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mawcor624

How exactly does armor work?

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I was wondering if armor works differently against certain types of damage or if it has something to do with the armor-to-health ratio, or simply how much you have on. For example, I once picked up a megashpere and had 200/200 armor/health, and when I was hit with a baron energy ball, I went down to 184/184, so it seemed to distribute half of the damage to each stat, and other times it seems to take away more from health or more from armor. So does it have something to do with whether I am being hit by bullets or mancu-blasts, or does it have something to do with how much health I have in relation to armor? Does someone know the answer to this question?

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I believe green armor blocks 1/3 of the damage, while blue armor blocks 1/2 damage. It doesn't matter how much you have left. If you picked up a blue armor and it drops down below 100%, it would still block 1/2 damage, until you pick up a green armor. As for armor bonuses, they are by default green armor type, and picking up 200 of those things while you have no armor will just give you 200% green armor, but if you have blue armor type, then armor bonuses would just add to the percentage without changing it.

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Green armor blocks 1/3 of the damage. If you were dealt 15% damage wearing green armor, I believe it will drop your armor by 5% and health by 10%. The 184%/184% scenario you decribed wearing blue armor (megasphere) sounds accurate. It probably dealt you 32% damage.

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Well said.

And because of Blue Armor's 1/2 damage bonus, sometimes it's better to avoid Green Armor if you have a decent portion of blue armor left.

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I can honestly say that in all my Doom playing experience I never noticed the difference between green and blue armor protection other than the 100% vs. 200% thing.

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I reckon this must be high up on a list of "quite major aspects of the way Doom works that aren't very well known". I didn't know about it until relatively recently, and had previously presumed it was just random. It's a useful piece of knowledge to have when planning a route or handling a battle.

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Linguica said:
I can honestly say that in all my Doom playing experience I never noticed the difference between green and blue armor protection other than the 100% vs. 200% thing.

I first read about it in the DeHackEd documentation, DEH_HELP.TXT, which describes this "armor class" factor, but before that I'm pretty sure I hadn't really noticed how it works.

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I never figured out armour at all in doom. Most games now use armor as an "extra life" like thing, where if you get hit, the armor goes down, not your health. Doom didn't. it "reduced" the damage you took and went down as you got hit.

I know the armor works, I've seen what happens in a fight with and without it. Let's be honest, the DoomGuy is very weak.

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Linguica said:

I can honestly say that in all my Doom playing experience I never noticed the difference between green and blue armor protection other than the 100% vs. 200% thing.

Me neither. :D

I never realized any difference between the two other than the obvious number differences. Though I did notice how extremely helpful armour is in battles. I just assumed it took "some of the damage" from your hits. :D

Guess this means I'll have to start planning things out better when I see green and blue armour. :D

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There is (was?) a site that explained the damage difference between the green and blue armors, along with a few other lesser-known aspects of the Doom engine. I seem to remember it included a quiz to test the reader on the amount of health/armor they'd be left with in certain scenarios. Last time there was a discussion on armor I looked for it, but didn't seem to have it bookmarked and my Google search was unsuccessful. Anyone else remember that site?

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After having a general knowledge of this info, it's funny to think how the strategy behind playing Doom will change a little bit after all this time.

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Wow, and I thought that this would be a topic that either everybody knew about but me, or nobody really cared about. Thanks for the info, guys. Whenever I was running low on mega-armor, I would always pick up green armor if it was available, because I thought that the only difference was in the quantity, so I'm glad I know how armor works and how much damage it absorbs. And yes, the doomguy is painfully vulnerable without armor (at least on ultra-violence); I've been felled by well-placed chaingunners before I even had time to respond when left without armor on several occasions.

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Csonicgo said:

Let's be honest, the DoomGuy is very weak.


yeah id like to see you get shot a couple times with bullets and or fireballs and not even sustain any injury except for a reduction to an arbitrary number that defines your limit of getting hurt.

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Linguica said:

I can honestly say that in all my Doom playing experience I never noticed the difference between green and blue armor protection other than the 100% vs. 200% thing.

I've had the same experience.

Although after reading this, I might look at little harder next time I pick up some armor. Thanks Ichor.

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doomer524 said:

yeah id like to see you get shot a couple times with bullets and or fireballs and not even sustain any injury except for a reduction to an arbitrary number that defines your limit of getting hurt.


One thing I really like about Doom is the doomguy's obvious mortality; if he gets hit a couple times by a shotgun, or if a chaingunner locks onto him for a couple seconds, he's dead. That's the way it should be, and forces you to be careful.

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doomer524 said:

yeah id like to see you get shot a couple times with bullets and or fireballs and not even sustain any injury except for a reduction to an arbitrary number that defines your limit of getting hurt.

Doom bullets are considerably weak in reality standards (or whatever). You can get shot in the head and it's probably just a flesh wound. Of course, in many more modern FPSs a bullet to the head from the start-off gun won't account for a HEAD SHOT anyway.

The imp fireballs shouldn't be able to kill you outright anyway. They're just balls of fire. They'll char your vest and give you a third degree burn, but it'll take a number of them to kill you.

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Yeah, but there's no bleeding, diseasing, gangrene or breakage, and I'm glad there isn't. Doom is not a tactical survival game etc. This could have gone into Doom 3, but even there it ain't appropriate, because gamers aren't doctors to know what infected their characters. Besides, that would have made them even weaker than they already are.

A really realistic bullet aproach had Wolfenstein, where the enemies could seriously damage you at close range, same in your case.

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Bleeding and disease... well I guess the doom guy's mortality isn't 'precisely' akin to reality, but in accordance with newer FPS's where you can look for a hidden guy who is chaingunning you for a few seconds and come out of it with 75% HP, the doom guy is definitely vulnerable. And jeez, if bleeding, gangrene and disease were what I was looking for in a game, I would have just gone to medical school.

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I can't believe some of you are so unobservant! Surely you must have noticed that with blue armour your health and armour decrease at roughly the same rate, but with green your health goes much faster. Try running through some nukage and watching the display; unlike bullets/missiles the damages are of fixed, known sizes, and are applied predictably.

Inferno said:
And because of Blue Armor's 1/2 damage bonus, sometimes it's better to avoid Green Armor if you have a decent portion of blue armor left.

The precise condition is H > 2A. That is, leave the green armour, unless your health is over twice the numerical value of your remaining blue armour (e.g if you have 100% health don't touch the green unless you have less than 50% blue)

Outline of proof: P_DamageMobj in p_inter.c has the code to look for; given an initial amount of armour of a given class, it maps a damage d to a health loss, and updates the armour. Now suppose the health loss is equal to the player's health; thus d is the smallest damage that will kill the player. Calculate d for the cases A<100% blue armour and 100% green armour and solve the appropriate inequality.

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Wow! Everyday I learn something new about Doom.

p.s. Btw, when I played the GBA version of Doom, I wondered why I was still loosing energy so easilly after taking the armour, either the green or the blue. It seems that there it doesn't protect you as much or at all as in the original. Have you noticed that?

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Ichor said:
As for armor bonuses, they are by default green armor type, and picking up 200 of those things while you have no armor will just give you 200% green armor, but if you have blue armor type, then armor bonuses would just add to the percentage without changing it.


Ok what if:

-15% blue armor left
-pick up 30 armor bonuses (take on blue as you say)
-lose 15% armor (original blue now gone)

Now your armor is 30% from 30 armor bonuses. But is your armor blue since they started as blue, or do they convert to green now that the original blue armor is gone?

Finally, if it is still blue, if I now pick up 30 more armor bonuses, are they also blue?

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No, it would still be blue unless your armor count reaches 0 before picking up those bonuses. 15% blue armor + 30 bonuses = 45% blue armor, not 15% blue and 30% green.

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Optimus said:

p.s. Btw, when I played the GBA version of Doom, I wondered why I was still loosing energy so easilly after taking the armour, either the green or the blue. It seems that there it doesn't protect you as much or at all as in the original. Have you noticed that?

Yeah I noticed this. It was a real pain in the ass to see that the armor didnt last long. The games difficult enough due to it being on gba.

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Ichor said:

No, it would still be blue unless your armor count reaches 0 before picking up those bonuses.

OK, third edit to get it right:

All your armor is one color, either green or blue.

Picking up the green jacket will make your armor green (e.g. if you had 50% blue, then afterwards you will have 100% green).

Picking up the helmets doesn't change the color.

That's according to my (sometimes fallible) reading of the source code.

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Ajapted said:
Picking up the helmets doesn't change the color.

That line could confuse some people. The easiest way to explain it is to say there are 3 degrees of "Armor Class", 0 (no protection), 1 (takes 1/3 the damage of each hit), and 2 (takes 1/2 the damage of each hit). It goes to 1 if you get an Armor, and to 2 if you get a MegaArmor (also the IDFA or IDKFA cheats, or a Megasphere). Bonuses give AC 1, unless it is greater (2) already, where the 2 remains. Armor class is set to 0 whenever the Armor percentage drops to 0.

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myk said:

The easiest way to explain it is to say there are 3 degrees of "Armor Class", 0 (no protection), 1 (takes 1/3 the damage of each hit), and 2 (takes 1/2 the damage of each hit). It goes to 1 if you get an Armor, and to 2 if you get a MegaArmor (also the IDFA or IDKFA cheats, or a Megasphere). Bonuses give AC 1, unless it is greater (2) already, where the 2 remains. Armor class is set to 0 whenever the Armor percentage drops to 0.

Wow, so much easier to understand now! ;-)

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Here's something else that's interesting. If I understand this correctly, you could get 200% armor but it's green because you picked up at least 100 armor bonuses while wearing green already. Now even if there's a blue armor available you can't make it blue without taking a hit first, because you can't pick up a blue armor if it's already 200%.

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