Sega Saturn Doom is Fixed

[FTLOTG]

Fafling@SegaXtreme & Doomworld has been hard at work addressing the (many) issues with Saturn Doom. Those not in the know, Saturn Doom is considered one of the worst versions of the game. Terrible framerate, weird sound issues and balancing, and tons of broken effects, it is a major disappointment especially since Doom 32x outclassed it by a significant margin.

This version was originally going to be significantly redone by Jim Bagley. He alleged the game was running at 60fps (a first for Doom!) and played great. John Carmack vetoed it due to affine texture warping. It seems this was done late in development as what ended up being shipped was a mess. Thankfully now it is being fixed. Enough of me rambling, enjoy the goods:

Time stamped link of the comparison:

Download the patch yourself (Requires redump NTSC-J version of game):

Doom fix patch

This is an unofficial patch that makes a number of fixes on the original Japanese Sega Saturn release of Doom. See the Updates for the list of what it fixes / changes. If you're interested, the minute details of the patch are listed in 2 files...

segaxtreme.net

Doonworld thread:

Dissecting Sega Saturn Doom

I think youd cap the framerate at 20fps to avoid the sudden speedups that are pretty evident in the showcase video that you posted.

www.doomworld.com

Spoiler: Patch Notes

Version 0.1:

• The nightmare difficulty is available in the main menu and saved in passwords as implemented in PSXDOOM-RE.
• Reinserts the unused inferno sky.
• Visually differentiates nightmare spectres.
• Slightly improves framerate (but the game still very much goes into slideshow territory).
• Stereo CD audio instead of mono.
• Reinserts an unused music (well on Saturn, it is playing on PSX) on the main menu. Automatic exit to the title screen after 30s of inactivity is disabled to allow to hear the full track without having to press buttons regularly. Fixes a bug bug specific to the Saturn version where the exit also happened on returning to the main menu after having spent more than 30s in the options. Exit to title screen is still possible with the classic A+B+C+start.
• Fixes a difference between the volume obtained from the options music volume slider and from track change.
• Corrects pan and pitch for sound effects.
• Increases range and volume for distant sound effects. The sound clipping distance is even longer then on PC vanilla Doom.
• Reinserts an unused fireball explosion sound effect (on Saturn, it is playing on PSX) for :
  • Mancubus projectile explosion.
  • Lost soul explosion.
  • Imp projectile explosion.
  • Cacodemon projectile explosion.
  • Baron of hell projectile explosion.
  • Plasma gun projectile explosion.
  • Arachnotron projectile explosion.
• Can play up to 32 simultaneous sound effects instead of 31.

Version 0.2:

• Reinserts the unused high res ID logo.
• Speeds up the start up of the game.
• New controls during start up :
  • Pressing start on high res logos skips to title screen.
  • Pressing D-pad right on the title screen, during a demo or during the credits triggers the next step of the demo loop.
  • Maintaining A pressed during a demo accelerates the demo playback (30 fps cap instead of 20).
• Adds a semi-transparency effect on the animated fire of title screen.
• Removes the black dots at the bottom of the animated fire.
• Makes Press start appear in front of the animated fire, not behind it.
• Noticeably improves framerate and reduces input lag. The game still goes into slideshow territory but less than before.
• Removes most of the holes that were appearing in the ground or ceiling.
• Zooms the sky background to match the PSX version display and align it better with 3D elements.
• Scrolls the sky background in sync with the rest of the 3D window instead of lagging by one frame.
• Makes the texts appear in front of the automap instead of behind it.
• Fixes several missing or corrupted wall textures.
• Increases strafing speed.
• Makes gravity and window bobbing independent of the framerate.
• Aligns ennemies and thinkers tic rate with the PSX version which prevents them to act up to 33% faster than they should when framerate is higher than 15 fps.
• Aligns ennemies death animations speed with the PSX version (except for the imp to avoid breaking a demo) as they were all sped up to compensate the low framerate.
• Reinserts the 3rd unused seesound and deathsound for zombies and chaingunners.
• Last minute intel : the demons speak ! A strange rumor is spreading among them, that the Spider Mastermind twins lurking in the deeper recesses of this game have conquered invincibility to the BFG spray, humanity's best weapon against those creatures. To make matters worse, they're said to be slimmer, faster and equipped with a rocket launcher that they use when they feel the pain. If all this is true, then they are extremely dangerous and must be terminated at all costs ! Since it will be an epic final battle, the main menu music will start playing when they're disturbed in their evil doings.

 

[RageBurner]

Color me interested. It makes me happy because the Saturn is obviously capable of delivering good FPSes; every machine has its quirks and Carmack should have known better that you need to work around them.

 

[Rocket2049]

it just takes the right developer to make a good port.

 

[RageBurner]

it just takes the right developer to make a good port.

Yeah, look at Powerslave/Exumed.

 

[FTLOTG]

I patched it and tried it, works extremely well. Not as good as PS1 Doom but very good.

https://streamable.com/w3fke0

 

[RanmyakuIchi's iconRanmyakuIchi]

I've seen rumblings about this both over at Doomworld and from a few Youtube channels I follow. Very interesting to say the least, and a neat look at what could have been had Carmack not been so stubborn.

 

[RageBurner]

I patched it and tried it, works extremely well. Not as good as PS1 Doom but very good.

https://streamable.com/w3fke0

Considering it is versioned at 0.2, hopefully it will match the PS1 version over time, if not even surpass it.