Doom SNES Unused Status Bar faces

I found the offset in WRAM that controls the status bar face.

With this offset, I found all the values that worked.

Note: If you use a value that is not listed below you will just see pixel garbage as you status bar face.

Here is a video showing the unused faces:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZpJs7Z6aRg&feature=youtu.be

Here is the offset in WRAM: 0x704

Values:

Dead = 00
God Mode = 02
Grinning Face = 04

[
Damaged = 06
Badly Damaged = 08
]

"Annoyed" Face = 10

[
Damaged = 12
Badly Damaged = 14
Almost Dead = 16
]

Ouch Face = 18

[
Damaged = 20
]

Looking Right = 22

[
Damaged = 28
Badly Damaged = 34
]

Looking Center = 24

[
Damaged = 30
Badly Damaged = 36
]

Looking Left = 26

[
Damaged = 32
Badly Damaged = 38
]

I know the grinning face isn't used, but the god mode face I believe is still used when you pick up an invulnerability sphere.

I don't get it, why would they choose not to use the grin face if they have it?

I guess it was a decision later in development not to use them, but they simply forgot or did not bother to take out the graphics. There are a few other unused sprites/graphics in the game besides this.

It would make sense if they were doing it for the sake of cartridge space but, if it's already in there, it doesn't make sense why they wouldn't want to use all of the resources that they can squeeze into there. They obviously had space limitations since they had to reuse a lot of the sounds and graphics.

While I know there's very little space on the cartridge, does anyone know how much space the coding for the grinface would take up? Because it seems relatively simple to have the graphic switch for a second upon the pickup of a new weapon.

A line or two of code? That should be absolutely trivial, I doubt it was that air tight.

They probably just converted the assets en masse and then removed what they ended up not needing. Since this particular sprite is rather small, they just overlooked it. The reason it's not used is either due to an oversight in not knowing it was in the original so they didn't bother to recreate it in the new engine, they didn't bother implementing it because who cares, or it doesn't appear due to an ouchface-like bug.

My brother had found these status bar faces several years ago using some cheat codes on the SnesX9 emulator, I don't remember the codes, though, so this is not a surprise to me.

Probably overlooked. All Doom ports were rush-jobs.

The SNES version seemed to have the most effort placed into it from my perspective. They actually built it around the PC version instead of the Jaguar version like all the others, consequently with the design and the 2 boss stage stages actually appearing along with the bosses themselves, something no other console port had at the time.

Well, considering they actually recreated the game in another engine, with no access to the source code or id's blessing whatsoever, they really put in more work than any other port at the time. OTOH, they had to be careful to include/recreate everything on their own simply based on observation/reverse engineering. There was not even some half-baked source code to guide them.

Maes said:

Well, considering they actually recreated the game in another engine, with no access to the source code or id's blessing whatsoever, they really put in more work than any other port at the time. OTOH, they had to be careful to include/recreate everything on their own simply based on observation/reverse engineering. There was not even some half-baked source code to guide them.

I take it back.

Maes said:

Well, considering they actually recreated the game in another engine, with no access to the source code or id's blessing whatsoever, they really put in more work than any other port at the time. OTOH, they had to be careful to include/recreate everything on their own simply based on observation/reverse engineering. There was not even some half-baked source code to guide them.

They should get a Cacoward for that alone. That's very impressive.