did some rom hacking was messing around with saturn quake, I found a test level on the disk and got it to load in an emulator Don't know if this has already been found, but I though it was cool!!
You can see all of the files used by Saturn Quake by putting the CD into your pc, looking at the files all levels in the game end with the file extension .LEV One file was called TEST.LEV, guessed this was a test map. I used a hex editor to edit the Saturn Executable changing E1L1.LEV to say TEST.LEV, Now when you load the iso in a emulator and go to the first level of the game it loads the test level and not the first level
I'm not finding much on this elsewhere unless I'm not doing enough digging. Cool find. I'll have to give this a shot and check it out.
It was the developers house - I remember reading a magazine article on it back at the time of release. If I'm right it would load for you normally if you were to play the game and find every secret area on your play-through. I never found anything when I've dug around online, so I'm pleased someone has actually validated this after all these years!
According to its Sega Retro article, the PAL version of Quake for the Saturn has an exclusive credit sequence that features what appears to be the test level based on the description along with something they call intermission music, but I don't remember either of these details at all during my time with this edition - the staff roll has always taken place over the camera rotating around one of the standard levels, though it's possible such things are unlocked somehow. The only other mention I can find of the test level online is a single screenshot on a page from 2015 about the possibility of porting Saturn Quake's stages into a format that can be read in the PC original, though little else is mentioned. In my own attempts to modify the game data to load this, I've only succeeded in getting various revisions of SSF to either crash with SH2-related errors or simply display an empty black screen.
The version of Quake I modified was the NTSC version, I downloaded the Iso off the net. All my Saturn stuff is packed away it quicker to just download an Iso.
For some reason SSF won't open the modified ISO, but I finally got this to work in an older version of Yabause and was surprised to learn it's actually a full level rather than just some incomplete test area - even the outer walls have textures that can only be viewed once you've exited the stage (by attempting to access the bathroom). This is a truly brilliant find!
It's on the Saturn game disc, you won't be able to load it on the PC version of Quake, Saturn Quake has a different engine called SlaveDriver. If you want to see it you'll have to hex edit the Saturn Iso and use an emulator.
Here's the site I mentioned earlier that shows attempts to port levels from Saturn Quake - including the test stage - back to the original PC version: http://www.richwhitehouse.com/index.php?postid=68 Unfortunately, it looks as if the format's specific rendering quirks have yet to be fully reproduced, as there appear to be some geometry issues.
Thanks for sharing, I had no idea that someone had worked out how the data is layed out in the LEV files. Really interesting read, Don't think anyone will be getting the Saturn levels working on the original Quake engine anytime soon, it's a lot of work
No command console on Saturn Quake, only way I know of to load the level is to hex edit the Iso. If you burn the Iso to a CDR you might get it to load on real hardware, I've only tried it with an emulator.
Nice find! You can use the following Action Reply (codes tested in Yabause) codes on Quake (U) to trigger when you start a new game. 1602CD00 2B54 1602CD02 4553 1602CD04 542E 1602CD06 4C45 1602CD08 5600
