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Doom 3 ROE's doom ports

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Anybody ever try the XBOX Doom 3 ROE's classic Doom ports? I'm wondering how they work/are stored. Do they run off a sort of "source port"?

I'm asking because, to say the least, the disc holds more master levels than you can play in-game. There's more to than this. Also a similar oddity involving how the secret exits to the junk PWAD levels work.

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I have, I actually used to use those ports quite a bit. I believe they are based off of some old version of prboom, judging by the fact that it uses timidity and some of the bugs I've encountered seem consistent with older prboom behavior. I actually ripped the sound patches that the game uses for use in my linux box. The Xbox 360 ports were also based off of ROE's Doom ports, which were in turn based off of the Doom 3: Collector's Edition ports. Actually, MAP33(Betray) is still in Xbox 360's IWAD but the code for the secret switch to it seems to have been removed, so there is no way to get to it.

AFAIK the secret level code is pretty much the same as it is in regular old Doom2. That is to say, level specific for a certain linedef number(you could easily look it up by extracting the iwad from the disk and finding said secret linedef, I may do that myself one of these days..). I definitely did not know there are more master levels than can be played on the disk, though. I always assumed they were omitted because of some space constraint or something. I wonder why they weren't included? Perhaps a menu bug? Are all the master levels there?

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MP2E said:

I have, I actually used to use those ports quite a bit. I believe they are based off of some old version of prboom, judging by the fact that it uses timidity and some of the bugs I've encountered seem consistent with older prboom behavior.

Hmm... If this is true doesn't that mean we should have the source for them?

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Well, I figure it's safe to discuss more on this :)

Yeah, there are all of the 21 master levels in their WAD form (20, since TEETH has 2 levels) on the disc (I own Master Levels for Doom and Depths of Doom Trilogy, anyway). They are completely unaltered, as far as I know. That includes that some of them also retain their "new" sky texture. If you play the Master Levels in-game, the sky texture isn't used, just regular Doom skies. Moreover, they have their original mapslot; yet in-game, the 18 levels are given a specific order.

For Doom 2, if you toy around with the included IWAD on PC, you'll see: the secret exit switch on Underhalls simply takes you to The Gantlet, not Betray. Betray itself is called Unnamed, for some reason. Beating it takes you to the monster cast of characters in the ending.

Ultimate Doom IWAD on PC: the Hangar secret exit takes you to Military Base, not Sewers. Sewers is also called Unnamed. Beating the level actually takes you to Doom 2's monster cast of characters. I don't know how that's done. Of course, the Doom II exclusive monsters are invisible.

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All of the XBox and 360 ports are based on a codebase derived from the Linux Doom source release version. This was verified by xttl who found some original Linux Doom bugs still in the code (via binary reversing).

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I'm not familiar with any of this, but does that account for, say, the 18 Master Levels order and which sky texture is selected for display?

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buttspit said:

I'm not familiar with any of this, but does that account for, say, the 18 Master Levels order and which sky texture is selected for display?

I'm sure the master level loading code is custom for the port. I imagine they're remapped in the engine so that they play in order. You'll notice for the Xbox port the order is strictly alphabetical (unlike the Playstation version which has two levels out of order virgil and combine IIRC). As to why they would only play 18 if all 21 are on the disc, I have no idea.

I know 2 of them are playable on the playstation version. The last one, mephisto.wad, is not in the rotation for either version. Given the general attitude I've seen over that map in this community I'm guessing they were not deemed to be of high enough quality. Although the fact that bad dream is not a secret level indicates otherwise.

For the sky I imagine they just didn't bother to code in support for them.

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