[v1.5] Doom 64: Retribution

[Lila Feuer]

I wonder what it would take to get Doom 64 a re-release/release on the PC, hypothetically speaking.

Nintendo shouldn't care, Midway is dead however, but id owns the intellectual property and oversaw the project's development in the first place.

[JohnnyTheWolf]

I wonder if the folks at Night Dive Studios and the folks behind the Turok Remasters have considered it. I remember asking about it on Turok Dinosaur Hunter's Steam forum, but I could not get an official response.

 

Even though we have Retribution, I would totally be willing to pay for a full-blown PC release/remaster.

[Lila Feuer]

Kaiser has the know-how to make it a reality, but yeah it's just the legal matters that are confusing.

[JohnnyTheWolf]

Plus it would allow both Kaiser and Nevander to finally get remunerated for all their efforts and good work.

[Nevander]

16 hours ago, Houndoom said:

He's working really hard for Nightdive Studios right now on various projects.

I'd love it if one of them was to get Doom 64 remastered and on Steam. You have no idea how fast I'd buy that shit.

[Blastfrog]

I have mixed feelings about commercial resurrections of long abandoned games. Stuff like this very project could potentially come under fire if Doom 64 were rereleased commercially. At that point, you'd probably have to rely on GZDoom to gain support for its IWAD and turn the project into a PWAD.

[Nevander]

Well guys I don't know if I will be able to make the 31st for 1.4. I still have two maps to finish and there still some other small things I want to do. It's looking like early November now for 1.4, definitely in the first two weeks.

[Average]

Worst Doom 64: Retribution 1.4 developer ever!

 

Looking forward to it regardless. ;)

[Nevander]

Yea I should see about getting some better Doom 64 Retribution 1.4 devs.

 

I am about half-way done with the next map.

[JohnnyTheWolf]

I did not even know you had a release planned for October 31st.

 

I probably already told you this, but please do not rush it; SGtMkIV did so with Brutal Doom 64 and it is a frustratingly unpolished mess. I still cannot believe this got him an award...

[Average]

Yeah, I'm glad you've the wisdom to hold off on the Halloween release for the sake of your project.  We can all wait for quality. :)

 

Slight aside here, but I just wanted to say that it's really cool to see Doom 64 garner some recent attention from the modding community and, of course, Aubrey Hodges.  Good times to be a Doom 64 fan!

[JohnnyTheWolf]

What about Aubrey Hodges? Did he announce something recently in regard to Doom 64?

[Nevander]

3 hours ago, JohnnyTheWolf said:

I probably already told you this, but please do not rush it; SGtMkIV did so with Brutal Doom 64 and it is a frustratingly unpolished mess. I still cannot believe this got him an award...

There is one thing I like about Brutal Doom 64 over mine though: his is more gritty and feels even more atmospheric. The "brutal" treatment works a lot better in Doom 64 than it does classic Doom IMO. Mine is more faithful and original yes, but lacks that grit his was able to achieve. I think part of the reason was using lower quality textures that were Doom paletted or something in the original releases. The lighting was darker too perhaps. The reverb effect is more pronounced. A polished version of Brutal Doom 64 would be pretty cool I would have to admit.

 

1 hour ago, JohnnyTheWolf said:

What about Aubrey Hodges? Did he announce something recently in regard to Doom 64?

He recently released his 20th Anniversary soundtrack for it. It's pretty good and it will work great as an alternative OGG pack. Since it's very new and stuff I will not be putting it ModDB. I will make one for myself but you guys will have to make your own since I don't want to just put up his latest work for free. Would feel dickish already but even more given recent events (read about it on his thread of the soundtrack).

[JohnnyTheWolf]

Oh, do not get me wrong: I also like what SGtMkIV did with Doom 64. My frustration with the mod is that it was released too early and up to this date it is still plagued with bugs, rough edges, questionable additions and insane difficulty spikes. Hopefully, with your permission, he will also rebuild Brutal Doom 64 using Retribution rather than outdated GZDoom64.

 

I did not know about Aubrey Hodges re-releasing his Doom 64 soundtrack. I will have to check it out! I take none of the new bonus tracks will be featured in Retribution's expansions, though?

[Nevander]

4 hours ago, JohnnyTheWolf said:

I take none of the new bonus tracks will be featured in Retribution's expansions, though?

When released, it will use tracks from the standard Doom 64 soundtrack. However, since the music assignments are done in LANGUAGE now, this means changing it to something else is very easy; only the specific strings need to be changed. This means you can create a music PK3 with the lumps D_NEW01 to D_NEW11 (one for each of the tracks from the original OST and the 8 new ones from the 20th Anniversary OST) and then change those strings to point to NEWxx instead of MUSxx and they will be changed.

 

I have already created a WAD such as this which re-assigns the Retribution levels to the new bonus tracks, although I will not be providing the ones from the 20th Anniversary soundtrack due to the reason above. The other three bonus tracks are already included in the OGG pack from ModDB. I will provide a guide on how to create a music pack to work with the re-assignment WAD when the time comes.

[Average]

I know you're probably already elbow deep in D64RTR stuff but I was wondering, if you have time and the inclination, if you could make the mod compatible with nashgore.  It works really well together except that the death animation of the imp 'freezes' leaving a floating body.  I'd fix it myself but I've no clue where to even start!

 

EDIT:  I added the version of nashgore that I use (just in case you don't have a version to hand). :)

quiet-nashgore.zip

Edited October 29, 2017 by Average : Added a file

[JohnnyTheWolf]

Another idea of an addon for a later release would be to have a Doom 64-themed version of the vanilla status bar. As much as I like Doom 64's minimalistic HUD, I kind of wish I could keep track of the type of armour I am wearing as well as the arsenal and ammunition I am holding without having to constantly switch between weapons.

Edited October 29, 2017 by JohnnyTheWolf

[Nevander]

8 hours ago, Average said:

I know you're probably already elbow deep in D64RTR stuff but I was wondering, if you have time and the inclination, if you could make the mod compatible with nashgore.  It works really well together except that the death animation of the imp 'freezes' leaving a floating body.  I'd fix it myself but I've no clue where to even start!

Yep. That darn Imp animation is a couple frames longer, so any re-definition of the Imp would most likely use the classic Doom animation frames and length. It would probably be easiest to patch Nashgore. Since I am building my mod to be sort of its own thing (meaning I am not trying to stay compatible with other mods given the nature of this TC), it means most mods will not play well with it out of the box.

 

What I'm thinking is: load D64RTR > load Nashgore > load a new file that replaces any incompatible Nashgore actors with modified versions of the Nashgore versions but with the Doom 64 frames and stuff

 

 

7 hours ago, JohnnyTheWolf said:

Another idea of an addon for a later release would be to have a Doom 64-themed version of the vanilla status bar. As much as I like Doom 64's minimalistic HUD, I kind of wish I could keep track of the type of armour I am wearing as well as the arsenal and ammunition I am holding without having to constantly switch between weapons.

Not a bad idea. I might could try creating another Doom 64 themed HUD in the style of classic Doom's layout. Maybe even include it and override one of the other HUD choices. I did make a patch for NC HUD (one of the best HUD mods IMO) that you can run after it with Retribution. The patch is for version 1.32 of the HUD though since 2.0 moved to ZScript.

[Houndoom]

On 10/25/2017 at 4:06 PM, Nevander said:

I'd love it if one of them was to get Doom 64 remastered and on Steam. You have no idea how fast I'd buy that shit.

Since Midway went bankrupt and got liquidated back in 2009, there's a chance the publishing rights could've fell into a corporate black hole.

I'd wager Warner Bros. has a death grip on it since they brought some IPs from them and has no idea what to do with it. Just like the Blood Franchise... *sadface*

[Nevander]

I think if anyone should own the rights it should be id Software. However, I doubt they care about Doom 64 at this point. That's a big problem these days with big companies in my opinion. They aren't down to Earth anymore, only caring about the big bucks and "moving forward." If they went back and remastered Doom 64 and re-released officially on the major outlets (Steam, GoG, etc.), they would be literally the coolest devs ever and would get so much more respect from not only me, but most likely the entire Doom community.

[Avoozl]

But ID generally aren't the same people anymore, like one or two of their members are still a part of it at least from my memory. It could pretty much explain how their company has changed.

[Quasar]

Hugo Martin is a big Doom 64 fan, take that as you will. The mappers for Doom 2016 were listening to the Doom 64 soundtrack while working. Some parts of Kadingir Sanctum are even lifted from Watch Your Step. They know about the game, they like the game, they consider it part of the canon. id Software just tweeted about it being more than 20 years old now a few days ago to celebrate their return to a Nintendo console with the upcoming Switch release of the new game.

[Nevander]

That just makes me think they are fans of their own franchise and use old material for inspiration. As a game development company, they don't seem to put any focus into their older titles anymore. Last time they did it was when they got Nerve to make No Rest for the Living. Now I know Doom 64 wasn't even an id title, but at this stage with Midway being dead, the status of it may as well be handed off to id.

[Average]

Perhaps Night Dive or Devolver Digital would be the best bets.  I mean, they've already shown form with regards to remastering old titles and Night Dive has already worked with Kaiser who's already got a remastered D64 sitting there ready to go. :)  

[Lila Feuer]

It's sad that a lot of people don't know there is several ways to experience D64 on PC, as I see almost endless comment after comment on twitter, FB and YT about 'bring D64 back' and 'oh the memories'. Course, the legalities associated with any version is also highly questionable, so I'd understand if most wouldn't want to take that risk. It's a good game, damned like Doomguy is to remain in Hell forever.

[Nevander]

Yep. My advice to anyone who really wants to play the legit original Doom64 experience but on PC is to "obtain" the ROM and use EX. There's no doubting it is the best way to play it on PC. Since the creation of my project, the goal shifted to be more like a remastered or enhanced version for a common and up to date engine with the ability for improvement and further enhancement in the future, including the addition of all the custom levels you could dream of. As time goes on, I stand by this new goal more and more firmly. I like what I've built and that I've built it in such a way that it can be such easily tweaked and modified. Those are the biggest drawbacks of EX.

 

Ideally the best thing would be if Kaiser or someone could get some major updates to EX to add support for all the things GZDoom can do like expanded MAPINFO support, dynamic lights, modifiable actors, and so on. I'd wager this is more likely than a re-release in any official capacity.

[JohnnyTheWolf]

Why do you think Doom 64 EX is still better than Retribution?

[Nevander]

The biggest reason is that the goal was always to completely and faithfully port it to PC. That fact alone makes it superior as a means to play the pure Doom 64 experience. If you want mods and modability, well that's where Retribution IS better.

 

It's also supported the new lighting system since its inception when GZDoom only recently added a "way" to do it, but I'm not sure how much it works alike yet since I have not delved into converting my maps to it yet. I don't know how well it will play with normal sector lighting effects and so on.

 

I still want to know how those GEC dudes did all their stuff. If Graf could see their modified sources, we could recreate Doom 64 perfectly in GZDoom as they seem to have done. We haven't heard about their project in a while but I really hope they don't keep it closed. Their methods will go a long way to allow me to bring my project up as well. They can go for faithfulness 100% while I go for minor enhancements and whatnot.

[Nevander]

So for the second unfinished map I am coming up with a puzzle that involves finding item codekeys from a server room and finding salvage to use a machine to construct items, one of which being a red key that you need to continue, however that key will need to be coded to work with the red door on the map (by using another terminal nearby).

 

I also made a garage door that has a missing switch panel (like in HL2 Episode 1 with the handle) and an open shipping crate made with 3D floors.

 

These maps should end up being really fun.

 

Going to need to come up with a cool Hell themed puzzle for the third unfinished map which is going to be in the Hell section. Open to ideas since I havent even started that one.

[JohnnyTheWolf]

How about having to place skulls on altars?