Soda's questions about Doom 64

I was reading through the editing documentation of Doom 64 EX, and found these that I have questions about:

* Slower clock rate, which the game runs a lot slower than PC Doom. (EX retains the same speed as the PC game).

Is this referring to the tic-rate? Does Doom 64 EX run at 35? What did the original run at, 30? And why would Doom 64 EX change this if it's supposed to be accurate? I'd think that timing like this would be pretty important to keeping the feel of the original game.


* Taller view height
* Wider radius and height

Okay, so the player is larger, but how much? Most importantly to me, what is the viewheight?

The clockrate in Doom64EX has always been 30. Though the most early builds that I can think of did have the original PC clockrate.

The viewheight in Doom64 is now 56 instead of 41. Viewheight is the camera height that you see in the actual game from the player's perspective. In PC Doom your viewheight is much closer to the ground.

Player radius is 19 and the physical height of the player is now 64. Not too much of a difference from the original.

Also, FYI, I am currently working on the 'extensive' document that covers all the technical aspects in Doom 64. Though not officially released yet, you can check out the current revision here:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/18609/D64Bible.zip

Its not finished yet, but it does give an idea of what will be covered.

I believe Doom64 Guy is 64 units tall rather than 56. I'm not sure about his width.

I think the erroneous 35fps ticrate has been fixed in more recent versions, so the game now runs at the intended speed.

edit: Kaiser beat me to it.

esselfortium said:

edit: Kaiser beat me to it.

Naturally. The topic might as well have been called, "Soda's questions to Kaiser." :)

Apparently people are too afraid to PM or email me.

That can be considered a good thing ;)

Besides, I think it's beneficial if the rest of the community knows, too. If someone else asks the same thing, and also it's not a personal subject, etc.

Kaiser said:

Apparently people are too afraid to PM or email me.

You scare me, Kaiser. You scare the B'Jesus out of me.

Thanks, Kaiser.

Anyway, I have another question. What's the best thing to edit Doom 64 levels for Doom 64 ex? (as in creating new levels)

Sodaholic said:

Thanks, Kaiser.

Anyway, I have another question. What's the best thing to edit Doom 64 levels for Doom 64 ex? (as in creating new levels)

I've been working from time to time on a modified Doom Builder that supports the Doom 64 level format. Unfortunately due to time and work I can barely spend any time on it. It WOULD be nice if someone can volunteer to maintain the tools.

Unless someone adds support, the only way right now is to wait until I can get a stable build online. Though once I release the next official build of Doom64 ex, then I can focus more on the editor.

Quick question, what is Doom 64's aspect ratio? Are the pixels 1x1 like in Doom95, or are they 5x6 like ordinary Doom?

That I wouldn't know

This is just random guessing, but I imagine that since the Nintendo 64's screen resolution is 320x240, that Doom 64 would likely use square pixel aspect, and compensate for such by making monster sprites taller and increasing the player's view height.

Kaiser said:

The clockrate in Doom64EX has always been 30. Though the most early builds that I can think of did have the original PC clockrate.

The viewheight in Doom64 is now 56 instead of 41. Viewheight is the camera height that you see in the actual game from the player's perspective. In PC Doom your viewheight is much closer to the ground.

Player radius is 19 and the physical height of the player is now 64. Not too much of a difference from the original.

Also, FYI, I am currently working on the 'extensive' document that covers all the technical aspects in Doom 64. Though not officially released yet, you can check out the current revision here:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/18609/D64Bible.zip

Its not finished yet, but it does give an idea of what will be covered.

Love to read such stuff. Interesting!

WildWeasel said:

This is just random guessing, but I imagine that since the Nintendo 64's screen resolution is 320x240, that Doom 64 would likely use square pixel aspect, and compensate for such by making monster sprites taller and increasing the player's view height.

That's what I was thinking too, but couldn't a lot of those 5th gen consoles have different resolutions? I'm not sure if the N64 could have any other resolution, but I know that PSX Doom ran at 256x200.

If Doom 64 did run at 320x240, is it possible that it did aspect ratio correction?

Just curious, is this being looked into? I think it would be kinda important when it comes to the aethstetics of the game, and if it was any different in Doom 64 EX than it would need to be changed.

Doom64 ran at 320x240. Though in the disassembly, the guFrustum call is setting some weird aspect ratio (more likely to fit the screen) but it definitely runs at 320x240.

So does that mean that it was likely doing some aspect ratio correction?

It means square pixels.

Sodaholic said:

So does that mean that it was likely doing some aspect ratio correction?

320x240 probably means square pixels, but because the end result was an analog video output, you can't be absolutely sure unless you know deep timing information about the N64 graphics hardware.

If you wanted to get incredibly anal, the thing to do would be get a video capture card with known timing parameters (note that off-the-shelf stuff running stock software is often slightly wrong in this respect!), and then capture the output of an actual N64 on it and do some quick math.

But what would you get in the end? That the PAR is actually 1.03487:1 instead of 1.00000:1? Doesn't seem worth the trouble.