The cyberdemon's death animation

[Captain POLAND]

Does anyone else think that it just feels off, like it doesn't belong with all of the others? Most of the other monsters have a somewhat realistic animation of them dying, breaking apart, collapsing, etc. The cyberdemon instead just explodes into a giant cloud of blood, like it was a balloon or something and you just popped it with a needle. It really doesn't make sense for it to have so much blood and so little other types of remains (muscles, organs, cybernetic components). All it leaves behind is the stumps of its legs - where did the rest of it go?

 

Has anyone ever made a mod to give it a better/more realistic death animation?

 

 

[esselfortium]

The cyberdemon actually is a giant balloon animal, but squeaking movement noises were deemed too unthreatening so they were replaced with the familiar hoof stomp we know and love.

 

 

 

But that's actually a good point. I've been seeing the old cyberdemon animation for so long I've never really given it any thought. It'd be interesting to see an alternate take on it, though it'd surely be a lot of work to animate... which is probably the reason it wasn't done in the first place.

[magicsofa]

Both the cyber and spider demon have this problem... although spider's animation is a little bit more complex, it still just crunches into the ground, with the same old barrel/fireball/rocket explosion graphics used heavily to cover it up. I figure they didn't want to spend the time on animating such large sprites in detail...

[slugger]

Here's one simple in-universe reasoning: It uniquely shoots an infinite supply of rockets, so there must be something in its torso capable of mass-manufacturing explosives. All that material cooks off when it dies.

[Thelokk]

I don't know, I find it very iconic to be honest. 

[Kute]

Just now, slugger said:

Here's one simple in-universe reasoning: It uniquely shoots an infinite supply of rockets, so there must be something in its torso capable of mass-manufacturing explosives. All that material cooks off when it dies.

Yea that was my first thought too - he's a CYBERdemon, it's his power supply exploding

[Teo Slayer]

The Cyberdemon's death animation is my favourite death animation in the entire game. I love seeing it going ka-boom with its leg remaining only

[thiccyosh]

I dunno. Where does the Cyber keep its rockets? Probably inside his body, so it's not too far-fetched that he explodes like a water ballon?

[Hitboi]

Never found the true answer. When the player hurts the Cyberdemon the rockets inside its body get damaged, so they explode by themselves and hurt Cybie.

But the weirder question is.. why does the Spider Mastermind explode too? When it cannot shoot rockets?

[Thelokk]

7 minutes ago, Hitboi said:

But the weirder question is.. why does the Spider Mastermind explode too? When it cannot shoot rockets?

 

Because that one certainly is, in fact, a giant balloon animal. Takes about the same effort to kill. 

[KubaloBlackMT]

I'm pretty sure if you were a cyborg and were blown up inside-out style from whatever mechanical core or piece exploded, all your internal organs would be charred black or to nothingness and probably wouldn't resemble anything organic. As for the cloud of blood, Doom seems to use a lot of red for their explosions but idk.

[BGreener]

I’m going to second the “filled with explosives” idea. It also seems a bit appropriate seeing these giant ‘boss enemies’ with quite the ‘explosive’ death.
 

This talk also made me realize something: For all the cool tech these demons have, I can’t recall playing through many “hellish factory” styled maps or settings.

[magicsofa]

It's not weird that it explodes, but the animation itself lacks much detail - there's only one frame of the actual sprite, while the explosion just erases it. There could have been more guts, perhaps a tossed rocket launcher or head, etc... but that would be increasingly difficult with the large size of the sprite, which is what makes me think they were just saving time.

[RockyGaming4725]

I find the simplicity of it fine. I mean, if you think about it, a lot of the demons’ death animations seem off. The baron and hell knights suddenly rip open, the chaingunner practically becomes gibbed, the archvile is similar on the hellknight, etc. I find that the death animations aren’t supposed to be super realistic, but to either be satisfying or easy to recognize while fighting a hoard.

[Nikku4211]

Yeah he's filled with explosives.

 

But did you know he's also filled with expletives too? You just can't understand them because they're drowned out by the hoof, cybernetic movements, rockets, and your own gun(also Doomguy doesn't speak Demon).

 

There's no bomb more effective than an F-bomb.

 

/j

 

I think what's actually weirder is that the barrel explosions have a bit of cyberdemon hoof in them. It's like whoever made the barrels in UAC were trying to harvest cyberdemon tissue.

 

/jj

 

Yeah Doom's deaths were never meant to be realistic. This is an over the top action shooter in a world where Mars' moons are habitable to life and turns out to be where hell is located. Cyberdemons are already a surreal idea by nature.

[Captain POLAND]

I could buy the 'filled with explosives' idea if it exploded in an actual blast, but not a cloud of blood.

[out_of_service]

I always liked the death animation for the Cyberdemon. You put a lot effort into fighting the bastard, so it's rewarding to see it explode into a shower of gore with only it's hoofs and bits of gore left over. I especially like the Doom 64 Cyberdemons death animation with the fiery explosions followed by blood mist lol. "TAKE THAT YOU SOB YEAHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

[mrthejoshmon]

I think that the Cyberdemon has such a simple death animation and a small corpse because it is easier to have them crumple into something small and not have them take a large amount of room after death, I can see them blocking entire doorways (like Duke 3D's Battlelord does).

Edited February 24, 2022 by mrthejoshmon

[ApprihensivSoul]

A couple people have mentioned it, but the Spider and Cyber are both mechanical, so they have a bunch of explosions in their death animation. Doom uses a palette where red is the colour for both explosions and blood, so the Cyber becomes hard to tell. No doubt if the engine supported it it would have had quake style body parts flying due to the art philosophy of id at the time, but it didn't, and so it doesn't. 

But no, it's not out of place, it's just different, because the monster is different. 

[Kute]

2 hours ago, thiccyosh said:

I dunno. Where does the Cyber keep its rockets? Probably inside his body, so it's not too far-fetched that he explodes like a water ballon?

 

I've seen them shoots thousands, so I'm thinking they can build them in-house. I'm no physicist but it'd only take like a speck of nuclear stuff to generate an explosion, maybe his blood is explosive and coagulates very quickly - maybe his launcher arm inside has a the rocket shape, it fills with blood, dries/coagulates instantly, and his rocket arm ignites the end and shoots it out. IDK. That's really dumb. But I'm trying to think what could possibly be the physical casing of the rocket more or less infinitely and instantly, and that's all I can think of

 

Unless he has access to some kind of personal transporter tech that just teleports standard rockets into his arm endlessly. It's not like there's no transporters in the doom universe, but maybe they require alot of power to run - his power source, which is what explodes when he gets deaded

[Faceman2000]

2 hours ago, KubaloBlackMT said:

As for the cloud of blood, Doom seems to use a lot of red for their explosions but idk.

^ This. I always thought it was just explosions that vaporized most everything, not a cloud of blood.

[Biodegradable]

I mean, good old Cybie is a boss monster after all. Him bellowing a dramatic roar before satisfyingly exploding all over the place, leaving nothing but a pool of blood and a chunk of his robo-leg behind just makes sense to me.

[Clippy]

I love how only his boots survive and when you kill them in a group seeing foot stumps everywhere

 

[ChopBlock223]

I figure he has a generator inside him to power his cybernetics, also powering a device which regularly teleports in rocket munitions to load his launcher, since there's no visible magazine or belt chute rigged to it, nor is there anywhere on or in his body to actually keep that neverending supply of missiles.

His launcher looks like it can fit one of these big rockets at a time, so I figure a new one is teleported in after the last one is fired.

 

When killed, the powerful generator inside him explodes, sympathetically detonating the loaded rocket. The launcher is destroyed and the speed of the explosion inside him is so high that much of his body basically atomizes into a fine red mist.

 

1 hour ago, ApprihensivSoul said:

No doubt if the engine supported it it would have had quake style body parts flying due to the art philosophy of id at the time, but it didn't, and so it doesn't.

That probably wouldn't be that hard to implement code wise, Hexen and Strife have some effects like that, it would really just entail throwing a Thing or two with an associated graphic when necessary, and make it susceptible to gravity.

 

Possibly the concept didn't occur to them, or if it did, there's the thought of reworking assets they had already done and then also debugging this behavior and making sure it doesn't cause problems.

[ApprihensivSoul]

You're probably right on that one. I was thinking along the lines of "Default engine behaviour", since Quake everything gibs like that, but you're right, it's not too out of the range of things the engine can do.

[Stupid Bunny]

Yeah it does lack the cool visceral gore of e.g. the mancubus, cacodemon, or hell nobility, but there's just something delightful in the Ren and Stimpy goofiness of him going up in a big red cloud and then leaving behind nothing but feet.

 

I think the sound effect could've used a bit more punch though.

[BetelgeuseSupergiant]

7 hours ago, Teo Slayer said:

The Cyberdemon's death animation is my favourite death animation in the entire game. I love seeing it going ka-boom with its leg remaining only

Especially in Brutal Doom

[BaileyTW]

I find it fitting actually. This big mass of flesh and machine pumping out endless rockets. On death the flesh has probably gone so weak the cyberdemon's body cannot handle the machinery and the weaponry in their body and is undone by the machinery just explodes spectacularly, and it works with the sound effect as its death roar is cut off so soon by an explosion.

[OliveTree]

1 hour ago, BaileyTW said:

I find it fitting actually. This big mass of flesh and machine pumping out endless rockets. On death the flesh has probably gone so weak the cyberdemon's body cannot handle the machinery and the weaponry in their body and is undone by the machinery just explodes spectacularly, and it works with the sound effect as its death roar is cut off so soon by an explosion.

i like this imagery a lot actually!

[ImproversGaming]

The Cyberdemon is just incredible for me. No other enemy makes me nervous or so on edge as the Cyberdemon. From the first wake up noise to the stomping footfalls getting closer the Cyberdemon still makes me shiver. Defeating a Cyberdemon is such a surge and seeing and hearing that last explosion caps it off nicely for me.

 

It is an interesting observation about the different death animations, I had not thought about this much, but I would be happy to keep it as it is.