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

[DynamiteKaitorn]

I'm worried that Mill will contain a good few bugs that I didn't catch during testing... :S

[Gerardo194]

It doesn't matter, we can help! I've always wanted to see and play Mill in PSX Doom and that time has come in your hands. Mill is my TNT favorite map

[Uroboros87]

4 hours ago, DynamiteKaitorn said:

I'm worried that Mill will contain a good few bugs that I didn't catch during testing... :S

I wouldn't worry too much. From what I've played so far, everyone is doing a great job desptite the few bugs.

[marver0PS]

I'll claim MAP26: Bunker of plutonia, please.

[Erick194]

Now the map is yours.

[DynamiteKaitorn]

Okay so I'm a little confused about this, I honestly thought my map should be in the clear when it comes to textures and rendering them but somehow it's still not in the clear? I'm a little confused by the PSX VRAM Reader.

 

This is the VRAM for map 22 Plutonia (I may or may not take it, not sure yet). To me, this looks like it should be in the clear and there should be no errors.

 

But according to ePSXe/Final DooM, this door texture STILL does not want to be rendered correctly. What gives?

 

 

[Gerardo194]

If I'm not mistaken, that door texture is exceeding VRAM for textures

[Dexiaz]

That's right, look properly at your VRAM, this door texture is out of limits

[Gerardo194]

@DynamiteKaitorn The door is located in the sprites section. I suggest you to remove two textures to get the door in its limits

[Dexiaz]

Even more, I'll suggest to delete those 2 exact textures:

 

The railing one is just because it uses TOO MUCH space, you've already using big midbar texture, use it instead.

The second wall texture is similar to the texture (near the mini-rail). So if you replace them both by another textures, your Door will work fine

[riderr3]

On 9/20/2018 at 8:11 PM, DeXiaZ said:

Even more, I'll suggest to delete those 2 exact textures:

 

The railing one is just because it uses TOO MUCH space, you've already using big midbar texture, use it instead.

The second wall texture is similar to the texture (near the mini-rail). So if you replace them both by another textures, your Door will work fine

Moreover, instead of SUPPORT1, it's possible to use equivalent SUPPORT4 which are 16-unit wide. Can be slightly different look but it's work when you need more space. Final Doom have some useful narrow textures.

Also STEEL03 has direct equivalent SILVER3 (also 16-wide).

So the railing texture can be keeped (or maybe add one more switch).

 

Edited September 22, 2018 by riderr3

[DynamiteKaitorn]

I'm officially taking Map 22: Impossible Mission from Plutonia.

 

Side note: Thnx for telling me about the shorter textures. With it I managed to reduce memory without needing to replace anything and as a result the doors not only render but I also kept every texture (More or less) in the image I posted earlier ^_^.

 

EDIT: Is it possible to show sprites inside VRAM so that we can get an easy visualisation to know if we have too many enemies/other entities loaded? (By variety not by amount... excessive use of 1 enemy obviously causes crashes. Same with the old DOS version.)

Edited September 21, 2018 by DynamiteKaitorn

[riderr3]

Yesterday I retrieved from my previous apartment my ancient PS2 unit which was bought in 2003, and the last 8 years it have been lying in the closet. And I had the opportunity to look at the beta version on the real hardware. SCPH-50000 actually has built-in PS1 hardware by the way.

Many new information with screenshots under the spoiler. Maybe interesting for those who will play on actual PS2/PS1 and GEC also.

Spoiler

What's have been used:
-PS2 SCPH-50000 modded PAL console. Laser lens has been changed on it's lifecycle.

-Verbatim AZO CD-R discs.

-IMGburn tool for CD burning. First time I used it at current laptop but it seems something with my CD-RW drive so it was unsuccefull. Second time I used IMGburn on my old laptop, and it was successful and no disc error was detected. So one CD-R is wasted basically.

-10x speed burning. My both drives not supporting lower speed.

Screens:
This vertical yellow lines only have been seen on PS2 in Master Edition menu:


Though in-game menu yellow lines is not presented. You can see here black line on bottom of the screen, but it's OK for PS1 NTSC games which loaded on PS2 PAL consoles. Gameplay also slightly slowed because of this. Strangely enough, Master Edition menu doesn't have bottom black line.


Image can look stretchy on 42" LCD TV screen, but on the distance it is not very noticeable. Will best looking on CRT screen.


Old password trick when you can have more health/ammo/armor. Explained in this old thread.

Password hack work in PSX Doom v1.0 but not worked in PSXDoom v1.1 (or v1.2?) and Final Doom (which have only one CD release, v1.1 PSX Doom is probably rare CDs, but I was used to play it in 90's).
To GEC: I see you have use v1.0 for PSX Doom part as the base, because the special passwords is works here (except maps which beyond 14 in beta). Also PSX Doom v1.0 did not save password after MAP01 is finished, like PSX Doom v1.1 and PSX Final Doom did. Maybe there are even more differences...

Maps usually loading 9-12 seconds, probably depends on maps sizes or another factors.

Conclusion - no any PS2-related hardware/software issues has been seen through the maps, except 3 things:
-Small yellow lines at startup which mentioned before.
-Video with Williams logo have slowdowns or even sometimes just skipping at the middle of video by itself.
-If you turn on PS2 settings "Diagnostics" and "Faster PS1 disc speed" this error happened at the startup:

So need to leave those settings on default just in case. Though "PS1 texture filtering" can enabled, it does not affect performance.

 

 

On 9/21/2018 at 4:26 PM, DynamiteKaitorn said:

Is it possible to show sprites inside VRAM so that we can get an easy visualisation to know if we have too many enemies/other entities loaded? (By variety not by amount... excessive use of 1 enemy obviously causes crashes. Same with the old DOS version.)

It will be harder to implement, because it's also depends on quantity of map sectors, lines and probably another dynamic factors.

By the way it would be useful to check limits on monster sounds which is loaded to PS1 memory (by calculation different monster types and overall PS1 RAM). Cause I found Pain Elementals is missing death sound on Garrison map, and surprisingly I did not noticed this before.

I will update my maps with new PSXDoomBuilder, because many texture errors is popped up, which is probably impossible to find without updated tools (thanks to them).

Didn't planned to take new slots for a while, but when new tools is released... I summed up that there could be exceptions.
@Eris Falling so if you not planned to get on Pharaoh, I take this map if GEC do not mind (except if they already started).
Also @Erick194 you can sign me for Tombstone. I know it's large, but I try to handle it.
 

Edited September 22, 2018 by riderr3

[Gerardo194]

That's a great information @riderr3 thank you very much. I will help us a lot!

36 minutes ago, riderr3 said:

To GEC: I see you have use v1.0 for PSX Doom part as the base, because the special passwords is works here (except maps which beyond 14 in beta). Also PSX Doom v1.0 did not save password after MAP01 is finished, like PSX Doom v1.1 and PSX Final Doom did. Maybe there are even more differences...

Yes, we've been using v1.0 as a base but we can upgrade it to v1.1 that is the Greatest Hits Release and we also have a copy of it. Another difference between v1.0 and v1.1 is the skull keys reading in some maps. What's this? In v1.0, playing maps where skull keys are located (not keycards) but not having picked up one, the locked doors will always show keycards in the status bar. This was fixed in Greatest Hits Release where maps that have skull keys, the locked doors will show skull keys in the status bar. This was also fixed in PSX Final Doom.

[mr-around]

May I occupy the slots of these maps?

Level 7: Prison 
Level 8: Metal
Level 20: Central Processing
Level 21: Administration Center

[Impboy4]

3 hours ago, mr-around said:

May I occupy the slots of these maps?

Level 7: Prison 
Level 8: Metal
Level 20: Central Processing
Level 21: Administration Center

That's a big order coming from someone who just now posted their first post in nearly 3 years.  You should start with one map and see if you qualify.  (I don't want this project be tainted by poorly edited/converted maps)

[Erick194]

On 9/23/2018 at 11:53 AM, mr-around said:

May I occupy the slots of these maps?

Level 7: Prison 
Level 8: Metal
Level 20: Central Processing
Level 21: Administration Center

Friend, the maps are now yours.

 

If you consider that it is difficult for you to map, I would appreciate it if you could inform us, if you leave the maps. I see no problem to try to collaborate =).

 

On 9/22/2018 at 11:37 AM, riderr3 said:

Yesterday I retrieved from my previous apartment my ancient PS2 unit which was bought in 2003, and the last 8 years it have been lying in the closet. And I had the opportunity to look at the beta version on the real hardware. SCPH-50000 actually has built-in PS1 hardware by the way.

Many new information with screenshots under the spoiler. Maybe interesting for those who will play on actual PS2/PS1 and GEC also.

  Reveal hidden contents

What's have been used:
-PS2 SCPH-50000 modded PAL console. Laser lens has been changed on it's lifecycle.

-Verbatim AZO CD-R discs.

-IMGburn tool for CD burning. First time I used it at current laptop but it seems something with my CD-RW drive so it was unsuccefull. Second time I used IMGburn on my old laptop, and it was successful and no disc error was detected. So one CD-R is wasted basically.

-10x speed burning. My both drives not supporting lower speed.

Screens:
This vertical yellow lines only have been seen on PS2 in Master Edition menu:


Though in-game menu yellow lines is not presented. You can see here black line on bottom of the screen, but it's OK for PS1 NTSC games which loaded on PS2 PAL consoles. Gameplay also slightly slowed because of this. Strangely enough, Master Edition menu doesn't have bottom black line.


Image can look stretchy on 42" LCD TV screen, but on the distance it is not very noticeable. Will best looking on CRT screen.


Old password trick when you can have more health/ammo/armor. Explained in this old thread.

Password hack work in PSX Doom v1.0 but not worked in PSXDoom v1.1 (or v1.2?) and Final Doom (which have only one CD release, v1.1 PSX Doom is probably rare CDs, but I was used to play it in 90's).
To GEC: I see you have use v1.0 for PSX Doom part as the base, because the special passwords is works here (except maps which beyond 14 in beta). Also PSX Doom v1.0 did not save password after MAP01 is finished, like PSX Doom v1.1 and PSX Final Doom did. Maybe there are even more differences...

Maps usually loading 9-12 seconds, probably depends on maps sizes or another factors.

Conclusion - no any PS2-related hardware/software issues has been seen through the maps, except 3 things:
-Small yellow lines at startup which mentioned before.
-Video with Williams logo have slowdowns or even sometimes just skipping at the middle of video by itself.
-If you turn on PS2 settings "Diagnostics" and "Faster PS1 disc speed" this error happened at the startup:

So need to leave those settings on default just in case. Though "PS1 texture filtering" can enabled, it does not affect performance.

 

 

I've also tested it, in my PS2 NTSC and you're right, you see those yellow lines on the left side.

 

With respect to the video elevation of the game is because the game is in NTSC, and not in PAL.
The good thing is that the external menu, recognizes if the console is PAL or NTSC, which I can incorporate the "PSXDOOM.EXEs" of the PAL versions.

 

I will also update the PSXDOOM.EXE 1.0 to the PSXDOOM.EXE 1.1 of the Greatest Hits version.

[Gerardo194]

Welcome to the Team, @mr-around

If you have any doubts when mapping, don't hesitate to ask us here in the thread. :)

[RonLivingston]

I had tried out the Psxdoom in doom format option, I wanted to replace entryway with fragports desert prison but all I came up with was this

[RonLivingston]

[RonLivingston]

And even if pharaoh took place in the night, then i'd see it would look pretty dark for a secret map for tnt evilution

[DynamiteKaitorn]

8 hours ago, Erick194 said:

The good thing is that the external menu, recognizes if the console is PAL or NTSC, which I can incorporate the "PSXDOOM.EXEs" of the PAL versions.

 

So that means when the final build is released, I can play it in all it's true PAL format? :D

[mr-around]

Thanks you guys for joining me to the project. I've nearly finished the map called Administration Centre (yet this only lacks color lighting and the startup testing). The only question (of a newbie member like me =)  ) is where the levels should be uploaded? (To whom?)

[RonLivingston]

1 hour ago, mr-around said:

Thanks you guys for joining me to the project. I've nearly finished the map called Administration Centre (yet this only lacks color lighting and the startup testing). The only question (of a newbie member like me =)  ) is where the levels should be uploaded? (To whom?)

The fire in the pitch black sky, your also going to add that in this level right?

[Gerardo194]

@DynamiteKaitorn Yes, there will be PAL formats of each build as well!

 

@mr-around you're welcome. We're glad new people is coming to participate in this project! Once you finish the maps, you must send it to @Erick194 via PM

 

@RonLivingston I guess you must download the Custom GZDoom builder by GEC, you can find it on page 1, try to download the Master Edition PSXDoom Beta too! Once you download the Custom GZDoom builder, you must use, PSXDoom format to map, not Doom format. If you have doubts, you can search for solutions in this thread or simply you can ask us! 

Try this, (I don't know if it goes this way) open Fragport's desert prison in Doom2 format and try to save it in PSXDoom format. I guess you must also search for Erick194's videos when converting and loading maps for PSXDoom format.

 

About the Administration Center level, I think it must use space sky, since Hell actually starts in Baron's Den level.

[RonLivingston]

@Gerardo194 I have an example with on desert prison and the psxdoom engine doesn't contain the waterfall texture. so I will have to remove most of the pools of water from other maps as well

[Gerardo194]

Yes, you have to. Unless those pools become green.

[RonLivingston]

And before I loaded the psx doom engine on the emulator after copying a pasting the map and renaming it as map01 and map31 I select doom II and I found this situation right here

[riderr3]

It's usually happened when using any map slot except MAP01. Current limitation of testing build.
Another case it's when map01.wad have PWAD file header instead of IWAD.

Also I've recommend read this thread from beginning, there are plenty of useful info and lot of questions will be solved by themselves. The PSX Doom currently is obscure format, and can be handled not so easily.

By the way I've found some new bugs in current beta:
 

Spoiler

Omen 3D effect needs to be fixed, from sides it's looking odd


Sewers have broken windows texture. Also nearby


Hunted final area have blackness under skybox. Sector can be raised or horizon line moved further


From the automap it's looking odd. Hide some lines, or just make all of them visible.

 

Edited September 25, 2018 by riderr3

[DynamiteKaitorn]

Wait, I thought all of the lines in the final room were visible for Hunted in Automap... OOF, more fixing to be done.

 

I'll see what I can do for the 3D roof thing for OMEN.

 

@RonLivingston I recommend you use SLAD3 to internally rename the map tag from mapxx (xx being whatever the original number is) to MAP01 as well as renaming the .wad file to MAP01.