Is there a technical reason why people punch the air repeatedly?

[3saster]

It's very common when trying to provoke infighting, especially in slaughtermaps, to repeatedly punch the air. The reason for this, as far as I know, is that supposedly monsters attack more frequently if you are attacking. My personal experience seems to confirm this is true, but this could just be placebo. So my question is, is there anything in the Doom source code that suggests why this would be true? Or is this entirely just an urban myth that everyone does because there's no harm in doing it?

[Edward850]

Your proposal a placebo, monsters don't directly care if you're attacking or not. However what does happen is it flags surrounding sectors as noise activated, awakening any monsters who may be asleep in those sectors that may have been behind sound blocking lines, an important element in causing infighting is to have as many enemies awake as possible after all. The fist, while it doesn't produce any actual audible noise, still has the alert function and thus is a free way of doing this.

[Maximum Matt]

I like to punch the air repeatedly because I like inspirational 80's marital arts movies

[Bauul]

Edward850 is completely correct.  As far as I'm aware, there's absolutely nothing in the code that makes monsters attack more frequently if you're punching the air (or attacking generally in any form).

 

Punching the air is simply a way of ensuring as many enemies as possible are woken up at the same time. It's easier to get enemies to infight if they're bunched up, so alerting them all at once is a sensible tactic. Punching allows you to do that with no ammo use, and is more pleasant on the ears than the chainsaw.

[SaladBadger]

I've often heard that another reason is that it advances the random seed by two (there's two calls to P_Random to pick an aim angle, and the damage done is calculated before checking for a hit), which given the way Doom's PRNG works, can potentially have a visible effect.

[Bauul]

1 hour ago, SaladBadger said:

I've often heard that another reason is that it advances the random seed by two (there's two calls to P_Random to pick an aim angle, and the damage done is calculated before checking for a hit), which given the way Doom's PRNG works, can potentially have a visible effect.

 

I'm no expert on Doom's RNG table, but isn't it the case that advancing the table by two could be as much a hindrance as a help? Unless you know the RNG table by heart, and where the game currently is in it, you could in effect be stealing high numbers away from the monsters to use up on your punches. This would therefore make them attack less when previously they'd attack more?

[Graf Zahl]

Let's also not forget that Boom compatible ports and up do not use the RNG table, so this will only work when playing with a pre-Boom port or on a pre-Boom complevel.

 

This also only makes sense if you know what value the seed currently is. And that's pretty much impossible when more monsters are active because their movement code also uses random numbers.

 

[whirledtsar]

If you're expecting an ambush in the next room, it can be helpful to alert the monsters so you know what you'll be dealing with.

[printz]

I thought punching the air is just a meaningless cheering gesture, or to show the demo viewer that the player is only watching how the hellspawn finish each other off.

[MFG38]

Fun fact: in Wolfenstein 3D, using the knife apparently doesn't alert other enemies.

 

So why is it different in Doom's case?

[TheNoob_Gamer]

7 hours ago, MFG38 said:

Fun fact: in Wolfenstein 3D, using the knife apparently doesn't alert other enemies.

 

So why is it different in Doom's case?

Different engine coding I guess? 

These 2 games don't use the same engine.

Quote

Technically, Wolf 3D used id Tech 0; Doom used id Tech 1.

 

 

[Shadow Hog]

Presumably an oversight. Not like it really hurts the game in the long run, though.

[printz]

14 hours ago, MFG38 said:

Fun fact: in Wolfenstein 3D, using the knife apparently doesn't alert other enemies.

Using the knife in the wind doesn't alert enemies, but hitting anyone with it does. So it can't be used for stealth kills. I guess in DOOM id just didn't care about this detail, or it would have been more complicated to program.

[Dark Pulse]

It's an allegory on just how badly war with the demons can mess with you.

 

Doomguy, having been permanently mentally traumatized by the experience, begins to hallucinate. Monsters flickering in and out of existence. Weapons that appear and disappear.

 

You hear a growl in the distance, and it's just like instinct. Punch the air. It's only when you don't feel it connect with anything that you realize it isn't there.

 

Understandably, he will never be the same man ever again.

[3saster]

I prefer to think of it as the doomguy is so strong, that the flexing of his muscles while punching is enough to alert every monster in the area. He's that strong!

[MFG38]

10 hours ago, printz said:

Using the knife in the wind doesn't alert enemies, but hitting anyone with it does.

 

Yeah, that's what I meant. Could've worded it slightly better.