Doom Playstation like Doom 64?

[Rudolph]

When I see what Midway was able to accomplish with Doom 64, I have to wonder: would it have been possible - or even preferable - for Playstation Doom to feature original assets as well? In fact, has there been attempts by fans to port Doom 64 to Playstation?

Edited December 10, 2021 by Rudolph

[intacowetrust]

These are not publicly released (yet) as far as I know, but Whiteysnakey on YouTube has done a few experimental ports of D64 maps to PsyDoom, which itself is a backport of the PlayStation Doom engine to PC:

 

 

 

The fact that this can be done with just asset swaps shows very clearly the shared DNA between these two games. Given that we now have the reversed source code for the actual hardware (PSXDOOM-RE) it should be possible to do such a thing in theory, though likely with some compromises. There has been no efforts to date as far as I know however...

[Wavy]

1 hour ago, intacowetrust said:

These are not publicly released (yet) as far as I know, but Whiteysnakey on YouTube has done a few experimental ports of D64 maps to PsyDoom, which itself is a backport of the PlayStation Doom engine to PC:

Heh. I was planning on porting Doom 64 to PsyDoom, but I guess I don't have to. The videos look really promising so far though!

[Rudolph]

Cool! So does that mean that a Doom 64-style game would have been possible on the Playstation hardware at the time?

 

I mean, I was under the impression that the Playstation was a more capable console than the Nintendo 64.

Edited December 11, 2021 by Rudolph

[intacowetrust]

20 hours ago, Wavy said:

Heh. I was planning on porting Doom 64 to PsyDoom, but I guess I don't have to. The videos look really promising so far though!

 

Not sure if he's planning on doing the entire game, maybe you could ask what his plans are or even collaborate?

 

18 hours ago, Rudolph said:

Cool! So does that mean that a Doom 64-style game would have been possible on the Playstation hardware at the time?

 

I mean, I was under the impression that the Playstation was a more capable console than the Nintendo 64.

 

Possible but likely some cuts would need to be made, like reducing texture variety to save on memory and things like that. The N64 is far more powerful than the PS1 in a lot of ways; the only real area where the PSX has the edge is in terms of storage with CD-ROMs, something that turned out to be crucially important for that console generation in the end.

[Wavy]

1 hour ago, intacowetrust said:

Not sure if he's planning on doing the entire game, maybe you could ask what his plans are or even collaborate?

Unfortunately, he replied to another comment on the first video saying:

Quote

At this stage it is just a bunch of fun experiments and challenges, I don't think I ever planned on releasing anything as the maps that've been recreated or converted are sort of all over the place. I think it could be possible for me to put together the Tech base "episode" of Doom 64 but I feel like a lot of the Castle and Hell levels are probably beyond the scope of what I could achieve within the original limits. I would love to try converting Map 23: Unholy Temple from Doom 64 because of its interesting 3D bridges but my impression is they would most likely glitch out visually.

 

So yeah, it just seems to be an experiment really. And they're trying to convert the maps while staying within PSX Dooms limits, where I'd probably go all out with textures and new decorations way past what the original PSX version could handle.

[Rudolph]

Ah, that is a shame. I am surprised to hear that the Nintendo 64 is more powerful, as the N64 ports of PC/Playstation games I am aware of (e.g. Wipeout 64, Mega Man 64, Resident Evil 2 on N64, Quake 64 and Quake II 64) have the reputation of not being too great. Heck, even the unreleased Playstation port of the infamous Superman 64 has the reputation of being much better than the original.

 

The only N64 port that I like better than the Playstation one would be Duke Nukem 64.

Edited December 12, 2021 by Rudolph

[Redneckerz]

21 hours ago, Rudolph said:

Cool! So does that mean that a Doom 64-style game would have been possible on the Playstation hardware at the time?

Not at the time because a thing like PsyDoom didn't exist (lol)

21 hours ago, Rudolph said:

 

I mean, I was under the impression that the Playstation was a more capable console than the Nintendo 64.

They are fairly comparable, though N64's graphical unit is definitely more forward looking (Transform & Lighting was already there, for instance).

1 hour ago, Rudolph said:

Ah, that is a shame. I am surprised to hear that the Nintendo 64 is more powerful, as the N64 ports of PC/Playstation games I am aware of (e.g. Wipeout 64, Mega Man 64, Resident Evil 2 on N64, Quake 64 and Quake II 64) have the reputation of not being too great.

If you really ought to know what the strengths were of each console, i would recommend Copetti's Architecture Tech analysis. I recently discovered this site and my goodness its a treat.

• PlayStation
• Nintendo 64

A ton of consoles are covered - From NES to Saturn to Wii. Its all there.

1 hour ago, Rudolph said:

 

Heck, even the unreleased Playstation port of the infamous Superman 64 has the reputation of being much better than the original.

 

The only N64 port that I like better than the Playstation one would be Duke Nukem 64.

Delta Force Urban Warfare is a very late (2002) FPS by Rebellion that was mistaken for a PS2 game. Men in Black CrashDown is incredibly colorful.

 

And then there is Quake 2 for PS1.

[Rudolph]

Also, to be fair to the Nintendo 64, its The World Is Not Enough adaptation is much better than its Playstation counterpart. I would not mind giving it another shot if I could find a way to comfortably play it with a keyboard and a mouse.

Edited December 12, 2021 by Rudolph

[Azuris]

On 12/12/2021 at 10:46 AM, Rudolph said:

Ah, that is a shame. I am surprised to hear that the Nintendo 64 is more powerful, as the N64 ports of PC/Playstation games I am aware of (e.g. Wipeout 64, Mega Man 64, Resident Evil 2 on N64, Quake 64 and Quake II 64) have the reputation of not being too great.

 

For Resident Evil 2 and Wipeout it was the Compression of the Video Sequences and Music/Audio that made it worse than the "uncompressed" ones on the Playstation/PC.

But Quake 2 for example doesn't rely on such Things and is a great looking Game (worth playing today since it is a different Game as the PC Version).

 

I would say, Games with prerendered Graphics, much Audio and Video are better on Playstation.

Games that rely more on 3D Graphics are better on the N64, as most Ego Shooters (no Warping)

 

If i remember well another Bottle Neck on N64, besides the Space on Cartdridges, is the limited space of Loading of Textures.

 

But i would love to see what is possible on that Console without Space Limitations.

I am recently playing Resident Evil 2 on that Console out of Curiosity, and it really is a little Miracle.

 

Controlewise they didn't figure it out well on the Playstation how to implement Controls for Shooters.

Even on the Playstation 2 it was still pretty wild.

The N64 had Controls similiar to WSAD (C Buttons) and the Stick acting as the "Mouse" .

 

Overall, i didn't like the early 3D Era, most Games are brutally ugly, even back then i didn't like it.

Nice 2D Games of the 16 Bit Era had much more Details and where more polished gameplaywise :P

Have the same Feeling about most 8Bit Games, still figuring out how to make Things fun and good.

[Kinsie]

On 12/12/2021 at 8:46 PM, Rudolph said:

Ah, that is a shame. I am surprised to hear that the Nintendo 64 is more powerful, as the N64 ports of PC/Playstation games I am aware of (e.g. Wipeout 64, Mega Man 64, Resident Evil 2 on N64, Quake 64 and Quake II 64) have the reputation of not being too great. Heck, even the unreleased Playstation port of the infamous Superman 64 has the reputation of being much better than the original.

The N64 had its strengths and its weaknesses. Among those weaknesses were a tiny, tiny texture cache and the native z-buffering eating up a good chunk of memory, but the biggest was the ROM cartridges. They were both smaller and far, FAR more expensive to do a print run of than PlayStation CD-ROMs. I'm still not sure how Angel Studios shoved both discs of Resident Evil 2 into just 60mb for the N64. I've read their GamaSutra post-mortem multiple times and I'm still pretty sure it was handled via illegal magicks.

[Dark Pulse]

On 12/16/2021 at 12:48 PM, Kinsie said:

I'm still not sure how Angel Studios shoved both discs of Resident Evil 2 into just 60mb for the N64. I've read their GamaSutra post-mortem multiple times and I'm still pretty sure it was handled via illegal magicks.

In short, it's amazing what you can do with lower framerate/resolution FMVs, reduced color depth across the board, and audio compression.

 

Not to mention, the games definitely did not fill their discs - only about half (The disc images you'll find floating around are about 600 MB, sure, but they both can be 7zipped into about 370 MB - meaning lots of empty space). And there was obviously some redundant code on each disc for the same game engine, etc.

 

So look at the original two games combined as roughly 700 MB of data, begin reducing all that audio, downsize and downframe the FMVs, reduce the color depths, factor in the game engine, model, and a lot of scene data would've been duplicated, and you start to see why it was possible to squeeze it onto a 64 MB cart.

Edited December 20, 2021 by Dark Pulse