Things about Doom you just found out

15 hours ago, Maximum Matt said:

What version is that

It appears only in multiplayer, which is why you won't see it if you just noclip in SP. (I had to look in the editor to see for myself.)

https://doomwiki.org/wiki/MAP11:_Circle_of_Death_(Doom_II)#Bugs

On mercredi 17 janvier 2024 at 4:28 PM, Li'l devil said:

it turns out Simon Garlick is a background character in Doom 3. Coincidence or not!?

Likely not, a lot of background characters in Doom 3 have cameo names. I mean there's Tim Willits's sister for example.

11 minutes ago, Gez said:

Likely not, a lot of background characters in Doom 3 have cameo names. I mean there's Tim Willits's sister for example.

A bit of Googling suggests that Simon H Garlick went on to found NZGames.com, a New Zealand gaming forum listed in that country's national library(!):

https://natlib.govt.nz/records/32385724

"Gaming spoilers and news items written primarily by Simon H. Garlick. Some discussion of New Zealand software developments, including information about Sidhe and Path of Exile, but main focus is on Quake. Includes discussion forums and links to New Zealand and Australian sites of interest."

It started in 1996 and still seems to have a bit of activity. The Simon Garlick in Doom 3 is Simon R Garlick... but Doom 3 is set in the future, so perhaps it's his great-great-grandchild.

I always remember emailing Jeffrey Bird, the chap who wrote Origwad, and actually getting a reply, because he had the same job! I think I added that to the Doom Wiki's page about him:

https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Origwad

"Thus he was able, in 2009, to license Origwad for use in a community megawad of retooled 1994 levels."

That's the thing about Doom. It'll never die. And all those who sailed the big ship of Doom will live forever as well.

On 1/18/2024 at 4:37 AM, plums said:

It appears only in multiplayer, which is why you won't see it if you just noclip in SP. (I had to look in the editor to see for myself.)

 

https://doomwiki.org/wiki/MAP11:_Circle_of_Death_(Doom_II)#Bugs

Now why in the circlestrafing hell would Saint Romero DO such a thing?!!!???!?!!?  Nobody can tell me that goddamn Bromero ACCIDENTALLY put that there...

He also put a stimpack out of bounds on E1M1 in v1.0, but that was fixed. There's a pattern to this...

I just realised that GBA Doom DM1 is a demake of Quake DM4. The massive visual change and downgrade in quality was enough to fool me into not connecting the two.

22 hours ago, Ashley_Pomeroy said:

 

"Thus he was able, in 2009, to license Origwad for use in a community megawad of retooled 1994 levels."

 

Is that 1994 Tune-up Community Project? This one definitely needs a follow up project. 

11 hours ago, Li'l devil said:

He also put a stimpack out of bounds on E1M1 in v1.0, but that was fixed. There's a pattern to this...

Perhaps a little careless with the mouse.

In Doom 2 MAP19: The Citadel, in the room where you need to raise the platform in order to reach for a backpack, Sandy deliberately placed two lines that block monsters to allow the player to reach that platform without getting stuck on monsters due to the engine's infinite height limitation. 

Just like he did in MAP24: The Chasm, Sandy used two textures on the same wall using zero-height sector trick, thus creating a more elaborate textured wall right at the end of MAP19. Kind of easy to miss.

On 1/19/2024 at 3:49 PM, Li'l devil said:

He also put a stimpack out of bounds on E1M1 in v1.0, but that was fixed. There's a pattern to this...

Maybe he wanted to place a secret leading to that area but ran out of time.

The cut Doom 1 versions of Refuelling Base and The Spirit World were likely still in the game as of the press release build, as they can be found with modification dates of 11th and 12th of October 1993 in Romero's source data release. Too bad we don't have the untouched version of that build.

6 hours ago, Individualised said:

The cut Doom 1 versions of Refuelling Base and The Spirit World were likely still in the game as of the press release build, as they can be found with modification dates of 11th and 12th of October 1993 in Romero's source data release. Too bad we don't have the untouched version of that build.

That reminds me of another fun fact about the press release, the episode 2 and 3 levels are swapped. E3M5 is E2M5 and E2M2 is E3M2. They were probably following the doom bible with the moonbase > hell > corrupted moonbase story. This could possibly explain why the spiderdemon has less health that the cyberdemon, because it was not intended to be the final boss.

1 minute ago, uhbooh said:

That reminds me of another fun fact about the press release, the episode 2 and 3 levels are swapped. E3M5 is E2M5 and E2M2 is E3M2. They were probably following the doom bible with the moonbase > hell > corrupted moonbase story. This could possibly explain why the spiderdemon has less health that the cyberdemon, because it was not intended to be the final boss.

Yes, this was the case until about a month before release.

I think that actually fits better - spider is the brains, cybie is the brawn.  

And it's been ages since I went through Tom Hall's "Doom Bible", what was the story going to be with the whole Phobos - hell - Deimos storyline? 

There were actually 6 episodes planned, but they only had vague description IIRC

Normally in Doom engine games you can step up to a platform up to 24 units above your current height. Most people who know about Doom editing or tech stuff know this.

In Heretic, you can walk over and under things. However, when their tops are higher than you are, you don't get the ability to step up on them like you can with floors. To go from floor to thing, you actually need to be on a floor 2 units higher than the height of the thing you want to walk on.

This isn't true in Hexen, where you can jump anyhow.

On 1/24/2024 at 4:54 PM, Li'l devil said:

There were actually 6 episodes planned, but they only had vague description IIRC

And now, thanks to Lord Romero's Sigil II: The Sigility, Doom One is finally complete - what a time we live in

I never knew you could play multiplayer on a old game like DOOM

Its just occurred to me:

In ancient greek mythology, "Pluto" is the name of underworld deity.

- Revenants are literary the ones, who came back from the dead.

- And Archviles, evil beings, who can resurrect, also have an obvious connection to the underworld.

So there is a certain elegance in Reverants and Archviles being mascot monsters of Pluto-nia Experiment.

(only 1 question remains - how hordes of chaingun wielding maniacs are releated to the ancient underworld myths?)

5 hours ago, Azure_Horror said:

(only 1 question remains - how hordes of chaingun wielding maniacs are releated to the ancient underworld myths?)

They'll send you there really quick if you don't deal with them asap.

This is more of a personal opinion but I just realized that "Intermission from DOOM" would fit much better for E2M9: Fortress of Mystery, rather than for E2M3: Refinery.

I think "Kitchen Ace (and Taking Names)" would fit much better for Refinery rather than swapping with E2M9's "Untitled". 

On 1/20/2024 at 8:39 AM, Uni said:

Just like he did in MAP24: The Chasm, Sandy used two textures on the same wall using zero-height sector trick, thus creating a more elaborate textured wall right at the end of MAP19.

I've been racking my brain trying to think of where in MAP24 you mean, but I am drawing a blank. Could you enlighten me? I looked for zero height sectors but they are mostly just doors. Perhaps you meant a different map..? Maybe the secret-concealing red wall under the computer screens in the pain elemental room in MAP08? Or the pillar in the north-west of MAP23, on the way to the BFG, that is vertically split to prevent BSTONE3 tiling upwards?

I have wondered for a long time why the Pinky corpses have a hole through their stomachs, when that part of the enemy isn't normally visible to the player, as their giant heads and hunched posture obscure it.

It only just occurred to me recently that (I assume) the idea was that the fatal shot pierced through the bottom of the Pinky's mouth and bore a hole into the abdominal wall. This also explains why the pinky spouts a lot of blood out of their mouths during their death animation

weird obscure engine thing, but I just realized pain states are one tic shorter if induced by a player's hitscan weapons. player specific thinking including their weapons is done before any thinkers are run, so hitscan weapons in particular do damage before anything else can run. once it finally gets to the thinker of the thing you shot, it sees that the tic counter is not 0 and decrements it, eating one of the tics that would have been dedicated to pain. This is similar to why flash states need to be defined with a duration one tic longer than the state calling A_GunFlash to remain in sync.

Other attacks, like monster hitscan and melee, or projectiles would depend on the order of thinkers in the list, but projectiles will usually be newly created at the end of the list, and therefore the monster will have done a tic before the projectile is processed as hitting them. A quick dehacked patch seems to confirm this, giving imps a 1 frame pain sequence. If you shoot them with the pistol, they won't visibly twitch at all in pain, but if you shoot them with a plasma ball, then they will very briefly twitch.

6 hours ago, RjY said:

I've been racking my brain trying to think of where in MAP24 you mean, but I am drawing a blank. Could you enlighten me? I looked for zero height sectors but they are mostly just doors. Perhaps you meant a different map..? Maybe the secret-concealing red wall under the computer screens in the pain elemental room in MAP08? Or the pillar in the north-west of MAP23, on the way to the BFG, that is vertically split to prevent BSTONE3 tiling upwards?

Pretty sure he's talking about this:

Not exactly a 0-height sector, but something you don't really see in vanilla Doom often.

Apologies @RjY, I misremembered that the example from MAP24 wasn't zero-height sector.

@hfc2x Thanks for sharing the screenshot, that was what I was referring to.

That is so cool - I’d always associated tricks like that with modern mapping, I never noticed Sandy did it all the way back then!

Doom originally had much more focus on elaborate light sectors, but during testing their testers ignored it completely. So they stopped adding these kinds of effects. You still see a few of them here and there, but they are not nearly as widespread as they could have been if their testers had paid more attention to what maps looked like. You see a few of these texture tricks here and there to avoid bad tiling and still have a nice bottom trim.

Had their testers been more into the architecture and visual look of the game, it might have looked a lot better. Id really upped their game in Quake when it came to light levels and other visuals.

Another thing I always found lacking in Doom was that Wolfenstein 3D and Quake both have support for patrolling monsters, but in Doom it's all static. I think they missed out on adding both tension and atmosphere by not having this feature. It's one of those things they could have added in Doom 2.

Edit: It was a while ago I learned of this, but I have never really pondered what the games could have looked like had they focused more on looks. Even Sandy can make some stunning areas, but if the goal was to make things that play well, doesn't have to look good, I can understand why his maps often ended up like they did. Take Doom 2 map10, each area is more or less color coded.

52 minutes ago, zokum said:

Edit: It was a while ago I learned of this, but I have never really pondered what the games could have looked like had they focused more on looks. Even Sandy can make some stunning areas, but if the goal was to make things that play well, doesn't have to look good, I can understand why his maps often ended up like they did. Take Doom 2 map10, each area is more or less color coded.

"Doom if they hadn't rushed it" is always an interesting thought experiment.  It's probably a much different game in a lot of ways.

18 hours ago, faceplant641 said:

"Doom if they hadn't rushed it" is always an interesting thought experiment.  It's probably a much different game in a lot of ways.

I wouldn't quite say rushed. They stopped doing this since feedback indicated it was pointless work. If they had did this then yes, it might have taken slightly longer to finish, but they might have spent less time on another feature and we would overall had a better product.

They spent time on improving deathmatch in maps I doubt anyone ever played much. I could live without a sniper ledge on e2m2 if it meant better lighting in maps...