[GEC] Master Edition PSX Doom for the PlayStation. Beta 4 Released [11/16/2022]

[dftf]

@Dark Pulse odd RE: Hanger AutoMap secret.  As per some other people's comments here, I can confirm I'm not using overclock in my emulator and the framerate limiter is set to 60FPS (as I assume the DOOM / Final DOOM games you build-against to create the disc-images are the NTSC-A (USA) releases, not the PAL (European) ones?)

 

As for Dis: well, sure, I could kill the Pain Elementals early-on, but isn't one of the features of DOOM that you can choose to fight, or provoke infighting?  The latter should generally be possible without the engine crashing (I think in the original Williams' games, Suburbs was the only level I've ever had this occur on).

 

@riderr3 I have replayed Tombstone (via God Mode / All Weapons) and just pressed each switch once; the exit was indeed not-walled-up so not sure what happened in my first playthrough.  Maybe I either missed once, or loaded a Save State where I thought I did one before the save?  Apologies, seems fine!  However, can I ask members here if there is any technical difference (engine-wise) in pressing each switch only once (where they briefly go down to green, then back up to red) and pressing USE twice rapidly (which causes them to lock in the green position)?  Is this a bug, or an intentional feature that sometimes does a different effect?

 

Enemy spawn areas shown on AutoMap: shame they do show though, as I like to reveal the full map on levels I've missed secrets on to see if I can figure-out where they are!  I wondered if perhaps tagging them differently would somehow hide them, but I guess it may be beyond the scope of this project.  Maybe the reverse-engineered PsyDOOM port might be able to offer this?

 

River Styx lava: my introduction to DOOM was the PlayStation versions, so I'm not as-familiar with levels beyond the console-originals.  I did buy the "Collectors Edition" (with Ultimate DOOM, DOOM II and Final DOOM and the DOOM95 launcher) but I prefer the slower-pace and creepier vibe of the PSX versions!  Does seem odd though to have lava and it not be damaging: was this an oversight in the original level, or the author did this intentionally?

 

Industrial Zone Megasphere secret: apologies if it's been discussed before... perhaps a "known issues" on the DOOM World wiki might help?  (It would also be nice to have a changelog / version history that details in each Beta what changes have been made to each level.  Currently all the Wiki notes is which new levels were introduced in which Beta, but not revisions to existing levels.)  In answer to your question, my emulator is not set to overclock the CPU, and the framerate limiter is set to 60FPS, as I assume the NTSC-A (USA) version of DOOM and Final DOOM are what this project builds disc-images against, not the PAL (Europe) version?

 

Wolfenstein: I just think it somewhat shatters the illusion that you've entered the world of Wolfenstein 3D when you clearly have geometry that wasn't possible in the original MS-DOS engine.  Also, seems a little inconsistent when people say we should have fast-flicker effects as that is what the original ID team used, but if you play the original ID version of this level (in DOOM II), the geometry (bar the one new secret area) is consistent with the original WOLF3D.EXE engine.  (I think this levels geometry is based on something like the 3DO or Jaguar port of Wolfenstein 3D?)

[intacowetrust]

On 4/10/2020 at 7:31 AM, dftf said:

Enemy spawn areas shown on AutoMap: shame they do show though, as I like to reveal the full map on levels I've missed secrets on to see if I can figure-out where they are!  I wondered if perhaps tagging them differently would somehow hide them, but I guess it may be beyond the scope of this project.  Maybe the reverse-engineered PsyDOOM port might be able to offer this?

 

 

Good call out! I've fixed this in the following commit for PsyDoom. It's a simple change so could easily be pulled into PSXDOOM-RE (and therefore eventually this project) also:
https://github.com/BodbDearg/PsyDoom/commit/5a9b4059ac7a18b724edc380c26fa3fc6e548f5a

 

The hidden lines outside the starting point window (on Deimos Anomaly) now don't show, for example:

 

[Whiteysnakey]

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Edited June 13, 2020 by Whiteysnakey

[vivisectt]

So awesome you guys are working on this!! booted up no problem on my modded PlayStation, but hangs on the second loading screen after the select game menu when using PSIO any idea why? let me know if I can help in anyway..

[Erick194]

On 4/10/2020 at 8:31 AM, dftf said:

Industrial Zone Megasphere secret: apologies if it's been discussed before... perhaps a "known issues" on the DOOM World wiki might help?  (It would also be nice to have a changelog / version history that details in each Beta what changes have been made to each level.  Currently all the Wiki notes is which new levels were introduced in which Beta, but not revisions to existing levels.)  In answer to your question, my emulator is not set to overclock the CPU, and the framerate limiter is set to 60FPS, as I assume the NTSC-A (USA) version of DOOM and Final DOOM are what this project builds disc-images against, not the PAL (Europe) version?

 

Wolfenstein: I just think it somewhat shatters the illusion that you've entered the world of Wolfenstein 3D when you clearly have geometry that wasn't possible in the original MS-DOS engine.  Also, seems a little inconsistent when people say we should have fast-flicker effects as that is what the original ID team used, but if you play the original ID version of this level (in DOOM II), the geometry (bar the one new secret area) is consistent with the original WOLF3D.EXE engine.  (I think this levels geometry is based on something like the 3DO or Jaguar port of Wolfenstein 3D?)

 

Greetings, I converted those maps, I will very likely modify the sector of the Megasphere in the Industrial Zone, the map of Wolfenstein and Grosse are based on the versions of Atari Jaguar, but I took the liberty of giving them a different twist since it is PSXDOOM and It should not look like the original.

 

On 4/11/2020 at 5:57 PM, intacowetrust said:

Good call out! I've fixed this in the following commit for PsyDoom. It's a simple change so could easily be pulled into PSXDOOM-RE (and therefore eventually this project) also:
https://github.com/BodbDearg/PsyDoom/commit/5a9b4059ac7a18b724edc380c26fa3fc6e548f5a

 

The hidden lines outside the starting point window (on Deimos Anomaly) now don't show, for example:

 

I will incorporate that repair as soon as possible, I hope to catch up with your commits in PSYDOOM for PSXDOOM-RE

 

On 4/13/2020 at 9:50 AM, Whiteysnakey said:

This could be incredibly simple or currently not possible but can you set a solid color for the sky box through some kind of work around?

 

Edit: Also is it possible to change the map name with the current tools?

 

Hmm, what exactly do you mean?

 

4 hours ago, vivisectt said:

So awesome you guys are working on this!! booted up no problem on my modded PlayStation, but hangs on the second loading screen after the select game menu when using PSIO any idea why? let me know if I can help in anyway..

 

I'm glad it worked well for you, unfortunately I don't use the PSIO and I don't know exactly how it works, but I'll try to get it fixed.

 

I appreciate everyone's comments, I will be catching up to reach Beta 4, Greetings everyone.

 

[Whiteysnakey]

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Edited June 13, 2020 by Whiteysnakey

[riderr3]

6 hours ago, Whiteysnakey said:

@Erick194 When a map is created with the "Tools" it is given the default name "Attack" when you play it.

 

Because this is a stripped down version of tools. When the Master Edition comes out, full tools will be available, including the ability to change the name of the level.

P.S. It's already possible to change the level name if you know how to use HEX editor and use it to search and replace the text string Attack (or Hangar) inside the test game image (.bin)

Edited April 18, 2020 by riderr3

[Whiteysnakey]

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Edited June 13, 2020 by Whiteysnakey

[Whiteysnakey]

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Edited June 13, 2020 by Whiteysnakey

[Impboy4]

There are no bot "things" in PSX Doom. It's exclusive to Doom 64 only.

[Gez]

The bots also don't have real AI, they're pretty much there just for the title sequence and kinda useless outside of that.

[DynamiteKaitorn]

It's unlikely team GEC will add such a feature anytime soon. the PSX engine is VERY limited in what it can do and maps can very easily eat up the small memory pool allocated per map.

[Whiteysnakey]

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Edited June 13, 2020 by Whiteysnakey

[DynamiteKaitorn]

This entire project is literally on PS1 hardware, there is no .pk3

 

If you want some PS1 textures and HUD graphics I think someone has posted them somewhere.

[Whiteysnakey]

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Edited June 13, 2020 by Whiteysnakey

[Erick194]

Battle Against the Icon of Sin ;) 

Spoiler

 

[taufan99]

Can't wait for the PSX IoS video!

[Whiteysnakey]

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Edited June 13, 2020 by Whiteysnakey

[Erick194]

They are back

Spoiler

 

[taufan99]

Cool! But what about the Arch-Vile's sound effects? I remember that Hodges gave the monster a few more sound effects than are available in the original PC version.

[DynamiteKaitorn]

Archviles are back you say?

 

*Proceeds to add them to Maps 11 and 32*

[Dexiaz]

 

 

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! OMFG! YOU'RE NOT KIDDING?! F*CK ME, THIS IS AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11111111111111111111111oneoneoneone

 

P.S.: Glad to see you've fixed a discovered problem with "wrong using memory in code". So how it's affects mapping? I mean, already used textures and monster on maps? Does those guys replace something existing like in Dehacked? Or it's a new things? Got too many questions about this.

[Dark Pulse]

Erick, you're a madman.

 

But what's the memory usage for them look like, is my question. And how well does it animate. And so on.

 

I mean, doing this on Doom 64 wouldn't be too hard (once replacement models got made, I mean), but doing it on PSX... wow.

 

I wonder if my levels can benefit from this... a couple of them (namely Open Season and Neurosphere) did originally have Arch-viles, after all.

[riderr3]

Stuff in the screenshots above which was recently added definitely needs additional testing. I hope Beta4 will not be delayed for another 6 months and we will not be teased.
 

45 minutes ago, Dark Pulse said:

I wonder if my levels can benefit from this... a couple of them (namely Open Season and Neurosphere) did originally have Arch-viles, after all.

I suppose arch-viles is worthy as mini-bosses on smaller maps (if they consume much memory). Also wolfss and keens can return to wolf maps (still I like Grosse ending with barons, i think wolf maps can also contain few usual monsters which fit PSX Doom macabre style).

Edited April 26, 2020 by riderr3

[Dark Pulse]

(Apologies for the double post, but I don't check in here as often as I used to.)

 

On 4/10/2020 at 10:31 AM, dftf said:

@Dark Pulse odd RE: Hanger AutoMap secret.  As per some other people's comments here, I can confirm I'm not using overclock in my emulator and the framerate limiter is set to 60FPS (as I assume the DOOM / Final DOOM games you build-against to create the disc-images are the NTSC-A (USA) releases, not the PAL (European) ones?)

Correct. I'm not sure what version the actual project is built off of - I do recall there being some PAL compatability - but I ran mine and tested mine off the NTSC-U/C version. And I know for a fact I did it - it's tricky, but possible. The whole map is tested at least once with no emulator-based overclocking just to make sure it all performs right, then again with it on.

 

It's difficult, but it should be possible. And again, moving it would basically mean fundamentally altering the map or the secret in some way - something I try to avoid unless there's no other option available to me.

 

I'm using an actual controller though - I don't know if you are. If not, that may be the difference-maker.

 

On 4/10/2020 at 10:31 AM, dftf said:

As for Dis: well, sure, I could kill the Pain Elementals early-on, but isn't one of the features of DOOM that you can choose to fight, or provoke infighting?  The latter should generally be possible without the engine crashing (I think in the original Williams' games, Suburbs was the only level I've ever had this occur on).

This is due to the fact Lost Souls consume RAM too.

 

The map is not really beatable from pistol start without infighting, so you got a valid point, but of course, that's how I have to test the map, so I make sure it's doable. The game is EXTREMELY tight with RAM limits due to how limited the PS1 RAM is (1 MB), and everything must fit into that - level data, sprites, sidedef textures, flats, the memory buffers for the screen, you name it. (The only thing that doesn't is the samples for music, and that's because the PS1 SPU has its own dedicated 512k of RAM for samples.) It's why I couldn't even fit Cacodemons in here on lower difficulty levels - the original plan was to keep the Cacos like the original map had, but turn them into Pain Elementals on Ultra-Violence (since one of PS1 Doom's selling points was that you found Doom II monsters on Doom maps in Ultra-Violence, and I felt keeping that was extremely important).

 

Unfortunately I overflowed on memory, every time - the Spiderdemon is the monster that takes up the single most amount of memory of any monster in the game (over half a megabyte!), and given that this is Dis, removing it from the map is NOT an option. So basically, short of removing the Barons (also not something I'd really like to do), I've got relatively little ways to free up memory, other than changing the sky (which would require me to remove some sidedef textures as non-fire skies use about 1/6th of the entire sidedef texture memory space - yuck), or possibly freeing up some of the tortured soldier textures - and even then, that'd only buy some time, and that assumes that the game is allowed to overflow into those memory areas if there's extra space not being used for sidedefs/flats (I'd presume not).

 

Basically, any map with Pain Elementals, if you give them enough time, will eventually crash the game due to how many Lost Souls get spawned. I'm not sure if PS1 Doom has a limit just like PC Doom does - I'd hope so. If not, then maybe Erick needs to add one to the re-engineered project. And even then there's bugs that could happen, like if they detonate too close to a wall they might get spawned outside the wall, and eventually begin corrupting the level. Another bug that will hopefully get fixed in an optimized version.

 

In short, the only way to deal with that would be to not have them be Pain Elementals - but then almost all the other Doom II monsters are not good fits:

• Chaingunners are pointless due to the Spiderdemon basically being a massive one... not to mention it'd make a map I already made more difficult become virtually impossible. The Spiderdemon already controls a huge chunk of the map, and I started it in the center to take away even more control from the player. I always hated how the original tucked it into a corner and you could just rush and brain it with some BFGs and turn the fight into an anticlimax.
• Revenants aren't nearly as scary in PS1 Doom due to the way slower movement speed. They also always fire homing missiles in the PSX version - and here you've got an arena map that reduces your cover sharply. Not a good idea.
• The Mancubus would consume too much RAM - I'd have to remove Barons as well to slot them in probably. And that would mean removing the Barons from all difficulties due to how the game works (it loads monster types if they're in even one difficulty, even if none of the Thing flags are set to spawn them in that difficulty), so basically adding them would fuck the lower difficulty level balance as Doom II monsters are *ONLY* supposed to be on Ultra-Violence.
• Hell Knights are just a weaker Baron, so not much point.
• Arachnotrons would be interesting... but they also can really pin you down hard, so I felt it wasn't a good fit, not to mention they'd basically make the map much easier to win via infighting to the point that you having to fight would become basically pointless. They do, however, have the advantage of using about 14k less RAM, but that's pretty negligible in the long-term scheme of things.

So basically, it's about the best version of the map I feel I can make, given the circumstances and limitations of the console. An ideal version would put the Cacos back in - but that'd have to wait for a hypothetical Doom 64 version of the project (where we get 4x the RAM and loading off a cartridge ROM means that monster variety issues are a thing of the past), and even then it'd have to be altered for a Spiderdemon.

Edited April 26, 2020 by Dark Pulse

[DynamiteKaitorn]

@Deⓧiaz

 

[intacowetrust]

4 hours ago, Dark Pulse said:

The map is not really beatable from pistol start without infighting, so you got a valid point, but of course, that's how I have to test the map, so I make sure it's doable. The game is EXTREMELY tight with RAM limits due to how limited the PS1 RAM is (1 MB), and everything must fit into that - level data, sprites, sidedef textures, flats, the memory buffers for the screen, you name it. (The only thing that doesn't is the samples for music, and that's because the PS1 SPU has its own dedicated 512k of RAM for samples.) It's why I couldn't even fit Cacodemons in here on lower difficulty levels - the original plan was to keep the Cacos like the original map had, but turn them into Pain Elementals on Ultra-Violence (since one of PS1 Doom's selling points was that you found Doom II monsters on Doom maps in Ultra-Violence, and I felt keeping that was extremely important).

 

Just to clarify a few things about memory limits on the PS1 which may be helpful for mappers to bear in mind:

• Main RAM is actually 2 MiB in size, VRAM is 1 MiB. A large chunk of your main RAM however is used up by the .EXE itself and the global variables it declares, as well as 64 KiB reserved by the BIOS. In the greatest hits version of DOOM all this leaves 1,368,380 bytes available for the program via Z_Malloc (usable heap space).
• The 2 screen framebuffers (front & back) consume only VRAM, not main memory. They always consume (except during screen fade transitions) a fixed 256 KiB of VRAM. Palette colors are also squeezed into otherwise unused parts of this 256 KiB too.
• Wall and flat textures only temporarily occupy main RAM during level loading, after that they are promptly evicted once they are uploaded to VRAM. Therefore these types of textures do not count towards your main memory budget during gameplay.
• 64 KiB of VRAM is used at all times during gameplay for the STATUS graphic lump (UI and fonts etc.)
• 64 KiB of VRAM (a 256x256 pixel texture 'page') is reserved for flats used by the level, not matter how many flats are actually used. This limits you to 16 64x64 flats per level but since the amount used is fixed, reducing the flat texture count does not impact memory usage.
• A fixed 192 KiB of VRAM (3 256x256 pixel texture pages) is reserved exclusively for wall and sky textures by the engine during gameplay. The engine supports textures with widths of 128, 64 and 16 pixels only (except for regular skies which are 256x128). This translates to a theoretical maximum of 12 128x128 textures, 24 64x128 and 96 16x128 textures which can be used during a level. The (previously hidden) VRAM viewer can be helpful to visualize where each texture is going into VRAM.
• As I identified earlier in the thread, there is a 256x256 pixel (64 KiB) texture page unused by the engine during gameplay. This further eats into the VRAM budget but could potentially be unlocked for use by @Erick194 to help make texture cache overflows less likely.
• After all of these things eating into VRAM, you have 6 256x256 pixel texture pages (384 KiB) leftover for sprites in VRAM.
• Sprites are uploaded to VRAM on each frame, depending on what is visible. Therefore they must kept loaded in main RAM at all times, as well as occupying VRAM when they are being drawn. The sprite lumps are stored compressed in main RAM however, therefore more effective compression could in theory reduce this main memory overhead.
• If the number of unique sprites being rendered in a particular frame exceeds the 384 KiB VRAM budget for sprites mentioned above, you get a "texture cache overflow" error.

 

4 hours ago, Dark Pulse said:

Unfortunately I overflowed on memory, every time - the Spiderdemon is the monster that takes up the single most amount of memory of any monster in the game (over half a megabyte!), and given that this is Dis, removing it from the map is NOT an option. So basically, short of removing the Barons (also not something I'd really like to do), I've got relatively little ways to free up memory, other than changing the sky (which would require me to remove some sidedef textures as non-fire skies use about 1/6th of the entire sidedef texture memory space - yuck), or possibly freeing up some of the tortured soldier textures - and even then, that'd only buy some time, and that assumes that the game is allowed to overflow into those memory areas if there's extra space not being used for sidedefs/flats (I'd presume not).

 

Again just to reiterate, your texture cache overflow error is caused by the fixed 384 KiB of VRAM dedicated to sprites being exceeded in a particular frame - it has nothing to do with running out of main memory. Changing the sky texture would also not help this issue, because the areas of VRAM dedicated to sprites, flats and textures are fixed and separate to each other. 

 

There are a couple of things you can do to try and reduce the VRAM usage by sprites on a particular frame:

 

(1) Use less types of monsters and sprites.

(2) Use monsters and sprites with smaller graphics.

(3) Have less monsters and sprites onscreen at the same time by partitioning up the level with solid walls, using less monsters in individual encounters etc. This can be easily overlooked but the key thing to remember with the texture cache overflow is that it's the number of unique sprites that are visible at the same time (and their size) which contributes towards the error. For example 4 imps could use as much VRAM memory for a particular frame as 4 different types of monsters, because each of those imps could be showing a different frame/pose. The more monsters you have onscreen the more likely each one will be showing something different, so this can add to the strain too... It's the reason why levels such as 'The Suburbs' can experience overflows due to the very large amounts of onscreen monsters, even though in theory they might be using the same level of monster variety as other levels.

 

I realize that with a level like 'Dis' your hands might be a bit tied for using some of those options, so perhaps @Erick194 might be able to help out with engine changes. Right off the bat there's that unused 64 KiB of VRAM which I've identified, which could be put to good use. He could also make it so that the texture cache overflow is not treated as a fatal error in the release version of the game and deal with the problem in one of two ways:

• Allow VRAM already being used for sprites in a frame to be overwritten and suffer the resulting (temporary) graphical glitches that follow. It might look funky for a few frames but probably much more preferable to a hard crash?
• Force the GPU to finish all current drawing, clear all sprites from the texture cache and allow it to be filled again. This would probably come with a large FPS drop, but still probably much preferable to crashing. In fact, I plan on doing this for PsyDoom and banishing texture cache overflows entirely since there isn't really much of a performance penalty in that case.

 

4 hours ago, Dark Pulse said:

Basically, any map with Pain Elementals, if you give them enough time, will eventually crash the game due to how many Lost Souls get spawned.

 

This is indeed possible, it would take a long time though. The game will outright refuse to launch a level (crashes with 'P_SetupLevel: not enough free memory') if it doesn't have at least 48 KiB of main memory free in the heap after everything is loaded. This 48 KiB is reserved for things that spawn during runtime, like bullet puffs, blood and spawned lost souls etc. so you are always guaranteed to have that amount of main RAM leftover on starting a level.

 

Given that a the size of a thing allocation at runtime is 172 bytes (including zone allocator overhead), this allows you to spawn approximately 285 map objects at runtime at a minimum - possibly more if the map doesn't require as much main RAM. There are a few other allocations (like thinkers for map changes/effects) that eat into heap space, but that should give you an idea of the kinds of limits you are playing with. You are much more likely to run into the VRAM limits with texture cache overflows (caused by lots of souls being active) than hitting the main RAM limit most of the time.

 

Edited April 26, 2020 by intacowetrust

[intacowetrust]

8 hours ago, Erick194 said:

They are back

 

@Erick194 that is friggin awesome!! Nice work!

 

Some questions on this:

• Do you plan on incorporating the changes made for Archvile etc. support back into PSXDOOM-RE, or will you be publishing them somewhere else? If possible I would like to make PsyDoom support the GEC Master Edition and the new additions to the enemy roster.
• Do you plan on making use of Aubrey's unused sounds for the archvile or will you use the PC sounds instead?
• Given that the archvile will require new sounds to be added to the game, will you be making tools to edit/update the .WMD file? (like what we discussed in the PsyDoom thread)

[Gez]

IIRC, Aubrey's arch-vile sounds are "raw" and not filtered/pitch-shifted/otherwise processed to be suitably monster growls. As in, they just plain don't work. You'd need an audio engineer to finish them properly.

[Erick194]

40 minutes ago, intacowetrust said:

 

@Erick194 that is friggin awesome!! Nice work!

 

Some questions on this:

• Do you plan on incorporating the changes made for Archvile etc. support back into PSXDOOM-RE, or will you be publishing them somewhere else? If possible I would like to make PsyDoom support the GEC Master Edition and the new additions to the enemy roster.
• Do you plan on making use of Aubrey's unused sounds for the archvile or will you use the PC sounds instead?
• Given that the archvile will require new sounds to be added to the game, will you be making tools to edit/update the .WMD file? (like what we discussed in the PsyDoom thread)

• In the current PSXDOOM-RE these changes will not be incorporated, there are still things to verify in PsyDoom and PSXDOOM-RE, this I will incorporate in a new branch for this project "Master Edition".
• Someone gave me some sounds for these enemies, including those made by @Deⓧiaz for the Archvile, I have not yet tried them.
• I have not created it yet, but I am in the process of doing it, first I wanted to see if I could including these enemies.

 

Currently I have other useful tools for this project, such as converting from Png graphic format to PsxDoom graphic format, Doom SprGen this creates the file "sprinfo.c" necessary to include the new frames of the game, reading in PSXDOOM.WAD and generates the files ( SPRITE1.lmp, TEXTURE1.lmp) since it is torture to do everything manually in hexadecimal editors.