PSX Doom is actually really good

[Jayextee]

10 minutes ago, Rudolph said:

Sure, but clearly the developers had yet to figure out how to properly implement the Arch-Vile and the Icon of Sin, so by focusing on developing a complete port of Doom 1 first, maybe they could have given themselves more time to figure out how to do it?

It wasn't that they couldn't figure it out. There wasn't the texture ram for either the Archvile's large number of animation frames or a whopping nine 256x128 patches for the IoS.

[Rudolph]

7 minutes ago, Jayextee said:

It wasn't that they couldn't figure it out. There wasn't the texture ram for either the Archvile's large number of animation frames or a whopping nine 256x128 patches for the IoS.

So how did the Master Edition manage to include both of them again? From what I understand, the hack can run on actual Playstation hardware.

[Jayextee]

Without looking at their implementation, couldn't tell you.

[Individualised]

2 hours ago, Rudolph said:

So how did the Master Edition manage to include both of them again? From what I understand, the hack can run on actual Playstation hardware.

I couldn't tell you why the Arch-Vile wasn't included but the Icon of Sin was probably not included because it just doesn't make much sense to have it, PS1 Doom is it's own thing. Same reason why there's no Dis or Wolfenstein 3D levels.

[Rudolph]

Wait, Dis is not in Playstation Doom? Surely, the port could handle a map with a single Spider Mastermind.

[Dark Pulse]

19 hours ago, Individualised said:

People say this a lot but... is this actually true? Doom 64 started development soon after Doom 2 was released, in late 1994. Was PSX Doom already in development at that point? It released in late 1995. I get the impression that it was the other way round. Doomwiki seems to explain how this happened; they didn't have a devkit yet so started development on a PlayStation version as a stopgap.

Development did begin in late 1994, but for PS1 Doom, I'm sure development began even earlier - the PS1 released in Japan in December of 1994, so it was fully possible to get PS1 devkits around the time, or even before then.

 

We'd probably have to ask one of the devs to be sure (sadly, none of them are floating around here anymore), but I know for a fact PS1 Doom was based on the JagDoom codebase. That and it's very silly to develop two totally different branches of the game side-by-side - code is going to be put into one and used in the other, if it's sensible to do so.

 

PS1 Doom came out first (by over a year - November 1995 for PS1 Doom, March 1997 for Doom 64), so there's really no way the game would be done almost a year and a half later if PS1 Doom were based on the Doom 64 codebase. It just doesn't make logical sense.

 

19 hours ago, Individualised said:

People say this a lot but... is this actually true? Doom 64 started development soon after Doom 2 was released, in late 1994. Was PSX Doom already in development at that point? It released in late 1995. I get the impression that it was the other way round. Doomwiki seems to explain how this happened; they didn't have a devkit yet so started development on a PlayStation version as a stopgap.

 

That's exactly what I meant by "partial hardware"; it's using the hardware to render things but it's doing it in the way the software renderer would. Though I wasn't sure if it was due to time limits or if it was because of Carmack.

I'd really recommend not using that terminology, as it is extremely confusing.

 

In a technical sense, hardware rendering is when some sort of specialized graphics chip accelerates the rendering, and software rendering is when the CPU itself is doing all of the graphical processing work. "Partial hardware" conversely implies some of it is hardware, and some of it is software, and that is definitely not the case for PSX Doom. (It is the case in a few other ports, though - IIRC the 3DO version does have acceleration for walls, but the flats still had to be done in software, and that's one of the reasons the 3DO version is so terrible performance-wise.)

 

It is rendering things like how the PC renderer did it, but that is done fully in hardware. The MIPS CPU of the PS1 has nothing to do with drawing the scene, so calling it "partial hardware" is not only erroneous, it's flat-out wrong.

 

11 hours ago, Rudolph said:

Sure, but clearly the developers had yet to figure out how to properly implement the Arch-Vile and the Icon of Sin, so by focusing on developing a complete port of Doom 1 first, maybe they could have given themselves more time to figure out how to do it?

 

I mean, 36 maps is still plenty, not to mention the extra post-Thy Flesh Consumed maps.

Doom II and Final Doom were the more relevant games by the time PSX Doom came out; doing a port of just the original game would have seemed silly and old. I mean, the original (Non-Ultimate) version was released on 32X, SNES, Jaguar... a port to the PS1 of just those levels, especially when how much stuff CD-ROMs could hold was frequently a highlight point at the time, would've just seemed backwards.

 

Also, the reason they couldn't easily implement the Arch-Vile and IoS was simple: Lack of RAM. The PS1 has 2 MB of RAM; after you reserve the chunk necessary to run the game engine, you're left with about 1.6 MB. Your entire level, textures, and so on, must all fit within that space. Sprites have a hardcoded amount of VRAM dedicated to them (about 384 KB, if memory serves), but the problem is the Arch-Vile also has like twice the frames of animation of any other monster, and reducing it would look quite choppy. GEC achieved it, IIRC, by judicious frame cutting as well as reducing the resolution of the sprite (but don't quote me on that).

 

Icon of Sin is a problem for a similar reason: If you try to load all monster types, or even most of them, in a map, the game will quickly run out of VRAM for sprites and bomb. The solution GEC came up with is that the mapper defines what monsters can spawn, and that's what the IoS spawns on a map that it's on - and only those (though IIRC it can nightmare flag them as well for variety; those take no extra sprites as it's really just a different blending mode).

 

5 hours ago, Rudolph said:

Wait, Dis is not in Playstation Doom? Surely, the port could handle a map with a single Spider Mastermind.

Dis was indeed not in PSX Doom. And you're forgetting it was more than that - there were also Barons of Hell and Cacos in there. Which is also doable - but it runs into a problem when you're doing a gimmick of "Doom II monsters in Doom I maps."

 

I did the conversion for Master Edition (please die a lot, it will make me happy), so I can speak in detail about my version of the map, but simply put, I tried to add Pain Elementals to that list and the map ran out of RAM. I had to chop the Cacos to make it work. The Spider Mastermind takes up an INSANE amount of the sprite VRAM space - so dropping one in limits you to one or two other types of monsters, and that's about it.

 

There's a reason it's used very sparingly - and in official maps where it is used (Redemption Denied comes to mind), that's the reason there is very little monster variety besides the Mastermind.

[Gez]

3 hours ago, Dark Pulse said:

Icon of Sin is a problem for a similar reason: If you try to load all monster types, or even most of them, in a map, the game will quickly run out of VRAM for sprites and bomb. The solution GEC came up with is that the mapper defines what monsters can spawn, and that's what the IoS spawns on a map that it's on - and only those (though IIRC it can nightmare flag them as well for variety; those take no extra sprites as it's really just a different blending mode).

They must have also reduced the size of the IOS wall textures quite a bit, as if I'm not mistaken with nine 256x128 patches in PC Doom, it alone would take about 150% of the available VRAM space usually allocated to wall textures. And there's the animated lava brain hole, plus the whole rest of the level to account for, too.

Picture from opening post of Master Edition thread, in the nested spoilers about VRAM stuff.

 

[Rudolph]

5 hours ago, Dark Pulse said:

Dis was indeed not in PSX Doom. And you're forgetting it was more than that - there were also Barons of Hell and Cacos in there. Which is also doable - but it runs into a problem when you're doing a gimmick of "Doom II monsters in Doom I maps."

But according to the Doom wiki, Redemption Denied features not only a bunch of Barons of Hell but also two Spider Masterminds.

 

Does it not make it a lot more resource-intensive than Dis?

 

5 hours ago, Dark Pulse said:

Doom II and Final Doom were the more relevant games by the time PSX Doom came out; doing a port of just the original game would have seemed silly and old. I mean, the original (Non-Ultimate) version was released on 32X, SNES, Jaguar... a port to the PS1 of just those levels, especially when how much stuff CD-ROMs could hold was frequently a highlight point at the time, would've just seemed backwards.

That is fair, but like I said, they could have always compensated with a more faithful port and more original maps. I mean, to this day, PC players still have to purchase Doom II separately, so I do see how even a conservative port of the Ultimate Doom would have suffered by comparison.

 

5 hours ago, Dark Pulse said:

GEC achieved it, IIRC, by judicious frame cutting as well as reducing the resolution of the sprite (but don't quote me on that). 

 

Icon of Sin is a problem for a similar reason: If you try to load all monster types, or even most of them, in a map, the game will quickly run out of VRAM for sprites and bomb. The solution GEC came up with is that the mapper defines what monsters can spawn, and that's what the IoS spawns on a map that it's on - and only those (though IIRC it can nightmare flag them as well for variety; those take no extra sprites as it's really just a different blending mode).

Oh, so Williams could have pulled it off back then, but they ultimately chose not to?

 

Or does that approach require some special knowledge that the developers may not have had at the time?

[Gez]

10 minutes ago, Rudolph said:

But according to the Doom wiki, Redemption Denied features not only a bunch of Barons of Hell but also two Spider Masterminds. 

 

Does it not make it a lot more resource-intensive than Dis?

No. As far as VRAM use is concerned, it doesn't matter whether you have one big spider or ten thousands; as long as they all use the same sprites, there's only one instance of the sprite set in VRAM.

 

So spider + baron < spider + baron + caco.

[Rudolph]

8 minutes ago, Gez said:

No. As far as VRAM use is concerned, it doesn't matter whether you have one big spider or ten thousands; as long as they all use the same sprites, there's only one instance of the sprite set in VRAM.

 

So spider + baron < spider + baron + caco.

Oh! So they still could have made Dis run on Playstation by just removing the Cacodemons?

[Gez]

Yeah, probably.

3 minutes ago, Rudolph said:

Oh! So they still could have made Dis run on Playstation by just removing the Cacodemons?

Yeah. But they decided to keep the spider for the big finale, so they ended the "Doom episode" with Threshold of Pain (six pain elementals and a bunch of Hell knights) and put Redemption Denied as the end of the "Doom II" episode instead of the Icon of Sin.

[Rudolph]

Well, regardless, it is nice to see modders finishing what Williams has started, so to speak!