Doom 64 is NOT Doom (DEBUNKED)

[JohnnyTheWolf]

Wow. It is always fascinating to realise even the things you take for granted can be this complicated under the hood. I am honestly surprised the Arch-Vile would be so much more difficult to get working on Playstation.

So if I understand you correctly, even if the monster had been redesigned to have the same amount of frames as a lower-tier enemy like the Imp, it would have been still too much for the Playstation?

[Avoozl]

YukiHerz said:

I think Quasar means that Trilinear filtered sprites in Classic Doom look like shit, to which I agree.

I strongly agree with this also.

[Edward850]

JohnnyTheWolf said:

I am honestly surprised the Arch-Vile would be so much more difficult to get working on Playstation.

Not really all that surprising. The PS1 only had 1MB of VRAM. I believe the 2MB RAM also came into play for monster type counts.

Doom was fairly pressed for RAM back when it was released, even on PC. For example, to get around the memory limitations on the PC they reused the screen frame buffer as the saved game buffer, which is where the file size limit on saves came from.
It also meant that if you could take a screenshot right as you saved, the screenshot would contain all the bytes from the saved game itself (although there is no sequence of events that allowed you to screenshot and save at the same time).

[VGA]

Can you load the data from a screenshot? :D

JohnnyTheWolf said:

Wow. It is always fascinating to realise even the things you take for granted can be this complicated under the hood. I am honestly surprised the Arch-Vile would be so much more difficult to get working on Playstation.

So if I understand you correctly, even if the monster had been redesigned to have the same amount of frames as a lower-tier enemy like the Imp, it would have been still too much for the Playstation?

The archville has a few extra frames because of the resurrection thing. But the flame in your face effect has a LOT of frames, a LOT. And extra sounds, too. Several code pointers specific to this monster would need to be implemented in Doom 64 as well...

And you would need to test this weird thing that resurrects corpses, it can have all kinds of side effects, like the ghost monster bug in Doom. Also the explosion of his attack makes the player jump into places he normally cannot go. That can screw a map's flow. You would have to use him sparingly like in Doom, otherwise he's very annoying.

And you would need new graphics for him. Well, I guess they said fuck all that.

[Maes]

The Doom64 also had the advantage of running from a cartridge -if something can't fit entirely in RAM, no biggie: swapping things in/out is less of a hassle than it would be on the PSX (which is designed not to swap at all, AFAIK) and for most effects and purposes, ROM can effectively be treated as RAM.

Even if actual RAM was at absolute parity between the two, that difference alone would give an enormous advantage to the cart based system.

[Gez]

JohnnyTheWolf said:

Wow. It is always fascinating to realise even the things you take for granted can be this complicated under the hood. I am honestly surprised the Arch-Vile would be so much more difficult to get working on Playstation.

So if I understand you correctly, even if the monster had been redesigned to have the same amount of frames as a lower-tier enemy like the Imp, it would have been still too much for the Playstation?

The arch-vile uses 29 frames of animation; the imp uses a mere 21. However, if you consider the amount of sprites rather than the amount of frames, this changes. Assuming five sprite per frame except for death frames that get only one sprite, the arch-vile gets 20*5+9=109 sprites and the imp gets only 8x5+13=53. So the arch-vile counts for two monsters. Then you can take sprite sizes into account, because 109 lost soul sprites would still be easier to fit in memory than 53 spider mastermind sprites.

So here are some cold hard facts from doom2.wad:

Imp: TROO sprites
53 sprites
combined size 77424 bytes

Demon: SARG sprites
58 sprites
combined size 120704 bytes

Lost soul: SKUL sprites
31 sprites
combined size 51168 bytes

Cacodemon: HEAD sprites
36 sprites
combined size 135508 bytes

Hell knight: BOS2 sprites
55 sprites
combined size 130080 bytes

Revenant: SKEL sprites
77 sprites
combined size 170372 bytes

Mancubus: FATT sprites
63 sprites
combined size 272244 bytes

Cyberdemon: CYBR sprites
65 sprites
combined size 437960 bytes

Spiderdemon: SPID sprites
52 sprites
combined size 582596 bytes

Arch-vile: VILE sprites
145 sprites
combined size 336780 bytes


Alright so you can probably reduce the arch-vile to weight about as much as the mancubus if you degrade its quality by using mirrored frames for its attack and resurrection sequences, something they didn't do in PC Doom. You could also make it use the same animation for both attack and resurrection. So they could have done it with some acceptable sacrifice to the monster's animation quality.

Note however that the sizes given are for images in Doom's picture format; it's going to be higher for "rectangular" formats where transparent pixels are listed individually instead of skipped over.

VGA said:

Can you load the data from a screenshot? :D

The archville has a few extra frames because of the resurrection thing. But the flame in your face effect has a LOT of frames, a LOT. And extra sounds, too. Several code pointers specific to this monster would need to be implemented in Doom 64 as well...

Not so much.

Arch-vile fire: FIRE sprites
8 sprites
combined size 13812 bytes

By comparison

Imp fireball: BAL1 sprites
5 sprites
combined size 5644 bytes

Cacodemon fireball: BAL2 sprites
5 sprites
combined size 7128 bytes

Baron/knight fireball: BAL7 sprites
11 sprites
combined size 8676 bytes

Revenant missiles: FATB and FBXP sprites*
13 sprites
combined size 9740 bytes

Mancubus fireballs: MANF sprites
10 sprites
combined size 12308 bytes

(* Yeah the revenant missile graphics were originally meant to be used for the mancubus.)

So the arch-vile fire doesn't use a lot of frames, but they are much larger in size than the typical fireball.

[Maes]

I am not familiar with the internals of PSX Doom, nor how divergent it is from the PC one, but it's entirely possible that a lot of simplifications were done in the internal structures and logic, incompatible with resurrecting or spawning new enemies on the map.

For example, there could be a fixed number of monster slots per map, rather than using a dynamic list.

Then again there is a Pain Elemental in PSX Doom...but does anyone knows if it behaves exactly as it did on the PC? Same Lost Soul limit? Or an even more restrictive?

In such a restrictive environment, the Archvile would be very complex to implement (but then again, the Mother Demon does spawn other demons...only that it's done in one specific map, so it wouldn't be incompatible with a global or per-map static limit).

[VGA]

Hm, I thought the Fire had more sprites. I think it just has a lot of frames, I was kinda impressed looking at it in Whacked.

Also if there is no Archvile then you can get rid of all monsters' Raise states info. Not sure how much that would help.

[JohnnyTheWolf]

Interesting!

But let us say, theorically, that, instead of cutting the Arch-Vile altogether, Williams had decided to get rid of its fire attack and make it only capable of resurrecting monsters - possibly increasing its hit points to compensate. Would that have worked?

[VGamingJunkie]

They didn't include him because they felt they couldn't do him justice. Probably due to the aforementioned sprites.

[JohnnyTheWolf]

Personally, I would have been fine with an Arch-Vile that focuses solely on reviving its fellow monsters. Its fire attack is just frustrating to deal with and, from what I have seen, it seems to distract it from serving its primary purpose.

I do not know if someone else has thought of that, but it would make for an interesting mod.

[Mattfrie1]

Maes said:

Then again there is a Pain Elemental in PSX Doom...but does anyone knows if it behaves exactly as it did on the PC? Same Lost Soul limit? Or an even more restrictive?

I'm pretty sure the Pain Elemental has the same 21 Lost Soul limit that vanilla imposes, but each lost soul spawned increases the kill percentage over 100%.

[Maes]

JohnnyTheWolf said:

Personally, I would have been fine with an Arch-Vile that focuses solely on reviving its fellow monsters. Its fire attack is just frustrating to deal with and, from what I have seen, it seems to distract it from serving its primary purpose.

To make it even more effective in this role, it should have a different pathfinding strategy than other monsters, otherwise it would still gravitate towards the player, eventually getting into melee range (should it at least have a melee attack then?).

It would be more efficient in its primary role if it searched corpses to resurrect more actively, or decided to travel in random spots of the map, eventually e.g. backtracking to where the player left a lot of corpses, instead of following the player.

[Quasar]

Maes said:

I am not familiar with the internals of PSX Doom, nor how divergent it is from the PC one, but it's entirely possible that a lot of simplifications were done in the internal structures and logic, incompatible with resurrecting or spawning new enemies on the map.

For example, there could be a fixed number of monster slots per map, rather than using a dynamic list.

Then again there is a Pain Elemental in PSX Doom...but does anyone knows if it behaves exactly as it did on the PC? Same Lost Soul limit? Or an even more restrictive?

In such a restrictive environment, the Archvile would be very complex to implement (but then again, the Mother Demon does spawn other demons...only that it's done in one specific map, so it wouldn't be incompatible with a global or per-map static limit).

There are no such radical changes.

[riderr3]

It's kinda spinoff of Doom ;)
I like the sounds especially!

[[McD] James]

Doom 64 has a lot more in common with 'Doom' than Doom 3 and Doom 2016 ever will. The game is a masterpiece in my opinion.

[Deleted_Account]

I can easily say the lesser known game of the Doom franchise is definitely one of my favorites. It's not everyone's cup of tea, but that's the thing about the Doom games. It's amazing that Doom as a whole has so many variations, so many variables and what different people prefer. But at the end of the day, the game series offers something for everyone. And to this day, to me, remains a solid gaming experience.

[Doominator2]

Honestly, I feel doom 64 is most similar to quake in terms of setting.

[Deleted_Account]

Doominator2 said:

Honestly, I feel doom 64 is most similar to quake in terms of setting.

Yup, Quake was a big influence on Doom 64 if I remember correctly.

[VGamingJunkie]

In summary, Doom 64, Doom 3, Doom RPG, Doom 2016, etc are all technically Doom. They were all at least approved of and looked over by id, include Doom Guy in some fashion, along with the expected cast of demons and weapons, and generally follow a similar plot of Hell taking over. They may play differently to varying degrees from the Doom you're familiar with but that doesn't mean they aren't Doom.

[Maes]

MetroidJunkie said:

Doom 64, Doom 3, Doom RPG, Doom 2016

Only that among these, only Doom 64 still uses even a vestige of the original idtech engine. Quite more than a vestige actually: you could say it was the most advanced incarnation of the idtech1 engine, maybe a bit behind Hexen in some aspects and more advanced in others.

[VGamingJunkie]

My point was that, just because it's a different feel of game, that doesn't mean it's not Doom. Besides, other than the unique graphics, there isn't really any argument for Doom 64 not being Doom that you can't also use to say Doom Ps1 isn't Doom, and that would just be silly. Different levels, you say? Doom 2 isn't Doom by that logic.

[Maes]

But the real question is: was Ultimate Doom just Doom II minus the new monsters, SSG, plus episodes?

[Foebane72]

Foebane72 said:

Why was it so hard for the N64 version of Doom to actually LOOK like Doom? All they've done instead is change practically EVERYTHING about what we love about Classic Doom and make it an entirely different FPS with Doom's name attached!

Having played quite a bit of it now, I take back this statement. All the main elements are there, mostly, but a lot changed.

I look at Doom 64 and it doesn't have the detailed textures or layouts of Doom, but entirely redesigned levels that are much poorer and SIMPLER by comparison and are frankly dull.

I stand by my statement of poorer and simpler redesigned levels. It seems the engine used is capable of non-orthogonal wall angles, and yet so far, in the base levels, all I see is 45-degree angles everywhere. They surely lacked imagination in this part. However, the textures are more detailed.

Where is the wonderful music of Doom? All we get is this horrible dirge which isn't memorable at all.

I take it back. It certainly makes a change and IS atmospheric.

The monsters look vaguely recognisable but I saw nothing wrong with the original graphics, so I fail to see why the changes were necessary. They're not even more highly detailed, neither!

Again, it's a change, and somehow they do look a bit more detailed, but in general the monsters look strange. As others have said, like too much clay - something which PC Doom never suffered from, they looked just right for digitised real models.

The sound FX are almost entirely changed too, only a few sounds remain from Doom, although I don't see why any had to be changed.

Well, I was wrong, a few sounds have made it from PC Doom, although I'm not used to constantly hearing the Zombie Human alert sound as the general ZH groan sound from PC Doom, for example.

I can only guess that the N64 wasn't up to rendering Doom as it SHOULD be at all, and that sacrifices had to be made. If it was a case of making it a different experience, then it was unnecessary as the Classic Doom experience is CLASSIC enough.

I was totally wrong about the N64 not being able to run original PC Doom, as far as graphics and sounds and music, etc. I eat humble pie at that.

Doom 64 is NOT Doom

I take that back, it's a console version of Doom, and I've seen the variations with other id Software games on console as compared to the PC originals, they added or removed and changed things around.

I forgot to mention, I've played PSX Doom as well, and it WAS different too.

As for my playthrough of Doom 64, I want to have a look at the later levels to see how they vary, but I'll have to google the level codes for that as I don't feel like finishing the base levels.

[Koko Ricky]

I feel like acquiring the source models for the sprites would be pretty much impossible at this point. For one, they would have to be in a format that's compatible with a modern program. Possible, but not entirely likely, unless it's generic. Someone would also have to have kept a backup of those model file for 20 goddamn years. That seems a bit unlikely, but then again we're still getting image dumps from John Romero once and awhile. I have a feeling that if we were to see the original models, we'd be a touch disappointed. 3D sculpting was much less sophisticated back then.

[Guest Unregistered account]

Doom 64's levels were actually a lot more sophisticated than classic Doom's ones. Not just in scripted sequences or fancy 3D effects, but in design, too.
Not only are they far better detailed, there are many gameplay elements of it that make it seem more polished. All the ideas are clearly conveyed, and the layouts are fun and memorable.
Having walls at mostly 45° angles really isn't a problem; having crazy angles simply for the sake of having them really isn't necessary and, in fact, I rarely use them while mapping for classic Doom (besides cave/rock walls or as part of more curved architecture) myself.

[Koko Ricky]

There is far more use of non-orthogonal angles than some are giving the game credit for. I also agree that the designs are generally a lot more sophisticated and orderly than Doom 1 and 2. Really, if you look back, especially at Doom 1, there are plenty of odd architectural choices that are a bit ugly if you're willing to take off your nostalgia glasses. Doom 64 does away with this by appearing more rigid on the surface, but really, there's an elegance to them that rivals the original games. And as mentioned, the heavy use of scripting, faux 3D effects such as room-over-room, and atmospheric elements such as the careful use of lighting, makes it stand out. That's why it's still a very good looking game today.

[Guest Unregistered account]

Indeed, and some of the ideas are totally amazing. (I.E. In the void)
As you said, a lot of the levels have architecture which just dwarfs the other Dooms (most of the Hell levels feature some really impressive scenery and are perfect screenshot candidates).

[Foebane72]

This may be the case, but after having tried several levels using level codes and just generally exploring, I've come to the conclusion that this version of Doom is not my cup of tea. Neither was PSX Doom.

I grew up with PC Doom from the beginning, and I prefer the wider sprawling environments of that game, and I even like the brighter look with even darker areas. It actually feels like Doom 64 is content to feel relatively cramped and symmetrical, whereas PC Doom did everything it could to seem like the opposite of that.

I also question certain aspects of the game mechanics, like how I was able to shoot pinkies without even aiming squarely at them, in one shot. Or how, in another level, a pinky some fifteen feet below me was able to hurt me with its bite attack.

I had a go at the final level and defeated the final boss, but what the heck was that thing? I liked the roster of monsters at the end, and how closely some of them looked and sounded like PC Doom, but where was the Spider Mastermind? And why was the final screeching boss not shown?

I will say some things in the game's favour, however: the switch mechanics are more complicated and impressive, I liked the use of atmospheric sounds like thunder in some levels, the fog effects were good, and I wasn't expecting Quake-style wall darts. And in a lot of ways, the look and feel of this game actually reminds me of Hexen, except with Doom guns.

But in the end, it is not my personal preference for a Doom game. I'd just be happier sticking with all the PC versions. I'm not really a console gamer, but I was always curious about this since I first saw it in the later 90s.

[Koko Ricky]

Kapanyo said:

Indeed, and some of the ideas are totally amazing. (I.E. In the void)
As you said, a lot of the levels have architecture which just dwarfs the other Dooms (most of the Hell levels feature some really impressive scenery and are perfect screenshot candidates).

Even simplistic maps like The Spiral are really inspired and interesting. They stand out both in terms of gameplay and and design. Maybe it's just me being a Doom 64 fanboy, but to me the mappers for this game did an extraordinary job considering that Doom modding was less than three years old at the time.

On a side note...do the room-over-room and bridge effects fuck up if there are multiple players on screen? If so, could this be a reason there's no MP?