Exploits You Love/Hate?

[Maximum Matt]

Okay this one is kinda related to the Tropes You Love And Hate thread from the other day - which game idocincracies/engine bugs do you love, hate, exploit, avoid etc? Do you consider any 'cheating'? Or do they sometimes make life easier for you?

Some examples:

• The classic manc fireball torch soak
• Killing baddies stuck in door frames/on the edge of elevators
• Knowing you can activate that switch buried in the floor to save time, but do you want to go and find out how to raise it up?
• Reloading a saved game and the baddies who aren't looking directly at you have gone back to 'sleep' 
• Lining up a floor decoration or item between a lost soul and yourself for protection 

Any more? 

[Graf Zahl]

On modern ports some aren't relevant anymore, but the ones I like to exploit quite often are:

 

3 minutes ago, Maximum Matt said:

• Knowing you can activate that switch buried in the floor to save time, but do you want to go and find out how to raise it up?
• Lining up a floor decoration or item between a lost soul and yourself for protection  

 

[Maximum Matt]

Oh yeah, forgot to mention, I'm talking about vanilla play.  I don't wanna hear about no fancy-shmancy modern updated super-duper glitch-free city-boy source ports, dammit

[noisebloom]

2 minutes ago, Maximum Matt said:

 city-boy source ports

 

lulz 

[DuckReconMajor]

I Love/Hate bar glides (32 width squeezies, whatever they're called). They take a lot of skill and they're impressive, but sometimes I want to see an "as intended" UV-Speed demo of some of these maps. 

 

Yes I realize that "as intended" is arbitrary and that UV-Max exists, but I think you get the gist of what I mean.

[Loud Silence]

I love strafe-running, monsters get stuck on edges, telefraging.

I don't like lost souls stuck inside walls.

[seed]

Pressing switches through walls :p.

 

Basically using infinite height in your favor.

[Maximum Matt]

5 minutes ago, Loud Silence said:

I don't like lost souls stuck inside walls.

Yes, THAT'S a bastard

[Ichor]

I like shooting zombies and imps on ledges in such a way that they fly off those ledges when they die. The zombie types might even drop their ammo or weapons in a spot where you can reach them. Also shooting rockets at a spot directly behind them for a similar effect.

 

Using arch-viles to constatly raise zombies and immediately kill them for more ammo.

 

In Heretic, I like using the iron lich tornadoes to get out of the water and over to the exit of E3M1.

 

I also like running over that "bridge" in E4M8 without shooting any of the back walls to raise the sections...yeah I know, it makes no sense. But if you're fast enough and maybe use straferunning, it shouldn't be too much of a problem.

 

In Hexen, getting yourself turned into a pig (reflected shots off a centaur or certain traps) and then changing back with full health. That one spot in Castle of Grief was patched though, so I can't do that anymore. But back in version 1.0, you could get turned into a pig and then skip past most of hub 4.

 

In the expansion, at the start of the second hub, you could stay on the ledges and go through the back way. That doesn't really count as an exploit since the map was designed with that in mind. However, if you use the boots of speed as a fighter, you might be able to make the jump over to the ledge with the Heart of D'Sparil and skip through the entire second hub.

 

Also in the second hub is Locus Requiescat. There's one place where you have to guess which of 4 switches is the right one. Guess wrong and you have a reiver party. Guess right and you get free mana. Ther fun part is, those switches will continue to work even after you pick the right one. Mash the right switch for infinite mana. Or a wrong one if you're into that sort of thing.

[HAK3180]

I don't really love/hate any, but there are some I'm willing to use and others I'm generally not. I straferun and SR-50 all the time. I will sometimes explore the possibilities of (horizontal) rocket jumping. I will intentionally wall-run on occasion. I will render lost souls powerless with some random Thing. I will sometimes cheese encounters when monsters are too dumb to realize they are shooting into the floor/ledge. I am not against suicide exits, though I don't really speedrun.

 

I would not save and reload to put monsters to sleep (but I pretty much use Crispy at the least these days). I will not intentionally try to skip W triggers via SR40/50. I will not intentionally hit a switch before it's supposed to be accessible, unless I'm not really playing it to play it. I usually will not super shotgun (or freelook) a shootable switch I believe is supposed to be accessed only by reaching a higher elevation. That's all I can think of.

 

Okay, one I dislike is when monsters can melee you from two stories below due to infinite height. But that's really the only time infinite height bugs me.

[RonnieJamesDiner]

It's been mentioned, but I think the only thing that really grinds my gears is when Lost Souls get pushed out of the map. Mostly because I can still hear them, taunting me from the void.

 

And now, I know you don't wanna hear no fancy-shmancy modern updated super-duper glitch-free city-boy source port stuff... but, I gotta say, as dirty as it makes me feel, I get some sick, diabolical pleasure out of using free mouselook to completely cheese the Icon of Sin battle at the end of Doom II when I'm playing in GZDoom. Yes, I know this destroys the whole point of that map, COME AT ME.  

 

[baja blast rd.]

Love: skill-based monster stuff -- rev melee baiting, goat melee baiting, etc. 

Dislike: finicky tricks such as linedef skips (linedef skipping in general is usually accidental and unwanted -- skip a teleporter or break an insta-pop and softlock -- more often than it's useful anyway). 

[Roofi]

Love : 2-bfg shots on cybies , walking on ledges  , grab items through barriers

 

Hate : Glides

[Cruduxy Pegg]

Love : Wall running

Hate : Gliding

[Swalzi]

Like: Apply floating cacodemons as shields against hitscanners on the ground.

Dislike: Skipping linedefs.

[Ancalagon]

Hate: Glides, void glides, impse glides, fence glides, etc.

 

Love: When a monster manipulation trick goes right, yolo tricks where the player just goes for it without a setup.

Edited July 25, 2019 by Ancalagon

[3saster]

I think it's a sourceport thing, but I like using the automap to find secrets, not with "show secrets on automap" though. The automap sometimes shows walk-through walls or hidden linedefs, and sometimes you find the secret itself or get a clue that there is one as a result. I might see a different coloured line on a wall and think "is there a way to open this?" This also encourages usage of more creative secrets than wall-humping, which is always a good thing.

As for other exploits, I like stuff like SR50 jumps, archvile jumps, pressing switches through the floor. I generally try to avoid using them where possible on first time runs of maps, but they can give new ways to replay certain maps, which I'm all for. I'm okay with void glides too, but not so big a fan of them in UV-Max. On certain timed teleport ambushes, it can sometimes be pretty funny to stand on the teleport spot and avoid the entire ambush (like Hell Revealed MAP31).

The silliest particular trick I know is Scythe 2 MAP04. You can use an archvile jump to launch yourself over the wall in the courtyard to grab a deathmatch only (I think) BFG. Funny and useful, it's great.

[Grazza]

I like pretty much anything that breaks the intended or standard map progression. Personally I don't like rocket jumps so much, but that's basically because I suck at them.

 

I dislike it when there's a really obvious shortcut that is also obviously TAS-only. That reduces the value of non-TAS demos since they are so clearly suboptimal. That said, it's always possible that someone will come along and show that there is a reliable way to do it non-TAS.

 

It's also unsatisfying when there's a really difficult or luck-laden idea or route that looks completely mundane when successfully executed (i.e. you don't see anything going wrong, so don't realize there was any issue at all). Linedef skips or extreme route choreography can fall into that category. You might run along a very carefully crafted path to get an archie to follow you, or to get the monsters to gather where you need them, and to someone watching it looks like pure luck, or else weird movements. And if a route requires too much random luck, that can be unsatisfying too. Maybe you calculate that there's a 1 in 1024 chance of everything aligning the way you need. Do you plug away until it comes good or do you find some way to manipulate things to improve the odds? You probably just move on another task.

 

One thing I'd like to see more is using "glides" to fall deliberately through 32-unit gaps in the floor, but there may not be many maps where that is useful (hint, hint).

 

But OK, exploits I really like. Void and impse glides are cool (often going hand in hand) and wrapping round in the void is kind of a holy grail. Anything making "advanced" use of momentum (e.g. "wobbles") is good, as is using quirks of the monster attacks against them and their brethren. Exiting dead and zombification are cool, as is pacifist killing of a boss brain. Using autoaim to hit switches (etc.) from above/below is always good, and basically anything that uses a detailed knowledge of the internal workings of the game, such as using those enemy fireballs that cancel one-time linedefs to your advantage. And using multiple exploits simultaneously or in quick succession multiplies their value.

 

tl;dr: see my first sentence at the start of the post!

 

[kb1]

• Silent BFG trick in DM.
• Bump-grabs
• Archvile ghosts, intercept overflow/all ghosts bug, player zombies, and voodoo dolls. So many games would just crash, but, somehow, in Doom, they work, and they produce some really bizarre, creepy behavior! These things work so well, and produce such cool effects that it almost seems like they were deliberate. The fact that they are bugs makes their existence that much more awesome.

[snapshot]

Wallrunning and Straferunning.

[Capellan]

9 hours ago, Maximum Matt said:

Oh yeah, forgot to mention, I'm talking about vanilla play.  I don't wanna hear about no fancy-shmancy modern updated super-duper glitch-free city-boy source ports, dammit

 

As far as I am aware, any kind of torch soak is a super-duper glitch-free city-boy source port thing?

 

Edit to add: And to answer the OP, I'm OK with pretty much all glitches when they're being deliberately exploited to short-circuit something.  Accidental triggering of glitches that break progression for the player are not so fun, though.

[geo]

Cheating is a weird thing in a single player game. Just have fun. When it stops being fun, do what it takes to have fun again to keep progress going.

 

What about exploits where you can wedge your way through pixel perfect gaps between walls?

[franckFRAG]

18 hours ago, DuckReconMajor said:

I Love/Hate bar glides (32 width squeezies, whatever they're called). They take a lot of skill and they're impressive, but sometimes I want to see an "as intended" UV-Speed demo of some of these maps. 

 

I made intentionally 32pix between two bars for the speedrunning, each time when I can.

 

Edit : I hate making a too large vanilla map for the saving (in DOS or chocolate-doom) Because it crashes with the limit size about the map.

Edited July 26, 2019 by franckFRAG : Add a sentence

[Mystic 256]

Archvile Jumps are my favorite