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Rathori

Does PrBoom+ change weapon damage?..

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...specifically, BFG: I'm playing BTSX E1 in PrBoom+ 2.5.4.1 and I can't seem to one-shot any Spider Masterminds, and there are a lot of them in the WAD, so that's hardly just bad luck. I never had such a problem in vanilla, Chocolate or GZDoom, so I assume it's a PrBoom+ thing.
I haven't noticed any other guns behaving differently though.

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So you're implying that you can oneshot mminds with bfg in vanilla every time, huh?

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Archi said:

So you're implying that you can oneshot mminds with bfg in vanilla every time, huh?

Not every time, but more often that not if you don't lose shots to blockmap bugs.

The spider has 3000 hit points.
https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Spiderdemon

The BFG has a main blast that deals 100-800 damage and 40 traces that deal 49-87 damage. Given the way Doom's RNG works, the probability to deal less than 3000 damage with a full hit is around 26%.
https://doomwiki.org/wiki/BFG9000

If a spider has been softened a bit by infighting, it should be reliably one-shotable. You are basically guaranteed to deal at least 2700 damage if everything hits, so worst case, finish it off with two SSG blasts.

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You are experiencing two issues here:

1. most source ports have replaced Doom's original random number generator with a more random one. Chocolate Doom, by its mission statement, of course did not do that.

2. ZDoom fixes one design flaw in how Doom managed actors on the map - this change prevents hitscan attacks from getting 'lost'. Unfortunately the BFG against a SpiderMastermind is the extreme case where originally a lot of the 40 hitscans that get fired by the BFG are lost, which can lose up to half the damage this weapon is capable of doing. So yes, in ZDoom-derived ports, one-shot kills are indeed a lot easier, unless you flip a compatibility option to restore the original flaw for these attacks.

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Archi said:

So you're implying that you can oneshot mminds with bfg in vanilla every time, huh?


Well, maybe 80-90% of the time. Like, if it doesn't die it must have been some bad RNG or me messing up the shot.

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I know how to use bfg against Master Minds, trust me. And it's more likely to not kill MMind with one BFG shot than to kill him with one BFG shot. Pure statistics I've got from all the slaughter maps I've played.

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Graf Zahl said:

Wow, I didn't know tracers could get lost. I guess I must have been pretty lucky in vanilla, then. Or they might have been softened up a bit by other monsters, as Gez said. Also, that bit about ZDoom must be why it worked so well for me in Sunlust, which I played in GZDoom.

Archi said:

I know how to use bfg against Master Minds, trust me. And it's more likely to not kill MMind with one BFG shot than to kill him with one BFG shot. Pure statistics I've got from all the slaughter maps I've played.

Not saying that you're wrong, it's just that, for some reason, I always thought of hugging Spiderdemons while the BFG ball connects as a reliable, if somewhat risky, strategy, kind of like two-shotting cybers.

Anyway, I read everything you guys posted, and did some quick testing - it must be GZDoom that spoiled me: I got 29/30 one-shot kills in GZDoom and only about 20% in Chocolate and vanilla Doom.

Thanks everyone for your replies!

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Rathori said:

I never had such a problem in vanilla, Chocolate or GZDoom, so I assume it's a PrBoom+ thing.

Actually, you did have this problem in vanilla and chocolate too, not just prboom+.

In vanilla/chocolate, look at the automap and press "G" to show the blockmap grid lines (128x128 boxes). When a monster's hitbox intersects those lines, the parts of its hitbox that fall outside of the blockmap box that the center of the monster is located in becomes invisible to hitscan attacks (like bfg tracers). The spiderdemon is so big that its hitbox is always intersecting blockmap lines, so parts of that monster will always be invisible to hitscan attacks.

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TimeOfDeath said:

Actually, you did have this problem in vanilla and chocolate too, not just prboom+.

In vanilla/chocolate, look at the automap and press "G" to show the blockmap grid lines (128x128 boxes). When a monster's hitbox intersects those lines, the parts of its hitbox that fall outside of the blockmap box that the center of the monster is located in becomes invisible to hitscan attacks (like bfg tracers). The spiderdemon is so big that its hitbox is always intersecting blockmap lines, so parts of that monster will always be invisible to hitscan attacks.


Ah, that explains why attacking Spiderdemon seemed to work better from some angles than the others while I was testing. Nice tip about the grid, thanks!

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Graf Zahl said:

You are experiencing two issues here:


Only that prBoom+ in particular is as close to vanilla as an "advanced" source port can get, and actually its selling point is its combination of performance and excellent compatiblity. So neither the RNG or the blockmap bugs can be at fault here. Unless the complevel settings are borked up.

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I know I should be running it at complevel 2, but I didn't actually set a complevel for BTSX, so I think it must be running in whatever its default mode is.

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No. ZDoom has been the only port ever to do that. This is a change that is utterly at odds with demo compatibility because it requires some hefty refactoring of essential game data.

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Ah ok. Is there a test map for that bug? Maybe with a monster stuck somewhere and the player also confined to a place from which he cannot hit with a hitscan attack?

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Gez said:

Read this and then try Barrel.

That's not a good demonstration. I got hit a couple of times but chainsawed the demons from within the alcove. In Chocolate Doom.

Can someone create a vanilla map where the player and a shotgunguy are confined in separate cages and you can't hit him?

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Oh, I was standing near the opening of the alcove, now I stood further back near the wall and couldn't properly hit. Now I'm going to try some source ports :D

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