id Doom map oddities

[termrork]

I think those havn't been said yet
Map07 : 1.The step which allows you to go to the exit will raise each time if each spider dies ( funny in Nightmare and -respawn ) and also if you kill the last spider in the "death-action" of the spider before
2. missing texture at line 168 which looks very weird with that floor texture
Map10 : 1.look at the cailing at the sector 143
2.also take a look at the sectors : 48, 102, 106 I think they were disigned for a light source thing
Map22 : some unused sectors espeacially sector 22 :D
Map27 : a texture nearly in the exit is missing... you can see it without idclip if you go too fast over the exit line

[Gez]

Quasar said:

See the Eternity Engine's r_dynseg.c source file for what has to be done to actually render polyobjects in a manner which is fully consistent with BSP theory. In short, the objects must be split through the BSP tree and rendered in fragments which are attached to the individual subsectors in which they are entirely contained. Nothing else is sufficient :)

Does that mean that a polyobject in Eternity can wander all across the map, or is it still bound to a sector?

[CODOR]

LogicDeLuxe said:
E1M5: the secret with the teleporter still feels somewhat out of place to me. In an early version, this particular secret wasn't there, indeed. There was no teleporter before the very end of E1M8, making it somewhat exclusive to hell creatures.

I remember when I first discovered that secret and verified that it wasn't in earlier versions of the map. I never cared for it much since I figured the teleporter at the end of E1M8 should be the first time the player encounters the more hellish technology, setting things up for lots of teleporters in The Shores Of Hell...

[Quasar]

Gez said:

Does that mean that a polyobject in Eternity can wander all across the map, or is it still bound to a sector?

Eternity does allow them to go anywhere; however, crossing between two sectors with different heights will cause temporary glitches and so is not recommended.

BTW, for however many oddities the DOOM maps have in them, Strife probably has 20x as much. Between stuff left over from the demo version, stuff that just plain wasn't finished, and stuff that simply has no logical explanation at all, there's just a whole lot of weirdness in that game.

A few examples:
* Tarnhill has a line special 1822, which does nothing. It was supposed to be 182, breakable glass, and is on the screen inside the medic's place.
* Next to Richter in the Commons is a secret door which, when opened by pressing, reveals a switch which does absolutely nothing. It is tagged to a sector which doesn't exist.
* The whole Harris/Mayor debacle.
* Some objects don't have proper dialog setup for them. You can "talk" to the Power Crystal in the Warehouse, and evidently the blue Acolytes who appear when you destroy the power coupling in Tarnhill are really peasants in disguise, if you manage to speak to them before they shoot at you...
* The important-looking guy tending a counter in the Commons, not far from Richter. When you ask him what he's doing, he says "Nothing." A named character with no purpose? I smell an unfinished quest.
* Though you're supposed to pay for access to the guy that sells Shadow Armor in the Commons, a skillful jump from the window nearby can get you in for free. Seems unintentional from how difficult it is to pull off.
* Though it's more a glitch in the game's code rather than the levels themselves, after defeating the Loremaster on the good-ending path, all deathmatch-only line actions begin to activate. This can allow such oddities as taking the Oracle's bad-ending shortcut to the Proving Grounds and causing the normal path to close permanently. The Factory map never accounts for this oddity at all, and you end up blocked by some HOM.

I could probably go on forever.

[printz]

Quasar said:

* The whole Harris/Mayor debacle.

What? I thought the setup was intended. And if you lose the game if you listen to Harris too much, you'll be surrounded by acolytes with low chance for you of escaping anyway, so it becomes irrelevant if you can't get any more help from the governor.

TIP: This works in vanilla Strife, but doesn't seem so in ZDoom or SvStrife. It uses things' ability of stepping up stairs: to resolve the chalice quest without getting into ANY trouble, just break the glass next to Harris (WAS IT PUT THERE ON PURPOSE?) and eject the chalice into the window. Be next to the window when you do this. Afterwards, just enter the tavern to Harris's room, pick up what you threw, and finish the quest.

[Gez]

Quasar said:

Eternity does allow them to go anywhere; however, crossing between two sectors with different heights will cause temporary glitches and so is not recommended.

Still, it means that something like this made for Eternity could use real pushwalls.

[Necros20]

Regarding Strife, In wintex I found a text screen that was apparently originally intended to appear after defeating the programmer. You can also find some unused dialogue in the voices wad.

[Quasar]

printz said:

What? I thought the setup was intended. And if you lose the game if you listen to Harris too much, you'll be surrounded by acolytes with low chance for you of escaping anyway, so it becomes irrelevant if you can't get any more help from the governor.

TIP: This works in vanilla Strife, but doesn't seem so in ZDoom or SvStrife. It uses things' ability of stepping up stairs: to resolve the chalice quest without getting into ANY trouble, just break the glass next to Harris (WAS IT PUT THERE ON PURPOSE?) and eject the chalice into the window. Be next to the window when you do this. Afterwards, just enter the tavern to Harris's room, pick up what you threw, and finish the quest.

On the easiest skill level, evading death and actually defeating all of the Acolytes in Tarnhill is well within the realm of possibility, so I don't think having a dead end in the game was a good idea at all. I accidentally triggered the Harris thing while goofing around in a recent game and I found it rather annoying. Even after defeating all the Acolytes, the Mayor continues to say the same thing and sets off the now-useless alarm again. This could have been fixed within the scope of the Strife dialog system. As is, you must ELVIS yourself into the prison and then kill the front door guard for a pass key in order to continue the game at that point.

[printz]

Fortunately it happens early enough to make restarting not a big chore.

I did resent the one-save system once, however not because I was foolish to do a quest wrong, but because the game is real fucking hard, especially if you take the good path and tackle the factory. Too many hitscanners there (and you know the deal: Reavers and Templars. Ouch). Lack of anything to help (money, health, armor or ammo) spells you doom when you finally reach the Proving Grounds (a rather tough level by itself, I'd say). Not to mention that Inquisitors are really Cyberdemons with 1000 health and extra capabilities.

Ultimate Doom E4M4 seems to be the glitchiest of all Doom games. Fortunately it's a forgettable level.

[Necros20]

In the level Darkmere from Hexen, near the entrance to the fort on the left side from when you enter is a switch which even in all the years I've been playing this game, I'm not so sure as to what exactly the said switch does. It really doesn't seem to do anything.

[printz]

Oh yeah, gotta love those cryptic switches in Doom 1, which are on your main path, but are used to activate a machine from the other side of the map. I wish they appeared more often in custom wads, equally without help for the player.

[Quasar]

Necros20 said:

In the level Darkmere from Hexen, near the entrance to the fort on the left side from when you enter is a switch which even in all the years I've been playing this game, I'm not so sure as to what exactly the said switch does. It really doesn't seem to do anything.

It's probably for deathmatch. Players can spawn inside areas which are closed off at the beginning, so there are switches to open such places from the inside. After all, Korax's minions need some way to come flooding out of the place right? ;)

[Vermil]

Quasar said:

It's probably for deathmatch. Players can spawn inside areas which are closed off at the beginning, so there are switches to open such places from the inside. After all, Korax's minions need some way to come flooding out of the place right? ;)

Indeed, it is just that. Because there are deathmatch start's in the fort, there are switches on both sides of the fortress enterance to open it. Hence whichever one is not used to open the enterance becomes a switch that does nothing.

[Necros20]

I don't think I've ever played deathmatch in that level, co-op yes but not DM.

[myk]

LogicDeLuxe said:
E2M5: There are a lot of dead Lost Souls in this map, eventhough they are invisible and have absolutely no influence on the game play. Maybe they had a different behavior in mind when they placed them in this map.

Well, the PR beta, which included the old lost souls that left bodies, already included work by Sandy Petersen (Unholy Cathedral, specifically).

I'm guessing E2M5 is one of Sandy's earlier works, and when he added these things they were simply monster corpse decorations. The level kind of imitates the work of the other designers in some ways, especially Romero's (just look at the start room and the way halls spread out), unlike other maps that seem more unique or experimental. That is, it might be an early map where he freely mimicked what the other guys had done while improving his hand at using DoomEd.

[Necros20]

On the subject of Hexen, as you may or may not know there is a hidden level titled maze that was left in there by accident and was removed in v1.1. There is also the throne room bug in Gibbet. Can't think of any other oddities at the moment.

[ultdoomer]

Map 12: In order to exit the room with the elevators and cacodemons you have to have a red key, which is nowhere to be found.

LogicDeLuxe said:

E2M5: There are a lot of dead Lost Souls in this map

What do you mean by "dead lost souls?"

[esselfortium]

myk said:

Well, the PR beta, which included the old lost souls that left bodies, already included work by Sandy Petersen (Unholy Cathedral, specifically).

I'm guessing E2M5 is one of Sandy's earlier works, and when he added these things they were simply monster corpse decorations. The level kind of imitates the work of the other designers in some ways, especially Romero's (just look at the start room and the way halls spread out), unlike other maps that seem more unique or experimental. That is, it might be an early map where he freely mimicked what the other guys had done while improving his hand at using DoomEd.

Hmm, that's an interesting way of thinking about it.

Honestly I'd consider the start area to be one of the only parts of e2m5 that's very interesting or memorable at all though...:\

[Espi]

esselfortium said:

Honestly I'd consider the start area to be one of the only parts of e2m5 that's very interesting or memorable at all though...:\

I always liked the secret gray area at the end of the slime tunnels for some reason.

[Hellbent]

Espi said:

I always liked the secret gray area at the end of the slime tunnels for some reason.

Of course. This is one of the classic moments of Doom; with the baron in its cage and the horse-shoe raised ledge above slime pool.

[myk]

ultdoomer said:
What do you mean by "dead lost souls?"

A thing with doomednum 23 (thing 116 in DeHackEd) which shows the last frame of a dying lost soul. It lasts only 6 tics, so you never get to see anything unless it is placed within sight of the player character's starting location.

[LogicDeLuxe]

ultdoomer said:

What do you mean by "dead lost souls?"

This:

Indeed, there were bodies in the beta. Here, a living and a dead Lost Soul can be seen:

[Necros20]

The lost soul corpses were likely added in when the monster still had a death sprite but they never bothered to remove them.

Regarding the corpses hanging from mid-air in E2M7, they never really seemed all that unusual to me given Doom's twisted nature. The effect was probably intentional.

[Enjay]

myk said:

It lasts only 6 tics, so you never get to see anything unless it is placed within sight of the player character's starting location.

Am I right in saying that (as well as an S shaped sector) SLIGE maps do that as part of a sort of "watermark" to identify them as SLIGE maps (not that either are hard to remove).

[printz]

Necros20 said:

The effect was probably intentional.

I'm pretty sure the area used to be indoors (caused both by the levitating corpses, pillar structures and odd sky height). But sky looked better so they changed it.

[deathbringer]

Enjay said:

Am I right in saying that (as well as an S shaped sector) SLIGE maps do that as part of a sort of "watermark" to identify them as SLIGE maps (not that either are hard to remove).

I thought it was a way of stopping the maps being playable with the Doom shareware? as the dead lost souls would be "nonexistent" objects if run with the shareware. ID did, ages ago, ask map makers not to create mapes compatible with it.

[esselfortium]

Espi said:

I always liked the secret gray area at the end of the slime tunnels for some reason.

Same. Well, at least after I actually discovered its existence, sometime within the past year. Really weirded me out when I first found it.

[Enjay]

deathbringer said:

I thought it was a way of stopping the maps being playable with the Doom shareware?

You could be right. I remember "back in the day" people would either include an item or texture from the full version to stop it running on the SW version or, very commonly, just save their map as E2M1. That's why many '94 WADs replace that map rather than E1M1.

[LogicDeLuxe]

Necros20 said:

The lost soul corpses were likely added in when the monster still had a death sprite but they never bothered to remove them.

Not exactly. Oddly enough, they did remove exactly one of them in v1.2.

deathbringer said:

I thought it was a way of stopping the maps being playable with the Doom shareware?

Exactly. It is mentioned somewhere in the Slige documentation.

[Necros20]

Then what would be the point of adding in something that has no perceivable function and can't even be seen?