Re-Release of Doom 64 Includes a New Chapter - News

by William D'Angelo , posted on 10 March 2020 / 2,852 Views

Nightdive Studios senior developer James Haley told USgamer that the re-release of DOOM 64, which will launch alongside Doom Eternal on March 20, will include a new chapter.

"Persistent players will have the opportunity to unlock a new chapter in the Doomguy’s saga, taking place shortly after [DOOM 64‘s] original campaign concludes," said Haley.

"The Mother Demon you defeated in that outing had a sister, and since you’ve been messing up Hell non-stop, she tries to get rid of you by sending you away. If you can make your way back and take revenge, you’ll be rewarded with a bit of lore that fans of both series, new and classic, should enjoy."

Nightdive Studios lead engine developer Samuel Villareal revealed some of the improvements made to the game.

"There were many subtle things that were missed when I initially reverse engineered the game, such as enemies being able to trigger the dart traps in Even Simpler," Villareal said. "Enemies having different falling physics compared to the player’s. Delays in scripted events being one-frame shorter—the split door in Breakdown is a good example of that—and [the] slightly different line-of-sight logic.

"Getting those right also made it possible for the demos to sync up, which was something that I struggled with for years, so now users will be able to use the ‘RunHecticDemo’ password [a code used to watch a successful playthrough of DOOM 64‘s hidden level Hectic]. In addition to this, the game is also capable of supporting frame rates for monitors beyond 60Hz, meaning you can choose to run the game at 120 FPS or even above 1000 FPS. Everything is now interpolated to run as silky smooth as possible.

"Additionally, the way sprites are rendered is now more true to how the original game rendered them, so no more seeing the bottom of sprites being clipped by the floor or explosion sprites being partially clipped by walls. I’ve even employed a technique that was suggested by John Carmack in his release notes when the source code to DOOM was released back in 1997. These things are pretty subtle but I am definitely proud of it."

DOOM 64 will launch for the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Windows PC on March 20, and is a free pre-order bonus for Doom Eternal.

A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel dedicated to gaming Let's Plays and tutorials. You can contact the author at wdangelo@vgchartz.com or on Twitter @TrunksWD.