Why is it that....

[Old-Doomguy]

1) The monsters are walking in place rather than having an idle animation?

 

2) The clips look like either very large magazines or a box rather than a regular pistol clip?

 

3) The spider demon's collision is so large that it can barley move if there isn't a huge open area?

 

4) The levels are referred to as maps?

 

5) You cannot walk under a flying monster or some decorations?

 

6) You cannot jump off a ledge if a monster is down on your landing spot?

 

7) The fist in the air can wake up demons?

 

8) The Doomguy sprite holds a rifle rather than a weapon that exists in the game?

 

Answer and fill up with more questions!

Edited September 18, 2020 by Old-Doomguy : added numers to the questions

[Endless]

1. They do stand in place, maybe you are refering to their sprite which changes depending on the angle in your POV, creating the effect that they're moving.

 

2. The magazine looks like this because is much easier to spot, and the box contains several bullets.

 

3. Chunky.

 

4. Levels is also another term used for the same purpose, but is maps mostly refers to the fact that in any level/map-editor tool, authors are alsmot ''drawing'' when creating/making ''maps'' that will have a virtual space in which the player can move, thus, allowing traveling through a map.

 

5. Vanilla behavior.

 

6. Same as 5, I believe.

 

7. Is not the sound that wakes up the demons, but the action of attacking.

 

8. It was meant to be a rifle instead of a pistol, but id opted for the pistol for balancing (lazy) reasons.

[TheEvilGrin]

1- Actually they do oscillate between 2 sprites givingthe impression they move

 

3- Actually the code that checks for collisions is just not taking the y coordinate into account. Weird.

 

7-Not too sure about that. Maybe those things are usually confused, or maybe they're the same thing.

[Doom-X-Machina]

<1-8>

 

DOOM.

[BoxY]

Who built all those secret closets inside the walls, and why did the demons find them, get inside, and then line up and wait perfectly still in total darkness until someone happened to walk by?

[Pegleg]

24 minutes ago, BoxY said:

Who built all those secret closets inside the walls

 

Them. It's always been them. They're the ones that did it. Them.

 

24 minutes ago, BoxY said:

why did the demons find them, get inside, and then line up and wait

 

Orders. Orders are orders, and Hell certainly has a bureaucracy.

 

24 minutes ago, BoxY said:

wait perfectly still in total darkness until someone happened to walk by?

 

But they didn't stay perfectly still. As established, they kind of rock back and forth. (They're looping the first two frames of their movement animation.)

[Wagi]

1) All the monsters in Doom have to pee very badly as there are no toilets in Hell (that's why it's hell)

[GarrettChan]

Why we can't put Arch-vile into good use and resurrect some people :P

[NoXion]

Why is it that there's this radioactive sludge everywhere? What kind of future are we leaving for our children, and our children's children?

Oh, the humanity!

[Old-Doomguy]

24 minutes ago, NoXion said:

Why is it that there's this radioactive sludge everywhere? What kind of future are we leaving for our children, and our children's children?

Oh, the humanity!

 

 

Exactly! Why would they put something so dangerous in there?

 

(Props to anyone who knows what game that line was inspired from)

[spineapple tea]

Why does Doomguy just stack helmets on his head to gain armor points

[Old-Doomguy]

13 minutes ago, N1ck said:

Why does Doomguy just stack helmets on his head to gain armor points

 

 

Because a helmet is the most important type of armor :D

[Test Tickle]

3 hours ago, Old-Doomguy said:

7) The fist in the air can wake up demons?

You can't see it in-game, but when he punches the air it actually lets out a massive shockwave throughout the area. It's not enough to harm them, but it's enough to make them aware of his presence.

[fufu]

30 minutes ago, N1ck said:

Why does Doomguy just stack helmets on his head to gain armor points

Why are there medieval helmets on a martian base anyway, is everybody in the UAC into roleplaying or something?

[Nevander]

3 hours ago, Old-Doomguy said:

The clips look like either very large magazines or a box rather than a regular pistol clip?

Not to be that guy, but technically they are all magazines. The game calling them clips is incorrect. With that said, the sprites do look like rifle magazines and not handgun magazines. This is probably because it was originally a rifle and not a pistol, and they didn't bother re-spriting the ammo drop to look more like a pistol magazine.

[Redneckerz]

Trying to insert real-life logic and sense into Doom's canon is like asking for Duke Nukem Forever to turn out to be the best sequel since Duke Nukem 3D.

 

It just does not happen.

[Gez]

4 hours ago, Old-Doomguy said:

1) The monsters are walking in place rather than having an idle animation?

Because that allows to skip on making an idle animation. A lot of corners were cut to enable faster production and easier distribution.

4 hours ago, Old-Doomguy said:

2) The clips look like either very large magazines or a box rather than a regular pistol clip?

Because the id crew weren't gun nuts.

4 hours ago, Old-Doomguy said:

3) The spider demon's collision is so large that it can barley move if there isn't a huge open area?

I don't know wheat they were thinking.

4 hours ago, Old-Doomguy said:

4) The levels are referred to as maps?

"Levels" implies the maps are stacked upon each other. "Map" is a more generic term.

4 hours ago, Old-Doomguy said:

5) You cannot walk under a flying monster or some decorations?

Because id's previous shooter experience was games like Wolfenstein 3D and Catacomb 3D, where collisions are actually in 2D, so fully 3D collisions were kind of an oversight. They fixed it for Quake.

4 hours ago, Old-Doomguy said:

6) You cannot jump off a ledge if a monster is down on your landing spot?

Same reason as 5).

4 hours ago, Old-Doomguy said:

7) The fist in the air can wake up demons?

Because monsters are woken up by the action of hitting the attack button.

 

Fun fact: with a weapon that has a sufficiently long "charging" time between clicking attack and actually shooting, such as the BFG, you can shoot monsters without waking them. Go to a close door, behind which monsters are waiting with their back turned, pull the trigger then open the door, the BFG ball will be projected without any monster waking up. (Being sent to their pain state will still wake them up, though. Depending on which frame of their idle animation they are...)

4 hours ago, Old-Doomguy said:

8) The Doomguy sprite holds a rifle rather than a weapon that exists in the game?

A rifle was originally the starting weapon. However, consider that the weapon worn does not change anyway depending on which weapon is held -- it's still a rifle even if you're using the chainsaw, the fist, the BFG...

[⇛Marnetmar⇛]

How come doomguy has a set of low detail glasses? Doesn't that defeat the point of glasses?

[Old-Doomguy]

53 minutes ago, Gez said:

A rifle was originally the starting weapon. However, consider that the weapon worn does not change anyway depending on which weapon is held -- it's still a rifle even if you're using the chainsaw, the fist, the BFG...

 

 

Yeah I know that actually, but it doesn't explain why he's showcased with a rifle. In Quake they gave Ranger the shotgun on the model, which is the starting weapon. They should've given Doomguy the shotgun as well, as it's probably the most used weapon, and Doomguy wouldn't really look cool with the pistol in hand.

[Gez]

4 minutes ago, Old-Doomguy said:

Yeah I know that actually, but it doesn't explain why he's showcased with a rifle.

Yes it does:

1 hour ago, Gez said:

A rifle was originally the starting weapon.

 

[Old-Doomguy]

1 minute ago, Gez said:

Yes it does:

 

 

No, it's not an explanation - rather an excuse.

[printz]

2 hours ago, Gez said:

Because that allows to skip on making an idle animation. A lot of corners were cut to enable faster production and easier distribution.

It's embarrassing because id have been perfectly capable of giving idle frames to the Wolf3D Nazis and the Quake monsters. Maybe the difference is that the Nazis are standing for attention, while monsters from hell would be more likely to stand at ease? And would rather idle around. Maybe id wanted to show how they breathe, and adding idle breathing animations would have been too much work (compared to the static frames in Wolf3D).

 

This brings up another baffling weakness of Doom never addressed until ZDoom: why is Doom the odd one without monster patrols? Both Wolf3D and Quake have them. What is Doom's excuse? I'm sure that this would have resulted in more interesting gameplay scenarios...

[Dark Pulse]

8 minutes ago, printz said:

This brings up another baffling weakness of Doom never addressed until ZDoom: why is Doom the odd one without monster patrols? Both Wolf3D and Quake have them. What is Doom's excuse? I'm sure that this would have resulted in more interesting gameplay scenarios...

Probably due to how advanced it was at the time, some kind of AI that would deal with monsters having patrols would've consumed tons of CPU cycles and made performance worse.

[TheNoob_Gamer]

4 hours ago, GarrettChan said:

Why we can't put Arch-vile into good use and resurrect some people :P

Well, archviles think they are nice beings, they do resurrect people, except they are reanimated.

[TheNoob_Gamer]

1 hour ago, Old-Doomguy said:

Yeah I know that actually, but it doesn't explain why he's showcased with a rifle. In Quake they gave Ranger the shotgun on the model, which is the starting weapon. They should've given Doomguy the shotgun as well, as it's probably the most used weapon, and Doomguy wouldn't really look cool with the pistol in hand.

Redrawing the rifle back to be every other weapons you are holding (melee weapons, pistol, shotguns, etc.) is tedious work.

[DNSKILL5]

1) Because it would look stupid. They’re not Nazi guards. They’re possessed humans and DEMONS. Why would they just be standing around? 

 

2) This is because the clip is a hold over from Wolfenstein 3D. It’s clip looks fairly similar. Also, a pistol magazine like one you’d see in the 92FS (which the Doom pistol is clearly based off, err well at least the toy is clearly modeled after that handgun) are fairy long and wide. Not all magazines are made the same in real life, so this is sort of a silly observation in my opinion.

 

3) Most likely because it was designed with E3M8 in mind initially, and they didn’t see a reason to change the behavior. 

 

4) Because they are maps? This is silly dude... you can call them levels, maps, stages, realms, etc. who cares?! It’s just the name they chose to go with for the internal files. Duke 3D used Levels. 

 

5) This is because of limitations of the original engine. While many complain about this issue, I have found it to not be as problematic as others claim it to be. If you don’t like this feature, it can be disabled in many source ports. 

 

6) Same reason as above. Looks like Gez beat me to this. 

 

7) This is also present in Wolfenstein 3D, except in that game the knife only alerts nearby enemies once you’ve attacked an enemy, not just when you stab to the air or walls. To me, this is something that should’ve been fixed initially. It allows players to break levels by luring enemies to their position without wasting ammo. It can actually be fixed and I’ve seen WADs that correct this behavior in the past. 

 

8) Ok... here’s the truth. It’s not just because there was a rifle in the betas. It’s because a rifle is a generic marine weapon. Literally, a marine is generally ALWAYS going to be issued a rifle. It makes sense. Why doesn’t it change between weapons? Because it is generic enough to reflect all the weapons of the game. Instead of making more images that take up more file size (yeah, people cared about not making games too large back then compared to now), you can just use the same image for all of the guns. This is also the reason they made certain directions the enemies face as mirrored images of other sprites was to keep the file size down.

Edited September 19, 2020 by Gerolf

[yaboidave]

5&6. the doom engine (idtech1) is actually a top-down engine presented as first person, this is why you can't have a room over room without advanced ports or doom builder formats. because the engine isn't actually 3d (also why you can't look up, down jump or crouch) all the actors (enemies, you, some decorations and probably a few other things) are infinitely tall, thus you can't move over or under them.

[⇛Marnetmar⇛]

4 hours ago, Old-Doomguy said:

 

No, it's not an explanation - rather an excuse.

 

You're not too well versed on cause and effect are you 

[Egg Boy]

Fucking magnets, how do they work?

[Biodegradable]

Why does Doomguy immediately consume the bonus health potions? Didn't his parents ever teach not to drink strange liquids you found on the floor!?