Things about Doom you just found out

[ASD]

Thought he dislocated his mouth due to the painful death.

[Hoodie]

I see no tongue?

[scifista42]

^The red pixels in his mouth on sprites BOSSJ0 and BOSSK0.

[damerell]

MetroidJunkie said:

It's because any demon that uses weaponry somehow has an infinite supply of it. What do THEY need ammo for? XD

Even so, there must be a point where one pinkbeast says to another "Y'know, Fred, maybe we should start hiding that stuff. I've got so many holes in me I feel like a colander."

[VGamingJunkie]

They don't seem to be that bright and especially not that coordinated. The fact that you can get them to infight so easily should be proof of that. XD

[Lvangundy]

When I was younger, I didn't understand how the monster code/logic worked, so I thought all the monsters had a "3d view" just like the player, like somehow the game engine was drawing each monster's FOV.

[Hoodie]

In so many games as a kid I thought the bad guys had so much more thought to them, like they actually planned out what they were doing instead of...

Chase
Shoot
Chase
Shoot
Pain
Pain
Chase
Pain
Death

[VGamingJunkie]

So basically, the exact opposite of Pacman, where people assumed the ghosts just had random movements when they actually had their own personalities.

[Hoodie]

I always knew that about Pacman though, so maybe that's why I thought other games had it, I don't know man.

Thinking is weird.

[axdoomer]

If you put "Destruction Soldier" in Google Translate to translate it to Chinese, then translate it back to English, you get "Doom".

[Cupboard]

axdoom1, that's an awesome manipulation of google translate, bravo

[illYay1337]

Lvangundy said:

When I was younger, I didn't understand how the monster code/logic worked, so I thought all the monsters had a "3d view" just like the player, like somehow the game engine was drawing each monster's FOV.

I remember thinking about how the levels must have been made and how the developers were typing in some random code to make a wall appear at a certain location or something. For some reason I was imagining in bright green low res ascii like on an Apple II.

This thought occurred to me while I was playing Spawning Vats for some reason. How do I remember this? Not sure...

[illYay1337]

Lvangundy said:

When I was younger, I didn't understand how the monster code/logic worked, so I thought all the monsters had a "3d view" just like the player, like somehow the game engine was drawing each monster's FOV.

I remember thinking about how the levels must have been made and how the developers were typing in some random code to make a wall appear at a certain location or something. For some reason I was imagining in bright green low res ascii like on an Apple II. It was like the Duke Nukem 1 level editor but in 3D so they'd place tiles in 3D in some way. Not even really sure how to describe it.

This thought occurred to me while I was playing Spawning Vats for some reason. How do I remember this? Not sure...

[Linguica]

Lvangundy said:

When I was younger, I didn't understand how the monster code/logic worked, so I thought all the monsters had a "3d view" just like the player, like somehow the game engine was drawing each monster's FOV.

I've thought before that it would be neat to see a stealth game that *did* internally render a viewpoint from every enemy's perspective, and then run some sort of detection algorithm on what they were *actually seeing* to determine if you got spotted or not, e.g., if you were wearing all black and there happened to be a black wall behind you, an enemy wouldn't see you easily, whereas if you were silhouetted against a white wall you would stand out.

[illYay1337]

Some of those things should be doable without even rendering the view at all, but standing out black against a white background would be a bit hard to test without rendering you from their point of view.

They actually could potentially do that but do a more basic render. Shadow mapping already renders a scene from a light's point of view to build a depth map and test what's in shadow or not from a light's perspective.

[Linguica]

I more meant like, actually literally using a real-world person-detection convolutional neural net or something, and making an indie game where you have to avoid detection from security cameras or something.

[Hoodie]

@Linguica, Siren might be that kind of game.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siren_(video_game)

[Krazov]

Linguica said:

I've thought before that it would be neat to see a stealth game that *did* internally render a viewpoint from every enemy's perspective, and then run some sort of detection algorithm on what they were *actually seeing* to determine if you got spotted or not, e.g., if you were wearing all black and there happened to be a black wall behind you, an enemy wouldn't see you easily, whereas if you were silhouetted against a white wall you would stand out.

And then there would be monsters seeing without colors, or seeing in infrared, or in thermavision, or being actually blind and detecting player by scent (more running = sweating = more scent) and with hearing (possibly echolocation). That would require different techniques of avoiding monsters. For instance, those thermovision monsters would go blind near lava.

[TheOrganGrinder]

Not necessarily "found out" so much as "realised," but I was thinking about it earlier and it hit me that far from being a gimmick that only exists to look funky on the automap, the five-pointed star-shaped boss arena of Phobos Anomaly is actually a really good layout for a fight, the fact that there's no safe or stable position to retreat to and the way that falling back towards any of the available points progressively restricts your mobility... nicely done, guys.

[scifista42]

@TheOrganGrinder: I agree (I wouldn't say really good, but it's quite good for a basic shape at least). Unfortunately, the actual monsters placed there did a rather bad, even counter-productive job at taking advantage of the arena's layout, IMO. They're slow and easy to outmaneuver, easy to kill without risk, easy to manipulate to stay in the central closets or near them, and die fast when you use a rocket launcher.

[SYS]

@Scifista42 - That's true but that's apparent after how many playthroughs? It's something we know because we've played the crap out of the game and countless third party maps with modern design.

[VGamingJunkie]

For that matter, I wonder if those barrels were put there on purpose for the player to exploit to turn the Barons of Hell against each other. Given their claws can damage members of their own species, it would make sense that ID put the barrels in that corner so that the player could use them if their maneuverability was good enough to pull it off. Sure, they die quickly from a rocket launcher but that requires the player to already have it from a previous level since this one only provides the chaingun and shotgun.

[scifista42]

I'm pretty sure that it wasn't on purpose, and that the barrel infighting bug wasn't discovered until some time after Doom's release. Possibly by a player rather than an idSoftware employee, but I don't know. I have a vague memory that somebody on this forum once mentioned when and/or who exactly discovered the gimmick, but I couldn't find evidence, not even on doomwiki.

[VGamingJunkie]

Then why make it possible for them to harm each other with their claws? Also, they never removed it so is it really a bug? They only modified it so that monsters never attack themselves, they didn't touch the idea of infighting others of the same species and it makes perfect sense because, in essence, that Baron of Hell has harmed the other one by causing the barrels to explode which can be viewed in the same light as having a stray projectile hit. Besides, what other real use do they have? Sure, you can harm the barons with them yourself but it's such a risk for such little gain. Infighting makes more sense because the risk is well rewarded by having one of them dead and the other one near death from the fight.

[Enjay]

scifista42 said:

Unfortunately, the actual monsters placed there did a rather bad, even counter-productive job at taking advantage of the arena's layout, IMO. They're slow and easy to outmaneuver, easy to kill without risk, easy to manipulate to stay in the central closets or near them, and die fast when you use a rocket launcher.

I'm guessing you didn't play in 1993 when the Baron battle at the end of the shareware episode was considered incredibly tough as the two bruisers claimed player after player after player and seemed to require an impossible amount of ammo to be thrown at them before they went down.

Fun times. ;)

Of course, nowadays, it's possible to enter the arena and kill the barons even before they have had time to leave their closets.

[Jon]

I think the barrels are to aid clearing out the spectres.

[Antroid]

I recently confirmed how excellent Doom is at keeping me awake. I don't sleep too much these days and so I keep dozing off at work, and lately as soon as I catch myself wanting to close my eyes for a few seconds or thinking some really absurd thought, I fire up doom and beat one level of something (or just try). Crazily enough, any sleepiness is gone as soon as the game boots up and I'm standing at the beginning of a level. Is this something like adrenaline or just simply the brain experiencing / expecting some stimulation? (The latter seems likely because when I actually have work and continuosly sit and do shit in our level editor, I don't doze off either).

[purist]

Enjay said:

I'm guessing you didn't play in 1993 when the Baron battle at the end of the shareware episode was considered incredibly tough as the two bruisers claimed player after player after player and seemed to require an impossible amount of ammo to be thrown at them before they went down.

Fun times. ;)

Of course, nowadays, it's possible to enter the arena and kill the barons even before they have had time to leave their closets.

I remember struggling with it on the jag from pistol start. I would take up all the ammo from the lower section and it would barely be enough to kill one baron. Going back down for a top up was terrifying because I expected the surviving baron to be waiting for me on the lift.

I used to try to tempt them into the barrels to save me having to make that trip

[damerell]

Enjay said:

I'm guessing you didn't play in 1993 when the Baron battle at the end of the shareware episode was considered incredibly tough as the two bruisers claimed player after player after player and seemed to require an impossible amount of ammo to be thrown at them before they went down.

That fits my memory. I hadn't yet stepped up to UV, and hadn't really learned to dodge fireballs - or even remapped the keys to make strafing easy. Taking the odd impball to the face - no problem. Baron fireballs, however, were very much a problem.

I also don't think anyone had realised that the rocket launcher was not just useful for crowd control but for doing a lot of damage to a single target - after all, those two barons were the first monsters we ever saw with a fat load of hitpoints.

Between those two factors, I ended up running around the room chaingunning them in intermittent bursts. This is an incredibly inefficient way to kill a baron.

ETA: chaingunning, because when you are no good at Doom, the chaingun seems so much better than the shotgun.

[Frisky]

That after playing the Doom series, your life has no point.