Cacodemontube's interview with Randy Linden (SNES DOOM programmer)

[taufan99]

I first shared this on the SNES DOOM hacking thread, but later thought that it would be better to make a thread for this instead.

About a week ago, @CacodemonTube just interviewed Randy Linden, who as we all know programmed the Super NES port of our favorite game. Enjoy this interview video!

Edited May 8, 2020 by InDOOMnesia

[Job]

I cannot stress how excited I am for the github repository to be finalized. It will take some work and adaptation, but there are a lot of new possibilities thanks to Mr. Linden. Maybe someone more knowledgeable can clarify if it's possible to simplify the tool chain described and whether a free-standing source port would be an option, as opposed to being tied to a ROM/emulator situation. 

 

Edit: It will become much clearer once we can pick apart the source code, but it'll be worth documenting all the idiosyncrasies specific to SNES Doom. Cacodemontube already demonstrated some in his videos, but others come to mind. For example, rocket splash damage is huge, plasma rifle shots do nearly a shot gun's worth of damage, BFG cones are far wider and insta-kill, etc. 

 

Edited May 2, 2020 by Job

[Ecafr8708]

Oh my god. Hooooo boy this is cool. But funny story, I found the repo early!

[betabox]

Enjoyed that interview start to finish. Naturally, I was really into the question about cut music and maps, wonder if those will ever surface for fans.

Edited May 2, 2020 by betabox

[theretromike]

I'm so glad that my questions were asked to Mr Linden. So yeah, just like he said on the French interview from 1995, this port was at first a fan project. It's quite impressive what he was able to do with such a limited hardware like the SNES, and on top of that without the original Doom source code to fully understand scripting or monsters behaviors. I can't wait to see all the mods / improvements that will come out hopefully very soon once the tools and source code will be available to the public.

[taufan99]

@Job Fingers crossed here too. With some help from Amiga masters, who knows if this can even be expanded way further.

@Ecafr8708 Yeah, but those are actually still empty. So we have to be patient as of now.

@betabox IIRC the earlier prototype was sent to someone else, whom we are unsure if he still keeps the prototype itself.

@theretromike Me neither!

[Ecafr8708]

@InDOOMnesia Yeah, I know. It's gonna be a long wait.

[Gokuma]

Awesome stuff.   It would be cool if those level edits by Mr. Coffi showed up.

[betabox]

4 hours ago, InDOOMnesia said:

@betabox IIRC the earlier prototype was sent to someone else, whom we are unsure if he still keeps the prototype itself.

 

Going by a comment on the vid, it doesnt sound hopeful for that prototype.

[Redneckerz]

SNES Doom Builder should totally be in the cards.

 

And DeHackEd support.

 

And DEHSUPP.

 

May aswell throw a GL renderer in (Similar to CatacombGL).

 

But SNES Doom Builder will do fine, for now.

 

:P

[Gez]

10 hours ago, theretromike said:

just like he said on the French interview from 1995

Is there a link or at least a reference to this interview? Like, the title of the magazine that did it, or something?

[theretromike]

 

26 minutes ago, Gez said:

Is there a link or at least a reference to this interview? Like, the title of the magazine that did it, or something?

Sure thing. Here it is:

I did the translation. It isn't great to be honest (I was learning English at the time) but it still understandable.

 

It was made by a French magazine called Joypad. It was available on a promotional VHS called "Doom L'ultime Carnage". You may find the full thing in HD here (without english subtitles though):

 

Edited May 3, 2020 by theretromike : No preview for youtube

[taufan99]

@theretromike Wow, I can't believe Ocean released a French promo VHS for the European SNES port! Thanks for sharing.

[Gez]

There's a lot of ads for other games after, the Doom part is pretty short. The interview itself is like 40 seconds maybe?

[theretromike]

4 hours ago, InDOOMnesia said:

@theretromike Wow, I can't believe Ocean released a French promo VHS for the European SNES port! Thanks for sharing.

Well, the SNES port of Doom was actually well received in France. Most French magazines like Console Plus, Ultra Player or Joypad gave it over 90% positive. There's even an old French TV ad with crappy CGI and speedup gameplay. They used the same catchphrase "You'll know what is hell" and it's still voiced by Patrick Poivey (Bruce Willis's voice in France):

https://www.ina.fr/video/PUB232183131/doom-version-15-secondes-video.html

 

1 hour ago, Gez said:

There's a lot of ads for other games after, the Doom part is pretty short. The interview itself is like 40 seconds maybe?

Yep, the interview is quite short, about one minute long, hence why I've only translated the "Making Of" part.

Edited May 4, 2020 by theretromike

[taufan99]

@Gez @theretromike Yeah, I just noticed that after watching the video. Still, these are cool discoveries!

That CGI is also pretty hilarious. Looks almost like late 90's/early 2000's FPS games.

[Dark Pulse]

9 hours ago, InDOOMnesia said:

@Gez @theretromike Yeah, I just noticed that after watching the video. Still, these are cool discoveries!

That CGI is also pretty hilarious. Looks almost like late 90's/early 2000's FPS games.

It also reminds me of the intro from Loaded.

 

 

^{Now let's see if my avatar winds up being familiar to more than a few people in this thread.}

[taufan99]

On 5/3/2020 at 5:08 PM, Redneckerz said:

SNES Doom Builder should totally be in the cards.

 

And DeHackEd support.

 

And DEHSUPP.

 

May aswell throw a GL renderer in (Similar to CatacombGL).

 

But SNES Doom Builder will do fine, for now.

 

:P

Not related to your comment, but fun fact, CacodemonTube is Dutch as well. You might have some luck arranging a face-to-face meeting with him, at least sometime after the lockdown.

[Redneckerz]

5 minutes ago, InDOOMnesia said:

Not related to your comment, but fun fact, CacodemonTube is Dutch as well. You might have some luck arranging a face-to-face meeting with him, at least sometime after the lockdown.

Dank je wel, InDOOMnesia. ;)

[Job]

I saw @CacodemonTube's video about the unused Doom guy faces in SNES Doom. I'd be really happy to see them restored. If you haven't seen them yet, you should take a look. 

[taufan99]

1 minute ago, Job said:

I saw @CacodemonTube's video about the unused Doom guy faces in SNES Doom. I'd be really happy to see them restored. If you haven't seen them yet, you should take a look. 

This one?

Oh yes, I've watched it a long time ago. Would be very nice to see them reimplemented once the source code is out.

[Tango]

this is a really interesting interview, and Randy seems like an awesome dude!

[taufan99]

10 hours ago, Tango said:

this is a really interesting interview, and Randy seems like an awesome dude!

Considering his extensive body of work since mid 1980's, indeed he is. Aside from this and Bleem!, he has also developed a Commodore 64 emulator for Amiga, the Amiga port of the Dragon's Lair games, and the SNES port of Wayne Gretzky and the NHLPA All-Stars, among others.

[theretromike]

On 5/8/2020 at 5:31 PM, Job said:

I saw @CacodemonTube's video about the unused Doom guy faces in SNES Doom. I'd be really happy to see them restored. If you haven't seen them yet, you should take a look. 

Not only Doomguy's faces, but also the player's sprites including the full rotation. Randy Linden said himself that his Reality Engine does handle different angles for the sprites but only for Doomguy during Deathmatch due to storage limitation.
Here's a video from Cacodemontube again where you can see it:

 

However, what's bothering me is that on the two videos recorded by KillingIMachine, Doomguy's sprite doesn't rotate at all. It's in shooting position all the time:

 

Since the Xband Modem has never been released in France, I've never tested the SNES multiplayer mod. Does anybody know if you can turn off some features via the Xband menu, like sprite rotation or sound effects in order to increase internet speed? That would explain why some features are missing on KillingIMachine's video.

Edited May 9, 2020 by theretromike

[taufan99]

4 hours ago, theretromike said:

Does anybody know if you can turn off some features via the Xband menu, like sprite rotation or sound effects in order to increase internet speed? That would explain why some features are missing on KillingIMachine's video.

As far as I can recall, XBAND had no such gameplay optimization features for its supported games, at least not in the case of SNES DOOM.

[Dark Pulse]

XBAND is no longer functional and hasn't been since about 1997. Games basically had to be either natively coded to support it (and very few were - IIRC Weaponlord was the only one explicitly advertised to work with it, although Doom turned out to as well), or hacked by the XBAND devs to work with XBAND.

 

But no, there was no settings like that or anything that I'm aware of.

 

Essentially, there's no way to recreate the XBAND experience that I'm aware of. It's lost forever.