does find some way for them to be modified, even if it is a little painstaking, I will definitely be right on it. While playing this butchered port I've thought of many basic layouts that would suit the game's behavior perfectly, so it could be more than just a frail shadow of PC Doom.

Thanks for the responses!

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Doomkid said:

Didn't Romero dispel that rumor recently? I might be wrong..

If he did, then how did Wisdom Tree get the Wolf3D source? Because Super Noah's Ark 3D *is* based on the Wolf engine. There's zero question about that. If you need to know how certain I am, I know people who have seen its source code. 'Nuff said.

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I don't doubt that one bit, but isn't it only the graphics and music that are changed, and not the level layouts? I've never actually played the game, so maybe the maps are different too. Again, this is all based on hearsay - The rumor has it that ID was upset due to the censorship of Wolf3D, but that seems silly considering they developed the SNES version of Wolf themselves, meaning they censored it themselves, to Nintendo's specifications of course. If it upset them that much, why did they make the port in the first place? Extra profit, sure, but it hardly seems sensible to get upset about something they would have known from the getgo.

Mind you, I'm not saying ID didn't give them the source code, I'm just saying the thought of being angered over the censorship seems sorta silly. Maybe wisdom tree came to them and offered to buy the source, and the ID guys just said "Yeah, that's fine, we don't care much about that anymore anyway on account of Doom" and sold it to them without a second thought. That seems a bit more feasible rather than the "they were angry about censorship" explanation, at least to me. I could be 100% wrong.

I assumed for a while that they reverse engineered the game, considering they were one of those "basically bootleg" game companies, which are famous for doing that kind of crap. Ive looked all over for the answers to this one.. It would be great if Romero could give a definite answer to this ongoing mystery once and for all, it's definitely a very curious bit of ID history..

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Doomkid said:

Maybe wisdom tree came to them and offered to buy the source, and the ID guys just said "Yeah, that's fine, we don't care much about that anymore anyway on account of Doom" and sold it to them without a second thought.

Mostly correct. The detail you left out is that id Software was a technology licensing company, so the reason there was no second thought was the same reason Blake Stone, Corridor 7, Operation Body Count, and Rise of the Triad also exist. The only added variable is that id software knew that it was going to be used without a license from Nintendo, but apparently that was considered not their problem.

The levels are completely new and actually pretty well designed in my opinion. Of course I might be biased since I have a license to sell the game.</shameless-plug>

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Blzut3 said:

Mostly correct. The detail you left out is that id Software was a technology licensing company, so the reason there was no second thought was the same reason Blake Stone, Corridor 7, Operation Body Count, and Rise of the Triad also exist. The only added variable is that id software knew that it was going to be used without a license from Nintendo, but apparently that was considered not their problem.

The levels are completely new and actually pretty well designed in my opinion. Of course I might be biased since I have a license to sell the game.</shameless-plug>

So is the portion of the old legend that's not true the idea that id did this out of retaliation for SNES Wolf 3D being butchered with censorship? I know they were pretty upset about it at the time to the point they swore they'd never develop for Nintendo again (which they didn't - they ended up letting 3rd parties like Sculptured Software and David A Palmer Productions handle ports). It's hard for me to imagine I suppose that it wasn't at least a tiny factor, even if Romero denies it :P

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Quasar said:

So is the portion of the old legend that's not true the idea that id did this out of retaliation for SNES Wolf 3D being butchered with censorship?

Not as far as Wisdom Tree side of the story is concerned. According to Wisdom Tree they paid for the license just like everyone else did.

Quasar said:

which they didn't

Debatable? (At one point Carmack expressed a bit of interest in the DS.) Is there a reliable source that indicates they were actually mad about that though? In the end it seems pretty childish to hold a grudge over what is effectively self censorship (they had to have known going in about Nintendo's policies). The quote from Linguica's post only indicates that they disagreed with the policy and at best thought it was funny that someone was going to side step it.

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Linguica said:

This excerpt from Masters of Doom is not entirely accurate. Originally, a company called Color Dreams (best known for making unlicensed NES titles) licensed the Wolf 3D engine from id to create a first person shooter for the PC based on the Hellraiser movie franchise in addition to an NES title. However, the tech for the NES cartridge fell through and the movie license expired, so Color Dreams formed a new branch called Wisdom Tree that focused on creating Christian-themed games. They used the Wolf 3D engine license which they still possessed to develop Super 3D Noah's Ark for the PC and SNES. Hence, id had no knowledge that the story of Noah's ark was going to be told in video game form with their engine.

Sources:
http://www.cenobite.com/collect/vg.htm
http://colordreams.rogerdeforest.com/

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