Question about "Doom 64 2: The Rising"

So I'm making my way through Absolution for the Doomsday engine (about eight years too late, I know, I know) and it's freaking awesome. I plan on getting a hold of the Outcast Levels just as soon as I finish it. Who needs Doom 3, right? Anyway, I've stumbled across some Youtube videos of something called "Doom 64 2: The Rising", and think it would make an excellent follow-up once I finish Outcast Levels, but...is it done? Does anybody know what kind of progress has been made on it and where I can get it? Also, should I fire it up in Doomsday to keep the mood or is there a better port to play it in?

"Doom 64 2: The Rising" is not done, no. I'm not sure if that project is still active.

To play the original game, though, I recommend Kaiser's Doom64EX. It's a far more accurate recreation of the game, created by the main author of Absolution.

Me and Sniper were working on that project, it was suppose to be an unofficial sequel to Doom 64 for the Nintendo DS (though it would still be playable on the PC).

We had already made plenty of levels and the project looked promising enough. However, the technical limitations of the DS kept being a pain in the ass which presented some considerable difficulties (we were still able to create playable levels and get the TC to work on the DS in the end however with a modified version of DS Doom).

The project died however once Sniper (who was both the project leader and one of the only people in the team who actually knew anything about getting shit to work on the DS) as well as some other crucial team members lost interest in it, largely because they were sick of being constantly plagued by the DS being a pain to work with.

I actually still have a lot of the stuff that was made for the project (levels, graphics, early alpha and beta builds etc) somewhere on my hardware I think, but many of the levels are not that impressive, largely because (once again) the DS was not a very good platform for complex or large levels.

Perhaps Sniper has brought the project back to live since I last spoke to him (which was ages ago) but I find it highly unlikely.

For what it is worth, here is a gameplay demo (recorded on the PC) from one of the levels that I was working on:

EDIT: Yes I know the video is extremely dark, like I said this was work in progress and was nowhere near complete.

Its a shame, really. Because I really wanted this project to be a success :(

hardcore_gamer said:

EDIT: Yes I know the video is extremely dark, like I said this was work in progress and was nowhere near complete.

That video looks like Doom 3 :D

boris said:

That video looks like Doom 3 :D

lol.

Actually the reason it is so dark was because I was working on the map on monitor that for some reason displayed things with much greater brightness then most other monitors and thus I thought the level wasn't anywhere near as dark as it actually is.

I'd pay money for a sequel to D64

Yeah, it's a real downer that The Rising was never finished. I'd play EX, but I feel like there's no reason. I own the Doom 64 cartridge. Besides, as far as I know Absolution is the same thing with maybe a few minor "errors", a couple more monsters (including a super-fast partially invisible cacodemon who took me totally by surprise), higher resolution and cool effects thanks to the Doomsday engine. Quite a few of those are positives. The Rising would at least give me more levels to play after I'm done with The Outcast Levels. Oh well. Maybe I'll see if the Absolution wad works in Legacy and play it in that port when I finish playing it the way it was intended, see if that alters the experience. :)

rabidrage said:

Yeah, it's a real downer that The Rising was never finished. I'd play EX, but I feel like there's no reason. I own the Doom 64 cartridge. Besides, as far as I know Absolution is the same thing with maybe a few minor "errors", a couple more monsters (including a super-fast partially invisible cacodemon who took me totally by surprise), higher resolution and cool effects thanks to the Doomsday engine. Quite a few of those are positives. The Rising would at least give me more levels to play after I'm done with The Outcast Levels. Oh well. Maybe I'll see if the Absolution wad works in Legacy and play it in that port when I finish playing it the way it was intended, see if that alters the experience. :)

While The Rising may be done for there are still some other Doom 64 style maps and Mods out there unless I am mistaken (not entire TC's though). Perhaps you could just play those instead?

I hate to be an asshole, but that level in the video looks generic, boring and flat in more ways than one. HardcoreGamer, you have potential, but it seems like all your effort goes into detailing, you also need to work harder on lighting contrast, gameplay variation, as well as height variation.

those monsters are VERY TALL

Make maps for EX you dorks

esselfortium said:

Make maps for EX you dorks

Totally agree, EX is much much better...

esselfortium said:

Make maps for EX you dorks

With a fully functional editor?

DeathevokatioN said:

I hate to be an asshole, but that level in the video looks generic, boring and flat in more ways than one. HardcoreGamer, you have potential, but it seems like all your effort goes into detailing, you also need to work harder on lighting contrast, gameplay variation, as well as height variation.

Except that you can't really do any of those things on the DS.

The DS has a very small screen compared to a PC monitor so your field of view is very limited as is the control scheme. Because of this most of the levels (not just mine, but of those of the other team members as well) were, as you say, rather flat and simple. Its the only way it would have been possible to create levels for the DS that play nice.

And like I already said earlier, the level wasn't even finished in the fist place and was work in progress.

40oz said:

those monsters are VERY TALL

It's a prequel to the original Doom...

Yeah, I really didn't like the way this project was going so I uploaded my map to idGames. Sniper kept bouncing between different projects, and I really wasn't interested in the DS aspect which added lots of annoying limitations. Also the monsters are massive because no one bothered editing the sprites to be the correct size :/

Also, this project was started before Doom64Ex's existance.

Okay, understandable. But EX is just a rehash of Doom 64. Your project would have been a whole new level set. Still, I suppose there are levels out there I can play, just no TC's, like hardcore said. Guess I'll make do.

I'm 10 levels into Absolution and DAMN! Hard, long and never boring. I think it's partly the visuals that keep it interesting, since puzzles were never really my thing. I really thought I'd have given it up by now. Oh, and thank God for the save feature.

How do the rest of you typically play? Is it a major pride thing for people to play without saving, or does everybody save every time they get past something annoying?

rabidrage said:

How do the rest of you typically play? Is it a major pride thing for people to play without saving, or does everybody save every time they get past something annoying?

Generally, I only save at the start of a level, or if it's a newer map that uses autosave checkpoints, I don't save my game outside of those checkpoints. However, I will save mid-level if a level is taking an EXTREMELY long time to complete.

rabidrage said:

Okay, understandable. But EX is just a rehash of Doom 64. Your project would have been a whole new level set. Still, I suppose there are levels out there I can play, just no TC's, like hardcore said. Guess I'll make do.

It's not a rehash, it's a reverse-engineered source port. It uses the actual Doom 64 maps and resources from the N64 rom. People can make custom maps for it using all the features of the game, and it makes far more sense to do so than to attempt workarounds in other ports to poorly imitate Doom64 when an accurate port of the real thing is right there and already moddable.

I would go crazy if someone made a MegaWAD or even just a set of a few levels for D64EX.

esselfortium said:

People can make custom maps for it using all the features of the game, and it makes far more sense to do so than to attempt workarounds in other ports to poorly imitate Doom64 when an accurate port of the real thing is right there and already moddable.

But unless I am mistaken, there is no real way to actually make levels for Doom64 EX, since normal level editing programs like Doom builder 2 don't support it.

Or has this changed? Now that I think of it its been ages since I played Doom 64, but I still think I have Doom 64 EX somewhere on my hard drive.....

rabidrage said:

How do the rest of you typically play? Is it a major pride thing for people to play without saving, or does everybody save every time they get past something annoying?

Not really a point of pride, just far more suspenseful for me, especially on really long levels.

hardcore_gamer said:

But unless I am mistaken, there is no real way to actually make levels for Doom64 EX, since normal level editing programs like Doom builder 2 don't support it.

Or has this changed? Now that I think of it its been ages since I played Doom 64, but I still think I have Doom 64 EX somewhere on my hard drive.....

Kaiser put together a custom version of DB2 specifically for making custom maps for the Doom 64EX engine. You might be able to find a link to it somewhere in this thread, but I'm not sure. A quick search may possibly turn up something. At any rate, the Builder64 editor is pretty buggy and I don't think Kaiser has gotten the chance to work on it again yet. The last time I gave it a try, I quickly lost patience with it. But it's definitely capable of creating maps that will run in the engine, just ask essel :D. If Builder64 ever gets updated so its a little more stable, I'll definitely be making maps with it.

*edit*

BLAMO

So there's a working link to a version of Builder64. Scroll down a bit and you'll find a list essel compiled of useful info on some of it's current issues. According to the post I linked to, Kaiser has builds of Builder64 on Codeimp's SVN...I've never bothered to check to see if there's a new build on there or not. Worth checking into I suppose.

I'm pretty sure at least a couple of those issues have been fixed by now, too.

Here is a custom EX map:
http://www.doomworld.com/vb/wads-mods/54601-toxin-64-a-custom-map-for-doom-64-ex/

Although if you run it with current version you would have a "I Suck At Mapping" map.