Differences between Doom 64 EX 2.5 versus the official remaster

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Apparently I’ve been seeing this question pop up pretty damn frequently so I will be posting a list of the more significant differences to be found in the official remaster compared to EX 2.5. Please feel free to share this, as I am tired of having to answer this question myself!

I apologize in advance if some of these things sound too technical. Because most of them are.

  • Uses the newest version of Kex Engine for its framework. It was necessary since it’s already scalable across multiple platforms. This does not affect the game in any way and the game logic for Doom 64 remains intact.
  • Up/down look and jumping removed. The goal was to keep this release of Doom 64 as ‘Vanilla’ as possible, plus it saves the issues when having to deal with the sky and player getting stuck in levels.
  • Switched to a shader pipeline-based renderer. Again, this was something that was necessary as modern graphic APIs now do not support the features that Doom 64 EX relied on (legacy OpenGL features like texture combiners, etc). All effects are now driven by pixel shaders.
  • Depth buffer is no longer used and instead now follows how the original game rendered the scene. This means that sprites will no longer be cut off by floors or walls depending on the order of subsector draws. Additionally, sprites are now fragmented based on the subsectors they overlap
  • Better awareness for widescreen aspects
  • 3-point texture filtering emulation
  • The way clouds were rendered is now correct
  • Demos now work, including the hidden hectic demo and intro map (there are some side-by-side comparison videos on youtube)
  • The timings of some executed scripted events were off by 1 frame. This is now corrected in the official release. Good examples are the blue key door in Breakdown and the scripted areas in Main Engineering. Compare the two and you’ll see what I mean.
  • Non-player objects have slower gravity (they fall down %25 slower than the player)
  • The entire original collision detection is now retained in this release, this includes all bugs (was needed for demos to sync correctly)
  • Projectiles fired from the player will immediately explode if the player is ~5 units away from a wall (not sure why Midway did this, but was needed for demos to work)
  • Monsters are now able to trigger linedef specials flagged as ‘death trigger’. Flag seemed to be multi-purpose, but monsters are now able to trigger the dart traps in Even Simpler
  • Logic for light strobing and glow effects were wrong – corrected in this release – also needed to make demos work
  • Logic for doors and platforms were wrong – ‘RaiseToNearest and RaiseAndChange’ were suppose to move at half the speed
  • Logic for perpetual platforms were wrong – Used a different randomization logic – needed to make demos work
  • Additional brightness setting in addition to the game’s original brightness setting. It applies an additive layer over the screen to increase the brightness even further
  • Automap controls is now idential to the original (hold use button to pan around)
  • Wav files are now used for sfx playback instead of MIDI

 

Happy? Me too.

Announcing Nightly Builds!

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Since I’ve been very busy with other ‘EX’ projects (3 to be exact) , dotfloat has been kind enough to continue maintaining Doom64EX. So without further adieu, here’s an update from dotfloat:

 

We’re happy to announce automatic nightly builds for Windows. This marks a major milestone for the continuation of the project.

But first, I’ll introduce myself; I’m dotfloat. I’ve been working on and off (mostly off to be fair) on Doom64EX in silence for the past few years. I became interested in programming because of Doom and I hope to make Doom64EX a strong engine.

Download the latest in-development version here

Note that since this is an in-development build meant for beta testing; stuff will break. If you’re not willing to lose your saves, please use version 2.5 instead.

The current long-term goals for the engine is to be a faithful recreation of the original Nintendo 64 game, while also being highly moddable. The minimum requirements will hopefully stay the same. If you can’t run the nightly builds, but can run 2.5, please report it as a bug.

iskcnmu

What’s new:
– Better Linux support (even though you have to compile it from scratch…)
– New Image loading system with support for Doom Picture format
– SDL2 support
– Various bug fixes and improvements

What’s next:
– Support for zipped (ie. pk3) and directory WADs
– Controller support (with N64 Controller)
– Support for replacing sounds
– Scripting language integration (AngelScript)

Other Notes:
– Multiplayer has been re-enabled, but it’s very buggy and unusable at this moment.
– OS X builds are a bit tricky because I don’t have an Apple machine. I’m trying to find one though!
– Animated textures don’t work correctly if you use an older WAD. You’ll have to regenerate it with the command “doom64ex.exe -wadgen “. However, this is only a graphics bug, and won’t affect gameplay.

Big thanks to GuntherDW, ProfessorKaos64, volumetricsteve, alexey-lysiuk, DieMatratze, aFoxNamedMorris, gogtytsufvhgekwzyuow (what a name) and others for having the patience to compile Doom64EX and report bugs.

If you wish to help out by submitting bugs or feature requests, you can do so on Github. I will also be checking the forums periodically, so you can report there as well.

You can also contact me on IRC at #doom64ex on irc.oftc.net, twitter as @dotfloat, email: dotfloat@gmail.com. Keep in mind that I live in Norway, so I might be asleep when you try to talk to me.

Doom64EX Status

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For those who are unaware, I have been swamped with other projects (one of them being Turok2 EX) and has left me with little to no time to update Doom64EX. However since the most recent release, I have gotten help from a few contributors. For the time being, dotfloat, MP2E and Quasar will be assisting me in maintaining Doom64EX.

The following is a list of goals that dotfloat hopes to accomplish:

GitHub repo: https://github.com/svkaiser/Doom64EX

New Stuff:
* SDL2 support
* Wadgen integration
* Various bugfixes
* 64-bit support on Windows and Linux

What needs to be done before a full release can be considered:
* New UI for Wadgen
* Fix save/load-related crashes

What won’t be considered for the next release:
* Multiplayer
* Doom Builder 64

Plan for the future:
* Full controller support
* Support for multiple image and audio formats
* Scripting

While nothing is set in stone yet, since I have the tenancy to drop off the face of the earth, I do have plans on migrating the Kex3 codebase with Doom64EX as I start wrapping up other things. This will introduce a ton of new features and improvements (hopefully) from my other projects. Anyways, thanks for keeping interest in this project wish the guys the best of luck!