[TerminX]

All of the larger sprites are like that... the size of the textures used on the PSX were very limited and they're all chopped up into pieces that use different palettes. For instance, the handle of the RPG is brown because the hand tile's palette has nothing but skin tones in it, the reds and oranges in the palette of the chaingun muzzle flashes actually doesn't even match the colors used on the barrels themselves, etc.

It cannot be unseen.

[Fox]

I am thinking of using the original Duke 3D tiles (except for the offsets). I have overlayed the sprites so I know which ones are identical except for being cut.

It would be crossing the line of what I generally consider profaning the original work, but that way you wouldn't be forced to use the full status bar.

[Lunick]

I think in this case, it would be acceptable to use the superior sprites.

[Fox]

Ehhh, the problem is that in some cases they modified some pixels so I can't just use the original sprite:

[Lunick]

Call Jimmy

[Fox]

Subjectiveness not allowed here.

[TerminX]

I'm not sure that I would even bother with that... it doesn't add anything to the experience beyond literally making the tile worse looking by way of color reduction and cropping, to meet a size limitation of the hardware it originally ran on. It's interesting from a sort of technical "wow, they sure had to butcher this to get it to run" standpoint but not terribly important beyond that. It wasn't quite as noticeable on the real PSX hardware, just due to the resolution and the fact that there were only really CRTs to display it on, but on anything modern it just serves as a distraction that's more likely to make people think something is wrong with their copy, or worse just lose interest. IMO you would be much better served by simply omitting such changes that are not artistic in nature (there is evidence of many if not most of these changes being performed by a computer program, not a human) and just uploading a package of the butchered tiles for the guys who are interested in that kind of thing.

All I know is whenever I see a screenshot of Total Meltdown now, all I see is how chopped up it all really is. I almost wish I'd never seen it because it truly can't be unseen... the whole thing is an unfortunate hodgepodge of mismatched palettes and molested textures. I really feel for the guys who had to port this to PSX in the first place... it's quite evident how much of an uphill struggle they faced when you consider that even after all that butchery, it still ran worse than it did on a 486.

[Fox]

They made some slight changes in the gun sprites so they wouldn't look as bad in 4-bit colors.

(look at the shiny corner)


And this bothers me. x(

[Mr. Nukem Roses]

sounds like the mod might be delayed a little longer i guess

[Fox]

No, I finished that part already.

[Mr. Nukem Roses]

Fox, on 13 November 2014 - 12:05 PM, said:

No, I finished that part already.

sweet

[TerminX]

Fox, on 13 November 2014 - 10:22 AM, said:

They made some slight changes in the gun sprites so they wouldn't look as bad in 4-bit colors.

(look at the shiny corner)


And this bothers me. x(

I'm guessing they touched it up after conversion... looks like that palette sacrifices lighter greys in favor of having a few skin tones for the hand, so that whole section of the gun probably ended up one color like the rest of the shine on it.

[Fox]

It's really weird that they went through all that while some of the tiles from episode 4 use 256 colors.

[Hendricks266]

Fox, on 13 November 2014 - 01:11 PM, said:

It's really weird that they went through all that while some of the tiles from episode 4 use 256 colors.

All the more reason to give anything that is purely a performance-based downgrade the finger.

[oasiz]

It's really VRAM usage that is the issue, not the frame rate.
This E1L1 dump I did some time ago shows that the VRAM is already quite full.



The textures with less bpp simply take less space in this atlas (more squished).
I believe that they just crunched down the clarity on the most common textures and some odd things got left intact as the level atlas wasn't full.

When making EP4, they could probably budget texture usage from the beginning so not a whole lot had to be done.

And This is something that you can't really load on the fly, thanks to the super slow optical medium.
So yeah, while the port has some shortcomings, it's still pretty impressive that they managed to mostly cram it all in despite the really low memory and without resorting to Jaguar doom like compromises with very simplified texture use and level design.

[Fox]

It's lame that they resorted on editing the maps for memory saving. Duke Nukem 64 runs so smoothly because all textures are compressed by the engine.

[oasiz]

Duke64 has the advantage of streaming stuff fast from the cartridge, which gives multiple megabytes of "free" fast cache. This is also usually why cartridge based systems had less RAM.
But it also means that no extra frames have to be really cut or bpp modified per texture as stuff like animations can just be quickly cycled from cartridge, aside from maybe storage space limitations.

Not sure on this but I don't think there is really hardware compression involved in Duke64, more likely it's the hardware mipmapping in action.
N64 games in general had to have a really low texture resolution since I remember the texture memory being something really absurdly low even back then.

The N64 simply had more CPU power to do calculations so it could contribute to why it runs smoother overall, but it had some issues on the GPU side which was something that belonged more to a SGI workstation in many ways except severely crippled. Playstation on the other hand relied a lot on supporting hardware, it's CPU is similar but a much less powerful variant of the N64 one. Sound/Graphics on the other hand are pretty sweet.

I'd say that both ports did pretty well considering the hardware specifications, playstation has to fit everything (sounds, script, graphics, map, etc..) in to the system memory as it had no fast cartridge "cache" to fall back on. I never found the choppiness to be much of an issue when I tried this with real hardware recently.

[NNC]

Wow, so much effort and time to make this mod look worse. Keep up the good work!

[OpenMaw]

I actually agree with this. This is all part of what makes Total Meltdown, Total Meltdown.

Even the guys who did the PSX Doom port made the effort to port over the slightly edited weapons.

[Lunick]

You could choose between the original or the smaller PS1 sprites too.

[Jblade]

Commando Nukem, on 14 November 2014 - 05:15 PM, said:

I actually agree with this. This is all part of what makes Total Meltdown, Total Meltdown.

No it doesn't, the levels do. This is pointless work no matter what justification they want to use.

They are free to spend their time doing this absolutely, but downgrading assets does absolutely nothing but make the mod look worse. If they were new assets entirely like Duke Nukem Advance I could understand the idea, but when they're downgraded lower quality ports of the original artwork it becomes ridiculous.

[Mav3r1ck]

Jblade, on 15 November 2014 - 12:40 AM, said:

No it doesn't, the levels do. This is pointless work no matter what justification they want to use.

They are free to spend their time doing this absolutely, but downgrading assets does absolutely nothing but make the mod look worse. If they were new assets entirely like Duke Nukem Advance I could understand the idea, but when they're downgraded lower quality ports of the original artwork it becomes ridiculous.

Indeed, it would be better to add TM additions in conjunction with the original game's assets instead of using the TM's port of those assets because they don't look as good as the originals do. The mod would be awesome with just that.

[OpenMaw]

Jblade, on 15 November 2014 - 12:40 AM, said:

No it doesn't,

Yes, it does.

Mav3r1ck, on 15 November 2014 - 01:34 AM, said:

Indeed, it would be better to add TM additions in conjunction with the original game's assets instead of using the TM's port of those assets because they don't look as good as the originals do. The mod would be awesome with just that.

Wrong. It's not just a simple downgrade. Fundamental alterations to make them fit the hardware and ultimately change the way they feel. is not just a simple downgrade. (I noticed that the pistol felt and looked different playing the game back in the 90s.) Not to mention both of you are agreeing upon a flawed justifier. There are custom textures, there are dramatically recolored textures from the original game, there are new, and different, musical and sound assets. It's not just levels that have been modified or added to the game. It is all part of the unique experience that makes Total Meltdown look and feel the way it does.


Better that all the work get's done on the first pass before release. Then if someone wants to modify it they can to their hearts content. It probably wouldn't be much work at all to disable the PSX variants of the weapons and get the originals back into the game. Someone will likely create their own patch if Fox doesn't do it himself. So this whole whining fest is ridiculous. Let those of us who want to have the complete unaltered experience have that, thank you very much. It's not gonna hurt you in the slightest.

[Player Lin]

Commando Nukem, on 15 November 2014 - 09:01 AM, said:

...complete unaltered experience...

Ah, I'm not sure using eduke32 with keyboard+mouse(or use non-PSX controller) would be still "complete unaltered experience"...maybe "nearly-perfect unaltered experience" I guess...

I don't mind about using original levels, musics and sounds but lowered quality artworks(except new ones that for DNTM only)...hmm, I'm sure why I still needed them when I'm not playing on the original console...

[Daedolon]

I'd rather have the art be consistent.

[Mav3r1ck]

Commando Nukem, on 15 November 2014 - 09:01 AM, said:

Yes, it does.



Wrong. It's not just a simple downgrade. Fundamental alterations to make them fit the hardware and ultimately change the way they feel. is not just a simple downgrade. (I noticed that the pistol felt and looked different playing the game back in the 90s.) Not to mention both of you are agreeing upon a flawed justifier. There are custom textures, there are dramatically recolored textures from the original game, there are new, and different, musical and sound assets. It's not just levels that have been modified or added to the game. It is all part of the unique experience that makes Total Meltdown look and feel the way it does.


Better that all the work get's done on the first pass before release. Then if someone wants to modify it they can to their hearts content. It probably wouldn't be much work at all to disable the PSX variants of the weapons and get the originals back into the game. Someone will likely create their own patch if Fox doesn't do it himself. So this whole whining fest is ridiculous. Let those of us who want to have the complete unaltered experience have that, thank you very much. It's not gonna hurt you in the slightest.

I understand where you're coming from and I also agree with this as well. I did enjoy Total Meltdown and I also enjoyed the "feel" and the "atmosphere" of the game that made it Total Meltdown. So if Fox wants to bring the whole TM experience to PC, I'll still enjoy the mod.

[Jblade]

Quote

Yes, it does.

No it doesn't - sorry but the PSX version was the first version of Duke I played way back when it was first released, before I even touched the PC version. Downgraded assets are not what I remembered about the PSX port, and it adds absolutely nothing to the 'experience' - if I want to play the port with all of the flaws I'd grab an emulator and play the proper game (I do have the disc) The PSX port ran at a terrible framerate like TerminX said as well, so why is running the mod at 60fps and playing at high-resolution not important, but downgrading the original assets is? As I said, if they were original art assets than I would agree with you! But they're not, they are the original Duke weapon art taken and butchered to fit into the hardware. Recreating it is fetish work, pure and simple. They can do whatever they want with this project but don't be surprised when people tell them that what they're doing isn't worth the effort.

[Fox]

Jblade, on 15 November 2014 - 12:40 AM, said:

No it doesn't, the levels do.

Commando Nukem, on 15 November 2014 - 09:01 AM, said:

Yes, it does.

Jblade, on 15 November 2014 - 10:20 AM, said:

No it doesn't

[Jblade]

i'll have you know my pigtails are much bouncier and shinier than hers!

[Mr. Nukem Roses]

it never hurts to fix any improvements a game might of had an issue with before. as for weapons, i say just add the normal Duke 3D weapons to replace the TM version. but still at least keep it faithful to what weapons were on the game. just like, add the weapons that were made widescreen compatible cause i'm sure the majority of people who will play this mod, will have there game widescreen