Compatibility and You

One of the biggest frustrations when working on Doom64EX is having to ensure that the game is able to run properly on most video cards. Back then, the N64 hardware was capable of doing some pretty cool stuff and Doom64 leveraged a lot of it’s features. Unfortunately a lot of those features, such as texture combining, wasn’t made available for PC video cards until 2001. This makes it difficult to get Doom64EX to look properly for video cards built around the N64 era.

After doing some investigations, I’ve came up with a final requirement list for getting Doom64EX to run or look properly on your video card. Clicking on the links below will list all known minimal video cards supported for that particular requirement:

• Must have OpenGL version 1.3 or higher
• Must support GL_ARB_Multitexture
• Must support GL_ARB_texture_env_combine or GL_ENV_texture_env_combine
• Must be able to support at least 3 texture units
• Must be able to support at least 2 texture units for light effects (no hud flashes)

That said, I’ve added a change to the game where it will no longer shutdown if it fails to find the required extensions so users with older video cards can at least still enjoy Doom64EX to some extent. So what does that mean? Basically it means that you can still run the game, but just don’t expect to see some of the cool effects. These effects that I am talking about are related to light flickers, glowing lights, item pickup flashes, damage flashes, etc. These effects makes use of the texture combining features in which the N64 version used. Instead of the glowing lights, the RGB colors will simply be increased but may look washed out and a overlay screen can be substituted for the the hud flashes. It won’t look anywhere as identical as the original but at least these users can still run the game. The look of the cloud for outdoor areas will also be effected as it also uses texture combining.

I am still looking for alternatives but as of now these are the new requirements. If you have any suggestions (especially if you have more knowledge of OpenGL) please feel free to provide any feedback.

Netcode fixed and *unix support in upcoming release

Still working diligently for the upcoming 2.2 release and hope to see an update sometime this month. Some of the biggest additions is the fixing and cleanup of the network system which net games are now possible without the possibility of inconsistency errors. A new menu has also been added for easy access of configuring options for net games.

In addition to that, I’ve been receiving a ton of help for supporting Doom64ex on 32-bit and 64-bit Linux operating systems. It’s really exciting being able to see Doom64 run on something other than Windows. Kudos to Urchlay for making it happen! I’ll be posting another update soon once version 2.2 is ready for release and meanwhile here are some screenshots showing Doom64ex on Linux. More screenshots can be found in the media section.

Rare Doom64 Magazine Scans

Not really news but wanted to share some magazine scans that I’ve found of Doom64 in early development. One scan also covers an interview with some of the Midway developers, a photo of the team, a very early prototype of the game, and also discusses about the art direction that they went with.

Version 2.2 In The Works

Doom64EX 2.2 is in the works. Most of the bugs reported on the forums are being addressed. Please report any other bugs that has not been mentioned yet and stay tuned for further updates.

Update: Sneak peak of the localization/regional feature which includes language support and colorized blood.

Y U NO UPDATE?

Still really burnt out after the completion of Doom64EX but working on side-projects has definitely helped me build my enthusiasm back up for Doom64EX. Been lurking on the forums and been making notes of reported bugs and issues and hope to address them sometime soon. Been a bit discouraged with working on editing/modding features due to the lack of community interest but I am still looking towards in getting basic decorate support in which I hope it can spark some interest again. If there’s any editing or modding features you would like to see, feel free to post them on the feature request forum.

I’ve been looking into some alternatives for a network library such as ENET to replace the currently broken network system in Doom64EX. If there’s a better library out there that’s easy to implement and is written in C, feel free to give me the heads up. I am also looking for contributers to join the project and help improve Doom64EX.

Current Status and New User-Levels

For the past three weeks I’ve been suffering some major computer issues, resulting to replace the majority of my computer with new parts, including a new hard drive. Over that time the forums were continuously attacked by spam bots as well as lack of updates to the Doom64EX wiki. Since now everything is coming back together, I hope to release an update for Doom Builder 64, Doom64EX and update the wiki with several more tutorials. Sorry for going MIA but hopefully things should pick up again soon.

As for community activity, several new pwads are in development for Doom64EX. Be sure to check them out!

• The Mort by C30N9
• Bleeding Terror by jdagenet
• Footmaps by Footman
• Ground Zero by Kaiser
• Teleport Station by Skadoomer

In other news, while completely unrelated to Doom64EX, here is a small glimpse of what I’ve been working on and off for the past month or so:

 

Forum-Spam Attacks and More

Due to ongoing threats from spam, a new registration system has been implemented to help prevent spambots from registering. Many spambot accounts were also deleted. Unfortunately some normal user accounts may have been deleted as well. If your account was deleted, please re-register to the forum. I apologize for the inconvenience.

In other news, Environment Artist Brian Goodsell has released a postmoderm article on Doom64 editing. It’s highly recommended that you check out his blog.