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Terra-jin

Weak Pain Elementals

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Hi. I'm wondering if anybody else keeps noticing this, but the Pain Elemental seems weaker than the Cacodemon despite them both having 400 health. It just seems that the Pain Elemental is much more likely to die from two SSG hits, while the Cacodemon often survives within an inch of its life. I've been playing Doom since who knows when, so it can't be a coincidence, can it? But they both have 400 health... am I seeing things or what?

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It probably seems weaker because unlike the cacodemon, you're able to get right up in its face without worrying about a counter attack. Cacodemons have a nasty bite, so you can't bump into them like you would a pain elemental. The closer you are, the most pellets that hit.

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I doubt it. They don't seem to have any differences as far as size is concerned, that perhaps could have affected this somehow.

But maybe if you're using an engine that adjusts monster size to their graphic appearance the pain elemental is being treated as shorter than the cacodemon, and thus more pellets from each SSG shot are missing it.

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I'm using ZDoom, that doesn't adjust monster size as far as I know. It's true though that I generally keep more distance from Cacos than from PE's, both because I can avoid the Cacos attacks and keep the PE from spawning Lost Souls.
But another thing I've noticed: when I'm at point blank range with those demons, it's less effective than when I take a little distance (while still allowing all pellets to hit). Really strange, but I suppose it's some kind of psychological effect that makes me remember point-blank blasts being less efficient...

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The size is the usual in the DECORATE text files, so unless they have some difference in regard to being targets to attacks, the cacodemon and pain elemental should be the same.

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Funnily enough, I've noticed this as well... it makes no sense, but it seems to happen for me. o_O

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I guess this could be tested by giving them a harmless attack, recording a demo, and then replacing one monster with the other in the level. If there is no difference, the demo will play back the same way with either monster.

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Don't forget that in ports that use vanilla's tracer code there ARE a couple of bugs that can cause tracers, even point blank ones (seemingly especially point blank ones at times) to go right through monsters. One of these is the fact that monsters are only clipped by tracers across their diagonals. Another is that mobj_t's are only linked into the blockmap block in which their center lies, so if the tracer doesn't cross that block it won't hit the monster.

Together these can contribute to some surprisingly ineffective shotgun blasts.

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Terra-jin said:

But another thing I've noticed: when I'm at point blank range with those demons, it's less effective than when I take a little distance (while still allowing all pellets to hit).

You are correct. Shooting a demon at point-blank range is less effective than shooting it from say 16 pixals away, generally speaking. Zdoom's hit-scan hit detection logic is different from vanilla Doom's (which makes it odd that this effect still happens in Zdoom... hmm...) in which this effect is even more noticable. In vanilla, if happens fairly frequently that if you are in a demon's face and shoot it with a hitscan weapon, the shot will go straight through it depending on how you line up with the blockmap. This source details how the vanilla Doom blockmap works. If you stand right next to a demon near a blockmap gridline, it is fairly likely you will shoot in the square that the demon is not considered to be in (even if the demon is partially in the sqaure, its origin is what's checked for, apparantly), causing Doom to think you missed, or causing "partial misses" where some SSG pellets are considered hits and others aren't. BTW, I'm not sure how well I explained that... feel free to clarify. =S

I often kill PEs in 2 SSG hits and cacos in 3, but that's just because of the distance I fight them from. I can get close enough to PEs to kill them in 2 shots most of the time. Whenever I kill cacos in 3, I'm almost never surprised by it, because I can tell from where I'm standing that not quite enough pellats will hit the caco to kill it in 2 shots, since I fight cacos from farther away to avoid the counterattack. The SSG does somewhere around 200 HP of damage per shot, so there's almost no margin of error to kill cacos/PEs in 2 hits (like it's possible, but very difficult, to kill Hell Barons in 5 hits instead of 6.)

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I think it does have to do with distance. I'm a dancer and I often get close enough to cacos - it's always 2 SSG hits. Pain elementals are strategically weaker if you CAN get that close to them, because you can just block their spawning lost souls and pump them full of it. Mappers would be smart to position them behind block monster lines so they can snipe you with lost souls and (try to) stay out of infighting as well as SSG range.

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I think that the availability heuristic might be another factor. Because cacodemons are much more common than pain elementals in most maps, it's easier to think of instances where a cacodemon takes 3 SSG shots than instances where a pain elemental takes 3 SSG shots - even though both occurrences are (probably) equally likely.

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@Death-Destiny: Wow, I've never known about that bug before. It's amazing how you can learn something new about a 15 year old game :| I guess that confirms what I've noticed with point-blank range shots in vanilla Doom (ZDoom has indeed corrected this - I've only experienced this in vanilla Doom). Most of the time, it was with Imps, normally they should only rarely survive a shotgun blast, but fighting in close corners the bastards just didn't die.

About the whole Cacodemon / Pain Elemental thing, I'm pretty sure it's indeed the distance I keep from them. It's still strange though, most of the time I get close to Cacos and PEs alike (or at least think I do)... I kill Barons mostly in 5 SSG shots. Creaphis might have a point, too. I'll keep a closer look on how I kill those things from now on! :)

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For me the pain elemental always seemed stronger, maybe because they sometimes popped out a lost soul at the last second to take the hit for it.

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PEs are weaker than cacoes because under most circumstances when encountered they can be walked up to and punched down. Can you do the same against a cacodemon without fearing death?

EDIT: most of the time the only casualty inflicted by the pain elemental is a lost soul (or two) bumping into me when the thing blows up.

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I dont know, I havent noticed anything like this. I've grown to understand that cacodemons take two full blasts of an SSG or two direct rocket hits. I've always seen Pain Elementals to be subject to the same amount of damage.

In addition to what Death-Destiny said about ZDoom's hitscan logic being different than vanilla dooms, I remember vaguely that Doomsday's hit scan is excellent. I dont think I had ever killed a cacodemon in more than two SSG shots unless the distance really called for it. Somehow in ZDoom, one or two pellets always manage to get past the cacodemon. I think i can get the maximum penetration of the SSG by aiming a little higher though. Aiming more at the cacodemon's eyebrow tends to do more damage than if you aim at it's mouth. In Doomsday, either way would do.

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I've noticed this too with the SSG. Some of you are saying it might be due to the collision and I think this could be true. The two monsters do have the same amount of health. If you chaingun tap them to death you will notice it will take the same amount of time to kill them both.

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I like how classic Doom (not ZDoom) mistreats the hitscans. It creates a sense of weapon imperfection.

EDIT: VANILLA DOOM FTW!!! Keep the game rules intact!!

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The Pain Elemental, in the broadest scope..is honestly, very very shitty. Let's go through the list of issues, shall we?

Annoying.

This floating bastard can make the difference between getting through a spot with ammo to spare and retreating, looking for ammo you hope you had missed. Some mappers forget that the PE can really throw off that tight ammo/health balance if the player plays in a different style than the mapper expects.

Buggy.

The PE has no melee attack whatsoever. This is likely an oversight and wasn't caught at all (the testers at id were probably hardcore players, and didn't give the monsters a chance to exhibit behavior that wasn't intended). Knowing this, a player can literally punch a trapped PE to death, without berserk, without taking any damage. Oops!

The PE also has a odd requirement to begin its main attack. The number of Lost souls in the map has to be less than 20.

You can probably see why this is a bad idea. in map09, there are two PEs near the start area that cannot do ANYTHING. since they don't have a melee attack, and cannot fire due to map09 having more than 20 Lost souls. Useless.

Then there's that chance that the PE , when it can fire lost souls, to be attacked accidentally by its own spawn. in this case, the PE will try to attack the lost soul that charged him, by... firing another lost soul.

If a PE dies next to another PE, and a lost soul it fires when it dies hits just right, it can lodge itself into the other PE. If the PE winces from the attack and decides to retaliate.... he'll attack the lost soul stuck to him... with lost souls. lost souls dying do no damage, thus the PE spits at the lodged Lost soul until the end of the level, or the player/a monster kills them.

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Csonicgo said:
If a PE dies next to another PE, and a lost soul it fires when it dies hits just right, it can lodge itself into the other PE.

What engine is that on? Lost souls spawned in occupied spaces die immediately in Doom. Perhaps in fast mode, where monsters rarely move something like that could happen, if an immobile lost soul is attacked by a pain elemental repeatedly, but the pain elemental should eventually move out if there is space around them. If you have a demo, please share.

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Csonicgo said:

The PE also has a odd requirement to begin its main attack. The number of Lost souls in the map has to be less than 20.

You can probably see why this is a bad idea. in map09, there are two PEs near the start area that cannot do ANYTHING. since they don't have a melee attack, and cannot fire due to map09 having more than 20 Lost souls. Useless.

Ha ha, I remember that one. I used to think it was funny to alert them and let them live, chasing me around the map powerlessly attempting to attack me, but being empty of Lost Souls.

I like PEs, though. While the way they are programmed gets a bit messy sometimes, I have a lot of fun with them, and it's not so bad mapping with them once you become familiar enough with the way they work. Actually, PEs are my favorite Doom2 monster... I probably like how they change up the gameply from simply dodging projectiles to trying to kill it ASAP in order to avaoid a swarm and run out of ammo. I like Archies for that same reason that they switch things up from simply avoiding projectiles, since you want to prevent them from resurrecting things.

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Csonicgo said:

[/b]Annoying.

This floating bastard can make the difference between getting through a spot with ammo to spare and retreating, looking for ammo you hope you had missed. Some mappers forget that the PE can really throw off that tight ammo/health balance if the player plays in a different style than the mapper expects.

Buggy.

The PE has no melee attack whatsoever. This is likely an oversight and wasn't caught at all (the testers at id were probably hardcore players, and didn't give the monsters a chance to exhibit behavior that wasn't intended). Knowing this, a player can literally punch a trapped PE to death, without berserk, without taking any damage. Oops!

If you end up wasting all too much ammo, then it's because you [b]let the pain elemental retaliate. And the way to prevent it is to run up to the monster.

This does not sound imbalanced in any way.

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Doesn't Doom have a random number system for damage? I think that's why you can sometimes kill something in 2 shots, and sometimes in 3 instead.

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caco_killer said:

Doesn't Doom have a random number system for damage? I think that's why you can sometimes kill something in 2 shots, and sometimes in 3 instead.

AFAIK, The random number system only applies to the demons, which is why they inflict a variable amount of damage within a certain range (for example, when you get hit dead-on with a Cyb missile and you have 200 health and 100 armor, the amount of remaining armor/health you have might vary, but you will always die from an additional hit.) The damage Doomguy's weapons inflict, however, should always be the same. As has been mentioned already, shooting PEs and cacos with the chaingun always takes exactly the same number of bullets. Often when I make demos of maps, for example, I count off the number of plamsa bursts I shoot at an enemy in a fixed location. Since the damage is always the same, I can proceed to another task without actually having to wait for the plasma to reach the enemy and watch it die, since I'm confident for this reason that it surely will.

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myk said:

What engine is that on? Lost souls spawned in occupied spaces die immediately in Doom. Perhaps in fast mode, where monsters rarely move something like that could happen, if an immobile lost soul is attacked by a pain elemental repeatedly, but the pain elemental should eventually move out if there is space around them. If you have a demo, please share.


It happens in Doom Legacy, Zdoom, and ---I think--- Eternity Engine.

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This will never happen in Eternity AFAIK. The original engine checks for monsters and for lines that cross the lost soul's bounding box. It does not check for impassible lines crossing between the PE and the LS, though, which leads to them getting spawned outside the level.

But if you honestly saw this in EE, it would be a glitch.

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I'm quite positive that one of the player's bullets/projectiles can do one of several different damage amounts. But, due to the system by which the Doom engine pulls its "random" numbers out of tables in certain orders, any 20 bullets will add up to damage amount close to 200.

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Ah yeah, I've seen lost souls get stuck on other things in ZDoom or Legacy. I'm not sure if this still applies in newer versions (of ZDoom). They could get stuck on your head, and if you weren't using free-look, game over. Something inherited from Heretic's thing-over-thing code, I believe.

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