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

[Erick194]

It can also be said that the music was created without reverberation, the reverb gives that special touch to the music when it is played, that is why in the official versions the music does not sound different, since from 21 to 29 they were not used for the maps, since the music can vary the output of sound like: deeper sounds, extended releases by reverberation or volume drops like map 3 because of the reverberation.

[MajorRawne]

Just chucking my twopenny in about monster variety. Cyberdemons and Spiderdemons on the PSX are rare, significant and terrifying. On the PC, they're reduced to a gimmick. ("Oh goodie, another 5 Cyberdemons.") Cutting them from the majority of maps for the PSX version maintains this, and creates IMO a better gameplay flow, as it's far more satisfying to tear through groups of minion-level monsters than to simply reach for the BFG for yet another soulless boss fight.

 

Same can be said for Revs (which are nerfed to near worthlessness on PSX but which, like Cacodemons, can give some "spine" to groups of weaker monsters), Mancubi and Barons. Their sparing deployment makes them an interesting change of pace, whereas spamming them just gets old, fast.

 

EDIT: Dark Pluse, thanks for providing your link to the changelog which contains an interesting, but ultimately "common sense when you think about it" (aka "D'oh!") issue, that your choice of monsters affects the map regardless of which difficulty level you're playing on. This prevented you from using Cacos instead of PEs on Dis at lower levels. It's probably not something that most people including myself would have even considered.

 

EDIT 2:

On 4/4/2019 at 3:21 PM, riderr3 said:

I know the fact about reverbs, the different maps have different type of reverberation. I wonder did it possible to change not only music, but also type of reverb to fit the map, or it's just hardcoded to music track or something.

I did not know this!! Which ones?

Edited April 5, 2019 by MajorRawne

[Dark Pulse]

5 hours ago, MajorRawne said:

EDIT: Dark Pluse, thanks for providing your link to the changelog which contains an interesting, but ultimately "common sense when you think about it" (aka "D'oh!") issue, that your choice of monsters affects the map regardless of which difficulty level you're playing on. This prevented you from using Cacos instead of PEs on Dis at lower levels. It's probably not something that most people including myself would have even considered.

Honestly, it's pretty much my only regret with the map. But unlike the others I worked on, chopping the Spider is not an option here, and I still managed to get a proper "Doom II in Doom" feeling the PSX version of the Doom maps had via the Pain Elemental, which was also key to me.

 

But yeah, if you have a monster type in the map, it's added to the memory regardless of what difficulties it's on. That scuttled my plans, since there wasn't enough memory for the Spider, Barons, PE + Lost Souls, and Cacos. Barons were part of the original map along with the Spider, and PEs are what help make it more of an interesting and challenging fight overall. I could've dumped the Barons and added the Cacos, but then you'd have a couple of medium tier threats, the Barons are supposed to put on some good hurt.

 

So yeah. It's a map where if we get to use the N64 version of the engine though, I'll definitely get to do it how I wanted to do it. Compromising like this is just part and parcel of the PSX Engine.

 

Admittedly doing that would also require the Spider getting added into the game, too...

[Dexiaz]

Since we can check and choose music tracks, what about making new ones? No progress with modding LCD files?

[Erick194]

The LCD file, is where it contains the VAG sound format, native to psx, only it does not have the header or the first 64 bytes. that is easy to modify, but the one that restricts the sizes and addresses of each one of the files is the DOOMSND.WMD, it brings a section where, it contains the offset and size of each one of the internal VAG files in the LCD. The option would be to create a program that reconstructs the WMD, since it contains mapsets and mapsamples, for notes, ADSR, among other things, and it contains each of the midis of the sounds, in a different format.

[Dark Pulse]

1 hour ago, Erick194 said:

The LCD file, is where it contains the VAG sound format, native to psx, only it does not have the header or the first 64 bytes. that is easy to modify, but the one that restricts the sizes and addresses of each one of the files is the DOOMSND.WMD, it brings a section where, it contains the offset and size of each one of the internal VAG files in the LCD. The option would be to create a program that reconstructs the WMD, since it contains mapsets and mapsamples, for notes, ADSR, among other things, and it contains each of the midis of the sounds, in a different format.

I think that'd be really good to swing if you felt it was worth it to have it happen. Picture some of this community's best musicians having these samples to play around with; see what nightmares they could manifest.

 

Of course, there is the overarching limitations of the Playstation's SPU RAM (512K), but other than that, it was a quite advanced little audio chip (and a direct descendent of the SNES' SPC700). Good mixing and judicious samples could be made to sound like streamed audio, when it was really 100% sequenced. (The whole game didn't stick to sequenced tracks entirely, but it's about 2/3rds sequenced and 1/3rd streamed.)

 

 

Shame we didn't get that game, by the way.

 

Ideally they can create more than new songs and can do new samples as well, but that may be less doable (without a lot more work, I'm not sure). If we're going to stick with Aubrey's stuff, obviously there's at least five games to potentially pull from: PSX Doom/Final Doom, Doom 64, N64 Quake I and N64 Quake II. (I know I shot him an email a few weeks ago asking about this stuff, but he's yet to reply.)

Edited April 7, 2019 by Dark Pulse

[CoTeCiO]

8 hours ago, Erick194 said:

The LCD file, is where it contains the VAG sound format, native to psx, only it does not have the header or the first 64 bytes. that is easy to modify, but the one that restricts the sizes and addresses of each one of the files is the DOOMSND.WMD, it brings a section where, it contains the offset and size of each one of the internal VAG files in the LCD. The option would be to create a program that reconstructs the WMD, since it contains mapsets and mapsamples, for notes, ADSR, among other things, and it contains each of the midis of the sounds, in a different format.

When I made my PC SFX mod I realized of exactly that, all sounds had to be same size or smaller than the originals and start in exactly the same address, otherwise it would not play (but it didn't crash the game), so I was replacing the hex data with a hex editor taking notes of the addresses where each sample started and making sure I was putting the sounds in the right place, padding the smaller samples with zeroes to match the originals seemed to be fine and the game doesn't appear to mind.

 

It's interesting to know what file dictates the offset and length of the samples. I was wondering that the whole time I went through that ordeal.

[Dark Pulse]

Having some real fun with Bloodsea Keep. I've got it running as a geometry test if I manually delete all the monsters, but it's still bombing out after removing the following monsters:

• Zombiemen
• Chaingunner (there was only one)
• Mancubus (there was only one)
• Revenant (there was only one)
• Cacodemons (there was only 2-3)
• Barons of Hell (there was only two)
• Arch-vile (but that doesn't count and is here for completion's sake)

I'm really hoping shrinking the "exterior" of the level a little (the huge lava lake, I mean) will allow it to run, because if not, I'd have to get rid of Pain Elementals and/or Lost Souls, and there won't be too much more opposition left at that point other than your basics.

Edited April 9, 2019 by Dark Pulse

[Job]

Dumb question, but is it possible to divide the level into two sequential parts in two map slots? 

[Dark Pulse]

43 minutes ago, Job said:

Dumb question, but is it possible to divide the level into two sequential parts in two map slots? 

It would be, but that'd be a pretty dumb way of doing things IMO.

 

I know the level can run without monsters, but there's not many real good ways for me to tell just what, exactly, is taking up all the memory. I'm within limits of my textures and flats, but the level is fairly complex, it's crashing even at an attempted malloc of around ~675K.

 

Not much I can do without better memory analysis tools or better ideas of what exactly fits where. I can try chopping some decorations, maybe, but that's pretty limited memory savings.

 

EDIT: Won't even run with chopping the Pain Elementals and Lost Souls, bombing on a malloc of ~530K. Yikes... Guess it really is time to strip out all the decoration.

 

EDIT 2: ~510K won't do either. Yeesh.

 

EDIT 3: Nor ~490K, and that's with literally every decoration given the boot. Welp. Another monster type is gonna have to get cut...

 

EDIT 4: FINALLY. Got it to run with monsters by removing Hell Knights as well. Unfortunately this will leave the bestiary REALLY damn thin. Hopefully I can at least keep the decorations and light sources... MAYBE add in the Lost Souls at least, but Pain Elementals are probably still a goner.

 

EDIT 5: Seems I can either keep the decorations but dump the Lost Souls, or potentially dump some of the decorations to squeeze in the Lost Souls. Definitely can't have both unaltered though. Hell Knights and Pain Elementals are toast either way, simply not enough room without some serious chopping/altering of the map in major ways so as to make it nearly unrecognizable, and I don't really know the "toll" of level data in terms of memory use.

Edited April 9, 2019 by Dark Pulse

[Job]

Wow, that's pretty crazy. The PSX Doom dev team had to grapple with some tough restrictions. 

[Dark Pulse]

32 minutes ago, Job said:

Wow, that's pretty crazy. The PSX Doom dev team had to grapple with some tough restrictions. 

Right now I'm shaving every bit of RAM I can by consolidating most of the decorations into a few types. Haven't gotten it to load the map yet though, so a couple might wind up getting sacrificed if I can't make it run with consolidation.

 

From my current changelog:

Quote

• To squeeze out every drop of RAM that I could get while still desperately trying to keep Lost Souls on the map, a bunch of decorations wound up getting the axe and replaced with similar decorations.
  • Thing Type 56 (Short Green firestick) was replaced with Thing Type 45 (Tall Green firestick).
  • Thing Type 57 (Short Red firestick) was replaced with Thing Type 46 (Tall Red firestick).
  • Thing Type 31 (Short Green pillar) was replaced with Thing Type 30 (Tall Green pillar).
  • Thing Types 32 (Tall Red pillar) and 33 (Short Red pillar) were replaced with Thing Type 37 (Short Red pillar (skull)).
  • Thing Type 26 (Twitching impaled human) was replaced with Thing Type 25 (Impaled human).
  • Thing Type 27 (Skull on a pole) was replaced with Thing Type 28 (5 Skulls shish-kebab).
  • Due to the removal of Zombiemen, Thing Type 18 (Dead former human) was replaced with Thing Type 19 (Dead former sergeant).
  • Thing Types 24 (Pool of blood and bones) and 81 (Pool of brains) were replaced with Thing Type 79 (Pool of blood and guts).
  • Thing Types 78 (Hanging torso, brain removed), 49 (Hanging victim twitching (blocking) and 50 (Hanging victim, arms out (blocking)) were replaced by Thing Type 76 (Hanging torso, open skull).
  • Thing Type 52 (Hanging pair of legs (blocking)) was replaced with Thing Type 53 (Hanging leg (blocking)) since it looks better with the above change, plus is another precious slice of RAM saved.

A couple of these may wind up going the way of the dodo entirely if it still won't run. About to do another test. And even if the map load succeeds, I've got to do a death and restart of the map to ensure it won't fail on reload if the player snuffs it.

 

EDIT: Nope, still refusing.

 

EDIT 2: Finally got it running with a couple more chops, and the death test succeeded, which means I've probably pared just enough back to manage to get it to successfully run with the Lost Souls. The above list now looks like this:

Quote

• Thing Types 45 (Tall Green firestick), 56 (Short Green firestick) and 57 (Short Red firestick) were replaced by Thing Type 46 (Tall red firestick) once RAM savings became key.
• Thing Type 31 (Short Green pillar) was replaced with Thing Type 30 (Tall Green pillar).
• Thing Types 32 (Tall Red pillar) and 33 (Short Red pillar) were replaced with Thing Type 37 (Short Red pillar (skull)).
• Thing Type 26 (Twitching impaled human) was replaced with Thing Type 25 (Impaled human).
• Thing Type 27 (Skull on a pole) was replaced with Thing Type 28 (5 Skulls shish-kebab).
• Due to the removal of Zombiemen, Thing Type 18 (Dead former human) was replaced with Thing Type 19 (Dead former sergeant).
• Thing Types 24 (Pool of blood and bones) and 81 (Pool of brains) were replaced with Thing Type 79 (Pool of blood and guts).
• Thing Types 49 (Hanging victim twitching (blocking), 50 (Hanging victim, arms out (blocking)) and 78 (Hanging torso, brain removed) were replaced by Thing Type 76 (Hanging torso, open skull).
• Thing Type 52 (Hanging pair of legs (blocking)) was replaced with Thing Type 53 (Hanging leg (blocking)) since it looks better with the above change, plus is another precious slice of RAM saved.

 

Edited April 10, 2019 by Dark Pulse

[riderr3]

@Dark Pulse actually in your case best way will be reducing the linedefs which are not affecting the progression. Removing static decorations is the least helpful method.

Here is unaltered Bloodsea top-down view and I see a lot of opportunities of reducing stuff. A lot of stairsteps can be reduced, or even changed onto lifts (in some cases). Cages with shotgunners also can be altered/combined. You'll get a memory space for new baddies.


Now mine conversion of River Styx which are already altered, look at number of linedefs, it even have more of them (sure it have less sectors but it does not change the situation much, especially you can reduce/combine them on Bloodsea, just watch for sound blocking lines). All decorations is also preserved.

5 monster types on PSX River Styx - imp, shotgunner, demon, HK, lost soul (the most economical types). So potentially Bloodsea can keep 4+ of them, don't forget to build image with find side batch script and you receive more extra space for baddies.



Also I made an analysis of PSX Final Doom unused graphics with hidden VRAM viewer cheat, which I discovered previously. It confirms the fact that the PSX Final Doom was planned much larger cause many new graphics are added. (compared to PSX Doom where almost all textures/flats are used)

Stuff which are unused:
-big marble face of arch-vile
-a LOT of computer panels and monitors, I'd say about 80% of them
-all vine-related textures except only one which are use on Congo and Aztec. In my case I use some of them at Abattoire and Garrison.
-the only one flaming animated wall I saw in Heck. Others seems to be unused.
-most of the wooden panels especially one with the picture on it
-ALL of new crate variations which are added especially for Final Doom (I facepalm when realized it). Only old crates are used. Now new crates is used at Titan Manor and Steel Works, and may be some other maps in Master Edition.
-newly added industrial fence (if I remember correctly). It used couple of times in ME.
-egyptian stone walls. And now it used on Pharaoh.
-most of the switches, because many maps usually have plain metal switches (even the fact there are new switches made for PSX Final Doom)
-animated wall with blinking red lights. Now used at Steel Works.
-williams panel obviously, because it was supposed for Club Doom.
-wooden wall with ID stickers (an easter egg was planned? Maybe GEC will find it useful this time)

-skies: shores of hell, city, thy flesh
-all kinds of tiled colored flats (which are non-marble). Some of them are used in March of the Demons and Pharaoh.
-cement flat
-factory-like red brick flat
-williams flat obviously, because it was supposed for Club Doom. Looks like a teleporter flat.
-fireblu-like flat. In ME I've not seen it on any map except I use it in end of Spirit World because PSX Doom can't properly handle skies on floor.

-also can be another graphics which I probably missed

I'm glad that Master Edition will introduce many unused assets.


 

[Dark Pulse]

22 minutes ago, riderr3 said:

@Dark Pulse actually in your case best way will be reducing the linedefs which are not affecting the progression. Removing static decorations is the least helpful method.

Here is unaltered Bloodsea top-down view and I see a lot of opportunities of reducing stuff. A lot of stairsteps can be reduced, or even changed onto lifts (in some cases). Cages with shotgunners also can be altered/combined. You'll get a memory space for new baddies.

I always build with Find Side, and so far with trimming the decorations down I've kept four monster types - Shotgun Guys, Imps, Demons, Lost Souls.

 

Big problem though is that I'd need to claw back another 100K of memory for Pain Elementals or Hell Knights, and about 200K for both.

 

While I could definitely simplify some geometry (and indeed, I've yet to do that), unless it can get me back that much RAM, I'm still not going to be able to fit in another monster type.

 

The level definitely has a lot of animated textures though, which might not be helping - blood flat, lava flat, bloodfalls... that might potentially be worth reducing a bit. But unless that and some level simplification can wiggle that extra 100-200K, it's not going to get a new monster type stuffed in there.

[Gerardo194]

I'm very happy to see everybody is doing a great job. If ever wondered why I haven't been online too much is because I had some exams to do last weekend.

[Dark Pulse]

1 minute ago, Gerardo194 said:

I'm very happy to see everybody is doing a great job. If ever wondered why I haven't been online too much is because I had some exams to do last weekend.

I see Kyo Kusanagi has also been retired.

[Gerardo194]

36 minutes ago, Dark Pulse said:

I see Kyo Kusanagi has also been retired.

Yes... Kyo was good. I felt it was already old so I decided to revome it. Who knows if he'll be back.

Do you like my new profile pic??

[Dark Pulse]

Just now, Gerardo194 said:

Yes... Kyo was good. I felt it was already old so I decided to revome it. Who knows if he'll be back.

Do you like my new profile pic??

I think it's Warhammer 40,000? Looks like a Space or Chaos Marine, anyway. Not 100% sure.

[Gerardo194]

5 minutes ago, Dark Pulse said:

I think it's Warhammer 40,000? Looks like a Space or Chaos Marine, anyway. Not 100% sure.

Nope, it's from a shitty anime movie called "Karasu Tengu Kabuto: the golden-eyed beast or Ougon no me no kemono"

I prefer the cartoon version, the movie isn't great, it was a meh...

When I saw that big 666 guy (Rasetsubo in the film), I thought this could be something great but I was wrong:

 

[Gerardo194]

I played The Living End by @mr-around and I can say it was very similar to my unfinished version.

 

[mr-around]

18 hours ago, Gerardo194 said:

It was very similar to my unfinished version

 

You mean color theme of the map or the simplified layout? BTW, this one was to a degree tricky in terms of geometry, as such having butchered most of the telepads or other metal bars etc. for the sake of saving memspace for dude types. HK's and Barons are both together here, as I like how do they whack each one and death sound of the Baron rather than applying nightmare mask to former or latter... whoever. Perfect Hatred mostly inspired the color theme, because this and Living End were both constructed by J. Romero, but LE now has better frame performance at the start.

[Gerardo194]

I mean the simplified layout and textures usage. I was planning to use similar colors but never added them, and also had problems with monaters choice. But I admit you did it better. It was going to use PSX Hell sky but it looks good with Doom 2 Hell sky.

[riderr3]

As I remember correctly, Living End have only one small sector with sky. In the case with PSX Doom, for memory sake they ditched skies in some maps as example Tricks and Traps, where are very small ceiling sector at the start, mostly not visible. But I think it's OK to use sky at Living End, because it's mostly visible and memorable part of map.

[CoTeCiO]

12 hours ago, riderr3 said:

Tricks and Traps, where are very small ceiling sector at the start

Whaaaaaaaaaaat!?!? How comes I never saw that in all these years!?

[Gerardo194]

14 hours ago, riderr3 said:

As I remember correctly, Living End have only one small sector with sky.

I was planning to add the sky near the exit, in other words... in front of the beginning.

[riderr3]

I wonder did the "New Hangar" will be removed from beta3? Cause it's actually a testing map.

[Gerardo194]

It has to be removed.

[riderr3]

You can see the sky through the flats which have transparency. But only if there are sectors with sky nearby (I take grate flat which was based on the texture from the PC Doom). Another engine "bug" that can be used as an opportunity.





Currently texture converting and adding is mostly troubled, because of HEX editing and messing around. Even if I replacing old textures, PSXMAP.exe frequently crashing on build. I Hope GEC will provide useful tools and batch scripts after this project finished.

Edit:
@Dark Pulse
All found features and bugs with descriptions I've added to text file, and I suppose GEC team is also gathering such info, later it's can be added to "PSX Doom modding guide" or something like this.
 

Edited April 15, 2019 by riderr3

[Dark Pulse]

I hope that we'd get some extra ways to free up memory, as while all these tricks and stuff are neat as hell, it's gonna be murder if we're dealing with the usual flat and texture room limits for some of them.

 

I'd definitely say that if we do an "exclusive" set of maps, we make use of this knowledge of yours though. So I hope you're writing down how to perform them so us LDs know how to use them. Gwehehe... :)

[CoTeCiO]

17 hours ago, riderr3 said:

You can see the sky through the flats which have transparency. But only if there are sectors with sky nearby (I take grate flat which was based on the texture from the PC Doom). Another engine "bug" that can be used as an opportunity.

That actually looks fantastic! Adds a new dimension to the maps. It might come in handy if any other community project involving PSX Doom comes along. I assume the same can be done for floors, right? I can imagine walking over rails with the PSX fire below. I don't know if PSX Doom likes to have sky on floor flats, but I assume it works, since it does on vanilla.