Doom 64: Merciless Edition

Original game : Doom 64

Platform : N64

Author : Immorpher

Release date : 03 January 2021

Category : Improvement

Patch version : 1.1

Modifications : G, P

Downloads : 1103

ROM Information

Database match: Doom 64 (USA)
Database: No-Intro: Nintendo 64 (v. 20180814-043336)
File/ROM SHA-1: 799A588D73DA3FCCE8031026A8187DA92B91C817
File/ROM CRC32: 5CC1ADE6

Hack description

What does the Merciless Edition patch? The first thing is it updates the Doom 64 ROM to the reverse engineered version developed by Erick194 and the GEC Team: https://github.com/Erick194/DOOM64-RE . This contains additional features such as turning off the 3-point filtering, gradient lighting, and offers a music test in the features menu.

It also updates a lot of the defaults settings. The default brightness is set to the maximum, the sound volume is set to the maximum, the 3-point filtering is off by default, and the features menu is always available to access the bonus options. Also the RSP microcode was updated to F3DEX2, which speeds up some of the geometry calculations. Doom 64 did not have much slow down due to these calculations, but perhaps this will allow for more elaborate modifications in the future.

Perhaps the most unique update is the new "Merciless!" difficulty setting. This is inspired by the "Hardcore" difficulty of Doom 64 EX, the "Nightmare" difficulty of the classic Doom games, and the "-fast" monsters flag of the Doom 64 Remaster. It takes the "Watch Me Die!" difficulty and makes the monsters more challenging. Here the monsters and projectiles move faster. Also they have fast reaction times and attack relentlessly. This attempts to achieve the same difficulty in some of the situations found Doom 64 Remaster with the "-fast" setting. But it's not necessarily identical to this or the other difficulty modes, hence the new name "Merciless!" This new difficulty was achieved via a mixture of code from Erick194 that was unused and new code.

Special thanks to Erick194, CrashOveride, and Elfor for help and providing the tools to work on the Doom 64 reverse engineered source code. And for more Doom 64 action feel free to join the Doom 64 discord: https://discord.gg/Ktxz8nz

Version 1.1 fixes a bug which caused passwords to save incorrectly.

Contributions

Contributor	Type of contribution	Description
Erick194	Hacking	Doom 64 RE Developer
CrashOveride	Hacking	N64 Compiler Assets

Reviews

A bunch of features that DOOM 64 needs.	thezerobit	2021-05-08	Version 1.1
Some of these features are things that DOOM 64 was truly lacking like warping to whichever level you like, cheats, turning off the three point filtering to better enjoy the pixelly goodness, and default full brightness. The new difficulty level is not (yet) my cup of tea, but I guess if I get around to beating this game on Watch Me Die!, maybe I'll be more interested in that. This hack is absolutely essential!

Everything I didn't know I wanted...	Adam Catalyst	2021-01-17	Version 1.1
While I haven't played with the Merciless difficulty (because my skills are much more wuss level), I have played with everything else, and can say it works brilliantly. Graphics are now crisp and feel like you are blazing around on a Pentium back in the day. All the options you would want are easily available. Game plays like a dream. I have not been able to find a single downside, unless of course you prefer your pixel art to be filtered and blurred. I honestly had no interest in playing this game, until I tried it with this patch. Highly recommended.

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