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aldiboronti

Movement and its effect on damage

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I've noticed that if I'm retreating rapidly backwards and get hit by a rocket I take far less damage than if I'm stationary or running head on into the attack. Does this work the other way? For instance, am I far more likely to take out a demon with a single shotgun blast if I fire as I'm running full speed towards him? I tried checking the Doom wiki for the damage system but all the calculations seem to involve distance rather than speed.

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The wiki is right: nowhere in the source code is there anything directly relating target & source speed to the damage dealt/received.

In the case of the rocket, you are actually evading/moving away from the blast damage, after you take the physical damage and cause the rocket to explode. Since the blast is generated precisely at point of impact, due to the way Doom works you have an entire tic to move away from it before it actually executes, so you can really shrug off some damage if you had sufficient speed. Since rockets are solid, this does not hold for full-frontal hits.

You can use the same technique to explode barrels taking minimum or no damage with your bare fists, but it involves being already in motion AWAY from the barrel when you hit it.

However, you can't shrug off explosions from Archvile blasts no matter how fast you run because they are always generated IN your position and they are applied INSTANTLY, with no status-update delay. You can only sort of abuse a bug if you are blasted in small, cornered space at near-point blank to take less damage, which has nothing to do with your speed though.

The other thing you mentioned however is just wishful thinking, as is the impression that "charging" before berserk punching things somehow increases damage. Try as you might, you won't get consistently higher damage from doing that.

That being said, the way you and monsters move (and almost anything else you and they do) DOES effect the final outcome of damage because the RNG gets used in particular patterns. If you could somehow "monitor" the RNGs status in real-time, you could indeed decide which is the best moment to take a shot (e.g. to guarantee max damage). That's what some TASers do.

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Yeah it's the unfortunate truth. Years ago i used to believe that getting a running start before berserk punching something would fuck it's day up. Unfortunately walking around like an old lady can do the same damage.

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I couldn't have wished for a fuller or more informed answer. Thank you, Maes.

Yeah, 40oz, that's exactly what I've been doing (charging in to berserk punch, not walking like an old lady, though I guess now I might as well! It's weird how your perceptions can often fool you in Doom.)

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aldiboronti said:

I've noticed that if I'm retreating rapidly backwards and get hit by a rocket I take far less damage than if I'm stationary or running head on into the attack.

PROTIP: straferunning would allow you to outrun the rocket.

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Maes said:

The wiki is right: nowhere in the source code is there anything directly relating target & source speed to the damage dealt/received.

In the case of the rocket, you are actually evading/moving away from the blast damage, after you take the physical damage and cause the rocket to explode. Since the blast is generated precisely at point of impact, due to the way Doom works you have an entire tic to move away from it before it actually executes, so you can really shrug off some damage if you had sufficient speed. Since rockets are solid, this does not hold for full-frontal hits.

You can use the same technique to explode barrels taking minimum or no damage with your bare fists, but it involves being already in motion AWAY from the barrel when you hit it.

However, you can't shrug off explosions from Archvile blasts no matter how fast you run because they are always generated IN your position and they are applied INSTANTLY, with no status-update delay. You can only sort of abuse a bug if you are blasted in small, cornered space at near-point blank to take less damage, which has nothing to do with your speed though.

The other thing you mentioned however is just wishful thinking, as is the impression that "charging" before berserk punching things somehow increases damage. Try as you might, you won't get consistently higher damage from doing that.

That being said, the way you and monsters move (and almost anything else you and they do) DOES effect the final outcome of damage because the RNG gets used in particular patterns. If you could somehow "monitor" the RNGs status in real-time, you could indeed decide which is the best moment to take a shot (e.g. to guarantee max damage). That's what some TASers do.



Fucking hell, I love readings your posts. Not trying to stroke you, here - but, I know NOTHING about programming or the Doom engine.

They're always so full of information and inner-workings. Love it.

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Yeah, the whole "charging" thing is bordering on swingshot territory. It's either psychological or based on luck as Maes explained. Hitscans are instantaneous, so the only thing that "increases" the damage of hitscan weapons is your distance and position relative to the target (hit boxes are square producing a wider target at an angle, and of course less distance means less spread).

aldiboronti said:

(charging in to berserk punch, not walking like an old lady, though I guess now I might as well! It's weird how your perceptions can often fool you in Doom.)


There's actually a reason for wanting to do this. Many enemies have a melee attack, so if you're within range for too long, you might get struck with the attack. Minimize your contact, and you minimize the odds of taking damage.

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Although movement speed has no effect on damage, there's been several occasions where fireballs just barely clip me (hitting me "in the shoulder," as it were), and I barely take any damage. I assume it's still all random, but I always wondered if there was any sort of "locational damage" for the player.

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I assume it's still all random, but I always wondered if there was any sort of "locational damage" for the player.

I haven't looked in the doom source in a long time so I don't know if the fireball works like an explosion (I'm leaning toward no, though). But if it did it would make sense that it caused less damage when it "hit you in the shoulder" because the corners of the bounding box are a greater distance from the center than the midpoints of its sides.

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Redeemer812 said:

I haven't looked in the doom source in a long time so I don't know if the fireball works like an explosion


Nope. Damage from non-exploding projectyles is instantaneous upon impact (applied by the CheckThing iterator) and independent from target distance/position. That's also why rockets always deal their direct impact damage, while the explosion may be variously shrugged off (distance, but also blockmap transition bugs).

Rocket/barrel explosions OTOH are delayed for one tic until they actually occur and they actually perform a radius check (actually, more like a block iteration, so it's possible to have some weird no-damage situations). The archvile blast is an exception to the one-tic rule, as it's applied immediately.

Getting little or a lot of damage depends on other factors (e.g. the whims of the RNG God, Armor (Doomers tend to underestimate how much more vulnerable the player is without it).

Again, this is mostly a "sociological" effect: when you get "a bit" of damage while running, you tend to reinforce this belief inside you, while selectively forgetting those 80 HP revenant fireballs that managed to catch up with you ;-)

A single imp can kill an unarmored player in just 5 consecutive attacks, if the RNG god feels like it, and a shotgunner can fuck you up pretty badly with 45 HP of damage. In both case, you'll feel like you've been unfairly raped. OTOH, you may get clawed 3-4 times by a Baron at close quarters and survive, also unarmored, thinking that you did something "special" to take less damage.

Sadly, if you sit down and average a lot of attacks, you'll see that there's nothing you can do to consistently take less damage, other than having a armor all the time. That's one of the reasons why maps that put the player in a low ammo/no armor situation have that steep difficulty feel to them.

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Maes said:

Again, this is mostly a "sociological" effect: when you get "a bit" of damage while running, you tend to reinforce this belief inside you, while selectively forgetting those 80 HP revenant fireballs that managed to catch up with you ;-)


I agree. I think that some of Kahneman and Tversky's heuristics are at work here.

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Maes said:

you can't shrug off explosions from Archvile blasts no matter how fast you run because they are always generated IN your position and they are applied INSTANTLY, with no status-update delay. You can only sort of abuse a bug if you are blasted in small, cornered space at near-point blank to take less damage, which has nothing to do with your speed though.

I'm very curious about this bug, could you (or someone else) specify how it works and how can it be taken advantage of exactly? Sounds like a tactic which could be useful from time to time.

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Megamur said:

Although movement speed has no effect on damage, there's been several occasions where fireballs just barely clip me (hitting me "in the shoulder," as it were), and I barely take any damage. I assume it's still all random, but I always wondered if there was any sort of "locational damage" for the player.


Occasionally when trying to dodge an attack it will just barely catch me and unload massive amounts of damage. It always makes me think I'd have been better getting hit dead on, although I guess that wouldn't necessarily be true. Randomness can seem not random sometimes.

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It has no baring on the amount of damage inflicted, but the most enjoyable movement/damage related action for me in Doom is playing Pinball Wizard (official signature move as approved by the Doom Signature Association) with Lost Souls. Stand still in front of a Lost Soul, giving yourself plenty of space and making sure there are no obstructions for it to get stuck on mid-flight. Then, as it rushes toward you, swing out with your fists and connect full on for a monstrous 200 points of damage and watch as it shoots across the room. Obviously this requires that you don't take any damage in the process.

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st.alfonzo said:

It has no baring on the amount of damage inflicted, but the most enjoyable movement/damage related action for me in Doom is playing Pinball Wizard (official signature move as approved by the Doom Signature Association) with Lost Souls. Stand still in front of a Lost Soul, giving yourself plenty of space and making sure there are no obstructions for it to get stuck on mid-flight. Then, as it rushes toward you, swing out with your fists and connect full on for a monstrous 200 points of damage and watch as it shoots across the room. Obviously this requires that you don't take any damage in the process.

Even more of a challenge is sidestepping it and punching it as it flies by, sending it flying off to the side

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