Lost Souls

[NaturalTvventy]

So what's up with Lost Souls' attacks? Sometimes they charge just fine, and other times they just sit there and hardly move when they hiss at you. It seems like this must be some sort of bug. I'm surprised no source ports have addressed it yet (unless I've missed it).

NT

[EarthQuake]

Well lost souls are an odd beast. Any attack upon them will interrupt what they're doing, any objects will block their attack and stop them, and often they forget who they were infighting. Perhaps you're referring to one or more of these behaviors?

Also, because they're not affected by gravity, and can't move on their own while attacking, interrupting their attack can make them extremely vulnerable as they'll just drift backwards until they hit a wall or object.

Heh, really there is just a lot of shit going on at once that gives lost souls their quirkiness. However, I think most of that quirkiness was intended.

[printz]

I'm willing to think the inability to charge through obtainable items was unintended...

[Catoptromancy]

EarthQuake said:

interrupting their attack can make them extremely vulnerable

My favorite way of dealing with a bunch of them on -fast is with the pistol. Just holding fire and shooting at whoever is in front or actively attacking with a clear path will hold them all back, even if they are spread out. Saves tons of ammo mostly from the misattacks and infighting.

[Quasar]

Lost Souls are one of the buggiest parts of the original engine. They in fact cause recursion through the P_CheckPosition routine whenever they collide with objects, causing the clipper to malfunction in a severe fashion by overwriting several dozen global variables used to track information about an ongoing clip process.

In BOOM this can cause an underflow on the spechit array, crashing the game.

Lost Soul bouncing behavior also changed between compilations of DOOM v1.9, causing demo sync headaches for source ports.

Also, because Lost Souls remove themselves during their death sequence, they were the prime culprit behind accesses to freed memory in the DOOM engine.

[40oz]

I've noticed that the most common cause of lost soul's randomly stopping in their tracks are because of pickups laid around on the ground. Lost souls used in rooms full of zombiemen and shotgun guys are a no no.

Also changes in floor and ceiling height interrupt their movement a lot too.

[Alphawolf]

On Nightmare its fun to watch them behave in a room full of monsters. Ouch. Rapid charging. Ouch.

[lazygecko]

The manual does describe them as really stupid.

[KwadDamyj]

Well, they aren't called LOST Souls for nothing. :P

[Encryptic]

GeckoYamori said:

The manual does describe them as really stupid.

I suspect the manual forgot to include the fact that they're the crack babies of the Doom world.

[skib]

More like lost brains.

Anyway, they are supposed to be hellspawn but are they a type of zombie human?

[Lila Feuer]

No no, not lost souls; found souls!

[Wagi]

Don't they also sometimes forget their target when they charge into a wall?

Also, I vaguely remember the "lost souls colliding with pickups" bug being reported on ZDoom, but I think it was either denied as "Won't fix" or "Not a bug". Why was this?

[Phobus]

A certain amount of the original behaviour is preserved in ZDoom, where it makes sense. Lost Souls being stopped by pickups is so ingrained in our conscious that you'd really miss it if it were gone. Particularly as it'd make them more dangerous.

The original code was that way to stop the Lost Souls attempting to travel through anything it hit with its melee attack I believe.

[Vermil]

Wagi said:

Don't they also sometimes forget their target when they charge into a wall?

Lost Souls "forget" their target whenever they make an attack, regardless of wheter it hit's something.

Personally, regardless of how messed up the Lost Souls code is, I think this is a nice bit of unique behaviour.

[Quasar]

Phobus said:

A certain amount of the original behaviour is preserved in ZDoom, where it makes sense. Lost Souls being stopped by pickups is so ingrained in our conscious that you'd really miss it if it were gone. Particularly as it'd make them more dangerous.

The original code was that way to stop the Lost Souls attempting to travel through anything it hit with its melee attack I believe.

It happens because most MF_PICKUP items are marked as MF_SOLID, and a lost soul will stop any time it touches an MF_SOLID object. MF_PICKUP is hacked in the clipper, *for normal movement,* to be treated as though it cancels out the MF_SOLID flag. However they forgot about MF_SKULLFLY movement, which is what the Lost Soul is using when it charges (also Maulotaurs in Heretic will display the same behavior).

[printz]

Phobus said:

A certain amount of the original behaviour is preserved in ZDoom, where it makes sense. Lost Souls being stopped by pickups is so ingrained in our conscious that you'd really miss it if it were gone.

It's bad when other monsters are affected by this, though.