Early and unused DOOM 64 Level Designs

[Gerardo194]

4 hours ago, Hyde said:

 

Oh gosh - honestly, the story wasn't much of an influence on what we created. It was kind of a 3 part setup. Space base/random locations/demonic/hell-ish locales. We decided the theme of most and tried to be diverse in look and feel, but it was pretty loose as far as sticking to lore was concerned. If we did follow an outlined story progression, I definitely don't recall. We really just let our imaginations run wild and challenged each other to come up with new ways to surprise the player visually and gameplay wise.

So I could assume we are travelling between Hellish dimensions created by you guys, couldn't I? I really love Doom64 levels

By the way, I'm making some fan, ugly 3D models of the missing Doom64 monsters along with a few new ones for a future fan-sequel. When they all are done, I will share its sprites for mods and a possibly future Doom64 Community project :)

[jazzmaster9]

@Hyde I have a question about Doom 64's scripting, or specifically its development

Was the Doom 64 team influenced by Hexen's ACS scripting in anyway? what made the team decide to create a proprietary scripting system instead of borrowing and possibly improving ACS?

was it copyright, or maybe just out of respect for the Hexen devs? 

Glad to see you shedding light on D64's development :)

[Antnee]

Sorry, for some reason I can't do anything with a post once I @ someone.

@Hyde, first of all, thanks for all you did.  D64 is my favorite iteration of Doom to this day!  Second:  Ever get an itch to make a new level?

[Bushpig2dope]

12 hours ago, Antnee said:

Sorry, for some reason I can't do anything with a post once I @ someone.

@Hyde, first of all, thanks for all you did.  D64 is my favorite iteration of Doom to this day!  Second:  Ever get an itch to make a new level?

@Hyde should lead a community wad ;)

[Dark Pulse]

19 hours ago, Antnee said:

Second:  Ever get an itch to make a new level?

Man, that'd be awesome if he wanted to make some new levels for his old project. A Romero E5 and some new Doom 64 maps from some of their original creators in the same year? Hell yeah.

[Antnee]

On 1/18/2019 at 8:58 PM, Gerardo194 said:

So I could assume we are travelling between Hellish dimensions created by you guys, couldn't I? I really love Doom64 levels

By the way, I'm making some fan, ugly 3D models of the missing Doom64 monsters along with a few new ones for a future fan-sequel. When they all are done, I will share its sprites for mods and a possibly future Doom64 Community project :)

 

Yo uh, gonna need some details on that and I'm all in if you'll let me contribute.

[Hyde]

On 1/18/2019 at 2:45 PM, Dark Pulse said:

@Hyde Thank you and all the other Midway guys for making two of the truly most unique Doom experiences the world got to see. I didn't own an N64, but PlayStation Doom was my second Doom (after the SNES port of Doom), and I always loved the difference in atmosphere compared to that. I sure did want to play Doom 64 though!

 

My questions are more Playstation Doom related - I'm kind of curious as to why some of the maps that got cut, well, got cut. I'm not sure if you're aware, but there's a very large project going on for Playstation Doom where we're hacking all sorts of lost/missing levels back into the game and giving them a makeover in the style of the work you guys did on Playstation Doom. Obviously we have to do quite a bit of work for some of these levels, but for others, it seems like there's really not any reason I can think of other than time constraints for not having them in there (some of the maps I've done, like E3M8: Dis and TNT's MAP05: Hanger/MAP06: Open Season come to mind), where relatively few cuts were needed to get them running (and running well) in the Playstation version of the engine. Any chance some light can be shed on this? It'd be kind of a bummer if it was mere time constraints, since there was plenty more room on that CD.

Me doing some of these maps has made me truly appreciate the sacrifices you guys went through to get a damn good port of the game on the Playstation, by the way - some of the limitations like stretched textures on walls over 256 units high, the 16 flat limit, the tight RAM requirements limiting monster variety, and geometry fun make me wish we had better debugging for that, but it also makes me appreciate all the work you guys did all that much more. That said, the desire to want to do things on the Doom 64 Engine is also what led to us trying to reach out to you - but @Erick194 is having progress figuring out the extra type of compression used by Doom 64 maps/textures/demos, so hopefully soon we'll have versions of those maps running on the N64 Doom Engine as well - and make use of all the little features and tricks that you guys got added to it. :)

Also, is there any reason why the flags for monsters (mostly used for the Nightmare Spectres) weren't used on more enemies? We know there was some Nightmare Imps in a beta version of PSX Doom (there's screenshots from an issue of Gamepro, I believe), but in the final game only Demons generally got that treatment, save for a few weird (and seemingly random) enemies:

 

Doom PSX was a blast to port and add a few levels into. We were so stoked we got the opportunity to do that.

Final Doom was purely a quick money thing. I ported all the levels myself while work was spinning up on Doom64. I remember it sold particularly well in Europe but not so much in the US.

 

I'm pretty sure we cut levels for these reasons -

 

--Outright too big to begin with, for memory reasons. Wad size combined with texture diversity. If something was beyond reducing and compromising the original look/feel, it was likely cut instead of butchered.

--Height limitations, due to texture tiling, as you pointed out. We would have to make fake sectors just to bring floors/ceilings together to exceed that single-wall 256 limit if memory serves. That was a lot of the editing right there, along with lighting.

--Likely another reason I can't recall, but there was always a reason. Never dartboarded.

 

As for the monster flags - I can't recall at all. Likely because some monsters probably just looked odd 'spectred'. The ones that were, were more the dummy, all flesh/no armor monsters. As for why any lingered - definitely don't recall. Might have been a mistake the flags were set incorrectly and simply never caught.

 

Also, I think I've seen it discussed elsewhere in the past and I think the guesses were wrong or partly right so here's a tidbit: The secret lettering on the map in Club Doom are the LDs first name initials along with some coworkers at the time. Will, Danny, Tim, John, Randy, Steve. We snuck that in and were so afraid we might get caught! The tekno track was done by Dan Lewis. There's a few others, like Randy's initials in The Marshes (which, The 'Marshes' was a soft reference to his girlfriend, now wife, Marsha), and in Doom64, "TEK" (short for tekno) in Map 17 by Dan. I snuck "T H" into the outdoor puzzle floor in The Mansion by tagging linedefs. I can't recall the other letterings meaning in there (W M?). There may be more...

[Hyde]

On 1/18/2019 at 9:22 PM, jazzmaster9 said:

@Hyde I have a question about Doom 64's scripting, or specifically its development

Was the Doom 64 team influenced by Hexen's ACS scripting in anyway? what made the team decide to create a proprietary scripting system instead of borrowing and possibly improving ACS?

was it copyright, or maybe just out of respect for the Hexen devs? 

Glad to see you shedding light on D64's development :)

 

Possibly influenced? I loved Heretic (I recall so many cool things they were doing in their levels then, visually too. Hexen was even better). We never messed with editing in either but we knew they were scripting events given the gameplay. We definitely wanted to script too but it was our own setup.

 

This brings up a great story/memory. They flew a few of us out to ID for about a week (LDs, code, etc). My first 'business' trip. We were to learn techniques/etc, talk shop, prepare for Doom64. I finally got to meet the guys behind Doom and maaaaaaaaan, did I feel like a superstar! Guess how much actual "work" we did in that time? Somewhere between Little and Very Little. The day we got there, Romero was DMing someone in the office in Heretic as we walked in. They were yelling obscenities of every sort at one another at top volume. I was watching Romero play - he was using the Firemace. I vividly remember the large bouncing steel balls and he was wrecking whomever and talking so much shit! It was GLORIOUS! The office had a room, with an ax in the door, filled with tons of game systems and games. Neo Geo carts laying around like they weren't the pricey carts they were, huge assortment of drinks to choose from, etc. Pure heaven (I was 20ish at the time). Well, we talked some shop, mostly with Sandy and a bit with American/Romero, but mostly, we ended up playing DM. Those guys had fun, a great crew.

 

Now, and I'm not proud to admit, but this makes the story great. Before we got there, we talked SO MUCH SHIT with the ID guys about how we were going to beat them in DM. We played pretty much every night at work, and at home on good 'ol Dial Up, so we thought we had skills. But.... we were keyboard players. No mouse. I don't know why we never tried it - simply didn't consider it necessary? Who knows. Aaaaaanyway, we got there and GOT MOPPED sooooo hard. We saw the power the mouse brought to DM... Let's just say, we spent most of the time there learning to play with the mouse, and by the end, were able to hold our own (but still got mopped). We still laugh about that. We proceeded to then wreck everyone back home with our newfound skills, and eventually, everyone was using the mouse. I believe American even recorded some LMPs (?) of us playing, rather, losing, and we took those home proudly in shame. Wish I had those...

 

When we weren't in the office, we were around town having fun/eating/etc with a few of them. I remember my friend Randy got a car ride with American in his souped up CRX (99% sure it was a CRX). Balls out, down the freeway. That thing was faaaaast. 

 

That period in gamedev was a great one.

[Erick194]

Hello @Hyde, welcome friend, I have a question, as said @Dark Pulse, we know several aspects that limit the PSX Doom, but what were the limits of Doom 64?. When creating maps.

[Hyde]

On 1/19/2019 at 3:22 AM, Antnee said:

Sorry, for some reason I can't do anything with a post once I @ someone.

@Hyde, first of all, thanks for all you did.  D64 is my favorite iteration of Doom to this day!  Second:  Ever get an itch to make a new level?

 

Glad you enjoyed it! We were pretty confident we were doing the brand proud. We couldn't have been bigger fans ourselves and had been editing for a few years already by then. Soooo many 3am nights just iterating on our own wads, well before we even got the license. It was awesome having that ability to decide the look and gameplay of something others could play. We fell in love, hard. We downloaded hundreds of wads and played them, learned from them, and saw so many cool techniques. The TCs, the megawads, etc. So good.

 

Once in a while, I do get that itch. Maybe someday, when I retire and my kids are in college :) We still reminisce about Doom. There's a reason it still has such a strong community, decades later. 

[Hyde]

3 minutes ago, Erick194 said:

Hello @Hyde, welcome friend, I have a question, as said @Dark Pulse, we know several aspects that limit the PSX Doom, but what were the limits of Doom 64?. When creating maps.

 

Hmm.. I'm sure we had texture limits and monster limits, but as for map limits (size/extents/depths/etc), I don't recall. I can't remember how we'd check if we were nearing any cap either. Maybe when we exported, it'd tell us but I think it was pretty rare to hit a map cap.

[Hyde]

On 1/18/2019 at 3:59 PM, Bushpig2dope said:

Loving the D64 love in this thread. The true Doom 3 ;)
 Oh and @Hyde I thought of a question, were there any scrapped demons in Doom 64? If so what was their design like and what place did they have in the game?

 

I unfortunately cannot recall at all. I don't think so, but it's totally possible. ID would have had to vet any new monster/weapon/etc for sure.

[Dark Pulse]

1 minute ago, Hyde said:

 

Hmm.. I'm sure we had texture limits and monster limits, but as for map limits (size/extents/depths/etc), I don't recall. I can't remember how we'd check if we were nearing any cap either. Maybe when we exported, it'd tell us but I think it was pretty rare to hit a map cap.

From what Kaiser (who reverse-engineered Doom 64 to create the Doom 64 EX port) has said, texture limits are generally not a problem. Apparently the game will kick out any textures that aren't currently visible in the camera view, unlike PSX Doom where they were statically loaded, so you'd have to do some pretty insane texturing to hit the limits I think.

 

That and having 4 MB of RAM also helps for that as well as monster variety. Basically means that unless you go completely crazy, most maps should fit just fine. It's even theoretically possible that once we get custom maps fully working in Doom 64, we could port the PC maps over unaltered (well, as unaltered as possible due to some missing monster types) with relatively little issue. (@Erick194 is making some good progress on figuring out the compression, as I said previously.)

Then again, there's some people in the N64 hacking/homebrew scene who've said it might be possible to get Expansion Pak support in to have Doom 64 use 8 MB of RAM. Then the sky will really be the limit!

[Erick194]

8 minutes ago, Dark Pulse said:

From what Kaiser (who reverse-engineered Doom 64 to create the Doom 64 EX port) has said, texture limits are generally not a problem. Apparently the game will kick out any textures that aren't currently visible in the camera view, unlike PSX Doom where they were statically loaded, so you'd have to do some pretty insane texturing to hit the limits I think.

A few days ago I tested several maps of the community chest 64 , with the n64 rom, and several maps were not loaded, there were also textures as if they were altered and the buttons disappeared.

[Dark Pulse]

2 minutes ago, Erick194 said:

A few days ago I tested several maps of the community chest 64 , with the n64 rom, and several maps were not loaded, there were also textures as if they were altered and the buttons disappeared.

Well if they're limit-removing that will probably put a kibosh on it. I'm talking more like vanilla limits.

 

Then again, I think @Kaiser would also have an idea of those limits.

[Erick194]

This are screenshots of MAP06 from @hardcore_gamer. I omitted the new textures.

 

[Dark Pulse]

2 minutes ago, Erick194 said:

This are screenshots of MAP06 from @hardcore_gamer. I omitted the new textures.

 

I mean, obviously if they made new textures, nothing we can do about that for the actual Doom 64 ROM without adding them to the ROM (and possibly expanding the ROM itself).

 

PS: Why such an old build of Mupen64? Mupen64Plus is at like 2.5. (It's normally commandline, but it also exists as a RetroArch core.) Definitely doesn't hurt to have your tests for the actual game running on a more accurate emulator where possible (until we can get the project to the point where people with Everdrives and actual hardware can do testing, anyway).

[Erick194]

1 minute ago, Dark Pulse said:

I mean, obviously if they made new textures, nothing we can do about that for the actual Doom 64 ROM without adding them to the ROM (and possibly expanding the ROM itself).

The test ROM is extended to 32Mb, and the main Wad is uncompressed at all.

 

3 minutes ago, Dark Pulse said:

PS: Why such an old build of Mupen64? Mupen64Plus is at like 2.5. (It's normally commandline, but it also exists as a RetroArch core.) Definitely doesn't hurt to have your tests for the actual game running on a more accurate emulator where possible (until we can get the project to the point where people with Everdrives and actual hardware can do testing, anyway).

I have to try that emulator. =)

[Dark Pulse]

Just now, Erick194 said:

I have to try that emulator. =)

Hit up here then, it's a pretty useful resource: http://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/Nintendo_64_emulators

[Kaiser]

8 hours ago, Hyde said:

in Doom64, "TEK" (short for tekno) in Map 17 by Dan

I cannot unsee that now

[Dexiaz]

10 hours ago, Hyde said:

There's a few others, like Randy's initials in The Marshes (which, The 'Marshes' was a soft reference to his girlfriend, now wife, Marsha)

Ha, never thought about that!

 

BTW, why in this map the teleport-trap doesn't do anything with Cyberdemon? I mean, in first case you think "I should entrap that Cybbie and crush him by using this trap", but no... 

[Gez]

The big teleporters in that level all have the "block monsters" flag, so the cyberdemon cannot use them.

[Dexiaz]

2 hours ago, Gez said:

The big teleporters in that level all have the "block monsters" flag, so the cyberdemon cannot use them.

 

That's not answer to my question, sorry. I know about "block monsters" flag, I don't get why this created against the player, not the boss.

[Dark Pulse]

3 hours ago, Đeⓧiaz said:

BTW, why in this map the teleport-trap doesn't do anything with Cyberdemon? I mean, in first case you think "I should entrap that Cybbie and crush him by using this trap", but no... 

Probably because that would make the fight against it a bit of a joke.

 

Then again, Tim didn't do that level - Randy Estrella did, IIRC (hence the RE initials and reference to his girlfriend/wife), so that's just a guess.

[kmxexii]

17 hours ago, Hyde said:

 

Doom PSX was a blast to port and add a few levels into. We were so stoked we got the opportunity to do that.

Final Doom was purely a quick money thing. I ported all the levels myself while work was spinning up on Doom64. I remember it sold particularly well in Europe but not so much in the US.

 

I'm pretty sure we cut levels for these reasons -

 

--Outright too big to begin with, for memory reasons. Wad size combined with texture diversity. If something was beyond reducing and compromising the original look/feel, it was likely cut instead of butchered.

--Height limitations, due to texture tiling, as you pointed out. We would have to make fake sectors just to bring floors/ceilings together to exceed that single-wall 256 limit if memory serves. That was a lot of the editing right there, along with lighting.

--Likely another reason I can't recall, but there was always a reason. Never dartboarded.

 

As for the monster flags - I can't recall at all. Likely because some monsters probably just looked odd 'spectred'. The ones that were, were more the dummy, all flesh/no armor monsters. As for why any lingered - definitely don't recall. Might have been a mistake the flags were set incorrectly and simply never caught.

 

Also, I think I've seen it discussed elsewhere in the past and I think the guesses were wrong or partly right so here's a tidbit: The secret lettering on the map in Club Doom are the LDs first name initials along with some coworkers at the time. Will, Danny, Tim, John, Randy, Steve. We snuck that in and were so afraid we might get caught! The tekno track was done by Dan Lewis. There's a few others, like Randy's initials in The Marshes (which, The 'Marshes' was a soft reference to his girlfriend, now wife, Marsha), and in Doom64, "TEK" (short for tekno) in Map 17 by Dan. I snuck "T H" into the outdoor puzzle floor in The Mansion by tagging linedefs. I can't recall the other letterings meaning in there (W M?). There may be more...

 

Interesting! I infer from this that you made The Mansion. The only other specific PSX Doom author info that I knew of was Estrella's credit for The Marshes. Do you recall who did the other maps (Twilight Descends, Threshold of Pain, Redemption Denied, Club Doom)?

[Dark Pulse]

My bet for Club Doom is that it was Danny Lewis (we know he did the music for it at least). Then again, could also be Randy Estrella as it was nothing but Revenants for enemies, and he went on record years ago with his love of the Revenant.

 

Oh, another question for Tim he can't probably answer: We discovered one of the samples in Aubrey Hodges' music was someone saying "Danny won. Danny won, hey" with what sounds like a ping-pong game. Do you know who said that and who really won that game? (Like, did Danny win a set or a match?) 

[Erick194]

Really difficult to know, we think it says "Tell me why". But it is curious to know that Tim will respond.

 

[Hyde]

4 hours ago, Dark Pulse said:

My bet for Club Doom is that it was Danny Lewis (we know he did the music for it at least). Then again, could also be Randy Estrella as it was nothing but Revenants for enemies, and he went on record years ago with his love of the Revenant.

 

Oh, another question for Tim he can't probably answer: We discovered one of the samples in Aubrey Hodges' music was someone saying "Danny won. Danny won, hey" with what sounds like a ping-pong game. Do you know who said that and who really won that game? (Like, did Danny win a set or a match?) 

 

Randy did Club Doom, but we all chipped in on feedback as he was creating it.

 

As to the sound bite, I don't recall at all. For sure, there were lots of random bets going around the office, with very interesting wagers! I wouldn't be surprised if it was something along those lines, but Aubrey would know (that vocal clip sounds like Orpheus, not Aubrey). I'll ping Dan and see if he recalls. In the video, there's a stutter after what sounds like "Danny" (more like Daneh'nay) so I'm not entirely sure what it actually says... Interesting though! Aubrey was great at making/distorting random sounds/things to get the feel he wanted. 

[Hyde]

6 hours ago, kmxexii said:

 

Interesting! I infer from this that you made The Mansion. The only other specific PSX Doom author info that I knew of was Estrella's credit for The Marshes. Do you recall who did the other maps (Twilight Descends, Threshold of Pain, Redemption Denied, Club Doom)?

 

So I looked at videos of those levels, and I cannot recall them at all. Definitely not mine (lots of plain walls/floors, which I couldn't stand). Hmm... No clue. Likely they were swapped in to make level count more inline with the originals. But as to their origin... got me.

 

[edit] - they could be Harry's levels? 

 

On that topic, as I was bouncing between vids - I noticed 'Tower of Babel' is the basis for Tuff.wad (if there's differences, it was definitely Randy, because he loved gauntlet type levels - just toss more and more at you), so I've got to correct that earlier statement. 

[Dark Pulse]

@Hyde If you indeed made The Mansion, can we have a picture of you to put on a dartboard or something for that goddamn teleporter maze for the red skull key? Like I got that the little lights marked start and end, but past that it was a total trial and error deal, and back in the day before a full-scale internet to figure things out, that was a good few minutes on the first playthrough right there. :)

 

I'm not 100% sure if even looking at it in the automap will show you the way - can't remember right now.