Murphy's law and Doom

[Mr. Freeze]

Super Jamie said:

I once started a MAP07 remake but used Barons instead of Mancubi. I actually found it harder with the Invisibility Sphere, as more often than not they'd shoot to the side and I'd strafe right into it.

I often wonder if this had any influence on the design of the Manc's two-shot attack.

Which is why my CC4 map is really fucking tricky to balance.

[Kyka]

So here's the scene.

You have a BFG in your hands.
You are hiding behind a pillar.
You know there is an archvile running around somewhere out there.
There are other monsters out there too.
You charge out intending to one hit kill the archvile with a BFG shot before it gets out of control.
You fire.
The BFG proceeds to distribute its damage amongst everything but the archvile, even though it was right in front of you.
You die.

[Maes]

Here's another one:

you're shooting at a revenant with the chaingun from close range, holding the fire button down.

This keeps it mostly under control, but you occasionally see it trying to go into its firing frames. You reassure yourself by thinking "It's under continuous uninterrupted fire, it can't retaliate, and I'm close, so hits can't go stray even if I don't repeat-tap on the fire button!"

Then fires a homing rocket in your face. Doing 80% damage. Unfortunately, you were playing a Jodwin map and only had 79%, and no armor. You die.

[Jodwin]

Maes said:

Unfortunately, you were playing a Jodwin map and only had 79%, and no armor. You die.

Stop posting and go back to your playtesting.

[Maes]

Jodwin said:

Stop posting and go back to your playtesting.

Yes, mum.

[Kyka]

Jodwin said:

Stop posting and go back to your playtesting.

Stop posting and go back to finishing that map.

[printz]

I think the barrels are remarcable disciplined entities of the Murphy law. I hope I don't have to be Captain Obvious about why.

[Bashe]

I hate when really weak monsters end up doing a lot of damage because of the stupid RNG. In my E2 playthrough with commentary (it's on Youtube), the very first hit I take it from a zombieman for 15 damage, the max a zombieman can do.

Same goes for when I can't dodge projectiles in a narrow hallway and have to get hit, and it just HAPPENS to do max damage.

[Super Jamie]

Maes said:

Revenant missiles always do 80 HP damage. And I mean always.

Revenants seem to do more damage in ZDoom than the other ports I play.

Maes said:

You reassure yourself by thinking "It's under continuous uninterrupted fire, it can't retaliate"

You let your guard down in a Jodwin map? Tsk, tsk, tsk...

[doomygecko]

The second the acid tab kicks in, massive amount of archviles and/or lost souls show up.
Have fun on your bad trip.

[Chrispaks]

You fire a BFG and it somehow manages to detonate the barrels next to you, yet leave everything around it generally untouched (monsters).

[ArmouredBlood]

Super Jamie said:

Revenants seem to do more damage in ZDoom than the other ports I play./B]

That's weird, usually it's boom that has revenants do full damage to me, and zdoom will let me off the hook.

Here's another; in a slaughter map, right when you have full ammo and little health, the only health around is a berserk, which promptly leaves you defenseless against the 642346 monsters attacking you, from which you get killed.

[Doom Marine]

When out in the open with an Archvile, he always waits til the last second before your SSG finish reloading, then you're in the air with 0 health. Always.

[Ichor]

If all you have is a shotgun and you see a chaingun guy for the first time in a map and he's in a small caged room, when you kill him, the chaingun will drop just outside of your reach.

If you're trying to get extra ammo by having an arch-vile hang around a group of dead zombies, he will instead spend most of the time trying to blow you away or run across some other monsters you really didn't want revived.

You pick up a soulsphere and the obligatory trap puts you in worse shape than before.

[Breadrobber]

So you walk into a large room and set off a switch which lets in several Pain Elementals. You're either low on plasma cells or don't have a better weapon, so you think, "Oh well, it's a big room. Rockets are fine." After dispatching most of them you're low on health, so you duck into a corner and wait a moment so you can prepare to finish them off. You step around a corner and shoot a rocket at a PE who is trying to get into your room. By chance, he spits out a Lost Soul which gets half-way to you when you fire that rocket. Rocket hits Lost Soul 4 feet away from you. Lost Soul dies. You die.

More rocket trouble:
You're running away from <insert whatever monster you hate like hell here> and you duck around a corner with a rocket launcher in your hands. You jump back around a corner and immediately fire a rocket. Unfortunately for you, he already managed to get all the way up to that corner and the rocket blast takes you down with him. Bonus points if it's a zombie or an imp (which might happen if you intended that rocket for a larger enemy).

WTF? More?
You're hiding behind a corner and get into a spot where a <Cyberdemon, Spiderdemon, horde of Barons, etc.> can't get you, but you're able to pump a steady stream of rockets into it via <a small hole in the wall, a gap between two columns, etc.>. What you don't see is a Revenant behind you who hits you with a rocket, which pushes you a little bit. Your rocket which you are firing hits the wall in front of you and you die.

[eargosedown]

Breadrobber said:

More rocket trouble:[/B]
[B]WTF? More?

You, my friend, should not use the rocket launcher so much :P

[Erik]

Ichor said:

You pick up a soulsphere and the obligatory trap puts you in worse shape than before.

This I find to be true very often. I am not a big fan of trapped soulspheres. I am more into trapped keys, trapped weapons, trapped nothing etc...

[Breadrobber]

Why God? Why MORE?!
You're in a heated battle towards the beginning of a level (or possibly later) and you're surrounded by zombies and imps, blasting everywhere. All of a sudden, you accidentally trip over the corpse of a chaingunner. You don't have the chaingun yet, so there's a forced weapon switch. While you're taking out your chaingun (or something else, maybe a berserk pack if you're later on in a level) you get gang-raped by imps. Whoopee.

Edit
What the hell is wrong with this game?!
A monster is sitting on its little post, firing away at you when you walk in his FOV. You go and open a door or trap and some more monsters pour out. To make things a bit easier you decide to encourage some monster infighting. You run out to the monster on his post with the monsters following. When they finally arrive, the post-monster decides he'd rather spin in endless circles on his little perch than shoot at you. You fight off the monsters yourself, and then the post-monster thinks its high time to kill you. You're hit by a fireball from him and die because you're low on health from fighting those monsters yourself.

[Super Jamie]

Erik said:

This I find to be true very often. I am not a big fan of trapped soulspheres. I am more into trapped keys, trapped weapons, trapped nothing etc...

Traps can be fun but they get boring fast. I much more enjoy maps with the fighting as the tough part and the key as the reward.

[Maes]

Revenants again. Not only do they always do maximum damage when you're unarmored and your health is below 80%, but when you manage to dodge one of their rockets thinking it's a straight one...guess what, it's not.

Oh well you think, it ran past me and I'm in a small room so it will hit somewhere and won't turn back. Guess what, it does. And then it hits you in the back when you're not looking. For 80% damage.

[Ichor]

How about the one where you're hiding behind a pillar or around a corner during an arch-vile attack, only to have a revenant rocket or some other projectile knock you back into the open just in time to get fried?

[aldiboronti]

You pick up an Invulnerability Sphere and race to where you need to use it a couple of rooms away. But you're completely disoriented by the white-out and get totally lost. Just as you find the room the sphere runs out .......

(One of my pet hates about Doom is that damn white invulnerability screen.)

[Kyka]

You pick up a partial invisibility sphere...

[Jodwin]

You have an SSG, 10 shells and fail at killing a mancubus at point blank range thanks to the hitbox glitch.

[Maes]

You're shooting an archvile at close range with the SSG. You know that you have a 55% chance of getting it to flinch and cancel its attack if every pellet in the discharge connects.

You managed to get the 2 first discharges right, and think that the next one can't go wrong...but 45% ain't little and you can only think "WHY, OH WHY?" as you see it nonchalantly completing its attack animation while your ass is being blasted away.

[Ninjalah]

-When and if you pick up a chainsaw, Doomguy decides that its better than the SSG and demands you spend the next 5 seconds looking for it again while a Caco shoots hot lightning into your face

-When playing Co-Op, every time you shoot a rocket your horizontal auto aim will hit your friend whos moving around at 300MPH. But when that Revenants fireball comes and hes in front of you so you cant see it, he will dodge at the very last second.

-When getting hit by your friends rocket to be vaulted into a pool of lava with 8% health left.

[Abyssalstudios1]

5a A chaingunner will always emerge at close range when the player is wielding the SSG,

5b The first shot with said SSG will miss due to the chaingunner roaming, and

5c The chaingunner will stop moving and commence firing the exact instant that the player begins to reload his SSG.

[Devalaous]

Maes said:

Revenants again. Not only do they always do maximum damage when you're unarmored and your health is below 80%, but when you manage to dodge one of their rockets thinking it's a straight one...guess what, it's not.

Oh well you think, it ran past me and I'm in a small room so it will hit somewhere and won't turn back. Guess what, it does. And then it hits you in the back when you're not looking. For 80% damage.

Never understimate the homers :p

Ive seen one do a 90 degree angle around a sharp doorway, then, naturally, 80 damage.

[geekmarine]

Another Revenant one: when you duck behind a wall to take cover from a pack of homing missiles, no matter how long you wait, there will always be one lone missile that'll hit you in the face the moment you pop your head out to check if they're all gone.

[Maes]

Ragnor said:

I've seen one do a 90 degree angle around a sharp doorway, then, naturally, 80 damage.

Is it my impression, or they track much more precisely in source ports?