[GEC] Master Edition PSX Doom for the PlayStation. Beta 4 Released [11/16/2022]

[Dark Pulse]

It could challenge Riven's five CDs. :P

[Gerardo194]

On 12/22/2018 at 10:05 AM, scalliano said:

 

 

6 hours ago, Tipo said:

 

Wow, you guys have done a great job, you both are awesome! I was wondering why you weren't addin the GEC logo on it and I remembered that we haven't published a brighter version yet and this Master Edition and GZDoom Master Edition have darker ones. I'm gonna speak with my brothers if we can publish the brighter one for you. 

@Tipo I think Dexiaz is right, invert the Master Edition into white.

 

3 hours ago, RonLivingston said:

Lets get realm from plutonia to take place in knee deep in the dead with the sky from episode 1 from ultimate doom

If I recall correctly @Dragonsbreathren is working on that map, let's hope he adds this sky to this level.

[Tipo]

Back from Christmas meeting with the family and a new thumpnail,i make it in a classic ntsc jewelcase design,adding gec logo.

If you have any ideas to add,just a pn and i try it.

I'am really happy that you guys make this,iam a big Ps1 and Doom fan.

Btw iam the Admin of the german Ps1 Group Playstation 1 The Collectors Club (videos on yt)

[Dark Pulse]

1 hour ago, Tipo said:

Back from Christmas meeting with the family and a new thumpnail,i make it in a classic ntsc jewelcase design,adding gec logo.

If you have any ideas to add,just a pn and i try it.

I'am really happy that you guys make this,iam a big Ps1 and Doom fan.

Btw iam the Admin of the german Ps1 Group Playstation 1 The Collectors Club (videos on yt)

Not bad at all! That's looking pretty impressive.

 

And more exposure is always good, so feel free to make some videos up if you'd like. Albeit people who don't understand German probably wouldn't understand without subtitles, but spreading knowledge of it helps either way. :) 

[riderr3]

And here is my progress, also with the beta videos. This maps is not sent yet, so you can criticize and make suggestions.

Caribbean
Unlike the Lost Levels in Master Edition version you'll meet cyberdemon in the end. Also special tag 670 used, cause I've removed timed switch because with PSX control turnings it's almost impossible to use these 2 switches and get to exit.

Administration Center
It's the first collaborative map in Master Edition with mr-around (beside the GEC ones). I managed to save 5 types of monsters on this huge map, also arachnotron.
I knew that many maps can be improved by monster variety, but it's up to other contributors.
Idea with exit design belongs to mr-around.

Notice at the 27:11 teleporter is broken (player teleporting with back side of linedef, probably an engine bug). I've fixed this by splitting long linedef into 4 short ones. It should work now.

Edited December 25, 2018 by riderr3

[Dexiaz]

Awesome to see Cyberdemon in the Carribean map, too bad Cyberdemon was cutted away from A.C.

 

To be honest, I'm not sure about the color choice for the Carribean map sectors. As far as you can remember I've used a neutral water-like colors. There are too many hellish red-yellow maps in this project.

[RonLivingston]

Yes. but apparently I would've liked administration center to take place with the burning sky instead

[riderr3]

15 hours ago, Đeⓧiaz said:

To be honest, I'm not sure about the color choice for the Carribean map sectors. As far as you can remember I've used a neutral water-like colors. There are too many hellish red-yellow maps in this project.

That's what I agree with. I've changed it to color 231, and I can approve it looks more appropriately.
 

 

11 hours ago, RonLivingston said:

Yes. but apparently I would've liked administration center to take place with the burning sky instead

It's not impossible, but I will explain why it's not a good idea on this particular map:

1) I have ZMalloc error just by changing it to burning sky. So it needs to remove 80 essential linedefs or remove arachnotrons which will make this map boring. Current sky is a choice of mr-around by the way.

2) Even after removing essential 80 linedefs, there are few more slowdown at the final area, this confirms that burning sky consumes more memory and causes a bit more slowdowns (cause it's animated), on another side it can save space for few more textures. I used it on Baron's Den where is no enormous structures.


Also one more interesting find:

As you can see it's not just a spectre flag but also acts like invisibility sphere (arachnotron misses hell knight).

[OniriA]

riderr3 , this is looking fantastic.

 

Can't wait to play those maps as part of the full package.

I'm especially pleased  and excited by your renditions and visions of the missing psx maps. 

You're doing a pro job here.

 

Sorry for not being helpful in any other way, I can only cheer you on.

 

 

[Dark Pulse]

Paging @Erick194 and/or @Gerardo194... 

 

Not that there is really a thread for it, but we had some talks with people pretty good at reverse-engineering N64 compressions, and after elaborating on what the situation is with maps/textures/demos for Doom 64, they've decided the easier route to go would be that since the game can read uncompressed data for all of those, to just expand the ROM so there's room for uncompressed data. They feel the algorithm used to compress them is a fairly common one - so common, they don't wish to pursue it further when uncompressed is always an option. (Though if it were common, I don't see how Kaiser or you guys wouldn't have figured it out by now, but I digress.)

 

Meaning that creating a GEC Master Edition for the N64 version of the engine is literally a ROM expansion and a map converter away, possibly along with some texture conversion work needed if we are to try to re-port some of the original textures in (although that will be trickier since most textures in Doom 64 are 64x64, 16x128, or 32x128, unless someone wants to try to hack some crazy multitexturing in like later N64 games had - don't know if it's a technical reason there's no 64x128 textures, or if they just didn't use them).

 

So in short, if someone wants to expand the ROM, get a map converter whipped up (either from PC to N64 or from PS1 to N64), and create the necessary compressors to stuff it back into an N64 ROM, I wouldn't mind getting to work on beginning creation of that version of it. Naturally I'd say to expand the ROM to 64 MB - that's the biggest the N64 supports anyway, plus if the compression ever is figured out, it's a lot easier to cut a ROM down if we've got too much unused space than it is to re-expand one where we're bursting past the seams.

 

Good news is that testing can otherwise be done on Doom 64 EX - as far as I know, if it'd blow up on console, it'd blow up there too. So nominally if it runs fine there, should also run fine on console. Kaiser has warned to not depend on EX for testing though, so we'd still want to do emulator testing, if not have people with actual flashcarts to test on actual N64 hardware. Good news is that community has a bunch of those folks, so that might make the job easier, and I've already had one person express their interest in doing so from those communities.

 

EDIT: I've been corrected - 64 MB is just the largest commercial game. Apparently the N64 can handle around 200 MB of cartridge space - technically 256 MB, but some system-related things are mapped in the upper portion of that.
 

Quote

 

fraser 11/04/2018

The 200MB thing was proven using the 64Drive hw2 which actually has 256 MB, but other N64 things conflict with the upper 56 MB.

 

 

Edited January 3, 2019 by Dark Pulse

[Gerardo194]

Interesting! If there's gonna be more people who want to help out, it's very welcome! 

I can't talk about programming because I don't know anything about it (only Erick, he programmed everything in PSX Master Edition and GZDoom [GEC] M.E.)...I think if the algorithm is so common for they, they should get in touch with my brother. Erick has been working on figuring the algorithm out and I think is having some results! That is why he hasn't been online here too much.

[Dark Pulse]

2 hours ago, Gerardo194 said:

Interesting! If there's gonna be more people who want to help out, it's very welcome! 

I can't talk about programming because I don't know anything about it (only Erick, he programmed everything in PSX Master Edition and GZDoom [GEC] M.E.)...I think if the algorithm is so common for they, they should get in touch with my brother. Erick has been working on figuring the algorithm out and I think is having some results! That is why he hasn't been online here too much.

I believe the two who looked into it (Zoinkity and jrra) generally stick to IRC. Specifically, they hang in irc.efnet.org, channel #n64dev.

 

I do know Erick's Discord tag though (because I saw him pop up once in the Doom 64 EX discord), and so I've passed that on to some of the other interested parties (like the one who said he'll help us out with hardware testing).

[CoTeCiO]

On 12/24/2018 at 10:38 PM, Tipo said:

Back from Christmas meeting with the family and a new thumpnail,i make it in a classic ntsc jewelcase design,adding gec logo.

If you have any ideas to add,just a pn and i try it.

I'am really happy that you guys make this,iam a big Ps1 and Doom fan.

Btw iam the Admin of the german Ps1 Group Playstation 1 The Collectors Club (videos on yt)

It looks too squashed in my opinion and the PlayStation font doesn't match the original. If you fix that, it would look a lot more professional. The idea is great, though, I really love the background!

[riderr3]

4 hours ago, CoTeCiO said:

It looks too squashed in my opinion and the PlayStation font doesn't match the original. If you fix that, it would look a lot more professional. The idea is great, though, I really love the background!

Not many knows, but real GEC logo can be found in Master Edition beta. On game selection don't press anything, wait and you see it in credits screen!
Maybe they will upload here more brighter and hi-res version of logo?

[Erick194]

3 hours ago, riderr3 said:

Maybe they will upload here more brighter and hi-res version of logo?

The GEC Logo without color reduction and in 320x240. =)

 

Or the high resolution version.

Edited January 4, 2019 by Erick194

[CoTeCiO]

Here's my take on a Master Edition cover for the NTSC version, inspired in the front cover of the Collector's Edition. If you guys like it I can do the inside and the back cover and even a CD cover.

[Dexiaz]

3 minutes ago, CoTeCiO said:

Here's my take on a Master Edition cover for the NTSC version, inspired in the front cover of the Collector's Edition. If you guys like it I can do the inside and the back cover and even a CD cover.

 

Looks good, I thought to make the similar, but with the Doom64 font.

 

Anyway, here goes my alternate version:

 

But anyway, I will vote up for @CoTeCiO version. But possibly you should use colorless (but not greyscale) version of title picture

[CoTeCiO]

1 minute ago, Đeⓧiaz said:

you should use colorless (but not greyscale) version of title picture

What do you mean?

[Erick194]

I think it says that you use the colorful image and not grayscale, anyway excellent work for the two =)

[CoTeCiO]

4 minutes ago, Erick194 said:

I think it says that you use the colorful image and not grayscale, anyway excellent work for the two =)

Hmm, if I use the normal version it would look way too similar to the original cover. I might try another color scheme for it, maybe a red tone instead of blue. I wanted to try a version based in the Ultimate Doom box cover, which has a grayscale cover with gold letters, but I don't think it would work without the real embossed gold text.

[Gerardo194]

28 minutes ago, CoTeCiO said:

 

 

20 minutes ago, Đeⓧiaz said:

 

 

Wow, you guys are very creative!!! Can't believe my eyes (though my right eye is itchy now) Awesome work you just did there.

I just can image the CD covers.

@CoTeCiO I really like that grayscale cover!

[Dexiaz]

23 minutes ago, CoTeCiO said:

What do you mean?

 

Something like this:

 

UPD: But anyway, I like that you've used the "original" art with the Cyberdemon behind everyone.

[Dark Pulse]

Personally I'd rather the art be something new and clever, not a rehash of the PS1 box art.

 

Maybe if we had some artists in the community it could be something like drawing it from another angle or something, to symbolize the "lost" aspect of this pack - the parts you didn't get to see, that were right around the corner.

 

But that's just my two cents.

[Dexiaz]

Well, actually there are few artists in the community who does an awesome work. For example, @Cage did some cool stuff for the "Doom 64 for Doom II" project (new pictures and vanilla-styled sprites of the Mother Demon)

[Gerardo194]

I think it will also be good having a new art for the cover, but who would do some badass art for this? Maybe as Đeⓧiaz said, Cage can help us. Anyway, I'm very glad for the four covers you guys have done here for this community project.

[CoTeCiO]

55 minutes ago, Đeⓧiaz said:

I like that you've used the "original" art with the Cyberdemon behind everyone.

Glad you noticed that detail!

 

53 minutes ago, Dark Pulse said:

Personally I'd rather the art be something new and clever, not a rehash of the PS1 box art.

Actually, that would be fantastic! It would be a huge plus to have custom artwork for the CD cover. I can't draw at all, but as people mentioned, @Cage did some outstanding work for Doom 64 for Doom II.

[Gerardo194]

I didn't notice that Cyberdemon was behind everybody there! How did you add that, where is that sprite from?? :O

[Dexiaz]

1 hour ago, Gerardo194 said:

I didn't notice that Cyberdemon was behind everybody there! How did you add that, where is that sprite from?? :O

 

No, my friend, it's not sprites. Check this thread.

Edited January 4, 2019 by Đeⓧiaz : Edited link

[Lollie]

54 minutes ago, Đeⓧiaz said:

 

No, my friend, it's not sprites. Check this thread.

Wrong link? This seems to be a post on a Russian board about a platform that leads to nowhere.

[Dexiaz]

Aw, shiet. Thank you. Link fixed