Lost Soul Behavior

There was a certain Youtube video of a UV Max run through Sunder MAP10, but the behavior of Lost Souls in this video was such that when they charged at the player, differences in Z height were not accounted for. Unfortunately this video is no longer available, but I remember the behavior I saw very clearly.

If the Lost Soul was very high above the player, the Lost Soul would charge level at the player's bounding box high above his head, not descending at all like they do normally.

My question is if there is a known version of any particular source port that shows this behavior with Lost Souls. This could help unravel some mysteries.

Isn't this what happens in vanilla as well?

In vanilla they move down unless the lost soul would otherwise touch the target.

Whose YouTube video was this?

I just made a level with a 320x320 square room, and then a ledge around it which is a lot higher. And on top I placed some Lost Souls.

When you shoot to wake them up the lost souls did not seem to bother much at all to float down, they would have had plenty of space. But it seemed that they went for the attack pretty quick and thus pretty badly kicked the shit out of my infinitely tall hitbox.

I tested this in Choco, which I would guess would be pretty close to vanilla, no?

EDIT:

new test wad. I got quite different results in choco compared to other ports like GZD, EE or PRB+
ptoing.net/post/doom/lostsoul.wad

ptoing said:

I just made a level with a 320x320 square room, and then a ledge around it which is a lot higher. And on top I placed some Lost Souls.

When you shoot to wake them up the lost souls did not seem to bother much at all to float down, they would have had plenty of space. But it seemed that they went for the attack pretty quick and thus pretty badly kicked the shit out of my infinitely tall hitbox.

I tested this in Choco, which I would guess would be pretty close to vanilla, no?

The behavior in question isn't when they're floating freely around, but specifically when they charge at you.

The source code is there to give them downward z momentum if they are not level with the height of your head, but of course like all z momentum calculations in DOOM it's not strictly mathematically accurate either, from the point of view of what should be a straight-line propulsion vector, so you can't necessarily expect it to connect perfectly.

In the demo I saw, it appeared they weren't descending at all but flying dead level toward the infinitely tall bounding box far above the player's head.

It's entirely possible something mundane was responsible for this, but I am currently at a loss to explain it.

The only times I've notices this is when they lunge at you, they make contact with a raised floor and continue charging with no descent until they hit a thing or a wall.

I'm pretty sure if a lost soul is close enough it won't lunge straight down either. I think they can only charge downward at a low angle. You're sure it didn't descend at all?

Quasar said:
If the Lost Soul was very high above the player, the Lost Soul would charge level at the player's bounding box high above his head, not descending at all like they do normally.

Now that I think about it, was it clear they always did this, or was it just a couple of instances or a certain situation where you noticed this? I mean, the lost soul or lost souls could well have been aiming at another target that was at a higher altitude than the player and across him, hitting him by accident.

myk said:

Now that I think about it, was it clear they always did this, or was it just a couple of instances or a certain situation where you noticed this? I mean, the lost soul or lost souls could well have been aiming at another target that was at a higher altitude than the player and across him, hitting him by accident.

this. i assume you are talking about okuplok's sunder map10 demo, which is here. the part with a PE horde results in lost souls everywhere and it's a total mess, but the only moments resembling what you describe were when the lost souls were infighting right above the player. skulls attacking the player behave normally and descend as they should.

I'm thinking it's possible that the player was on a lift moving down, and the souls were attacking at the players previous height.

edit: ack noticed that's just about what myk just said..

MR.ROCKET said:

I'm thinking it's possible that the player was on a lift moving down, and the souls were attacking at the players previous height.

edit: ack noticed that's just about what myk just said..

Then you should probably have thought that I would have mentioned if a lift were involved. This was on solid ground ;)

dew said:

this. i assume you are talking about okuplok's sunder map10 demo, which is here. the part with a PE horde results in lost souls everywhere and it's a total mess, but the only moments resembling what you describe were when the lost souls were infighting right above the player. skulls attacking the player behave normally and descend as they should.

Thanks, that clears it up ;) I just wanted to make sure that there is not some port out there floating about with odd Lost Soul behavior that nobody had noticed. But if they were trying to fight each other, then it makes sense. As you say, it was quite a mess and difficult to judge what was going on.

Ah ok, yeah this is true and from the looks of it, it's now q/a'd :)
But you know this still could have been done with a little trickery involved. Ok say there is an area in a map, a big room yet being an elevator as a whole with both ceiling and floor moving keeping a 128 unit open area between, and surrounding walls unpegged. Wouldn’t this still seem like a solid non-moving room if the player was teleported in there? :P
I'll have to try this out.