DOOM CE: PSX TC & D64 Retribution, overhauled

[molecicco]

Download it here: https://www.moddb.com/mods/doom-ce



SUMMARY

This mod builds on the PSX DOOM Total Conversion and DOOM 64 Retribution, to take advantage of the latest GZDoom versions and adds many features that make them more faithful but were impossible to implement at their time of release. To achieve this, a large amount of the code has been adapted from GEC Master Edition (also known as DZDoom) into ZScript, while looking at the reverse engineered source code and existing source ports of these games for reference.

In addition to that, the mod is highly modular and also incluides many optional "enhancements" that deviate from the original experience. Depending on your preference, you can choose to play as close to vanilla as possible, or experiment and play with upscaled textures, PBR materials, flashy particle effects and other features that are common in other GZDoom mods.

Since it runs on the latest GZDoom (4.10+, currently), that means that it is compatible with other mods. It's been tested with mods such as Corruption Cards, Project Brutality, QC:DE, Death Foretold, Embers of Armageddon, Guncaster, Trailblazer, GMOTA, Russian Overkill, Complex Doom, Legendoom Lite, Pandemonia, and many others (NOTE: Support is more limited in Doom 64 because most mods depend on Doom 2 textures and Doom 2's actor heights).



HIGHLIGHTS

• PSX DOOM software lighting emulation (brightness fades with distance).
• DOOM 64 with gradient and additive lighting. Can be enabled in PSX DOOM too to give it a different look.
• Options to restore the PSX DOOM aspect ratio or to use the Nintendo 64's 3-Point filter.
• The mod is powered by ZScript to make it more accurate to the original.
• PSX DOOM TC Lost Levels can be integrated into the regular episodes to provide the full PC level set.
• Bonus episodes and maps for DOOM 64 from the Absolution TC era.
• Customizable speeds: approximate them to the slower ticrate (30 tics/sec) of the originals or make them faster for a bigger challenge.
• Option to restore Arch-Viles in PSX DOOM, Spider Masterminds in PSX FINAL DOOM, Absolution TC exclusive monsters (Acid Demon, Stalker, etc) and Doom 2 monsters (Revenants, Arch-Viles, etc) in DOOM 64.
• The Red and Green Demon Keys exclusive to the Outcast Levels TC are included in that episode.
• Choose to play with the dark ambient Console soundtrack, the action oriented Computer soundtrack, or both, in which action fades into ambient after the music finishes.
• AI interpolated DOOM 64 animations and Smooth Doom adapted to PSX DOOM.
• 2x AI upscaled textures.
• PBR materials.
• Brightmaps for sprites and textures.
• Play with a fullscreen hud styled like DOOM 64 or the default GZDoom hud.
• Ambient sounds for decorations (torches, barrels, etc).
• Enemies and the player can produce footstep sounds.
• Two new difficulties: Nightmare/Hardcore is UV with fast monsters and no respawns, and Ultra-Nightmare/Doomslayer is a modified version of the difficulty introduced in DOOM 64: Retribution.
• Integrates Nashgore with slight tweaks and bug fixes.
• Higher quality and more varied sound effects.
• Many more miscellaneous small details.

INCLUDED MAPS

PSX DOOM CE

• Evil Unleashed/Ultimate DOOM: PSX campaign. Maps that were absent from the original console release come from the PSX Doom Lost Levels community project.
• Hell on Earth/DOOM II: PSX campaign. Maps that were absent from the original console release come from the PSX Doom Lost Levels community project.
• No Rest For The Living: A reimagination of the Xbox mapset. The maps included here are based on conversions by Dexiaz and Salahmander2 for the PSX Doom TC.
• Bonus maps: Tech Gone Bad and Phobos Mission Control by BlackxZodiac13, originally created for the PSX Doom TC (based on the maps by John Romero).

PSX FINAL DOOM CE

• Master Levels: PSX campaign. Maps that were absent from the original console release come from the PSX Doom Lost Levels community project.
• TNT: Evilution: PSX campaign. Maps that were absent from the original console release come from the PSX Doom Lost Levels community project.
• The Plutonia Experiment: PSX campaign. Maps that were absent from the original console release come from the PSX Doom Lost Levels community project.
• Bonus maps: DeXiaZ's Mausoleum by Dexiaz and Last Gateway to Sin by BaronOfStuff, originally created for the PSX Doom TC.

DOOM 64 CE

• The Absolution/DOOM 64: The original campaign.
• The Lost Levels: These maps are exclusive to Doom 64's 2020 remaster by Nightdive. They are only available if the included installer finds a valid installation of the 2020 release.
• The Doomsday Levels: Maps that were exclusive to Kaiser's 2003's Absolution TC and its Outcast Levels expansion, merged into a single episode. The maps included here are based on conversions made by Nevander for Doom 64: Retribution.
• Redemption Denied: A 2005 mapset by Steven Searle and AgentSpork for the Absolution TC. The maps included here are based on conversions made by Nevander for Doom 64: Retribution.
• The Reckoning: A 2008 mapset by Steven Searle for the Absolution TC. These maps included here are based on conversions made by thexgiddoomerx for Doom 64 EX.
• Bonus maps: Waste Processing and Mining Front by Maverick and Temple Ruins and Temple Grounds by Henri Leto, standalone maps made for the Absolution TC, are included. They are based on conversion made by thexgiddoomerx for Doom 64 EX.

FEATURE PRESETS

Since almost every feature is optional, the mod contains four presets for different levels of enabled "enhancements": Faithful, Faithful Enhanced, Modern (default) and Experimental.

When starting the mod for the first time, you will be prompted on what preset to use. They can be changed later by going into the Features Menu and choosing Choose Features Preset.

• Faithful: Features will be set as faithful as possible to the original.
• Faithful Enhanced: Some enhancements such as smooth animations, ambient sounds, gore and particles trails will be enabled, but gameplay will remain faithful to the original.
• Modern (default): More features including subtle gameplay changes will be enabled. Some monsters that weren't available in the console campaigns (Arch-Viles, etc) are also added.
• Experimental: Same as Modern, but with new visuals and music style will change over time.

Comparison videos (a little outdated, but they give the idea):

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Faithful preset:




Faithful Enhanced preset:




Experimental preset:

AUTO-LOADED ADDONS

There's two download flavors: Lite and Full.

Lite is just the base mod for those who don't want any additional features other than those built inside the mod.

Full is a massive ~1GB download because it bundles several addon pk3s that get automatically loaded when starting the mod. Each can be safely deleted or moved to a different folder to skip auto-loading them if you prefer not using it.

• Maps.LostLevels: Adds missing PC levels into the PSX DOOM campaign, and the 2020 bonus episode into DOOM 64.
• BGM.Extended: Extended, higher quality Console soundtrack by Aubrey Hodges. Some bonus tracks are also mapped to some maps when this is present.
• GFX.Brightmaps: Brightmaps, textures that remain bright regardless of how dark the room is (like switches, monsters' eyes, etc.).
• GFX.Decals: Higher quality decals. You may want to remove this to have more crispy, pixelated, vanilla-friendly decals.
• GFX.Extra: Smoothened wall/floor animations, glowing floors, and liquids will produce splashes.
• GFX.Parallax: Adds a 3D-like relief effect to liquids.
• GFX.PBR: Changes how textures react to lighting. Gives a glossy or metallic effect to textures.
• SFX.HQ: Upscaled, higher quality sounds and adds some additional sounds to some monsters.

Some non-vanilla friendly screenshots:

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PSX DOOM with DOOM 64's gradient lighting:


Upscaled textures, PBR materials and other special effects:

Comparison screenshots:

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Aspect Ratio:


3-Point Filter:

...and on top of that, there are several megawads that have been ported to work with this mod, should you want to play new levels:

• Rumble Pak by Antnee, Koko Ricky, DMPhobos, SteelPH, hardcore_gamer, jdagenet, Kore, riderr3, RileyXY1, sector666, snapshot, TheAgaures and Yummy Pie, converted by me. It consists of a selection of maps released standalone and as part of Community Chest 64.
• The UnMaking by scwiba, converted by me.
• Beta64 by Antnee, converted by me.
• Episode 1 for DOOM 64 (Knee Deep In The Dead) by Z0k, converted by me.
• PlayStation DOOM Reloaded by RHG 45 and Yikesdude754, converted by styd051.
• Fall of Triton by RHG 45, converted by styd051.
• Plutiona 2 & PCRP by (various mappers), originally converted to the PSX TC by Cryo, converted to this mod by me.

Level pack screenshots:

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The UnMaking:



Beta 64:



Knee Deep In The Dead for Doom 64:



PlayStation DOOM Reloaded:


Fall of Triton:


Plutonia 2 & PRCP:

INSTALLATION

Check out the ModDB page for detailed instructions, but TL;DR: for PSX DOOM you need the DOOM 2 IWAD, and for DOOM 64 you need the 2020 DOOM 64 remaster installed, and must run an installer batch file that is included with the download.

DISCLAIMER

I am not associated with any of the authors of the Total Conversions or any other resource included in this package. All credit belongs to them! There is a credits menu where all the resources and their authors are listed. If you enjoy a specific feature that is not original to this mod, make sure to try out their individual, separate mods. While special care has been taken to be respectful to the original games, this mod does not aim for total accuracy. For that, please check out source ports such as PsyDoom or the official DOOM 64 remaster.

More videos:

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[RubyEyeShabranigdu]

I love this MOD! I can't wait for the "GZDOOM 4.8.0 Edition"! (Of course after the GZDoom 4.8.0 official release! xD)

[Casualfan]

Glad to see this finally made it to the forums! I've been keeping an eye on this one for a while now, and personally I love how it revamps Doom 64! The updated visuals go really well with Doom 64's more colorful and atmospheric design.

[molecicco]

Thanks! I'm glad people are digging Doom 64 since a lot of effort went into it (even if the implementation is hacky in some places).

There's two things I'd like to do when 4.8.0 comes out. First is to leverage the ScreenJob api to create proper mapinfo-defined intermissions and cast of characters instead of the current ACS-based approach. Second is to add alternate versions of the maps with baked lightmaps. I experimented with ZDRay for a bit and the results looked better than I expected. There was a problem though: 3d floors would flicker and sometimes disappear, so I'm not entirely sure if I'll be able to work on this when 4.8.0 launches.

I took a few screenshots of how it looks:

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[RubyEyeShabranigdu]

Amazing screenshots!!!

[Cheater87]

What will the new GzDoom have?

[molecicco]

I've released version 3.2.0, which is compatible with GZDoom 4.8.0.

Highlights:

[*] (!) Fixed a bug where the random damage calculation was executed for the total damage, instead of per bullet.
[*] Remade the intermissions using GZDoom's 4.8.0 ScreenJob api, instead of using hacky ACS-based maps. The only exception are the DOOM 64 intro maps and the ending cast of character rolls.
[*] (Relevant only for modders) The "spawner" flag can now be activated on any Doom 64 thing and it will behave the same as the original when Thing_Spawn is called. Previously, I was using a special Thing (500) to simulate this behavior.

No lightmaps yet for obvious reasons. I'm waiting until they are officially released until I properly play around with them.

[Talon1024]

This is an amazing TC! I've been following its progress on ModDB since before the 2.0.0 release, and I must say this TC is truly impressive. I have a few questions and bugs to report:

First of all, I see the ipk3 contains the vanilla sprites. I believe GZDoom can load the sprites from the Doom 64 Steam rerelease IWAD just fine, so is it possible to delete the vanilla sprites from the ipk3? I understand you need to keep the recoloured sprites for the Nightmare Imp and the Absolution TC monsters (for now), as well as the smooth Doom 64 monster sprites.

Second, I think the only Doom 64 rendering feature GZDoom is missing now is transparent flat textures on non-3D floor surfaces.

And now for the bug reports:

- On many levels that spawn in monsters, the spawned monsters aren't getting the +COUNTKILL flag like they should, making it impossible to achieve 100% kills on maps like LOST01 (Plant Ops)
- The arrow traps on OUT08 (Derelict) are not being activated.
- OUT08 (Derelict) secret bug report:

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- When the player "uses" a candle on OUT08 (Derelict), it disappears rather than just being extinguished. In addition, once all of the candles have been "used", the megasphere that is supposed to appear on the secret pillar does not, even when the player presses the switch to lower the pillar.

- On REC07 (Shadow Crypt), the script which unlocks the yellow key room does not run on skills lower than I Own Doom, because the script spawns Hell Knights, but checks for Barons when deciding whether to reopen the rest of the level.

BTW, Doom 64 is also on GOG.com.

[Wiw]

Well colour me impressed! Just looking at this makes me want to boot it all up with the Experimental settings, just because I can.

[molecicco]

Thanks for the feedback! I'll go through the map bugs so they'll get fixed for the next release.

First of all, I see the ipk3 contains the vanilla sprites. I believe GZDoom can load the sprites from the Doom 64 Steam rerelease IWAD just fine, so is it possible to delete the vanilla sprites from the ipk3?

It's possible, just a ton of work. Before the iwad dependency existed I used the Retribution assets as a base, which has some sprites with changed offsets and different dimensions (blank pixels at the edges). All of the hires sprites are based on those, which means that I'd have to clean all of them if I replaced them with the iwad ones. I'd still like to do it at some point, just not a priority.

Second, I think the only Doom 64 rendering feature GZDoom is missing now is transparent flat textures on non-3D floor surfaces.

There's a bunch of stuff that is also not supported. From the top of my head... the way skies are rendered (colored clouds, animated fire skies), texture flipping flags and switch overlays are also not supported (having to create composite textures for each of these is not ideal). Doom 64's fake 3d floors are sort of supported through the "noskywalls" and "drawfullheight" UDMF flags, but when I apply them to every sector of a complex map the skybox becomes glitchy, sometimes it starts flickering and sometimes it disappears completely. It's hard to isolate and reproduce, which is why I haven't posted a bug report for it yet. Another difference is that the lightness of gradient sector colors depends on a brightness slider (not gamma), so what the player sees are not the actual RGB values that are set on the map. This mod uses an assortment of ugly hacks to compensate for these limitations, which most players won't notice anyway.

BTW, Doom 64 is also on GOG.com.

If you copy GOG's doom64.wad to the same directory as the installer it will recognize it, but for the next version I'll add a registry lookup so it automatically finds it like the Steam one.

[molecicco]

I've released version 3.3.0 of this mod, which fixes all the reported issues so far: https://www.moddb.com/mods/doom-ce/downloads

Aside from bug fixes, one highlight of this release is that Doom 64 now includes the missing Doom 2 monsters (Chaingunners, Revenants, Arch-Viles, Spider Masterminds) in the original campaign if the default or experimental presets are selected, or if the feature is toggled manually. Their placement is loosely based on Doom 64 for Doom 2. Obviously, an exact carry over was not possible because D64D2 has different geometry and monster arrangements, so the intent is to slightly spice things up instead.The idea of adding the Spider Mastermind into Burnt Offerings was taken from Brutal Doom 64. This feature was silently added a couple of releases ago as a beta, but it was using placeholder placements.

Other highlights are that the GOG release of the DOOM 64 remaster is now auto detectable by the installer, and the bundled GZDoom was bumped to 4.8.2.

[molecicco]

Version 3.4.0 is up. https://www.moddb.com/mods/doom-ce

The highlights are:

• Even more bugfixes.
• Doomslayer/Ultra-Nightmare difficulties have been reworked based on play tester feedback (thanks Steppskie and Zoya). The levels are still in no way balanced for it, but it should be less tedious than having to fight dozens of additional hell knights and barons. The difficulty is now composed of the following modifiers:
  • Monster health is reduced by 20%
  • Player damage taken is increased by 20%
  • Ammo pickups are downgraded to their lowest tier (e.g box of shells to a single shell).
  • Ammo is worth 300%.
  • Monsters have a chance to change the frame rate of their next animation, making them faster and more unpredictable.
  • Monsters have a high chance to stop being stunned by pain and may counter attack if they get into a pain state.
  • Monsters have a chance to stop infighting.
  • Monsters that shoot projectiles have 33% chance to fire one that has higher speed.
  • Monsters are more aggressive.
• Added an option to style messages like the originals.

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• Added new cast of characters cutscenes that are more faithful to the originals. You can rotate the sprites by pressing the movement keys and the extra monster types will appear if the options to add them are enabled.

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• Added an option to show a small icon on the fullscreen hud when berserk is active.

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A couple of Doom 64's Lost Levels received very minor bug fixes, so if you are interested in that, you will need to delete your generated doom64.iwad and doom64.ce.lostlevels.pk3 and run the installer again. The level packs converted by me in ModDB's Addons tab have also received updates, so you will need to re-download those as well.

[Casualfan]

I seriously love this mod and it's my preferred way to play Doom 64, but for the life of me I can't figure out how to load it with a mod loader (specifically Doom Runner). You mentioned a while back that it can be run with a mod loader. Do you think you could post a screenshot of what it looks like when you load it? I'm specifically looking to use the Lite version next.

[MrRumbleRoses]

I seriously love this mod and it's my preferred way to play Doom 64, but for the life of me I can't figure out how to load it with a mod loader (specifically Doom Runner). You mentioned a while back that it can be run with a mod loader. Do you think you could post a screenshot of what it looks like when you load it? I'm specifically looking to use the Lite version next.

i think i can perhaps help with that a bit. so if say you got something like, QZDL for example. you place the IWADS of Doom 64, PSX Doom & Final Doom CE in there, cause they play as there own games. and if you were to use the GZDoom launcher that is bundled with CE, then you set the path to that. and if you want. custom name the port when you edit the sourceport to something that relates to Doom CE, like for me. i call it GZDoom CE Lite. cause i myself use the Lite one

[molecicco]

A new version (3.6.0) is up on ModDB.

Highlights:

• DrPySpy shared with me the complete frames for the Archvile early, and gave me permission to include them in this release. No more mini mother demon!
  I recommend disabling the upscales and smooth/interpolated animations because they butcher the great art! If you're disabling stuff, why not use the opportunity to also disable the PBR addon and extra particles and gore as well. The game looks and feels better than you think without them.
• Doom 64 sector light effects have been replaced with Thinkers that essentially function like the originals instead of hacking the Doom ones (please report new bugs that may appear because of this). Because the originals have very strong strobing effects, a slider to control their intensity has also been added.
• In PSX Doom, you can now switch super shotgun sprites between Final Doom style and the classic one.
• All non-gameplay maps have been reimplemented as GZDoom cutscenes, except for the title sequences. No more fake maps between levels.
• Improved mod compatibility and various bug fixes.

NOTE: Saved games from previous versions won't work! This version has breaking changes, so any map packs from ModDB's addons tab need to be downloaded again. The Doom 64 Lost Levels wad also needs to be generated again using the patcher.

A clip of Dark Citadel featuring the new Revenant and Archvile:


The complete Doom 64 monster roster if the extra monsters are enabled:



In addition, I released an experimental addon back in December that lets you play PSX Doom CE (or Final Doom or any CE map pack) with Doom 64 graphics and gameplay: https://www.moddb.com/mods/doom-ce/addons/psx-doom-64.

Hangar:


Plutonia's Congo (features Craneo's Chaingunner and DrPySpy's Revenant and Archvile):



EDIT: One more video, this time in low fidelity using a heavily configured Vanilla Essence: