Arch-vile removes God Mode?

I used to have a version of Doom 2 which had a rather curious bug: if you were in God Mode and an arch-vile attacked you, the hit would still deal damage and subsequently remove the God Mode. I assumed it was an intended feature and I rather liked it, however now I can't find any version that actually has the bug.

Does anyone else know about this bug or how to replicate it? Anyone know what version it's from or where I can get my hands on that?

well, which source port were you using at the time? or were you not using one?

That's quite the interesting bug...

roadworx said:

well, which source port were you using at the time? or were you not using one?

I can say pretty safely it's not a source port-related thing. I'd imagine the issue is related to one of the retail versions of Doom 2. Which one, though, that's open for speculation.

Are you sure you weren't standing on a damage exit floor at the time the Archvile struck? Those DO take away your God mode (but not invulnerability from the sphere or the IDBEHOLDS cheat).

Sadly, without more information on the source port, map, possible use of DEHackED or scripts etc. we can only speculate, and the above is the only explanation valid for a vanilla, unmodified game.

thereaverofdarkness said:

I used to have a version of Doom 2 which had a rather curious bug: if you were in God Mode and an arch-vile attacked you, the hit would still deal damage and subsequently remove the God Mode. I assumed it was an intended feature and I rather liked it, however now I can't find any version that actually has the bug.

Was this happening on a specific map, or just generally? Because I can think of two circumstances in id-published IWADs that would create this impression:

• Monster spawner cubes play the archvile's flame attack sprite (at high speed) when they reach their destination, and if the player is standing at the destination point they will be telefragged by the cube; telefrags ignore IDDQD.
  
• PLUTONIA.WAD MAP11 uses a hurtfloor exit sector (like the one at the end of Doom E1M8) if you pick the "wrong" path at the end; hurtfloor exit sectors disable IDDQD (but make you immortal), and that sector also contains archviles.
  

I suppose if you had the invulnerability powerup and it coincidentally expired just before the detonation of the arch-vile's attack, you could create the memory that the arch-vile's attack is the one thing that terminated invulnerability.

It sounds like Hunted ending sequence.

I'm only certain of one map in which it happened, but I think it was happening in others. Actually, now that I think about it, it was Final Doom, probably Plutonia.

It was definitely not a hurt/exit floor or monster spawner, just the regular arch-vile attack.

It was no source port. I played the game on windows-DOS using Doom95 on a computer running Windows ME Home Edition. This was back around 2002-2003.

If it's a Doom95-specific bug, good luck getting anyone to replicate it today, let alone fix it :-)

Actually I've never heard of that before, first time... Hmm, gotta do a research about it.

I'm still betting on a false memory. It happening "in one map of Final Doom, probably Plutonia" really points out towards the bad exit of Hunted.

Well since we're on the subject of false memories, here are my top 3 ones:

1. Seeing a chaingunner getting gibbed by the SSG in MAP04 of Doom II.
   
2. Seeing an Archvile NOT resurrecting corpses that it had killed itself.
   
3. Dying on TNT's MAP30 puzzle teleporting me in the lava pit at the bottom of the platfotms, rather than in that voodoo doll telefrag sector
   

My top false memory is there being a Chaingunner on the ledge overlooking the "zig-zag" platform in E1M1.

I am also -still- convinced that there was a Doom95-based demo of Doom II somewhere, which only included MAP01.

Maes said:

Are you sure you weren't standing on a damage exit floor at the time the Archvile struck? Those DO take away your God mode (but not invulnerability from the sphere or the IDBEHOLDS cheat).

I remember when I was younger and trying to find a way to stop taking damage in the E1M8 trap to kill the monsters, eventually using the invulnerability sphere cheat to get around it.

That would be a great trick if the player was using the god mode cheat and encounters an Arch-vile and has it removed by it's fire attack, maybe insta-gibbing the player.

Piper Maru said:

That would be a great trick if the player was using the god mode cheat and encounters an Arch-vile and has it removed by it's fire attack, maybe insta-gibbing the player.

The Sky May Be/The Blessed Engine actually pulled such a stunt with the "Blessed Cannon" -a projectile so powerful that it overflowed/underflowed the health counter, either instantly gibbing the player or making him nigh immortal. Anything with more than 10000 HP could theoretically survive even telefragging without the need for God mode, which actually has a limit to its protection.

Like that Baron on Sky May Be?

It actually takes relatively little to defeat God mode: just 1000 HP of damage in one go. But normally, only telefragging can do that -the single most damaging attack, the big BFG ball, does at most 800. And still God mode is not actually taken off in those cases.

Well when I played as a kid I thought that the mountain in Mount Pain keeps spawning infinite Lost Souls since I kept seeing them teleporting on the mountain.

Cynical said:

My top false memory is there being a Chaingunner on the ledge overlooking the "zig-zag" platform in E1M1.

Well, the PSX port has a chaingunner in E1M1! But not on that ledge :D

It's not a false memory. I was experiencing it happening multiple times but at first I wasn't sure why my God mode kept coming off. Sometimes I'd be taking damage and think "didn't I have God mode on?". It'd happen again, and I'd think "No, I'm sure I had it on." Then I started to see a pattern: the first damaging attack was an Arch-Vile. That's when I decided to test it. I put God Mode on and stood in front of an arch-vile, and sure enough it damaged me and removed God Mode.

There's only one map in which I conclusively recall this happening, because I was spending a lot of time exploring that map in God Mode and it had multiple arch-viles, but it definitely happened multiple times.


The map I first discovered it on was Plutonia E1M1 (Congo) I think. Actually now that I just played Congo to check, it only covers about half of my memories of this testing, so I think there's another Arch-vile level somewhere else in Plutonia in which I also experienced this. Or maybe I missed some secrets containing Arch-viles. I may or may not have been playing on Nightmare difficulty if that makes a difference.

thereaverofdarkness said:

It's not a false memory.

Except it is. As we know with 100% certainty how the archvile attack works, we can say right off that it doesn't remove godmode or even deal enough damage to ignore it. It can't be from an older version either, otherwise it would have been well documented by now for vanilla demo compatibility.
The only way to strip godmode is the type 11 exit sector effect.

Bugs aren't from misbehaving code, they are from programmer error. Sometimes a bug is from a planned feature that was later scrapped. Perhaps someone accidentally or purposely copied the line of code to remove God Mode onto the Arch-Vile attack, and that bit was taken out in a later version.

It is indeed possible that I have a false memory of the event, but that's a bit of a stretch considering I was in my late teen years and I demonstrated the effect a few times after discovering the source of the previously noticed pattern. Do I have false memories from my late teen years? Absolutely. Do they involve scientific investigation? Generally not.

thereaverofdarkness said:

Perhaps someone accidentally or purposely copied the line of code to remove God Mode onto the Arch-Vile attack, and that bit was taken out in a later version.

Edward850 said:

It can't be from an older version either, otherwise it would have been well documented by now for vanilla demo compatibility.

Remember: Doom demos require a 100% accurate replication of the game's internal logic for them to stay in sync. Bugs, overflows and all. And the logic changes between 1.666 and 1.9 are rather bare.

Edit: I suddenly remember that as far as demos are concerned, it would be meaningless if godmode was unflagged or not, as a demo can't record you enabling it in the first place. However the issue here is people have been playing Doom for 23 years, and something as common as being hit by an archvile while cheating would surely have been documented by now if it existed in any version.

Type 11 exit sector would be my guess too. I can understand how the cause could be confused with an archvile attack if it happened at the same time.

thereaverofdarkness said:

It is indeed possible that I have a false memory of the event, but that's a bit of a stretch considering I was in my late teen years and I demonstrated the effect a few times after discovering the source of the previously noticed pattern. Do I have false memories from my late teen years? Absolutely. Do they involve scientific investigation? Generally not.

I have false memories of games that I played when I was a teenager too. Given that you're reporting something that nobody else has ever observed or reported, the simplest explanation is either that it's a false memory, or it's a true memory of something that you misunderstood (ie. it wasn't the archvile attack).

Is it possible that some dehacked patch had been applied that greatly increased AV damage (as well as player health)? 1000 damage overcomes God mode.

It overcomes it, but it doesn't actually turn it off.

As I said, it could be a false memory. Occam's Razor -- if we find enough lack of evidence in support of the event, even if we can't find any directly opposing it, it still can be false in spite of evidence in its defense. I just don't take very well to someone dismissing my experience without a second thought, and making the assumption that I was careless in forming the memory. But to all of you who have given in-depth answers, I am extremely grateful for helping me figure this out.

I'm beginning to feel I am remembering it incorrectly, though it still seems bizarre for me to remember it so clearly if it didn't happen.



It couldn't have been a mod increasing damage. The arch-vile attack was connecting while in God Mode and dealing the same damage (non-fatal) as it did without God Mode. There could have been a mod installed that I don't know about; it was my Dad's computer and his installation of the game. I really don't know everything he did with the game, but I always felt it was unmodded. I know he played with some community content, but it was all custom standalone wads AFAIK. He also used WADAuthor extensively though he was never very good at level design and I'm pretty sure he never took his modding beyond standard level design.




So I'm wondering if anyone could create a doom version that has this effect? I think it would be great if the Arch-vile could remove God Mode. It makes the Arch-vile command more respect. Currently it's just that newbie-killer that dies to a couple rockets after you learn how not to get smacked around by them, but so is everything else amiright.


Lastly: if you think my ideas are interesting, please take a look at the Propose a New HEXEN Class thread. I put a lot of work into my suggestion and it hasn't got any replies yet.

thereaverofdarkness said:

So I'm wondering if anyone could create a doom version that has this effect? I think it would be great if the Arch-vile could remove God Mode. It makes the Arch-vile command more respect. Currently it's just that newbie-killer that dies to a couple rockets after you learn how not to get smacked around by them, but so is everything else amiright.

Wouldn't that just be as simple as not cheating? Otherwise what is even the point of cheating in the first place if the game randomly decides that the cheat is meaningless.

It sounds more like you think that god mode is some sort of intended way to play the game. It's really not.

Although to answer your exact question, yes, a person very easily could make such a version.