The Pain Elemental has "clean hands?"

I don't refer to their not-so-pretty look, nor to the somewhat faecal color of the whole monster, but to a particular property: I think it's the only monster that cannot become the active hunting target of other monsters, besides the Archvile (excluding of course scripting and advanced source port stuff).

In fact, when a PE hits something with a newly generated Lost Soul, the "culprit" for what regards the game code is that Lost Soul, not the PE. Plus, the "poor" PE lacks a melee attack and it can (when the Lost Soul limit doesn't forbit it...) only spit Lost Souls.

So, practically, the PE is "not responsible" for what it may hit, and other monsters never attack it voluntarily (although there's nothing explicitly preventing it, like e.g. in the case of the archvile). The only game creature actually hunting down the PE is the player, while other monsters never get actually angry at it, even in the worst of crossfires.

Unless there are monster-cross linedefs that can cause some damage and also assign "responsability" the one who crossed them?

I think that you are wrong because when a monsters hits a pain elemental, it sends his lost souls on the concerned monster.

Right, if another monster hits the PE it will retaliate ofc, but that's not what I said:

Maes said:

In fact, when a PE hits something with a newly generated Lost Soul, the "culprit" for what regards the game code is that Lost Soul, not the PE. Plus, the "poor" PE lacks a melee attack and it can (when the Lost Soul limit doesn't forbit it...) only spit Lost Souls.

Quite the opposite: I said that no monster can get "angry" at the Pain Elemental itself, only at the lost souls it spits. Also, because Lost Souls actually "forget" their target after landing a successful hit, since they employ a "tit per tat" tactic, the PE isn't even seriously retaliating: a lost soul won't attack another monster again unless it's also hit in turn.

So the result is that the PE just keeps spitting ineffective Lost Souls that get in each others' way :-) Plus, the PE is never held accountable for what the Lost Souls hit, even when freshly created.

I have seen the PE go after all kinds of monsters. It gets into fights all the time, it can bite and shoot lost souls at the target (its just really slow)... The other monsters seem to hate it and its souls (the stupid lost souls will fill the whole god dam room if you give that thing a chance)!

ducon said:

I think that you are wrong because when a monsters hits a pain elemental, it sends his lost souls on the concerned monster.

I think you missed the point. If another monster hits the Pain Elemental accidentally, the Pain Elemental's response will be to send Lost Souls in their general direction. The monster will fight the Lost Souls, and not the Pain Elemental, since it has no means of directly attacking the monster that hit it.

Maes said:

I don't refer to their not-so-pretty look, nor to the somewhat faecal color of the whole monster, but to a particular property: I think it's the only monster that cannot become the active hunting target of other monsters, besides the Archvile (excluding of course scripting and advanced source port stuff).

In fact, when a PE hits something with a newly generated Lost Soul, the "culprit" for what regards the game code is that Lost Soul, not the PE. Plus, the "poor" PE lacks a melee attack and it can (when the Lost Soul limit doesn't forbit it...) only spit Lost Souls.

So, practically, the PE is "not responsible" for what it may hit, and other monsters never attack it voluntarily (although there's nothing explicitly preventing it, like e.g. in the case of the archvile). The only game creature actually hunting down the PE is the player, while other monsters never get actually angry at it, even in the worst of crossfires.

Unless there are monster-cross linedefs that can cause some damage and also assign "responsability" the one who crossed them?

I have never seen Archies nor PE's hunted by any monster, the code forbids it I am pretty sure. They are high on my personal list of "get first" monsters.

I have seen PE's spit out new lost souls to attack one of their own spawn that inadvertently hits or runs into the PE. Lost souls, of course, infight on a regular basis.

A PE will direct many lost souls to "get" a monster that happens to hit it in a cross fire, excluding Archies. It is a fun trick to get them busy with that, which of course helps the infighting and thus the player. A room completely full of lost souls, if left alone, will soon be almost empty just from infighting if you give them some time. I really hate wasting a couple of shells to whack just one lost soul.

When I saw the thread title I thought you were talking about the interesting way the PE appears to wipe his hands on himself as he moves about. ;)

Searcher said:

I have never seen Archies nor PE's hunted by any monster, the code forbids it I am pretty sure. They are high on my personal list of "get first" monsters.

I have seen PE's spit out new lost souls to attack one of their own spawn that inadvertently hits or runs into the PE. Lost souls, of course, infight on a regular basis.

Ah good, at least someone grasped the thread's subject. Yeah, PEs and Archies are never deliberately targeted themselves by other monsters (which doesn't mean they can't target other monsters themselves, or get caught in involuntary crossfire) but for different reasons: the Archie is protected from retaliation by a deliberate hack to the code (call it "superior orders" if you please), while the PE is protected by never performing the attacks itself , but rather by putting all the "blame" for them on the Lost Souls, which seems more of a side effect rather than an intended behavior. What a bastard ;-)

Searcher said:

When I saw the thread title I thought you were talking about the interesting way the PE appears to wipe his hands on himself as he moves about. ;)

Heh. It would be funny if it had a punching melee attack, though ;-)

Maes said:

...that cannot become the active hunting target of other monsters, besides the Archvile (excluding of course scripting and advanced source port stuff)...

To be honest, I'm pretty sure in Intense cross fire, the Archviles will turn on other monsters. I'm certain I've seen archies and imps scrapping it out before.
I'm not sure if thats only zDoom though, or if it also happens on Vanilla Doom II.

EDIT:

Maes said:

Yeah, PEs and Archies are never deliberately targeted themselves by other monsters (which doesn't mean they can't target other monsters themselves, or get caught in involuntary crossfire) but for different reasons: the Archie is protected from retaliation by a deliberate hack to the code (call it "superior orders" if you please)...

Never saw this bit. So I'm guessing Archies only turn on each other during cross fire.

So no monster will ever attack an archvile, even if it is being roasted alive?

The monsters fight the pain elemental and the lost souls. You need to play more doom...
Edit: If your playing Doom2 map30, or is that just cross fire.

Icarus said:

So no monster will ever attack an archvile, even if it is being roasted alive?

I've seen monsters turn on the Archvile from it's splash damage, even in Vanilla.

Stealthy Ivan said:

The monsters fight the pain elemental and the lost souls. You need to play more doom...

Heh

Stealthy Ivan said:

The monsters fight the pain elemental and the lost souls. You need to play more doom...

It seems you need to play more Doom.

PE's can indeed never be the intended target of a monster's attack as a result of retaliation. Maes is correct in his assumption that only the Lost Soul doing the actual damage can become the target. PE's can get hurt in the crossfire or by being hit by its own Lost Souls but that's it.

The Arch Vile is different. It has special code to prevent it from being attacked by other monsters.

I <3 Graf Zahl, for only he understands me.

Icarus said:

So no monster will ever attack an archvile, even if it is being roasted alive?

Exactly. There is code to deliberately prevent retaliation vs archviles. Also, why do a lot of people on this thread take my statements as meaning "Pain Elementals cannot be attacked/damaged" ? That's not what I meant.

Actually, there is one situation in which Pain Elementals become the target of monsters. If the Boss Brain shoots a cube 'containing' a PE and if that cube happens to telefrag a barrel, any monsters nearby will receive damage from the exploding barrel. Since the PE caused the barrel to explode, the monster turns on the PE.

Voila. Also, there is no way an Arch-Vile is ever the intended target. The code simply forbids it, so in any case where the Arch-Vile would directly injure another enemy they would simply ignore it. Not even other Archies can do this.

I've never really noticed this, mostly because when I see a Pain Elemental, it's priority to kill as fast as possible.

@TerraJin: dude, I gotta try this in a map :-o
Is it something you actually witnessed or you just deducted it should work out that way?

DJShrimpy said:

I've seen monsters turn on the Archvile from it's splash damage, even in Vanilla.

Uhm...no. Catching a fireball by mistake is not the same as a monster chasing another to the death, which no monster will ever do to an Archvile, and is, as Terrajin suggests, almost impossible to induce with PEs.

The latter.

:P

Terra-jin said:

The latter.

:P

Oh...then somebody should check the code and see if it's possible that the whole telefrag/spawn chain will indeed make the spawned monster the "culprit" of the barrel attacks. Or try it in a test map. Hmm...*goes to make one*

in the old doom97 launcher (from a cd actually bought in 98) i have also seen an archvile attack those poor, weak imps...it was because i strafed around, the imps would accidentally shoot the archvile, who would then kill them in one blast. i dont remember the map unfortunately, but i think it was one of the later ones...it was a dark courtyard sorta place with green brick pillars and walls

and the p.e...yeah ferocious, one stray blast and it spits out lost souls non-stop at its attacker while the enemy only attacks the lost souls...left the room and came back later, dead hellknight and about 20 lost souls plus the p.e. left to kill, think it was the "o" of destruction! map

I wonder if Vanilla Doom also works like that - whoever destroys a barrel becomes the 'owner' of the exlosion damage. I'm used to ZDoom, so it does need to be tested for Vanilla.

Oh and Maes, make your 1000th post a good one!

Since the spat Lost soul is itself a monster in its own right, it gets the blame for attacking, instead of the Pain elemental, that merely spews it forth.

I do wonder what would happen in Map30 if an Archvile were to telefrag Barrels... I'm guessing any damaged monsters would do nothing about it. If you give the Archvile any other attack it won't be targetted, because of its special code, and I bet the transference to the Barrel would change nothing.

AgentOrange any monster that inadvertently hits an archie in a crossfire or infighting situation is subject to getting hammered by that archie. It is not at all uncommon. The PE of course with spit its little flamers all over anything that just happens to hit it as well.

Terra-jin These odd behaviors were noted early on and put in demo form on Ledmeister's page using vanilla.

See these two pages: some fun stuff over there.

http://classicdoom.com/odddemos.htm

http://classicdoom.com/v11bbugs.htm

There you go, I made a small "proof of concept" map to test what happens, and it turns out Terra-jin is right: a monster telefragging a barrel gets the "blame" for it, and any monsters hurt by the explosion will hunt it down.

Get it here Edit: updated by renaming map02 to map30 for some tricks to work. Warp there.

In MAP01 I just tried it with the Icon of Sin and a cube spitter, with the only target lying exactly on a barrel. Weaker monsters usually die from the explosion, but tougher ones survive and get attacked by the two barons instead. You may have to restart the map a few times to get a tough monster like a mancubus that can take a hit or two and demonstrate the concept.

I tried to make a MAP02 too, where a PE should teleport on a barrel via a vanilla WR teleport linedef, but at least in ZDoom it refused to teleport until the barrel was removed from the teleport destination, something that wasn't an issue with the cube spitter.

Some notes: so far, the tested source ports behave very differently on the issue:

• Chocolate Doom: the icon spitter doesn't "telefrag" the barrel as intended,monsters just become stuck. MAP02 doesn't allow teleporting with a barrel on the teleport destination.
  
• Vanilla: exactly as Chocolate. Or viceversa ;-)
  
• ZDoom: MAP01 works as intended, MAP02 doesn't allow teleporting with a barrel on the teleport destination.
  
• PrBoom: in MAP01 the spitter telefrags the barrel but the monster doing it takes no "blame" for it and is NOT attacked. MAP02 as in previous cases

So all in all, perhaps it's just not possible to achieve the infamous "PE feud" except in some source ports.

Thanks myk! So...by renaming MAP02 to MAP30 and warping there, the PE indeed completes the barrel telefrag in chocolate doom, survives, but is IGNORED by the baron :-S I set the baron to deaf and he is isolated by block sound linedefs, maybe he should be awakened first? The trick is doing this without him hitting the barrels...

ZDoom works smoothly on the other hand: the Baron starts attacking the PE, but soon ignores it after he takes enough damage from a single lost soul, and turns to the player again. So the PE has, indeed, its own form of total or partial impunity ;-)

PrBoom, on the other hand, doesn't allow monster teleport even on MAP30: the PE still can't teleport. I hope this info is of some use to the wiki/source port developers.

Edit: I don't know how my post moved BEFORE yours, honestly!!!

In Doom only Map30 allows monsters to telefrag. I'm guessing that the Map02 should work as you intended in Doom if renamed to Map30, as this is a general effect.

Discovering curious quirks is particularly special only in regard to Doom v1.9 or earlier... in other cases if their behavior is not desired, they might even be taken as a fixable bug. Occasionally discoveries made on Doom v1.9 are later removed in other engines (such as the relatively recent on the blockmap targetting glitch).

Maes said:
Thanks myk! So...by renaming MAP02 to MAP30 and warping there, the PE indeed completes the barrel telefrag in chocolate doom, survives, but is IGNORED by the baron :-S I set the baron to deaf and he is isolated by block sound linedefs, maybe he should be awakened first? The trick is doing this without him hitting the barrels...

It seems that in Doom telefrags are not considered intentional attacks. I changed the Pain elemental to a Cacodemon and it behaved in the same way. ZDoom must have rearranged all this stuff; its code for barrels is relatively unique. For instance, barrels don't produce the ouch face in ZDoom when a lot of damage is inflicted.

PrBoom, on the other hand, doesn't allow monster teleport even on MAP30: the PE still can't teleport. I hope this info is of some use to the wiki/source port developers.

Yeah, that was changed. There's a compatibility setting related to this.

I don't know how my post moved BEFORE yours, honestly!!!

No idea... I guess we talked so much about software oddities that a server glitch came out of the closet and hit us.

AFAIK, the only way the Arch-vile attack can turn other monsters against the user is if you edit the properties of a different monster to give it the Arch-vile attack. Doom2 Extreme Gold (recently discussed on the forum) demonstrates this using modified Hexen bishops.

"Monsters can telefrag on MAP30" is a compatibility setting which I believe PrBoom supports. If you turn that setting on, it should work in that port, and in Eternity. The BOOM team considered this to be an annoyance for some reason and so they made it optional.

Uncle 80 said:
AFAIK, the only way the Arch-vile attack can turn other monsters against the user is if you edit the properties of a different monster to give it the Arch-vile attack.

Yeah, it's similar to the "hitscan" attacks, that enrage anybody. If you make a clone of the Archvile, cloned Archviles hurting each other will infight, much like Zombimen hitting each other with their guns.

Neat. Most interesting topic I've read in a while.

Bizarre how many people completely failed to understand the plainly written English though.

So the pain elemental can't bite you or a monster? I never new that...
BTW since we are on the PE subject, have you ever seen one shooting blanks! :) The PE goes through the motion of shooting a lost soul but the soul never comes out. At this point the PE is just target practice!