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Dubbag

Why do demons walk in place?

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I'm asking why do Doom demons that are in their inactive state simply jog in place? They play the first two frames of their walk animation but don't move until you wake them up. I know this is because Doom demons do not have idle animations. But they could have just had them standing there static, or breathing. Would make more sense IMO. 

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I guess the walking in place sort of vaguely resembles breathing or just like, idle shifting of weight without actually having to draw separate frames.  Static would've looked weird because none of their walking frames really resemble a natural standing pose, so most of them would've looked like they were posing or doing a freeze frame or something.

 

I've often wondered what sort of idle animation I would do.  I think a Wolfenstein-style "standing on guard" thing would also look off, I guess it's hard to imagine imps or pinkies holding a disciplined at-attention stance for any stretch of time; a lot of the demons have too much of the Chaotic Evil thing going.  I'm sure there exist mods that have drawn idle states for them but can't be bothered to go check them out just now.  I'm sure someone else in the comments will oblige.

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They probably couldn't be bothered to make new idle / breathing frames so they went with whatever looked closest to that, mods like Beautiful Doom fix this.

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13 hours ago, Dubbagdarrel said:

Why do demons walk in place?

If you look carefully, you'll notice they're marching in place. They are, after all, the armies of hell. This is simply a part of the drills they do to maintain readiness.

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Probably to simulate the fact that, well, they're alive and aware of what's happening in the surrounding areas and not just immovable statues. 

 

And tell the player that they should be on the lookout as a result, if they're seen or heard, they'll be coming for them.

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They try to trick you in to thinking that they are stuck, helpless and could not do anything to you, so you would come close carelessly...

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When bobby prince is laying down those fat beats, you'd get up and start walking in place too.

 

Moonwalking they ass into sandy's city baybeeeeeeeeee.

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There are some truly funny theories here. Although, I'm not sure the OP was inviting such jests.

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I thought of old JRPGs as well when I saw the topic title, where characters would walk in place waiting to be spoken to. On a practical level, maybe it's to indicate that this is someone who can be spoken to - or in Doom's case, a way of helping the player pick out threats due to the movement even if the monster hasn't been woken.

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Got to keep the blood circulating while you are waiting for the next face you can eat. No one wants to get a cramp while lunging after your prey. I mean can you imagine? The other demons would give you shit for the rest of eternity.

 

18 minutes ago, ReX said:

Although, I'm not sure the OP was inviting such jests.

 

He made a post on the Internet. He only has himself to blame.

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they're warming up for when they have to fight you, obviously. a little known fact is that john romero wanted to also include animations for stretching, squats, and yoga, but due to hardware limitations he could only include ones for jogging in place

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On 2/17/2021 at 5:35 PM, roadworx said:

they're warming up for when they have to fight you, obviously. a little known fact is that john romero wanted to also include animations for stretching, squats, and yoga, but due to hardware limitations he could only include ones for jogging in place

Can we get a mod that adds pre-workout stretches as an idle position for demons?

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As others mentioned, I always thought of it as being similar to JRPGs of the SNES area. In games like Mario RPG all the enemies march in place during a battle, so it never seemed that weird to me, just a common 90s game trope to represent the enemy being alive.

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I always considered this a regression from Wolfenstein 3D, and it doesn't help that surrounding games (save for the idTech/Doom clones) have full standing frames. It all goes along with everywhere Doom feels rushed and subpar, again in comparison with surrounding games: lack of patrolling behaviour, really buggy movement against environment, lack of aggression...

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On 2/16/2021 at 4:41 PM, Gez said:

They're trying not to pee.

How can an arachnotron pee anyway?

And it's more like they are slightly teabagging as practice or something...

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If you remove that animation, they would all look like statues and it'd be very weird. "Breathing" animations would be a waste of resources since you usually spend little to no time watching them animate like that, except in maps like Gotcha!, so id decided to leave them flipping between two nearly idle frames.

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You try standing on your legs for hours upon countless hours without developing a twitch, a cramp, pins and needles, etc.

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