Doom64 EX (Feedback build) Now at v1.1c

[psyren]

Wondering why I can't save ammo when playing "Even Simpler" by getting the Caco's and Hellknights fighting each other, I only found this in the changelog:

+ Implementing MF_NOINFIGHTING flag

Same thing in "The Bleeding" now that I noticed. Enemies can damage and even kill each other, but they don't fight back when accidentally hit like they're supposed to. I'm certain that monster in-fighting worked in the original version.

[Sporku]

Kaiser said:

?

Looks like you got things figured out pretty nicely. :P How'd you do it?

[FirebrandX]

Kaiser said:

Haha, thats awsome. I didn't even knew they had a tournament. Also, was this held the moment it was released? If so, then how were you so familiar with the game if you managed to speedrun through the first level and The Spiral?

Also, got any screenshots of that box? :)

The grand opening was held in only 6 locations around the country. I got lucky in that I just happen to live in the same area where it was programmed (Dallas and surrounding areas). I had been a death-match champion on the Playstation Doom games, so having that experience gave me a huge advantage going in to the opening day event.

At any rate, they let us play the game for an hour before starting the contest, which gave us time to get used to the controls and layout. For The Spiral, I just played "hit-and-run" style, dodging into alcoves while the monsters started fighting eachother. All the other contestants foolishly blazed right into the angry swarm and got wasted in seconds. I was still in the process of finishing off the rest of the mobs when they came over and informed me I won for being the only one left alive :P


Give me a few mins and I'll upload a screenshot of the box and shirt.

[Kaiser]

psyren said:

I'm certain that monster in-fighting worked in the original version.

Only when the devs wanted them too. If you have an emulator, go to No Escape and just try to get the Nightmare Imps, Mancubus, and Cyberdemon to fight back with each other. (Note the mancubus on the perpetual platforms are not flagged, so those will fight back).

AgentSpork said:

Looks like you got things figured out pretty nicely. :P How'd you do it?

its a little bit of both laziness and mixing the texture's color arguments with the diffuse channel, which is after I render that same wall/flat/sprite twice :)

[leileilol]

DaniJ said:

No. It is impossible to white-out a textured polygon using a multiplicative method of lighting where diffuse is applied first.

Never said it was multiplicative. The first layer is just a white color being affected by lighting, second is the actual texture. It isn't impossible, considering the N64 actually does use a subset of OpenGL (all that uucode bullshit wasn't neccessary especially since that only really applied to vertex transformation)

[FirebrandX]

Here's a pic of the box with my N64 sitting in front for scale:



Its been a chore trying to keep it from getting damaged after 11 years, involving 4 moves in that time. I'm not sure how much longer I want to hold onto it. Eventually I'll give up on it and toss it.

The shirt is packed away in plastic crates in the garage, so I'll have to dig it up later when I have time to sort through all the junk in there.

[Sporku]

Sell it on ebay at the very least. I'm sure somebody is willing to pay a decent amount of money for something like that. God DAMN that thing is huge though. I thought maybe you were talking about twice the size of the normal game box at the most. :P

[DaniJ]

leileilol said:

Never said it was multiplicative. The first layer is just a white color being affected by lighting, second is the actual texture.

Which would be multiplicative lighting.

It isn't impossible, considering the N64 actually does use a subset of OpenGL (all that uucode bullshit wasn't neccessary especially since that only really applied to vertex transformation)

Oh really? Please do explain or better yet provide evidence because to my knowledge, that is utter rubbish. Yes, it is absolutely necessary and I'd love to know why you think its "bullshit". The microcode is responsible for a fair bit more than just transformation.

[psyren]

As this is a feedback thread for a test release, that's what I'm trying to write. I do realise that technical improvements are far more important right now than gameplay issues, so please forgive these comments.

I agree that monster infighting is an unfair player advantage at times. When an enemy on a higher platform hits a lower enemy, for example, the lower one just stands in front of the platform trying to get to the higher one, and waiting to be cut down by chainsaw. That is wrong.

Getting monsters to fight each other is a fun part of original gameplay that I do remember very well, though I don't remember the original very well anymore. Not enough to know where and when monsters did fight with each other. (Too many years playing Absolution) If you are certain about where you use that no infighting flag then that's fine I suppose. As the developer, you have every right to make it however you want.

All I'm trying to say is that it was a fun and alternative playing style that I would wish for you to keep intact. Jumping into the arena full of Arachnotrons and Barons, and trying to get them killing each other without firing a shot and dying myself in the process is a serious rush.

Meaningless words of an old man: In restoring and preserving a Classic, better to add more options than limitations.

***

On the technical side, someone previously mentioned the sky moving but this is the first place I saw it, in level 10, "The Bleeding". Not sure if it's useful or not. What is that strange image that stays on the horizon?






***

@FirebrandX,
That box is great! Like a comic book though, to try and preserve paper as a collectible is a nightmare. How do you keep it in such sweet condition without a hermetically sealed mylar bag and 2" of styrofoam around it? Either that, or Texas air doesn't have as much humidity as I imagined it did.

[myk]

psyren said:
Meaningless words of an old man: In restoring and preserving a Classic, better to add more options than limitations.

It's just better to port things properly (with fidelity) and if options make any sense, not make them get in the way or distort what is being ported. We kind of lost track of this initially with DOOM because the community's initial efforts were more about modifying the game than porting it, since most of us still used DOS compatible systems for a while and thus didn't really need ports that much.

[Gez]

psyren said:
On the technical side, someone previously mentioned the sky moving but this is the first place I saw it, in level 10, "The Bleeding". Not sure if it's useful or not. What is that strange image that stays on the horizon?

So, it's not just the firesky.

[psyren]

@myk,
I do trust Kaiser to port things properly, as he always has done, to the best of his ability as far as I know. Maybe I'm crazy but I think he did change this monster infighting in "Even Simpler". Regardless of it using the original ROM data, I think he changed this and I am disappointed with the result, so voicing my complaint.

Nintendo gamepad controls cannot compare with full (Quake-like, key setting) control a port can offer. Once playing Doom with mouselook and keyboard WASD I can't go back. {as an old man - Can never teach an old Dog new tricks}

Kaiser tells me to check with an emulator! You stubborn ass! You KNOW I'll never even make it to map 17 using Project64 and the best controller configuration I can muster, let alone be able to fight and possibly survive it.

There is no way to make it through map 06 either, without cheating. "Run" is not enough to get through those rising floors. The third falls before you ever have a chance to cross it. No one else ever had this problem? {might be engine timing like you are trying to figure out?}

Might be the same problem as the end level. Yes, we should be able (if we have the keys) to go click click click and shut off the portals. Wait for one to close before you close another is wrong.

Again, maybe I am totally outta turn of what Doom64 was on Nintendo. I dont think so, as I could finish the final level in about 30 seconds with all keys. 36 seconds was my personal record.

[Kaiser]

psyren said:

I agree that monster infighting is an unfair player advantage at times. When an enemy on a higher platform hits a lower enemy, for example, the lower one just stands in front of the platform trying to get to the higher one, and waiting to be cut down by chainsaw. That is wrong.

Getting monsters to fight each other is a fun part of original gameplay that I do remember very well, though I don't remember the original very well anymore. Not enough to know where and when monsters did fight with each other. (Too many years playing Absolution) If you are certain about where you use that no infighting flag then that's fine I suppose. As the developer, you have every right to make it however you want.

What I meant that only when the devs want them to, is because that this flag exists in the original n64 game and that was Midway's call on that feature. There are monsters who do not infight, and I mentioned the beginning of No Escape as an example.

Also there are cheat codes for Project64 that enables the features menu. Simple enough :\

Also, that stretched texture is suppose to be the mountains.. obviously thats a rendering glitch.

Gimme yer specs.

[FirebrandX]

The fire sky is a confirmed glitch:



It looks like its set at the wrong horizon plane and is also tiled 12 times on the screen.

However, the bleeding sky looks perfectly fine on my setup.

[Kaiser]

This occurs on low resolutions. How does it look on 1280x1024? Or 1024x768?

[Gez]

My laptop's max resolution is 1280x800. Usually I play in windowed 800x600.

[FirebrandX]

Ok that's strange. It looks different on each resolution. 1024x768 has it tiled 8 times and lowered a bit, while 1280 has it looking even closer, like say 6 tiles, and its lowered to the point of only seeing the top portion. Its as though the higher the resolution, the lower the horizon and the closer it gets scaled to the screen.

[Bashe]

psyren said:

There is no way to make it through map 06 either, without cheating. "Run" is not enough to get through those rising floors. The third falls before you ever have a chance to cross it. No one else ever had this problem? {might be engine timing like you are trying to figure out?}

Um, I've done it, on Doom64EX and on the original cart. It's not rocket science, just run. If you can't make it for some reason, you're doing it wrong.

[FirebrandX]

psyren said:

There is no way to make it through map 06 either, without cheating. "Run" is not enough to get through those rising floors. The third falls before you ever have a chance to cross it. No one else ever had this problem? {might be engine timing like you are trying to figure out?}

I've made all run-jumps in Doom 64 EX no problem. If you're having trouble getting a straight run-up to work, try what's called the "speed-strafe". This is where you use the run button in combination with a left or right strafe while running forward at an angle. Clears those longer gaps with ease.

Oh just one more thing: You can easily check level 17 on an emulator using the password feature. There are sites like gamefaqs that list a password for every stage in the game.

[sector666]

Two bugs to report. One, spectres do not spawn. I double checked the macro in my level set to spawn them (and the spectre tags as well) and couldn't see anything wrong, so I tried adding a regular demon with the same TID. The demon spawns, but the spectres which are tagged the same do not.

Second bug, I've been keeping old level version backups in the maps folder and I found out there's a problem if there are too many wads in that folder. All of a sudden when I went chose Custom Map in game, the select map menu never came up, and I couldn't do anything at all. The only way I could get out of this was to hibernate the computer and start it up again.

I was in fullscreen when this happened, if that makes a difference. Anyway the limit seems to be 16 wads in the maps folder, because it happened as soon as I had 17 total in there.

[Kaiser]

sector666 said:

Two bugs to report. One, spectres do not spawn. I double checked the macro in my level set to spawn them (and the spectre tags as well) and couldn't see anything wrong, so I tried adding a regular demon with the same TID. The demon spawns, but the spectres which are tagged the same do not.

Can you post the link to the wad that has the faulty spawning spectures?

Also, for any editing related topics, can you post them here:
http://www.doomworld.com/vb/doom-editing/43861-doom64-ex-editing-tools-and-docs-online/

Instead of this thread?


I'll look into bumping up the map limit count, though I don't remember ever setting a cap on how many wads that can be loaded.

[sector666]

I meant to say spectres won't spawn by trigger, in case that wasn't clear.

I'm pm'ing you a link and better description.

[psyren]

Windows XP SP2
AMD Sempron 2800+ (1.5Ghz)
1GB RAM
ATI Radeon 9200 video card (DX 9c)

Running EX in 640x480

Higher resolutions make the menu fonts smooth out a little bit, but I think only OpenGL is going to take care of the jagged transparent texture edges.

Yes, well I cursed those Midway guys many times playing map 06 on the console, but then it was only that dang rising/falling platform that gave me trouble. 10-12 times trying and I'd eventually get where I wanted to be (and thinking, "Dipshits! This is DOOM! Not Super friggin Mario Bros!")

I had the same trouble in Absolution, but never had any problems getting past the 3 switches/floor lifts until playing EX. I could always go click, click, click, but now it makes me wait for one to finish doing it's thing before I can click the next switch, and the last one falls before I can get across.

Your prolly right and I just need to set mouse button 2 to 'run' instead of jump (and learn how to use it!) I only ever went to the bother of enabling features and jumping to get through that damned level 06. I think I even wrote in the walkthrough that jumping will get you into far more trouble than it will ever get you out of.

Seems you can't jump as high to grab keys off platforms, so it isn't even as useful for cheating as it was in Absolution. (There are a few places where he should block jumping though, like the low wall to the Left at the start of map02, where I can hop over to the exit switch and finish the level in 5 seconds)

I'm all for adding monster infighting to the features menu then. I'm sure you are quite right that it was an option developers could turn on or off for any map. I'd like to be able to do so. {request hint!} :)

And no. I love Project 64 for a dozen other games, but Doom64 is not one of them, and I won't be entering the code to check out level 17 or any other. There is just no way to configure any plugin to be as smooth controlling as EX is

[Vegeta]

This may be dumb to ask, but is it intentional that the Lost Souls only bright in dark when they die?

[Kaiser]

Vegeta said:

This may be dumb to ask, but is it intentional that the Lost Souls only bright in dark when they die?

It occurs on the n64. Again, bear in mind that the sprite states/frames data are taken directly from the rom. So whatever happens to the sprites is intentional, unless its a glitch on Ex's end..

[Doom_user]

Psyren, I've played through the actual N64 version 3 times in the past year. Each of the 3 times I went through the game, my experience was that

In The Absolution, after you press 1 of the 3 switches, you have to wait 5-10 seconds before you can press another one.

In Hectic, the ceiling in the spider room only lowers to crush once, after killing all of the monsters. Both of the exits take you to level 2.

Playground exits to level 1.

If you experienced these things in Doom 64 EX, it's working exactly like the actual N64 version.

[FirebrandX]

Ok some problems in fullscreen mode with the game crashing. I've had the game lock up 3 times now when initiating a load sequence. The first 2 times was on the opening screen where you skip it by pressing enter to bring up the menu options. The 3rd was upon completing the "Breakdown" stage, where it went blank as normal to load up the next level, only it stays blank permenantly.

What's really bad about these crashes in fullscreen is you can't alt-tab out of them to kill the task. When you try that, you get a startup bar, but no mouse pointer! WTF?? So I try to control-alt-delete to bring up task manager and it comes up ok, but you can't kill the task! I had to use the keyboard tab functions to select the doom64 app and kill it, but nothing happens. Task manager fails to kill it. The ONLY way out is to reboot, which is unacceptable.

I think from now on I'm going to avoid fullscreen mode until the issue can be worked out, or at least some way to kill the task is restored.

[TheLazenby]

I just tried Doom 64EX yesterday for the first time, and I've played around with it a bit since then (I ran through Breakdown with no monsters in an attempt to make sense of the 'mysteries' JPEGs); I dunno, I think I'm just too used to "Absolution", having played that constantly for the past three years or so. This version doesn't seem as smooth and sleek as that did; in fact, the higher resolutions in 64EX seemed to give me trouble. (I was experimenting to see what best matched my 1440x900 monitor.) The 'music' in Staging Area kept cutting out and restarting for some reason.

Lowering the resolution seemed to fix that problem, oddly. I haven't had trouble with it since.

[FirebrandX]

Well to be honest, I like this version better than Absolution. Although there are still bugs to work out, I feel this version is significantly closer to emulating all the effects and features of the cartridge version. For one, the shading is quite a bit closer. Next, the skyboxes are also much closer and better looking. Third, event triggering is much more accurate. Lastly, the weapons now function as they should, like the unmaker's laser.

[FirebrandX]

Hmm doublepost from lagged web site...