Doom 64: Doom 64: Merciless Edition

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.

Doom 64: Merciless Edition 1.1

These patches work on the North American releases of Doom 64: the original 1.0 version and the later 1.1 version (sometimes called “Rev A”). You can apply the appropriate patch to its respective ROM version using one of the websites below:
https://hack64.net/tools/patcher.php
https://www.marcrobledo.com/RomPatcher.js

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 updates a lot of the defaults to what I personally prefer. 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 to this version 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. I tried to achieve the same difficulty in some of the situations I found when playing the 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 code I wrote.

Here are some future updates that I am considering. First, the N64 hardware has another texture filtering option called “average.” It will likely not be my preferred way to play, but a nice option to have in the features menu. Second, Doom 64 has two compression algorithms to compress its assets. Once I get a better handle on how to use them, it may be possible to load custom sprites, animation frames, music, and maps into the game.

Special thanks to Erick194, CrashOveride, and Elfor for teaching me the ropes 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

- Immorpher


1.1 Updates:
- Fixed a bug which incorrectly saved passwords
- Compiled with O2 level optimization


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