Jaguar Doom modding resources

[VL2M STUDIO]

WHAT IS OUT THERE

Known mods:

1. Doom: Slayer Edition - WIP; Music in game, new monsters
2. Death Tongue - Cancelled
3. Doom 2 conversion
   https://forums.atariage.com/topic/318975-ac2011-version-doom-ii-hack/
4. Chex Quest conversion - side project of Slayer Edition

 

MODDING RESOURCES

1. Jaguar Doom source reposted on Github
2. Mapping tutorial

 

TOOLS

1. SLADE now has better Jaguar Doom support

 

Original post:

Quote

Are there any significant Jaguar Doom modding resources? I know that there is a map tutorial floating around but is there anything else?

 

Edited December 19, 2023 by VL2M STUDIO
tools!

[VL2M STUDIO]

I see that Kaiser once made a tool that extracted the Jaguar WAD and converted it to PC Doom format. Seems like a mirror cannot be found.

[VL2M STUDIO]

Found these 2 videos, not sure if he released the tools.

 

[VL2M STUDIO]

Youtube video

 

[VL2M STUDIO]

Oh boy I'm entering a rabbithole!

[Midway64]

Well, it may be not a lot, but you could extract the WAD from the Jaguar file dump (.jag) and modify it on Slade, the problem is i don't really know if Jaguar Doom uses a different image/map format, nor if Slade supports it, will check that out.

[Midway64]

Okay, just opened JagDoom.wad on SLADE and it does work!

The sprite list is a mess though, you can definitely look at the sprite lumps, but there's always a . marker after each one.

The graphic and sound lumps are okay though.

The files are in a proprietary Jaguar format, and there's no option to convert in SLADE, so there's more stuff to do before you can modify something to say the least.

Edited May 5, 2023 by ValveMercenary

[Individualised]

Wanted to do a Jaguar custom map recently and was surprised to find that tools and information for Jaguar mapping is very scarce. There's stuff for PS1 Doom, GBA Doom, 32X Doom, hell there is even some SNES stuff but not Jaguar which is arguably the most documented of the console ports. Very strange! Hope you find what you need because I'd be interested too!

Edited May 5, 2023 by Individualised

[VL2M STUDIO]

2 minutes ago, Individualised said:

Wanted to do a Jaguar custom map recently and was surprised to find that tools and information for Jaguar mapping is very scarce. There's stuff for PSX Doom, GBA Doom, 32X Doom, hell there is even some SNES stuff but not Jaguar which is arguably the most documented of the console ports. Very strange! Hope you find what you need because I'd be interested too!

I found the guy in the Vimeo video. I have asked him if he still has the tools.

[VL2M STUDIO]

54 minutes ago, ValveMercenary said:

Okay, just opened JagDoom.wad on SLADE and it does work!

The sprite list is a mess though, you can definitely look at the sprite lumps, but there's always a . marker after each one.

The graphic and sound lumps are okay though.

The files are in a proprietary Jaguar format, and there's no option to convert in SLADE, so there's more stuff to do before you can modify something to say the least.

Yeah SLADE only supports viewing Jaguar format, not converting to Jaguar format

[Gez]

1 hour ago, ValveMercenary said:

Okay, just opened JagDoom.wad on SLADE and it does work!

The sprite list is a mess though, you can definitely look at the sprite lumps, but there's always a . marker after each one.

IIRC those "." lumps contain important metadata for the sprites, like the offsets and dimensions maybe. It's been too long so I forgot the details but if you delete or move those . lumps, the sprites will no longer load correctly.

[Individualised]

Just remembered - @Quasar is usually the guy to ask about Jaguar Doom. Hope he doesn't mind the ping!

[Blzut3]

I was commissioned to make a tool that converts PC doom wads to Jaguar wads (can't release it since the customer has an exclusive license).  The Jaguar engine requires certain lumps to be aligned in memory, and some lumps must be compressed (even if the data gets larger), some lumps must never be compressed.  I don't know if Slade has all the rules in place to actually write a working wad.

[VL2M STUDIO]

1 hour ago, Blzut3 said:

I was commissioned to make a tool that converts PC doom wads to Jaguar wads (can't release it since the customer has an exclusive license).  The Jaguar engine requires certain lumps to be aligned in memory, and some lumps must be compressed (even if the data gets larger), some lumps must never be compressed.  I don't know if Slade has all the rules in place to actually write a working wad. 

Well the Jaguar format in Slade is only viewable. You cannot convert anything to Jaguar format.

Edited May 6, 2023 by VL2M STUDIO

[VL2M STUDIO]

Attempt at a Chex Quest TC. Still in development.

 

[VL2M STUDIO]

Feel like I should post all that I can find in the first post of this thread

[VL2M STUDIO]

Added some links

[VL2M STUDIO]

Want to map for Jaguar Doom? Join this community project that I started

 

https://www.doomworld.com/forum/topic/136660-community-project-jaguar-doom-recreated-from-memory/

Edited June 16, 2023 by VL2M STUDIO

[VL2M STUDIO]

Alternative link to the mapping tutorial: http://pscd.ru/info/1817-izmenenie-urovney-v-doom-dlya-atari-jaguar-doom-level-hacking-tutorial.html

[VL2M STUDIO]

Someone found my 1on1 Psydoom vid, talked a bit about jag doom modding. Got this comment

[taufan99]

13 minutes ago, VL2M STUDIO said:

Someone found my 1on1 Psydoom vid, talked a bit about jag doom modding. Got this comment

Uhh, I don't really know much about the Atari Jaguar homebrew/romhack scene, but I'll take this with a grain of salt.

[VL2M STUDIO]

Just now, taufan99 said:

Uhh, I don't really know much about the Atari Jaguar homebrew/romhack scene, but I'll take this with a grain of salt.

Me too

 

[Individualised]

Sounds like your standard AtariAge collector/"so retro" bullshit. They're known to sell unlicenced homebrew based on existing properties. If this "new player" actually tries to sell the Doom II IWAD they will be the laughing stock of the Doom community.

Edited September 1, 2023 by Individualised

[VL2M STUDIO]

Some good news! Doom: Slayer Edition is not dead!

New stuff on the AtariAge forums.

And found this video as well.

 

[Bitbotherer]

As one of the people involved in the slayer/chex/heretic project I can confirm that jh5124 has no clue about what's going on.

 

One of the people in the team was responsible for releasing the modified Doom II jaguar files many years ago after he converted the levels and patched the original jaguar Doom image. People keep selling his work so perhaps that's where the rumour of sales started I believe.

 

We are currently about to start internal beta testing of the rom to ensure we do not have memory related issues due to map sizes.

 

If you have any tech questions then please just ask. A few bits that might interest people:

 

1. We've written a utility to fully convert PC textures/sprites/sound files etc. to jaguar (music is still a pain due to the jaguars non standard MUS format - with a non standard instrument set and limited in number of simultaneous notes too. It still needs some tweaking). The utility also creates the support files needed to implement additional creatures etc back into the source code.

 

2. We took a hiatus due to external issues affecting one of the team members.

 

3. We are working to have an open release as soon as we can - when it's ready though is always the date.

 

4. The change list is enormous and includes memory leak fixes, etc.

 

5. Current wad (today's build) breaks Slade in a few places due to some successful experiments we did on texture reuse.

 

6. Yes you have to pad the wad entries to a 4 bytes boundary, dot files are the post data for the previously defined graphic, some files must be compressed even if it's a bad option, names of lumps have high bit set in first character if lzw compressed.

 

7. Calico doom implementation was very useful to study during development.

 

8. There are lots of new screen shots and videos of the animated textures on the atariage discussion.

 

 

[taufan99]

@Bitbotherer Thank you very much for the clarification! Much appreciated to avoid misunderstanding, especially among people like us outside the Atari homebrew scene.

 

Speaking of which, I like what I've seen so far from the current Slayer Edition progress. Once it's out, I hope @Quasar will consider implementing a Calico support for the romhack.

 

[Bitbotherer]

5 hours ago, taufan99 said:

@Bitbotherer Thank you very much for the clarification! Much appreciated to avoid misunderstanding, especially among people like us outside the Atari homebrew scene.

 

Speaking of which, I like what I've seen so far from the current Slayer Edition progress. Once it's out, I hope @Quasar will consider implementing a Calico support for the romhack.

 

No problem, glad to clarify.

 

There is unfortunately a bit of "history" between various jaguar homebrew developers and some like starting trouble - usually in YouTube comments. (Basically comes down to those that left/were banned from the Atariage forum Vs those that are still on there). 

 

And this all slayer development started because people finally decided to look at the networking issue :) Jaguar doom is notorious for having flakey network play and it's explained in the manual as  being noisy in hell causing comms problems. The actual reason being rather more mundane - maths rounding errors because of differing frame rates, leading to a drift in position, between the two players.

 

Edited September 14, 2023 by Bitbotherer

[VL2M STUDIO]

16 hours ago, Bitbotherer said:

As one of the people involved in the slayer/chex/heretic project I can confirm that jh5124 has no clue about what's going on.

 

One of the people in the team was responsible for releasing the modified Doom II jaguar files many years ago after he converted the levels and patched the original jaguar Doom image. People keep selling his work so perhaps that's where the rumour of sales started I believe.

 

We are currently about to start internal beta testing of the rom to ensure we do not have memory related issues due to map sizes.

 

If you have any tech questions then please just ask. A few bits that might interest people:

 

1. We've written a utility to fully convert PC textures/sprites/sound files etc. to jaguar (music is still a pain due to the jaguars non standard MUS format - with a non standard instrument set and limited in number of simultaneous notes too. It still needs some tweaking). The utility also creates the support files needed to implement additional creatures etc back into the source code.

 

2. We took a hiatus due to external issues affecting one of the team members.

 

3. We are working to have an open release as soon as we can - when it's ready though is always the date.

 

4. The change list is enormous and includes memory leak fixes, etc.

 

5. Current wad (today's build) breaks Slade in a few places due to some successful experiments we did on texture reuse.

 

6. Yes you have to pad the wad entries to a 4 bytes boundary, dot files are the post data for the previously defined graphic, some files must be compressed even if it's a bad option, names of lumps have high bit set in first character if lzw compressed.

 

7. Calico doom implementation was very useful to study during development.

 

8. There are lots of new screen shots and videos of the animated textures on the atariage discussion.

 

 

Huge thanks for this clarification post. Can't wait for this to come out!

[Bitbotherer]

Quote

 

No problem, we still keep encountering "features" as we test - such as the health potions varying between pc and console versions (1 Vs 2). Do you adjust the value or alter map to have less etc.

 

It's looking good though to hopefully pop it's head above the parapet soonish.

[taufan99]

5 minutes ago, Bitbotherer said:

No problem, we still keep encountering "features" as we test - such as the health potions varying between pc and console versions (1 Vs 2). Do you adjust the value or alter map to have less etc.

 

It's looking good though to hopefully pop it's head above the parapet soonish.

I know the beta testing is currently still for internal-only, but do you think running the romhack on Atari Jaguar emulators (eg. BigPEmu, Bizhawk and Phoenix) would be feasible?