Doom 64: Merciless Edition II (Nintendo 64 / Emulator)

[Immorpher]

Happy 24th birthday to Doom 64! Merciless Edition II is a modification of the reverse engineered Doom 64 source code, with the goal of adding new features and accessibility options. The primary focus on compatibility is Nintendo 64 hardware, but it works on emulators too. Some of the features include, texture filtering modes, extended brightness, dithering, colored HUD, automap stats, optimizations, bug fixes, and more! On top of that it has a new "Be Merciless" difficulty mode which makes the monsters more aggressive and unpredictable, but gives the players a boost in terms of ammo and weapon switching. Intended for an overall more violent experience.

Download Links:

ROMhacking.net: https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/5850/

Installation Instructions (not like a WAD!):

Spoiler

Merciless Edition is for Nintendo 64 hardware (using a flashcart) or Nintendo 64 emulators. It requires a ROM of one of the Doom 64 release for Nintendo 64, where patches are provided here to upgrade it to the Merciless Edition. You can apply the appropriate patch to its respective ROM version using one of the websites below:
https://hack64.net/tools/patcher.php

https://www.marcrobledo.com/RomPatcher.js

N64 Demonstration Video with Timestamps in the Description:

Screen Shots:

Spoiler

Full Feature List:

Spoiler

- "Be Merciless!" Difficulty
The “Be Merciless!” difficulty setting combines parts of the “Nightmare!” mode introduced in Doom 64 RE with the "Hardcore!" mode of Doom 64 EX and other tweaks. As opposed to exactly copying the difficulties of other Doom 64 ports, it is now an experience focused on brutal action. Enemies are more relentless, unpredictable, faster, and agile. However, the ammo bonuses are increased and the weapon switching is faster. Overall, it is a more violent experience which may appeal to fans of the newer iterations of the Doom series.

- Menu Reorganization and Defaults Menu
Many of the menus have been reorganized and renamed to accommodate the additional options and accessibility. A new "Video" menu has been added to toggle the various new video modes. Then many of the new accessibility options have been added to the "Display" menu. There is also a new "Status HUD" menu to change how the HUD looks. Further, the "Password" menu option has been moved to the main menu for easier access. There is also a new "Defaults" menu to restore the game to the original Doom 64 settings, Merciless Edition settings, Immorpher's settings, or Accessible settings for increased accessibility.

- Movement Menu Options
Many players have expressed motion sickness when playing Doom 64. There is an overall swaying motion which happens when the player is moving. This also causes the weapon to bob up and down which may be making some players sick. Now there is a slider which can reduce this bobbing motion to the point of being turned off. Digital movement in Doom 64 was restricted to "walking" speed, unless the "speed" button is pressed. The new "Autorun" setting defaults digital movement to running, where now the "speed" button slows the player down.

- Video Menu Options
The option to turn off the classic N64 3-point linear filtering has been moved from the "Features" cheat menu in Doom 64 RE, to the main "Video" menu in the options. This allows it to be accessible without beating "Hectic" or using a pass code. Further, this option has been extended to filter skies only (like Doom 64 Remaster) or completely off (like Doom 64 EX). Doom 64 is known for being a particularly dark. Even at maximum brightness many screens still struggle with it. Now the brightness option has been extended. By default, this version sets the brightness to the original maximum value. However, it now can be extended even beyond that by twice without oversaturating the screen. Further, there are additional video options which utilize the Nintendo 64 hardware features, such as anti-aliasing, video dithering, interlacing, and color dithering. Some combinations have a nicely retro look!

- Display Menu Options
The "Display" options now contains a flash brightness option to make the game more accessible. Some parts of the game have intense flashing, particularly the first megasphere in "Holding Area", which has the risk of inducing seizures in some players. Now there is an option to reduce or turn off these flashes. And if you get tired of waiting through the intermission text screens, there is a new option to skip them. Finally, there is an option to display the map statistics in the automap screen, if you're a completionist.

- Status HUD Options
There are more options now to modify the status bar and HUD. By default, the new colored HUD will be enabled, which changes color depending on armor type, ammo type, and health status. This can be disabled in the menu. Doom 64 by default has a margin around the screen to displace the HUD elements for older TV safe zones. Now this can be adjusted. Also the transparency of the HUD can be adjusted.

- Other New Default Options
As mentioned the brightness has a new default setting, but also the sound volume default has been set to the maximum. This sets it slightly louder than the ambient music. Further, to honor Retro Fighter’s commitment to continuously improving their N64 controller designs, there is a new default option in the “Gamepad” menu. For controllers where all of the N64 buttons are accessible in one position, like the Retro Fighters controller, variants of the Super Pad 64, or the Hori controller, then the new “Retro Fighters” option might be the optimal layout.

- Story Screens Update
The story screens now have the menu ambience as opposed to silence. When a new game is started, there is an abbreviated introductory screen adapted from the N64 manual and Doom 64 Reloaded. The "Demon" text has been changed to "Bull Demon" in the ending sequence and also the "Mother Demon" makes an appearance. The intermissions can be turned off any time in the "Display" menu, or by pressing buttons the screens can be sped up.

- Messaging System Update
Inspired by the messaging system of the Doom 64 Remaster, now up to three messages (as opposed to one) will appear on screen at once. Hopefully this makes it easier to figure out what has been picked up or if you have found a secret area. The messaging system also supports colors now, where secrets and secret items will appear as blue. If you happen to die, stick on that screen for a while to see special messages from the Doom 64 community.

- Game and Save Management
Now the memory pak save files include abbreviations for the difficulty. It is easier to keep all of those Doom 64 saves in order. Also if your playthrough of Doom 64 is getting too hard or easy, you can restart your game at the current level with the difficulty of your choosing. Which means you can change your difficulty midway through the game.

- Zombiemen and Text Restorations
The third sight and death sounds in Doom 64 would go unplayed due to the limited randomization in the code. Now this randomization routine has been updated such that these sounds will be played. Also the missing "You pick up a medikit that you REALLY need!" has been restored.

- Other Updates
With the new brightness setting, the infrared goggles have a less noticeable effect. However, now they have an overall boost to the gradient lighting without altering saturated colors. Exiting to "Hectic" will now show a stats screen and allow saving. Unusual capitalization and grammar has been fixed for the text screens. Weapon selection ending cycles have been altered to stop at the ending weapon, which is hopefully less confusing.

- Optimizations
F3DEX rendering is replaced with the later F3DEX2 rendering. This should improve geometry calculations. Although this is not a major slowdown in Doom 64, it may result in a slightly more-stable frame rate and perhaps allow for more geometry in future custom maps. Further it is compiled with level 3 optimizations (O3), which improves code execution speed. In some code bases this can be unstable, but so far no issues have been found. Importantly compatibility with the original Doom 64 demos are retained.

-Features Menu
These are bonus additions to the features menu added by Erick194 for Doom 64 RE!
SECURITY KEYS: Inaccessible in the original game, this will give you all the keys available in the level.
WALL BLOCKING: Inaccessible in the original game, this will allow you to walk through walls.
LOCK MONSTERS: Inaccessible in the original game, stops the movement of enemies.
MUSIC TEST: Inaccessible in the original game, you can test all of the music in the game.
COLORS: Added by Erick194, this turns off the colored lighting in the game.
FULL BRIGHT: Added by Erick194, all sectors will be at maximum brightness.

And these are the features added for the "Merciless Edition".
WARP: Features menu now can warp to the final and secret levels.
GAMMA CORRECT: This utilizes the N64 brightness adjustment, making the game very bright.
MERCILESS CREDITS: Those who have helped the "Merciless Edition" make it to completion.

Known Issues:

Spoiler

Here is a list of known issues which are being looked into.

- In "Even Simpler" only one out of the four staircases raise. This has been observed in Doom 64 RE as well and is inherited from that code base.
- An infrequent freeze occurs on the "Absolution" which seems to be lost soul spawning related as it only appears on the harder difficulties, where Pain Elementals are more aggressive.
- In "Tech Center", Lost Souls sometimes don't appear after grabbing the blue key in harder difficulties.
- The switch which opens the door in the red key room in "Burnt Offerings" doesn't make a sound.

Emulator Specific
- These bugs may or may not appear depending on which emulator is used. These are due to emulators having inconsistencies with Nintendo 64 hardware.
- For all versions of Doom 64, the blood melt screen transition isn't rendered properly in many emulators. Due to some of the optimizations on this version, a few emulators have reduced framerate during this screen transition.
- Enabling dithering and entering the "Adjust Screen Center" mode will cause the screen to jitter.
- Entering the menu from the automap screen sometimes produces weird graphical bugs.

Frequently Asked Questions:

Spoiler

What happened to Merciless Edition I?
This was an early attempt where I was less familiar with the code. It doesn’t have many options and mostly just permanently changed parts of the game. You can get it here: https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/5634/

How about custom content such as levels?
This is part of the long term goal where a friend has been helping me! It has been slow progress, but we know what needs to be done and have a lot of the code needed. If you are familiar with programming and can help out, we would love to have you!

Credits and Other Links:

Spoiler

Reverse Engineering: @Erick194, @Kaiser, @intacowetrust, @Quasar
Compiler Assets: @CrashOveride, AlphaTango
Play Testing: SCD, @Buu342, IRL Random Hajile, @taufan99
Special Thanks: Doomworld, @Neigh Winny, @IsannKeket, @Nevander

Doom 64 RE: https://github.com/Erick194/DOOM64-RE

GEC Team Discord:  https://discord.gg/aEZD4Y7

Doom 64 Discord: https://discord.gg/Ktxz8nz

Most importantly... let them taste their guts!

Edited September 27, 2023 by Immorpher

[Azuris]

Sounds pretty cool, will give it a better look at the Weekend :)

Edited March 31, 2021 by Azuris

[Wavy]

Awesome. Doom 64 plays well on my 3DS but this will make it much easier to control.

 

^{Also I'm the one who gave the repository a star an GitHub ;)}

[adamastor]

This is awesome.
One question though: is there a way to make it playable on EX? I mean applying this to the rom and then using the WAD generator?
If not, what would you reccomend to play this on pc?

[Immorpher]

1 hour ago, Adamast0r said:

This is awesome.
One question though: is there a way to make it playable on EX? I mean applying this to the rom and then using the WAD generator?
If not, what would you reccomend to play this on pc?

EX is great at ripping and using assets, however it doesn't incorporate source code so it would end up like normal Doom 64 on the other end.

I have done quick tests of it with Project 64 2.1 and it works fine. There's newer versions of it, although they added things to nag you a bit when loading the software.

Mupen64 works too! It doesn't come with a GUI, but if you get a GUI like RetroArch, I think it comes with Mupen64 and might be a easier experience than Project 64.

I think older emulators like 1964 may work as well from others playtesting.

[BlueThunder]

Congrats on the release.  Will have to break out an emulator and give this a try for sure.

[Noiser]

That's amazing and it's nice to see all those acessibility settings to help people out to enjoy the game. Congratulations!

Edited October 13, 2021 by Noiser

[jasonpener]

How fantastic!

Do you think there is a chance of seeing the updated releases levels added to the ROM?

That's a project that I've thought would be interesting to see.

[Immorpher]

9 hours ago, jasonpener said:

How fantastic!

Do you think there is a chance of seeing the updated releases levels added to the ROM?

That's a project that I've thought would be interesting to see.

I do hope to add custom levels to this. Right now a buddy is helping me figure out how to extract and insert custom levels into the ROM. It's mainly down to applying known compression/decompression algorithms and perhaps some format conversion. If anyone is familiar with C programming with some spare time, we would be happy to have the help!

[Average]

This is some fantastic work.  Between this and all the other different ways to play these days it really is a great time to be a Doom64 fan.

 

Thanks so much for making this and sharing. \m/

[BlueThunder]

45 minutes ago, Immorpher said:

I do hope to add custom levels to this. Right now a buddy is helping me figure out how to extract and insert custom levels into the ROM. It's mainly down to applying known compression/decompression algorithms and perhaps some format conversion. If anyone is familiar with C programming with some spare time, we would be happy to have the help!

That be cool to play custom levels on real hardware with your everdrive. 

[Shanes]

Could it be possible to utilize the ram expansion pack for higher resolution on original hardware? 

[Immorpher]

18 hours ago, Shanes said:

Could it be possible to utilize the ram expansion pack for higher resolution on original hardware? 

Yes,@jnmartin84 was able to take my mod and use it to enable higher resolution on Doom 64. It worked well for the most part! The frame rate dropped a little as expected. Unfortunately it would cause a crash if too many large sprites on screen happened at once. Like using the chainsaw against an enemy very close up for a period of time. It seems to overload a graphics buffer of sorts. I hope to revisit that and perhaps set up some sort of blood / bullet puff limiter to make it more stable one day.

[Shanes]

I would love to see that! I am looking forward to trying this out on real hardware..

[Azuris]

Holy Moly, you even included a PAL Patch in the Zip File :)
I've patched my own ripped ROM now hrhr

Lets see if it works.

Wanted to test it earlier... But had way to much work :(
Lets have some Halloween Doom 64 Fun now hrhr

[Immorpher]

6 hours ago, Azuris said:

Holy Moly, you even included a PAL Patch in the Zip File :)
I've patched my own ripped ROM now hrhr

Lets see if it works.

Wanted to test it earlier... But had way to much work :(
Lets have some Halloween Doom 64 Fun now hrhr

I noticed in the code that there was a region detect, so it should work in PAL! I have had a few buddies with PAL N64's test it and they said it worked. I haven't tested it myself though!

[Azuris]

1 hour ago, Immorpher said:

I noticed in the code that there was a region detect, so it should work in PAL! I have had a few buddies with PAL N64's test it and they said it worked. I haven't tested it myself though!

 

Yep, worked on original PAL Hardware!

At least the first two Levels :D

Played around with the Settings, a real must have for Owners of Everdrives (or else).

 

Have to look up the Password from where i stopped playing on the Switch a few Weeks ago and test it on later Levels  :)

 

 

[Immorpher]

Here is a preview of the next update which lets you look and aim vertically on the N64. There's some graphics bugs due to sector rendering (read description), but perhaps I can figure it out by looking at Doom 64 EX code.

 

[Wavy]

Awesome. Could you add an option to allow the joystick to always strafe by any chance?

[Immorpher]

9 hours ago, Wavy said:

Awesome. Could you add an option to allow the joystick to always strafe by any chance?

That can be done! Then the digital left and right shall be turn. Basically swapping the inputs.

[Immorpher]

Finally decent N64 emulation is here! Ares is a modern multiplatform open-source emulator with great N64 support. It requires a beefy computer, but it supports all of the Merciless Edition features including its 4 different dithering modes. Right now I need to debug how Merciless Edition handles the memory pak, but it is kind of a moot point since Ares has save states. Below is a video of Merciless Edition being played on Ares with dithering on. Also Ares has great support for most of the N64 games and you can get it here: https://ares-emulator.github.io/
 

 

[Dimon12321]

On 1/19/2022 at 8:17 PM, Immorpher said:

Finally decent N64 emulation is here! Ares is a modern multiplatform open-source emulator with great N64 support.

What's wrong with Bizhawk? Nice vid, BTW.

Edited January 20, 2022 by Dimon12321

[Immorpher]

17 hours ago, Dimon12321 said:

What's wrong with Bizhawk? Nice vid, BTW.

I never heard of Bizhawk until now haha

[taufan99]

Hey Morph, I know it's been a while since anything about this romhack was last talked about.

Regarding the custom levels, you may want to check out the latest version of OptiDoom (a backport of the infamous 3DO port which aims to improve it in general) by @Optimus. As can be guessed here, it has a feature of loading custom levels, albeit with limitations to be obeyed (documentation on these is still work-in-progress as of now).

Since the 3DO port, much like D64, is based on the Atari Jaguar port's code, this should help to an extent, although I'm not sure how much it can help you in the case of Merciless Edition, due to the vastly different sizes of custom D64 maps out there. Otherwise, I hope this still comes off as of any use to you!

[Immorpher]

11 hours ago, taufan99 said:

Hey Morph, I know it's been a while since anything about this romhack was last talked about.

Regarding the custom levels, you may want to check out the latest version of OptiDoom (a backport of the infamous 3DO port which aims to improve it in general) by @Optimus. As can be guessed here, it has a feature of loading custom levels, albeit with limitations to be obeyed (documentation on these is still work-in-progress as of now).

Since the 3DO port, much like D64, is based on the Atari Jaguar port's code, this should help to an extent, although I'm not sure how much it can help you in the case of Merciless Edition, due to the vastly different sizes of custom D64 maps out there. Otherwise, I hope this still comes off as of any use to you!

Oh thanks for pointing it out! Kovic has been making progress on this end too. I do plan on knuckling down and getting custom level support going, just a matter of carving out time.

[Kinsie]

On 1/22/2022 at 2:35 AM, Immorpher said:

I never heard of Bizhawk until now haha

Bizhawk previously used a Mupen64plus emulator core, but I believe their latest versions use the Ares N64 emulator to some extent.

[Immorpher]

2 hours ago, Kinsie said:

Bizhawk previously used a Mupen64plus emulator core, but I believe their latest versions use the Ares N64 emulator to some extent.

Makes sense! I have used both of those at various times.

[taufan99]

I've finished Hectic in 100%, and am currently at Outpost Omega on the Project64 3.0 emulator. Unfortunately, although the saved game has no problem at all, the Features menu is no longer present after at least loading the game the second time after closing and re-opening the emulator.

Also, a rather minor visual bug at the area on Staging Area nearby the exit.

Otherwise, this is a very overlooked romhack that needs more of everyone's attention, either Doomers or N64/romhacking/retro gaming fans in general. Looking forward to the next major update!

Spoiler

 

[Immorpher]

 

4 hours ago, taufan99 said:

I've finished Hectic in 100%, and am currently at Outpost Omega on the Project64 3.0 emulator. Unfortunately, although the saved game has no problem at all, the Features menu is no longer present after at least loading the game the second time after closing and re-opening the emulator.

Also, a rather minor visual bug at the area on Staging Area nearby the exit.

Otherwise, this is a very overlooked romhack that needs more of everyone's attention, either Doomers or N64/romhacking/retro gaming fans in general. Looking forward to the next major update!

Ohh I haven't tried it on 3.0 yet! I remember during the fades of Project 64 there would be a color glitch. Is there still that glitch in 3.0 or are the fades between levels smooth? Thank you for the bug reports! I know some of the sprite stuff can be bugs of the original Doom 64, but I am also using more RAM than the original Doom 64 so I gotta be careful they dont start bleeding into the video RAM.

[taufan99]

3 hours ago, Immorpher said:

Ohh I haven't tried it on 3.0 yet! I remember during the fades of Project 64 there would be a color glitch. Is there still that glitch in 3.0 or are the fades between levels smooth? Thank you for the bug reports! I know some of the sprite stuff can be bugs of the original Doom 64, but I am also using more RAM than the original Doom 64 so I gotta be careful they dont start bleeding into the video RAM.

The fades are far smoother, as I can confirm. Sometimes white flickering will happen, but it's rare in between.