I can potentially fix Doom 32X's bad instruments. (Partially done)

[lunaark]

So, I typically do Doom SNES ROM hacking, but I already found everything that I understand, and I knew Doom 32X was hackable, and had notes taken on it. Guess what I saw in those notes? Where the voices were stored and how long they were. Each voice is 27 bytes long, which gives me some variety but not a lot, however, if I tinker with the first 27 bytes, and figure out what sounds good I can fix the farts and zippers of a soundtrack it has, I will try to replicate AdLib as much as I can with those 27 bytes each, and/or make better sounding instruments.

Because it will be a manual hex operation, I can even do it on my tablet.

Edit: I did an E1M1 bass instrument edit, mostly consisting of repeating the first byte I enter (so it was like AA BB then C9 for example), and it sounds like decent slap bass, considering it was a 2 minute edit that consisted of me randomly typing anything between 0-9 or a-f on my keyboard.

To make it easier to hear, I nulled out the first 6 bytes of the guitar track, which muted it all, making the bass the only audible thing in the song.

Get out your subwoofers... (NOTE: USE THE [E] ROM, NOT THE [JU] ONE WHILE PATCHING THE IPS.)

https://www.dropbox.com/s/8d3sotoi4toq3pz/bassdemo.ips?dl=0

Edit 2: I have traced down the E1M1 guitar instrument, guess what though? The instrument is 2 BYTES. 2. If I change anything before or after it, no matter what, the only bytes that change anything are 2 bytes starting at 0x005CFC, which are 4F 11, but the only combination that won't sound muted is 4F 11 and 3F 11, which makes it sound 8-bit (sounds like a pulse wave)

Edit 3: Because I am desperate to see what is possible, I will try porting the 1994/09/09 32X prototype E1M1 guitar via copy and paste, to see if some E1M1 guitar mods are possible.)

Edit 4: I realized the Sonic Spinball Doom 32X hack has different instruments from standard Doom, so I will look into the instruments, and how you change what instruments are used (repointing them, so you can use instruments that are NOT 2 bytes...)

Edit 5: Wow, the guitar instrument sure has diversity in what you can do with it *the sarcasm is too strong*, I mean come on, a 2 byte sized instrument with only 2 working combinations?

Edit 6: I am using the JU ROM now, and I noticed a difference in the instruments and stuff. I went to 5CFC for the e1m1 guitar, it is different, so I am excited. It went from 4F 11 to 01 11.

Edit 7: Looking good so far with the JU ROM, however if I change anything at 5CFC there is no difference, so I have to do my strategy to find the instrument again, which consists of going to the starting voice, then nulling out 27 bytes, and repeating until the instrument I want is muted, then I know which one it is.

Edit 8: The guitar is at 5D00 now, and like the E ROM, it is not looking good for variety.

[VGA]

I grant you permission to proceed with your plan.

[Maes]

ROM download link or it didn't happen (or a patch to the most common 32X ROM dumps ;-)

[Jaxxoon R]

Well, the game uses the GEMS sound driver, for starters: http://segaretro.org/GEMS
Not only that, but a guy called "Saxman" has previously copy/pasted music from Sonic Spinball over to Doom, as can be seen here: http://www.romhacking.net/hacks/702/
My suggestion would be to instead create entirely new mixes using the GEMS devkit provided in the first link, and then do a straight insert into the Doom 32X ROM.

[betabox]

Speaking of SNES Doom, TheLoneSurvivor, check your PM inbox every now and then. Got something coming up that might interest you.

[HorrorMovieRei]

lol @ that custom title
Anyways, go for it. I really want to hear a proper blast-processed Doom ost.

[Blastfrog]

Geckoyamori made some really cool covers on his old YouTube channel, I wish I saved it so I could reupload it.

[lunaark]

Ok, so after fiddling around I changed the E1M1 bass instrument, it is quiet kind of, but still the same volume as usual, but I noticed it sound more bassy and had a semi-reverb effect. I will manually disable the guitar and upload an IPS patch, it uses the [E] version.

EDIT: After disabling the guitar, I noticed it sounds like slap bass. I did a good job considering it was an edit I made in 2 minutes.

EDIT 2: Get the subwoofer out, REMEMBER, USE THE [E] ROM NOT THE [JU] ROM FOR PATCHING.

[lunaark]

Jaxxoon R said:

Well, the game uses the GEMS sound driver, for starters: http://segaretro.org/GEMS
Not only that, but a guy called "Saxman" has previously copy/pasted music from Sonic Spinball over to Doom, as can be seen here: http://www.romhacking.net/hacks/702/
My suggestion would be to instead create entirely new mixes using the GEMS devkit provided in the first link, and then do a straight insert into the Doom 32X ROM.

I know that it uses GEMS and that he did the hack, I also tried using the GEMS devkit out of curiosity, but it was for DOS so I had to use DOSBox and the program was also VERY confusing, even though I knew what the stuff meant.

[Technician]

What's not to be fixed with this port?

[lunaark]

Technician said:

What's not to be fixed with this port?

Well, the main problem with the graphics is what I can notice as double wide pixels. (by that I mean they add an extra pixel to the side of everything, basically stretching it.) If that can be fixed and FPS issues fixed, the graphics are fixed.

The main problem with the music is the fact that is is basically a fart and zipper symphony, which can be fixed with patient hex editing and alot of trial and error.

The main problem with the maps is that they are simplified, due to using the Jaguar maps. This can not be fixed unless me/somebody else finds a way to use ram more efficently, as I seem to recall there is only 384K of RAM available to the 32X version of Doom, compared to the 4MB you had in the DOS version of DOOM (Those are all numbers purely based on memory, it has been a while since I heard those things.) The only way I can think of that would save RAM is only putting the visible parts in RAM, then putting some of the invisible stuff connected to the visible stuff in RAM, then when the invisible stuff is visible, transfer some of the connected invisible parts to RAM, which would save RAM but cause potential stuttering.

The main problem with the game is that it is rushed, but with the collective effort of me and other people it can be completely overhauled to a new version rather than the mess of a release it was.

[Blastfrog]

The 20fps cap (should be 15) and lack of light diminishing are a couple things wrong with it.

[lunaark]

Sodaholic said:

The 20fps cap (should be 15) and lack of light diminishing are a couple things wrong with it.

Why 15FPS when you can have it run at higher FPS?

[Technician]

'Cause eventually you're just going to turn it into Doom. A ports charm comes from it's developments team's creativity to overcome hardware limitations. Of course, 32X Doom fails at this aspect but why try and polish a turd?

[lunaark]

Technician said:

'Cause eventually you're just going to turn it into Doom. A ports charm comes from it's developments team's creativity to overcome hardware limitations. Of course, 32X Doom fails at this aspect but why try and polish a turd?

Because, if you can make a great thing out of a turd, why not do it? I find it is fun and challenging, and if you don't like it fuck off because I won't stop. If you have a genuine concern, tell me, because I am pretty sure making ROM hacks does not affect you in anyway, and some people actually want this. I won't stop because of one person, and the other people in the comments seem to be supportive of my work.

[Blastfrog]

TheLoneSurvivor said:

Why 15FPS when you can have it run at higher FPS?

Because the gameplay logic is tied to the framerate and the Jaguar version (and things derived from it) was designed to run at 15. Due to the poor performance, it jumps back to 15 a lot anyway, so it'd be more consistent too.

TheLoneSurvivor said:

if you don't like it fuck off

Woah there, you're being a little too harsh and defensive. Technician was just throwing in his two cents, he wasn't attacking you or anything.

[Jaxxoon R]

What's the point of putting levels that didn't exist in the original PSX Doom into the TC. The whole charm of the port was that it was missing a good chunk of content. Why polish a turd?

EDIT: I'd like to test this, but I can't find a dump that doesn't die when patched.

[Doomkid]

Jaxxoon R said:

Why polish a turd?

I'm not a huge fan of the PSX port, but it's far from being a "turd"!

[VGA]

Doomkid said:

I'm not a huge fan of the PSX port, but it's far from being a "turd"!

He was being sarcastic.

[Maes]

The 32X port is pretty much at the bottom of the barrel when it comes to the hardware specs for a true Doom port -one that's using the original engine and most of the resources, albeit with cuts-. This lower limit seems to be a 32-bit CPU and about 4 MB of addressable RAM, which can be only partially supplanted with addressable (slower) ROM and resource compression, which is heavily used in console ports. So you have a lot of swapping things in/out of RAM all the time. And in fact, the Saturn port (which is basically a 32X plus a GPU and CD-ROM unit, plus some more RAM) fares a whole lot better, but still it's far from the best.

I don't know how well a level truly tailored to the 32X limitations could run -e.g. using a single texture, flat and monster type, so that no "IWAD" access and decompression is required during gameplay. Maybe then a consistent 35 fps or even more could be feasible, but it would be a whole lot more monotonous.

[fraggle]

TheLoneSurvivor said:

Because, if you can make a great thing out of a turd, why not do it? I find it is fun and challenging, and if you don't like it fuck off

I for one think your project is pretty cool. Please calm down.

[lunaark]

buttspit said:

Speaking of SNES Doom, TheLoneSurvivor, check your PM inbox every now and then. Got something coming up that might interest you.

Wait, what? MIGHT intrest me? If it has to do with new info about SNES Doom it is very intresting.

[Doomkid]

VGA said:

He was being sarcastic.

I got the impression he was semi-mocking Technician, but the difference here is that the PSX port is worth having a dedicated PC version with extensions and improvements, unlike the 32x version, which offers essentially nothing new or interesting, in contrast to the PSX port. Then again I love tinkering with Doom95 so I'm not one to talk about attempting to salvage objectively outdated ports!

[betabox]

TheLoneSurvivor said:

Wait, what? MIGHT intrest me? If it has to do with new info about SNES Doom it is very intresting.

Once it arrives, gotta verify it has anything you can dig into that could help you further your progress on hacking SNES Doom. Should be sometime next week.

[lunaark]

buttspit said:

Once it arrives, gotta verify it has anything you can dig into that could help you further your progress on hacking SNES Doom. Should be sometime next week.

You can at least tell me what it is, as I can tell you if it would help and the anticipation is crazy, I am losing sleep over it rn.

[Shadow Hog]

If you don't mind me asking, why are you making patches for the PAL version of a 32X game? Wouldn't you want the 60Hz the NTSC versions allow for? (...Ignoring that the framerate of the game isn't even remotely close to 60Hz at any point.)

[Job]

TheLoneSurvivor said:

You can at least tell me what it is, as I can tell you if it would help and the anticipation is crazy, I am losing sleep over it rn.

That goes double for me.

[Technician]

If it's a beta with a debug mode, don't keep it under the radar.

[lunaark]

Technician said:

If it's a beta with a debug mode, don't keep it under the radar.

Well he did make posts before about Doom SNES prototypes. My theories of what it is (based on context)

OK, so he said he would try to find stuff in it that would be useful to me, which narrows it down to a storage device because finding stuff in a ROM makes no sense with all the context. I think it could be

-A box with Doom SNES alpha stuff
-Old harddrives
-Maybe, just maybe even a devbox used by one of the devs (which would be a gold mine in both price and content)

[Xane_MM]

You're fixing one of the things people usually say is bad about the 32X version? This is good!

Also, while we're on the topic of 32X instruments, is there a way to port that odd-but-cool Bowed Pad 32X instrument from Dark Halls to something like AdLib Tracker II or something? From what I remember, it's the only instrument that didn't sound like farting.