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

[riderr3]

According to to Doomwiki page, Final Doom have some issues related to music tracks.

There are two tracks which are not looped in-game: Vexation (MAP02: Virgil) and Demon Drone (MAP08: Minos). As soon as the first playback is over, only silence was heard. I actually wanted to apply Minos track to one of converted maps.

 

Regardless of whether it is a executable/software bug, or an bug in the music track itself, I have a request to @Erick194, maybe he knows how to fix this bug, given that he worked on the tracks and other tech-stuff. If possible, this will be a nice addition to the rest of the features of the Master Edition.

[Devalaous]

Reminds me, are you guys gonna use the cut tracks for the last three master levels? (Subspace, Subterra and Vesperas all had unique tracks made for them, much like the other master levels, but they weren't done in time for the release)

[Gerardo194]

I like those cut tracks... Listen to them almost everyday. I like the idea.

[mr-around]

Hey, What are those cut tracks? I thought they are plainly from original psx doom's maps 1-3

[Impboy4]

I don't think Aubrey Hodges even has the original midi data and samples anymore for those tracks. But it wouldn't hurt to ask anyway.

[Dark Pulse]

I emailed him back in March about that (and stuff like potentially replacing the soundfont to combine in the N64 tracks as well), haven't gotten a reply.

[Devalaous]

On 8/8/2019 at 7:29 PM, mr-around said:

Hey, What are those cut tracks? I thought they are plainly from original psx doom's maps 1-3

When he released the psx final doom soundtrack, the three bonus tracks on it turned out to be tracks that were originally made for the final three master levels, but the deadline came too soon, so they never made it into the game.

 

He confirmed this himself when I asked him, since I noticed the final three master levels reused old music, while all the others had a special new track. You can probably still find that post on doomworld

[mr-around]

Now I quickly recalled what you mean, the very tracks from his album on Bandcamp, like "Darker Than a Blackness" (Darkness?), can't fully remember those titles. But why you think they were specifically designed for Levels 11-13 or is that just pure guessing?

[Gerardo194]

Aubrey said those tracks were planned for levels !!-!3.

[mr-around]

I've got a redesign offer for Well of Souls level. The wall preventing point overflow error from occuring can be omitted (if the author accepts my proposal).

 

As a solution at least two linedefs should be drawn (which are otherwise dummy). No sector merging required. Hidden flag is worthy. Performance left intact.

 

 

Voilà! Ta-Da! It plays. Works. No slowdown.

 

 

If the author @Dragonsbrethren thinks the wall is still cool and aesthetically pleasant I in any case can do nothing with the map conversion that is not mine and wasn't chosen to take at beginning of Betas 1 & 2.

 

What happend to Dragonsbrethren anyways? Wasn't here online since Feb.

[Dexiaz]

Nice work!

 

Info in OP is not actual. I've already released my last map. So I suppose there are not so many unfinished maps left in the list? And what's the progress with them? There were a lot of time to finish them even with sudden hiatus.

[Dark Pulse]

Soon as I stop being lazy (and I need to be, I go back to work in about 3 1/2 weeks) I'll have Bloodsea Keep done.

 

No idea about Tech Gone Bad; gonna need to do a LOT of testing, chopping, and experimenting before I give any sort of confidence timeframe on that. The map is limit-removing, after all, and PSX Doom is more strict in its limits than even Vanilla for obvious reasons. :P

[riderr3]

On 8/14/2019 at 9:19 PM, mr-around said:

I've got a redesign offer for Well of Souls level. The wall preventing point overflow error from occuring can be omitted (if the author accepts my proposal).

 

As a solution at least two linedefs should be drawn (which are otherwise dummy). No sector merging required. Hidden flag is worthy. Performance left intact.

 

 

My assumptions have just been confirmed. I fully support that without a wall is many times better. For me, Well of Souls turned into a Wailing Wall because it was time consuming to lure HK's out of there, with such limited ammunition.

By the way, about these two lines.
I remember the Administration Center where in the huge final location there were extra hidden lines added. I guessed that mr-around added these lines for a reason and I remembered my cases.
Also taken from my notes (need to correct and add to the guide after this project being done):
"FrontZClip: Point Overflow", "LeftEdgeClip: Point Overflow", "RightEdgeClip: Point Overflow" - an error related to the lines, there are too many of them in one place where the player is looking. For example, many windows in one place on the maps The Final Frontier and River Styx. It also happens if the sector is very large - in this case it is necessary to divide the sector.

As one of the developers of old games for NES said in an interview:
"When you work with restrictions, you get a lot of creative ideas."
Personally, I can confirm from my observations that this is indeed so.

As for the inactive users for a long time, I think GEC will be able to decide what to do with these maps and updates to them. Although I really would like to see Well of Souls without a redundant wall already in Beta 3.

 

18 hours ago, Dark Pulse said:

No idea about Tech Gone Bad; gonna need to do a LOT of testing, chopping, and experimenting before I give any sort of confidence timeframe on that. The map is limit-removing, after all, and PSX Doom is more strict in its limits than even Vanilla for obvious reasons. :P

I guess a lot of windows removed? Sometimes just shorten windows is mostly enough to keep framerate decent.

 

Seconded for outdated OP. At least for my calculations, there should be 22+ new maps in beta 3 and a lot of updates. The wiki page though said "A new beta is currently planned for release in late March or early April."

 

Edited August 15, 2019 by riderr3

[mr-around]

25 minutes ago, riderr3 said:

"FrontZClip: Point Overflow", "LeftEdgeClip: Point Overflow", "RightEdgeClip: Point Overflow" - an error related to the lines, there are too many of them in one place where the player is looking. For example, many windows in one place on the maps The Final Frontier and River Styx. It also happens if the sector is very large - in this case it is necessary to divide the sector.

 

That's not accurate. All of those crashes actually indicate a subsector exceeding some limit of segments displayed per single convex sector/subsector. A complicated and concave sector doesn't usually lead to all those errors and for the sake of avoiding those a polygon can be made concave instead of intricating it with more linedefs.

 

On 6/20/2018 at 9:02 PM, Dragonsbrethren said:

Thankfully, the level design here lends itself really well to having the wall, the gameplay is barely altered!

 

Dragonsbrethren minds of dismantling that stuff.

Edited August 15, 2019 by mr-around

[riderr3]

22 minutes ago, mr-around said:

That's not accurate. All of those crashes actually indicate a subsector exceeding some limit of segments displayed per single convex sector/subsector. A complicated and concave sector doesn't usually lead to all those errors and for the sake of avoiding those a polygon can be made concave instead of intricating it with more linedefs.

Agree. In technical terms, in most cases this is true.

 

22 minutes ago, mr-around said:

Dragonsbrethren minds of dismantling that stuff.

The main problems here is the ammo shortage and limited progression. In the original map, I can choose several paths, different switches to open the path to ammunition, jump down into the pit at the end of the corridor. And in the PSX rendition with the wall, I am limited in freedom and must either take risks to take the blue armor, or to lure HKs.

[mr-around]

Just now, riderr3 said:

Agree. In technical terms, in most cases this is true.

 

I experimented that myself by creating a single 4x4 box room in my test map. Having in addition made another two-sided-lineded box and splitting it to a degree of having 16-23 segments (note the sector is always convex whatever shape it be), then playing the map later shuts down with front clip (sometimes, not).

 

Take an observation of Unholy Cathedral where the central area is infested of such sector divisions. Wormhole was re-edited in a similar way but it may be an oversight.

[Dark Pulse]

1 hour ago, riderr3 said:

I guess a lot of windows removed? Sometimes just shorten windows is mostly enough to keep framerate decent.

Well, for one thing, I'm already overflowing on one of the actual hard technical limits - the map has 6170 Sidedefs, but making this part of PSX Doom will require chopping down to 2184. Using the Final Doom version of the engine would help but its max is 5461 so it'd still need some chopping. There's also some height fuckery fun (the boss chamber is 400 units high for example), so there's going to need to be some vertical compression as well.

 

So in short, there's going to need to be a whole lot of walls and stuff that just plain go outright. Of course, simplification will hopefully bring me under those limits, but it's gonna be a fairly intensive process.

 

And then there's the whole optimization aspect on top of that - the map is positively huge (limit-removing, remember) compared to the standard stuff, so making sure FPS doesn't tank is also key.

1 hour ago, riderr3 said:

Seconded for outdated OP. At least for my calculations, there should be 22+ new maps in beta 3 and a lot of updates. The wiki page though said "A new beta is currently planned for release in late March or early April."

That was Erick's last timetable, and until he gives an updated one, there's really nothing I can do but say "in the future."

 

He's said he's still working on it, but a lot of his recent time has went into the GZDoom-based project and on reversing the full code for the PSX and some unknowns for Doom 64 (there's still no knowledge of how to compress maps/textures for that version, which is key for if we ever want to do such a hack for that version of the game - and I'd really like to, honestly.)

[Erick194]

@Dark PulseThe code that I gave to @Kaiser really compresses lumps from the maps and textures of Doom 64.

 

I also agree that beta 3 had to go out months ago but, to accommodate the maps, to name them takes time to do, but not only that, at the end of this month, my brother and I have to perform some very important exams and we are preparing for it.

[Dark Pulse]

30 minutes ago, Erick194 said:

@Dark PulseThe code that I gave to @Kaiser really compresses lumps from the maps and textures of Doom 64.

@Erick194 So the actual code for 1:1 compression has been found? I thought you had one that worked but was somewhat inefficient compared to the original algo and consumed roughly 8K of wasted space per map (dunno about textures).

[Erick194]

it's not 1:1 but it works

[Dark Pulse]

Then we'll need an expanded ROM to at least 16 MB to fit up 32 maps (or more), since the current game data uses like 7.75 MB of the 8 MB, and so replacing all the maps will take us over by about 256K or so.

 

Of course, to even really begin mucking around in doing it, we'd need a modified builder for it, and a PC<->N64 and/or PSX<->N64 conversion tool, along with texture conversion (unless we just use the built-in ones).

 

And if we wanted to re-add the missing monsters, we'd need some code hackery as well as replacement actors and so on.

[mr-around]

Does XEBRA, ps1 emulator, properly plays the music on MAP06? Are those varying/higher note octaves accurate for PSX Doom not heard on ePSXe? Not sure if the pure console played it that way.

[Dark Pulse]

48 minutes ago, mr-around said:

Does XEBRA, ps1 emulator, properly plays the music on MAP06? Are those varying/higher note octaves accurate for PSX Doom not heard on ePSXe? Not sure if the pure console played it that way.

XEBRA, if anything, is more accurate than ePSXe, so generally the answer should be "yes."

 

A similar level of compatibility is in RetroArch - the BeetlePSX cores are a slightly tweaked Mednafen, which is also one of the more accurate PSX emulators around.

[mr-around]

45 minutes ago, Dark Pulse said:

XEBRA, if anything, is more accurate than ePSXe, so generally the answer should be "yes."

 

 

An Emulaton General article that I read recently says a word about XEBRA, about its great game compatiblity but a slightly toned down audio system which can be revealed inaccurate. That's why I asked if the Corrupted Core track really should play as sinister... and I like it :)

[Remul]

How close is this to completion? I'm really eager to try this out on my PS1

[Gerardo194]

Hey there @Remul if you haven't tried this out, I suggest ou to download the Beta 2 that is in the first page of this thread. the completion is 75% maybe. Beta 3 will be released maybe till next months due to our studies.

[Dark Pulse]

@Remul Beta 3 will have most of the maps completed, but it needs for them to release an update. Will have about two dozen new maps once they do though, compared to Beta 2 (and some bugfixes for maps that were in Beta 2 that had bugs discovered).

[Lollie]

I can't remember if this has been asked already, but: Has any work gone into adding Final Doom's mouse compatibility to the original PSX Doom somehow? Or can the PSX Doom levels be transplanted into the Final Doom engine, maybe?

[Uroboros87]

On 8/2/2019 at 1:15 PM, riderr3 said:

Phobos mission control

It seems that the nukage wall texture should be used here

 

This has been fixed, I was waiting to see if any other issues were found before uploading it as I didn't want to send a map with just one texture change.

[Dexiaz]

 

Well...thanks to GEC Team for the Editing Tools, finally I did the true justice to this stupid ceiling crusher trap.