SNES Doom source released under GPLv3

[Jon]

2 hours ago, Dark Pulse said:

While I'm sure Randy doesn't need me to explain the concept, for the rest of you

yeah, I’m pretty sure most of the audience here are up to speed on the matter, but thanks. 

[Dark Pulse]

30 minutes ago, Redneckerz said:

Useless but fun fact for the rest of you: The first N64 emulator for PC's in the 90s was a HLE (High Level Emulator).

Good ol' Ultra 64, immediately controversial because it came out during the system's actual lifetime.

 

Now, nobody batted an eye about Yuzu or Citra. Or even RPCS3, since the PS3 is still technically active (if now a shovelware farm).

[Impboy4]

Here's hoping we can get better tools to mod this port cuz Mopoz90's beta tools ain't worth it atm.

[Job]

I fear this may be dead; at least there's still FastDoom. 

[taufan99]

5 hours ago, Job said:

I fear this may be dead; at least there's still FastDoom. 

The current process is probably taking a lot more time and effort. Remember that it took us 5 months between the appearance of the Github page and the actual first phase of the source code release.

[RandalLinden]

... still working on it, but my first priority is Cyboid and that's taking most of my time.

 

Rand.

 

[Job]

1 hour ago, RandalLinden said:

... still working on it, but my first priority is Cyboid and that's taking most of my time.

 

Rand.

 

Thank you for the confirmation and reassurance, I appreciate it! I certainly understand your primary project takes precedence. :)

[Dimon12321]

BTW, during my search for enemies' heath RAM addresses, I noticed that "big" enemies use 2 bytes of memory, so we have 4-7 unused bits of memory per an enemy. So concerns "little" enemies. For instance, a zombieman doesn't use 3 bits of memory.

If we were able to use all those unused bits, how many more enemies could be present on, let's say, E1M7?

Edited January 1, 2021 by Dimon12321

[Azuris]

On 7/15/2020 at 1:15 AM, sector666 said:

 

It already looks strange turning when there's enemies on screen anyway. I can imagine that would be even more apparent with turn+strafe. But visual oddness isn't what keeps me from going back and enjoying the SNES version again these days. It's the no turn+strafe control scheme.

 

If there was a toggle for allowing turn+strafe then it could be added in without bothering people who don't like the lack of sprite rotations.

 

Hopefully it will become possible now to have more than just one custom level at a time too.

 

Haven't seen every Post, but having the Code and having such nice Things as the SD2SNES, wouldn't it be possible to add Sprites to rotate them ;) ?

I mean, even the Rockets of the Cyberdemon are flying backwarts to save Space, why keep such Limits on my 128 gb SD-Card?

 

Yeah, there are some other Bottlenecks, but maybe some additional Sprites :)?

 

[taufan99]

51 minutes ago, Azuris said:

Yeah, there are some other Bottlenecks, but maybe some additional Sprites :)?

Last time we heard from the man Randy Linden himself, he said he was still in the process of handling copyright stuff for the main resource. Months later, I hope he succeeds in that.

[Azuris]

In the worst Case, wouldn't it be possible to handle it like Doom 64 with the EX Port and "extract" some Kind of WAD from the ROM?

Or as a Community Project to downgrade by redrawing the Sprites from the original WAD...

 

 

[Dark Pulse]

On 1/1/2021 at 7:44 PM, Azuris said:

Haven't seen every Post, but having the Code and having such nice Things as the SD2SNES, wouldn't it be possible to add Sprites to rotate them ;) ?

I mean, even the Rockets of the Cyberdemon are flying backwarts to save Space, why keep such Limits on my 128 gb SD-Card?

 

Yeah, there are some other Bottlenecks, but maybe some additional Sprites :)?

The bigger problem is ROM space.

 

The SuperFX2 handles almost everything - all the SNES is actually doing is rendering the framebuffer (that the SuperFX2 generates) and reading controller inputs.

 

The catch: The SuperFX2 can only address up to 8 Mbit/2 MByte of ROM. So in short, we can't just simply expand the ROM for more space, because the SuperFX2 would have no idea how to read from that space.

 

Essentially, we'd need to implement some kind of bankswitching the SuperFX2 can understand, or we'd need to "extend" the SuperFX2 somehow so that it can read more ROM data.

 

Without that, we're limited to what we can cram into 2 MB - and considering Randy had all of about 16 bytes free, there ain't a whole lot of space left.

 

Even if we delete some of the stuff in there that'd be semi-useless (like the XBand code), there'd be precious little room for new sprites. So an expansion solution basically must be come up with to even begin to approach the "full" game.

 

The two largest games released for the SNES during its lifetime were 48 MBit/6 MB (Star Ocean/Tales of Phantasia), but the max actual capacity is about 117.75 Mbit, or about 14.7 MByte (The console can technically read 128 Mbit/16 MByte, but there needs to be addresses for internal hardware, mirroring, etc.). This would be, theoretically, just enough to fit Doom II (13.9 MB), but TNT (17.3 MB) and Plutonia (16.6 MB) are out of reach.

 

However, considering the SNES port does not use flats, that might remove a few MB, and perhaps with some form of compression, it just may fit without bankswitching.

 

And even then, we still have to solve how to get a SuperFX2 to be able to address more data, either via bankswitching or expansion.

Edited January 4, 2021 by Dark Pulse

[Kroc]

Since any mod is less likely to be run on an original cart than on an Everdrive or emulator, the question is: what do they support? I've heard that some emulators can see a larger address space from the FX2 that original hardware.

[Dark Pulse]

7 hours ago, Kroc said:

Since any mod is less likely to be run on an original cart than on an Everdrive or emulator, the question is: what do they support? I've heard that some emulators can see a larger address space from the FX2 that original hardware.

The caveat to that would be that the ROM would not be playable without that specific flashcart.

 

Of course, the ROM would be impossible to play on original without sacrificing a SuperFX2 cart anyway - and nobody's gonna destroy Yoshi's Island for Doom. And there's only so many copies of Winter Gold in the world.

[Roebloz]

Not entirely related to the source release, but thanks to @CacodemonTube giving me his tools, I was able to port not only the first map of my Doom 1 PWAD, but E4M1 and E4M6!!! (I don't have a video for E4M6 yet)

Obviously these are just showcases. But if anyone needs me to test something out with monsters, linedefs or whatever, ping me here and I'll be happy to provide with the requested information.

[Job]

@Roebloz, I don't have any technical requests at this time, but I'd welcome more conversion and playthoughs of levels in SNES Doom, or even technical showpieces. 

[Impboy4]

@Roebloz Try converting the Jaguar maps to SNES Doom as a sort of what if Randy kept the tradition of using them like the other consoles did back then.

[Roebloz]

4 hours ago, Impboy4 said:

@Roebloz Try converting the Jaguar maps to SNES Doom as a sort of what if Randy kept the tradition of using them like the other consoles did back then.

That is...an odd request. Do remember I can't import textures so it won't be 1:1.

[Impboy4]

9 hours ago, Roebloz said:

That is...an odd request. Do remember I can't import textures so it won't be 1:1.

Well, you won't be able to get a 1:1, but use the SNES resources to get as close as possible.

[Job]

I feel it'd be interesting to see if some challenging maps can be ported over as a technical exercise. For example, Go 2 It, Odyssey of Noises, simplified D64 levels, etc. I think @CacodemonTube had ported over a couple of the larger Doom 2 levels as well as a fairly sprawling custom level.

[Roebloz]

1 hour ago, Job said:

I feel it'd be interesting to see if some challenging maps can be ported over as a technical exercise. For example, Go 2 It, Odyssey of Noises, simplified D64 levels, etc. I think @CacodemonTube had ported over a couple of the larger Doom 2 levels as well as a fairly sprawling custom level.

CacodemonTube only ported MAP01-MAP03 and MAP13. And I said technical testing requests, not asking me to porting requests. (I can try porting D64's E1M1 though)

[Dark Pulse]

Porting E4M2 is gonna be a bitch. Not only do you most definitely have to get that render distance way, WAY down, you also have the added problem of that too much geometry is also going to cause some serious slowdown.

[omx32x]

would be nice to see someone turn his into an source port for pc like 64EX 

(and make it open source so there can be a port to everything)

[Wavy]

All I want is an actual editor. Not the closed beta we have now.

 

5 hours ago, omalefico32x said:

would be nice to see someone turn his into an source port for pc like 64EX 

(and make it open source so there can be a port to everything)

I'd love to see this. It would be a lot of work but I think it'll pay off.

[Roebloz]

1 hour ago, Wavy said:

All I want is an actual editor. Not the closed beta we have now.

 

I'd love to see this. It would be a lot of work but I think it'll pay off.

Well technically the tools that Mopov made are simply a Gamr Configuration for Doom Builder and an importer (Although only MAP01/E1M1 is modifiable) The main thing is that he has been inactive for a while so me and Cacodemontube can't release it for now.

[AWP_LONERT]

to be honest, what are we gonna do with the SNES port of doom any ways

[AWP_LONERT]

On 1/6/2021 at 2:19 PM, Dark Pulse said:

Porting E4M2 is gonna be a bitch. Not only do you most definitely have to get that render distance way, WAY down, you also have the added problem of that too much geometry is also going to cause some serious slowdown.

just cut parts of the map and have fewer demons, then it won't be bad

[Azuris]

8 hours ago, AWP_LONERT said:

just cut parts of the map and have fewer demons, then it won't be bad

 

Ah but the SNES Version of Doom is famous for beeing closer to the PC Version than Ports on superior Machines.

Would be a shame to "break" this :>

[Orchid87]

What I would really like to see implemented in SNES Doom is the knockback physics. Without it, SNES version feels very stiff and gives away the fact that it uses a different engine. Also a general fine tune of the engine to resemble real Doom engine in stuff like animations speed more wouldn't hurt.

[Dark Pulse]

15 hours ago, Orchid87 said:

What I would really like to see implemented in SNES Doom is the knockback physics. Without it, SNES version feels very stiff and gives away the fact that it uses a different engine. Also a general fine tune of the engine to resemble real Doom engine in stuff like animations speed more wouldn't hurt.

That's always going to be very tricky given the PC version's logic updated at 35 Hz/sec. Getting the SuperFX2 to match that might well be impossible. Even console ports of the era generally differed - the PSX version, tries to render at 30 FPS, but game logic operates at 15 Hz.

 

Halving that (17.5 Hz) might be more achievable, but even that is probably fairly close to the upper limit. Remember, we're most definitely not rendering at anywhere near that speed, especially in bigger areas.

Edited February 25, 2021 by Dark Pulse