Playstation Doom graphical glitches

[ReFracture]

Map 11: Refinery

http://imgur.com/H6ewBqI
Those used to be imp corpses.. then I walked into the next room, saw the arachnotron.. and now those corpses have become this.

I went back to the start where cacodemons were still alive.. now the imp corpses have become this..
http://imgur.com/wjMncX3
and get a load of the cacodemon projectile!

Anybody ever seen this before?

Shots taken from a Playstation playing a longbox copy of PSX Doom.

More:
http://imgur.com/5Z1bQkb
http://imgur.com/MriCZQU

[MegaZzZeux]

You broke Doom.

[Waffenak]

Glitch troll visited your game

[Blastfrog]

Mike.Reiner said:

Anybody ever seen this before? Shots taken from a Playstation playing a longbox copy of PSX Doom.

Weird. I've never seen that before, and I think I may own the same version as you. You have the North American NTSC version, right? It may be interesting to investigate the cause, but I would have no idea what's causing it, perhaps some code got corrupted by scratches? Or maybe it really is some strange bug.

I've heard that there's different revisions of the game out there, identifiable ingame from stuff like the color of the MAP02 exit room, one of them being red, and another being yellow. What versions are out there, and are there any differences between different regions, besides the disc copy protection sector and/or region code in the actual data itself being for the appropriate region of release?

[Xegethra]

Yeah that is strange, I've never come across this before either....I dunno if it matters but I've always played PAL copies in region 2, as I live in the U.K. Not sure on actual versions though, nothing I have played has done this.

[Suitepee]

That's some pretty cool glitchery there.

[Memfis]

Reminds me of my first attempts to play Strain. :) (stuck spiders everywhere)

[ReFracture]

Sodaholic said:

You have the North American NTSC version, right? It may be interesting to investigate the cause, but I would have no idea what's causing it, perhaps some code got corrupted by scratches? Or maybe it really is some strange bug.

I've heard that there's different revisions of the game out there, identifiable ingame from stuff like the color of the MAP02 exit room, one of them being red, and another being yellow. What versions are out there, and are there any differences between different regions, besides the disc copy protection sector and/or region code in the actual data itself being for the appropriate region of release?

Yeah it is NTSC-U.

The disc does have some light scratches, but nothing that's ever caused issues before, and I have played through the game completely more than once.

I also own a jewel case NTSC-U copy, has different art on the CD itself but it seems to be identical otherwise (I have two for link play).

[mrthejoshmon]

Sometimes copies of the game do some really strange things.

My copy of Doom has random sounds playing (Shotgun elevators, lost soul zombies, pistol doors that sort of thing). At one point the wall textures went all acid trip on me (much like the problem shown here) with textures "glowing" (brighter than they should be), some going spastic, some being misaligned and even being the wrong texture (This can also be done as well as numerous other oddities by disc swapping. You can also do something even more messed up on the original Doom exe's by loading a corrupt PWAD, but enough about that).

I think it is caused when the PS1 (or are you emulating it?) reads the data incorrectly. This can be caused by a damaged disc, a damaged Playstation, *overuse, disc swapping or emulation problems. I think the hardware you are using to play the game is reading VRAM info incorrectly (Where the sprites for monsters stored in a map are for the PS1, it is utilized when the said sprites are on screen) and is showing incorrect frames for the imp corpse.

*Overuse is an odd one, some people tell me it does exist, some others are skeptical and to be honest I am unsure if it exists either although I have encountered it before. What it basically means is the disc looks fine but it is actually heavily damaged by using it to frequently and for extended periods of time, by what method it is damaged I am unsure of.

To be honest, I don't even know what the fuck I am talking about.

[ReFracture]

Heh well for clarification I am playing it on a real Playstation. I used my capture card to take the screen shots. The disc reads all sectors without errors and I haven't had any issues with that Playstation at all. My other one fails to boot games sometimes but that's a different story.

Consigno on #zdoom tells me that this is something he has seen before and it seems to just be bugs in the game.

[Maes]

Seeing how read errors are par for the course for CD media (especially on old, battered drives like the ones inside the 100-odd millions Playstations still around), it shouldn't surprise you to see a glitchy texture or hear a broken sound or watch a broken video now and then.

Sadly, CD-R media and especially the "modern" 80-minute disks just make it harder for the PSX's already marginal drive to correctly read/focus (the actual pressed PSX disks actually use 60min/530 MB grooving, which is more reliable). Copies will always be more unreliable, especially on aging units. The only thing you can do is look for increasingly rare 74 min or even ultra-rare 60 minute audio blanks, burn them at the slowest possible drive speed (this might mean 4x or even 8x), and hope for the best.

However, the situation seen in your shots looks more like an internal runtime glitch, than a botched read.

[ReFracture]

Yeah my two other Playstations.. one fails to boot games anymore and the other does skip parts of the opening Williams FMV, but they are also older models with less reliable drives. The earlier ones had cheap plastic gears that would warm up and start to break down due to their proximity to the PSU, later versions moved to metal gears and tracks and positioned it away from the PSU.

My oldest one that doesn't read games anymore does have a pretty interesting backside though:
http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/leben2/playstation2.jpg

[Doomkid]

Playstations and PS2s have never been reliable for me. All of my old systems still work fine, but I've been through two PSX and two PS2 systems, both of them stopped working in a matter of months and from that point forward I just gave up.

The glitch you're showing reminds me of something that happens in a lot of older games, especially badly programmed ones, though I'm surprised to see it happen in Doom. In certain NES/Genesis games this is caused by the game reading the wrong portion of the CHR data, often if an enemy/character is in a location it isn't meant to be in.

[Clonehunter]

mrthejoshmon said:

*Overuse is an odd one, some people tell me it does exist, some others are skeptical and to be honest I am unsure if it exists either although I have encountered it before. What it basically means is the disc looks fine but it is actually heavily damaged by using it to frequently and for extended periods of time, by what method it is damaged I am unsure of.

I actually wonder if there is some truth to this, but with PS2 'Blue Discs' as opposed to normal PS2 discs. My copy of Racer Revenge used to play great, and I played it hours non-stop. Now it rarely gets past the loading screen, though the disc is fine. Quake III Revolution has had problems too, recently.

The problem could be in the game-station itself, as other non-blue discs run fine. Yet, even then, it could still a problem within the game console. Going back to Doom, it could be that the console you're playing on is old, overused, and damaged. I read somewhere that PS2 consoles can ruin themselves if they end up playing too many DVDs, which is what I did a lot.

[mrthejoshmon]

Clonehunter said:

I actually wonder if there is some truth to this, but with PS2 'Blue Discs' as opposed to normal PS2 discs. My copy of Racer Revenge used to play great, and I played it hours non-stop. Now it rarely gets past the loading screen, though the disc is fine. Quake III Revolution has had problems too, recently.

The problem could be in the game-station itself, as other non-blue discs run fine. Yet, even then, it could still a problem within the game console. Going back to Doom, it could be that the console you're playing on is old, overused, and damaged. I read somewhere that PS2 consoles can ruin themselves if they end up playing too many DVDs, which is what I did a lot.

I have reason to believe there is truth to it. Certain games I owned died unexpectedly despite looking perfectly fine (Ratchet and Clank games had a habit of going nuclear on playthrough 6, always playthrough 6). Purple discs made my PS2 go molten and would sometimes hurt to the touch (Damn you The Sims!) and most of all, it would get to the point where certain PSX games would just cop out on me and not run on either the PS2 or PS1 because I played them so much.

[Maes]

For a product meant to use optical disks as its primary medium, Sony sure went el cheapo with the PSX. The mechanisms they used are really no different than those found in any dime-a-dozen boombox or a portable CD player: simple brushed motor, plastic rails, etc. Compare it with how even the cheapest PC CD-ROM drive is built, and you'll see what I mean.

And even if the mechanism doesn't go BLR on you, the lens and laser diode eventually will (they're rated at 1000-so hours, which is not really much more than what e.g. a tape head was rated for). At some point, you have to swap mechanisms in and out yourself.

[ReFracture]

Clonehunter said:

I actually wonder if there is some truth to this, but with PS2 'Blue Discs' as opposed to normal PS2 discs. My copy of Racer Revenge used to play great, and I played it hours non-stop. Now it rarely gets past the loading screen, though the disc is fine. Quake III Revolution has had problems too, recently.

Early 'FAT' model PS2s in particular had this issue. I've seen it to a lesser extent with early 'slims'.

The 'Blue Discs' are actually CDs that require a faster drive for use. For some reason the drives would just stop being capable of running fast enough. Often PS2s that cannot play blue discs cannot play Playstation 1 discs very well either. (My observations only).

The final revision of the slim PS2 seemed pretty rock solid, mine still plays all types of discs without issue. It was a pretty sleek model that brought the PSU back into the console and combined the GPU and CPU onto a single die. You can run that thing for hours and it will barely be above room temperature, unlike the original slim that got stupid-hot.

[Jaxxoon R]

mrthejoshmon said:

Purple discs made my PS2 go molten and would sometimes hurt to the touch (Damn you The Sims!)

Holy shit, son, seriously. I'm astonished anyone would let it go for that long. I placed one of those BLU Discs in a fat PS2 and immediately took it back out when I started hearing the noises the drive was making.

[BlueFeena]

Mike.Reiner said:

My oldest one that doesn't read games anymore does have a pretty interesting backside though:
http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/leben2/playstation2.jpg

That's the original 1000 series model I think. I still have mine after almost 10 years. In Sony's infinite wisdom, they decided that removing Red/White/Yellow cables was a *great* idea and made everyone by their proprietary audio/video cables on the later models IIRC. Also, that parallel port is a really coveted item as it lets you connect -- amongst other things -- a game shark to the back of the unit.

[ReFracture]

BlueFeena said:

That's the original 1000 series model I think. I still have mine after almost 10 years. In Sony's infinite wisdom, they decided that removing Red/White/Yellow cables was a *great* idea and made everyone by their proprietary audio/video cables on the later models IIRC. Also, that parallel port is a really coveted item as it lets you connect -- amongst other things -- a game shark to the back of the unit.

Right on the money: SCPH-1001. Bums me out that it doesn't work anymore.

I'm sure they just wanted to cut costs. At least you can use S-Video and RGB from the proprietary multi out, far higher video quality than what straight composite gives.. so I never minded the jacks being axed.

Was parallel ever used by anything official? My 9001 doesn't have that, but the pins are still on the mobo in every revision of the Playstation after removal.

I know even the serial was removed in the final revision 'PSOne', probably since only a dozen or so games used it.

[Blastfrog]

Why was it ever called PSX to begin with? Where on earth did the X come from? It's not even some weird name that the general public started using, it's used on internal files even in early games.

[ReFracture]

The Playstation was referred to as the PS-X during development, how it was being called that by everybody out there.. I don't know. It's not like people call the Gamecube Dolphin or the Wii Revolution.

Though in 2003 a real PSX did come out..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PSX_%28video_game_console%29

[MajorRawne]

Strange, I have played Doom and Final Doom to death over the years and never once encountered graphical glitches or sound bugs. The only thing I noticed (and I only noticed it recently after being made aware of it in the PSX TC thread) is how sometimes textures, when viewed from extreme angles, "carry on" past the end of the wall. That tends to happen with SUPPORT3 textures (or whatever they're called on the PSX) creating pillars or window frames.

It seems that as peoples' Playstations gradually wear out, they produce bizarre effects within the game.

PSX Doom, keeps on playing even when the Playstation itself is having a fit. What a game.

[ReFracture]

Yeah I've played it quite a bit myself and have never seen this before or since.

I wager this is a bug personally. It loaded the correct sprite to begin with, and would change to other sprites as I moved through the level and had other monsters come on the screen. The object in memory associated with that sprite kept shuffling around I guess.

[mrthejoshmon]

MajorRawne said:

The only thing I noticed (and I only noticed it recently after being made aware of it in the PSX TC thread) is how sometimes textures, when viewed from extreme angles, "carry on" past the end of the wall. That tends to happen with SUPPORT3 textures (or whatever they're called on the PSX) creating pillars or window frames.

LITE textures were a prime example, it's like the texture misaligned itself after you get to the side of it.

[Blastfrog]

I played a lot of the Jak and Daxter trilogy as a kid, they're definitely in my top ten of favorite games. For some reason, Jak 2 discs kept failing on me, going through multiple copies. I treated all of my discs well, but it was that one in particular that consistently crapped out with use over time.

Mike.Reiner said:

or the Wii Revolution

I remember that. They should've stuck with Revolution, and ditched Wii after the first one. Now we have the "We You." Blegh.

[ReFracture]

Sodaholic said:

Now we have the "We You." Blegh.

Marketing seems to escape Nintendo these days.