A complete (almost) study on the berserk fist

[DooMer 4ever]

I was making my own wad and put another player1 start to see the voodoo effect (another player emerges and if you shoot it, you will lose energy).

So i typed ibehold s to get berserk and then hit the clone. i then loaded the game before i hit the clone, missed once on purpose and hit again. I continued this, wrote down the results, which are written below and did it again. Guess what, the loss of energy was exactly the same every time!

1. 100
2. 90
3. 60
4. 50
5. 60
7. 20
8. 20
9. 70
10. 60
11. 50
12. 50
13. 10
14. 60
15. 60
16. 50
17. 50
18. 70
19. 70
20. 50

This is only the beginning of the list, but you get the idea. I started a new game and tried again, the list was still same, but when i quitted to windows and started the game again, the list had changed.

What i proved here is that the damage done by fist has nothing to do with the speed you move, the game just creates a list at the beginning when you run doom.

I also checked what happens when you don't use berserk code: the list is still the same, damege of the attack is just one fifth of the berserk attack. I tested this list on the monsters too and it worked. The imps would die if damage was 30 or more.

I even counted the average value of the damage made by the fist: it was something like 50.465... so it looks like the average value of damage is 50 on berserk fist, and 10 on fist.

Oh and one more think, the damage done by any weapon uses the same model. On shotgun i got damage between 28 and 52 or something like that, and every bullet hit the clone.

And i have a weird bug too: if you hit the clone so you will lose anergy but will not die and then get killed by a monster, you will become a ghost! The enemies that have not seen you before will not see you and you cannot use any weapons. The enemies that have seen you before will try to kill you though.

[myk]

Hmm, that 0 health effect is strange. It's like doom is confused, marking you as dead, though it still keeps track of your actual hit points. You can only move around, and monsters can effectively kill you.

[Erik]

The doom "randomization" is just a list lookup, there's nothing random about it.

[Fredrik]

What i proved here is that the damage done by fist has nothing to do with the speed you move, the game just creates a list at the beginning when you run doom.

The list is actually the same every time you run Doom. The exact damage of every punch will always be related to the specific gametic you're at. If Doom generated a rndtable every time you ran it, demos would never synchronize.

[IMJack]

I'm wondering what it would take to add a better pseudo-randomizer to Doom. I know computer random mnumbers aren't truley random, but I need at least a better dice model for this mod I'm trying to make.

[Fredrik]

Really, why? Doom's random number generator seems fine enough to me.

The only advantage you'd get from further randomization (i.e. fetching a random number from the clock every time you call for a random number) would only result in making demo playback impossible.

[DOOM Anomaly]

hehe I like tele-fraggin' the clone thing, its fun...

I also like making clones tele-frag each other too, i cant stop laughing. :)

[Fletcher`]

Pushing clones in godmode with your guns is fun too. Heh.

[The Ultimate DooMer]

ravage said:

Pushing clones in godmode with your guns is fun too. Heh.

...unless you use ZDoom, in which case they won't move in god mode. (a bit annoying, as I had to change all my puzzles that involve pushing manikins around because of that)

[IMJack]

Heh, the project I'm trying to work on involves gutting the existing accuracy/damage engine and replacing it with a homebrew RPG-style system. I'm trying to write an FPS/RPG hybrid that makes sense. The system used in, say, System Shock 2 or Deus Ex didn't make sense to me; I wanna know how the numbers reflect and affect the dice rolled and know I can reproduce results from the video game in a tabletop game with real dice. The system I'm putting together is trying to make the best balance between realism and playability possible in a tabletop or computer game setting.

As for demo playback, I'd probably add something to the demo output that stores the results of random number rolls.

[Little Faith]

And then you'll probably do a pen-and-paper version next, if I know you well enough. :)

[Epyo]

cool. So much to learn.

[IMJack]

Little Faith said:

And then you'll probably do a pen-and-paper version next, if I know you well enough. :)

That's the plan. :)

Hell, if this thing actually works, I'm gonna go mad crazy with it. ;)

[Fletcher`]

IMJack said:

Heh, the project I'm trying to work on involves gutting the existing accuracy/damage engine and replacing it with a homebrew RPG-style system. I'm trying to write an FPS/RPG hybrid that makes sense. The system used in, say, System Shock 2 or Deus Ex didn't make sense to me; I wanna know how the numbers reflect and affect the dice rolled and know I can reproduce results from the video game in a tabletop game with real dice. The system I'm putting together is trying to make the best balance between realism and playability possible in a tabletop or computer game setting.

As for demo playback, I'd probably add something to the demo output that stores the results of random number rolls.

Basically what happened to Kmod?

[IMJack]

ravage said:

Basically what happened to Kmod?

Kinda, but mostly not.

[myk]

Fredrik said:

Really, why? Doom's random number generator seems fine enough to me.

The only advantage you'd get from further randomization (i.e. fetching a random number from the clock every time you call for a random number) would only result in making demo playback impossible.

Actually it could be written onto the demo, which would be a disadvantage, making it bigger (how much depending on how it's implemented.) But an even greater disadvantage would be that you could hardly record short (or longer, even) "optimized" demos. Too much (or real) randomization is not an advantage, in my opinion. For DOOM at least, although I never liked the overdependence of RPGs on randomness, even though I was a D&D fan for many years (which isn't a good example of when this is not so.)