Yeah, actualy I ported it to my engine. You can see it (older version) running in emulator. It doesn't look as good of course as it's still a work-in-progress. My newer versions improved the look and geometry. Very cool to see it ingame! Also here :
I think you've stumbled upon something people probably haven't know about for years. The fact that it will run on real hardware is very neat. Good to see Quake getting a fresh breath of air.
I was playing around with this a little more the other day. Here are some screenshots I grabbed. Sorry, I know they're not the best quality. I don't have a capture device so I had to take these with my phone's camera. Here's what you see when you first start the level. There's an Ogre on the couch just hanging out and watching TV. There's a box of pizza on the coffee table: Close up of what's on the TV: Close up of the Ogre wearing a Lobotomy t-shirt and underpants covered in hearts. Ha-ha! Bottle of milk on the counter. Are some of the developers missing? Interesting that the "Missing" text is backwards: There's a rottweiler in the kitchen with a bone and a teddy bear: Close up of the teddy bear: What's in the fridge: When we look out the kitchen window we see um... uh... Close up of the basketball poster: A gun and some armor on the floor below the poster:
Couldn't see any of that on the emulator, didn't realise at the time but monster's and models were invisible because Yabause can't emulator the game properly. Thanks for the showing it
When you modify the ISO you might need to update the sector's error correction. Maybe that is why the emulator rejects it?
Very cool, thanks for the screenshots. They put quite a bit of time and effort into making this all detailed. I'm curious what they've tucked away in their other games such as Power Slave/Exhumed.
I downloaded Noesis from Rich Whitehouses site and I can play around with the level and view everything (except models) in greater detail. I also exported the level to an .obj file and can view it in blender, although without the textures. Interestingly, when I exported it to an .obj file, it does export all the textures as .png files. This Noesis program is neat and you can view all the levels in the game. It can be found here: http://www.richwhitehouse.com/index.php?content=inc_projects.php&showproject=91
I have copies of Duke Nukem and Power Slave. I just took a brief look at the files on each disc and while Duke doesn't have a "TEST.LEV" file... Power Slave does! I don't have time to explore this one more, but I will take a look at it later.
...and there we go. I had a feeling. Pretty excited to see what all is there. I would make a separate thread, though.
I was about to mention this. SSF doesn't load isos directly, it uses cd drive emulators like daemon tools, and if you load a modified bin/cue without updated error correction code in the sector, you'll get read errors. Also the USA version of Quake didn't work in SSF the last time I checked due to unemulated Xband libraries. So use the PAL version.
Could a failure to update the error correction in the modified sector also explain why certain objects don't appear to display in Yabause? I'd love to see if there's any difference running this test level with SSF, but I wouldn't know where to start! P.S. Considering that both Exhumed and Quake use (different revisions of) the same basic SlaveDriver engine, it wouldn't surprise me if that other test level can be accessed in a similar way. Fingers crossed...
Great find! I know Exhumed or 1999 (I'm not sure which version I was playing) has a picture of Ezra (head of Lobotomy I recall) in it. It displayed when my Saturn's internal memory was corrupted or something. It was displayed as the background of the main menu screen. .
I took a look at the hidden level in Saturn Powerslave, unfortunately it's just a copy of one of the already existing levels. The file size is identical, I'm willing to bet there are no differences. When I get time I will checksum the two files to be sure.
Sadly, Duke Nukem 3D on Saturn (another Lobotomy game) has no hidden level, I already took a look before.
Ezra Dreisbach was a programmer at Lobotomy, and from what I've seen elsewhere, that picture of him could be unlocked in Exhumed by setting the Saturn's internal clock to December 10th (which is supposedly his birthday)...
I've just checked, and the most recent build of SSF (012_beta_R4) runs the US version of Quake almost perfectly, with just a few background layer glitches - here's a screenshot of the test level, which I was able to access using those Action Replay codes posted earlier:
I've noticed that this level also has some items you can "collect". You can pickup the antenna on top of the TV, you can pickup the heads hanging on the wall, and the milk carton on the counter... I can't remember what else. They don't seem to do anything to your inventory and you can use these items. They just disappear after you collect them.
After a bit of digging I finally found my reference to this in print - specifically Sega Saturn Magazine from the UK (April 1998) at the end of a four part guide on all the secret areas in the game:
