Things about Doom you just found out

[Kokoro Hane]

I just found out the Doom collector's edition for XP outright lied on the box, as it didn't support mouse and says that it was the original way. I always knew something wasn't right about that, 'cause I first played DOOM on the 95 discs and it had mouse AND joystick support. Booting the wads from an original floppy into DOSbox you can use mouse as well. So evidently I wasn't imagining things when I knew mouse support existed. 

[PixelCrunch]

On 9/9/2020 at 12:16 PM, SaladBadger said:

Help I can't stop hacking the alpha versions.

 

This time I turned to 0.2. 0.2 is tiny enough I think it could be reverse engineered easily, but I haven't any idea where to start, so i've taken to exploring other avenues, and found just like alpha 0.5, there's complete structure dumps in the executable's symbol tables. A few things I've learned from this:

• Even though they aren't used in the alpha, the game already supports multipatch textures, but texture 0 (the only defined texture) is simply overridden by the renderer. Its actual contents are just a bunch of patches placed 112 units away from each other, and it's 80 units tall (don't have the precise width atm), which fits that computer "grille" texture in the alpha. Textures beyond 0 are not overridden, and will be drawn as specified. The format is close to the nameless 0.4 format, but with some extra bits that got cut, evidenced by the structure dumps.
• Sectors are "areas", which define a floor and ceiling height and which lines are associated with them. I need to pull a Jeffery Bird and see if multi-area maps are possible. I suspect the renderer actually supports them.
• Lines are interesting. Looking at the structure dumps, lines are like the DoomED DWD files where they define their own flats, but the heights come from the associated area. I tried changing the flat nums but it didn't seem to do anything, I wonder if the code overrides the flat nums on all lines in area 0, or all lines entirely. There's also only one texture defined, so if windows are actually possible in this alpha, they need to have the same texture on the top and bottom, and there's no masked textures (but I assume those didn't come in until way later) Oh yeah, in addition to "firstcollumn", there's also "lastcollumn" which allows for some really primitive texture scaling:

 

Edit: I created some tools to emit workable 0.2 format levels, and I've gotten some levels like a basic cube working, but any attempt to make a level with more than one area, no matter what lines the area is referencing, causes the game to immediately crash upon rendering the world without any fanfare whatsoever. Even when referencing a completely closed loop of lines, with (presumably) absolutely no way for rendering to progress into it, it still crashes. I don't know if this is some limitation of the engine (only allocates space for one area, crashes if any more are loaded) or if I have my data defined wrong. (ed2: even an area with 0 lines in it causes immediate crashes)

 

Edit 3: I took a look at viewinfo and I think I understand its format (its defining spans of places which aren't drawn to on screen), but in my usual "I'm probably missing vital information", I can't change it in any meaningful way without inducing crash city again. Whee. I also have no idea how it interacts with HIGHBLIT, but it seems there's also supposed to be MEDBLIT and LOWBLITs. The alpha 0.3 format looks simpler.

Speaking of the Alpha Versions (and a bit off topic), Is there a way to play the Alpha version .WADs in a modern source port? Please let me know!

 

Also, some of the Alpha versions supported the obscure Sierra High-Color D.A.C Module, which supported up to 32,768 colors @ 320x400, but was cut from later versions.

[taufan99]

2 hours ago, Kokoro Hane said:

I just found out the Doom collector's edition for XP outright lied on the box, as it didn't support mouse and says that it was the original way. I always knew something wasn't right about that, 'cause I first played DOOM on the 95 discs and it had mouse AND joystick support. Booting the wads from an original floppy into DOSbox you can use mouse as well. So evidently I wasn't imagining things when I knew mouse support existed. 

Doom95 did have mouse support (which was also used in the Collector's Edition). A certain version, however, broke it. A lot of people, however, did play with only keyboard back in the 90's (because mice were not common in early 90's DOS gaming), just that DOOM has already been supposed to be played with both keyboard and mouse despite the reality of the "keyboard-only" majority

[Kokoro Hane]

3 minutes ago, InDOOMnesia said:

Doom95 did have mouse support (which was also used in the Collector's Edition). A certain version, however, broke it. A lot of people, however, did play with only keyboard back in the 90's (because mice were not common in early 90's DOS gaming), just that DOOM has already been supposed to be played with both keyboard and mouse despite the reality of the "keyboard-only" majority

 

Yeah I heard about how majority played with keyboard only back then. I always had played it with keyboard and mouse on Doom 95, but of course, I didn't play doom 'till 2000, so naturally mouse & keyboard was already common for FPS. Ah, so something broke it I see... 'cause my Collector's Edition the mouse wouldn't work at all no matter how hard we tried lol. Ah well, that's why source ports are awesome!

[SaladBadger]

1 hour ago, PixelCrunch said:

Speaking of the Alpha Versions (and a bit off topic), Is there a way to play the Alpha version .WADs in a modern source port? Please let me know!

 

Also, some of the Alpha versions supported the obscure Sierra High-Color D.A.C Module, which supported up to 32,768 colors @ 320x400, but was cut from later versions.

No current ports support them, the game data is too different. But it can be converted. Deathz0r made two "alpha resource" wads many years ago, but with advances in engines like ZDoom, it should be possible to make a more accurate recreation.

[zokum]

On 5/24/2020 at 10:37 PM, Jon said:

 

To be honest, support for alpha formats is more within the scope of Chocolate Doom than zdoom. It could be nice if we could have a 320*400 hi-color version of the game. I wonder what the game would have looked like IF they had kept that mode in it.

PS: The retarded forum software will not let me remove the quote bit. Sorry about that.

[SaladBadger]

I don't remember the high color mode being too rocket sciency, so simulating it shouldn't be hard. Instead of rendering to an 8 bit framebuffer, it renders to a 16-bit RGB5X1 one, drawing colors from a special 16-bit color palette, which instead of having a colormap like the 8-bit renderer, instead has 32 levels of 16 bit palettes for shading.

 

If the 0.5 RE effort bears fruit (I'm hopeful atm, but working out the rendering functions is testing me), I do want to implement a quick-and-dirty port for the sake of testing functionality.

[Maximum Matt]

On 2/17/2019 at 2:29 PM, Erick said:

In E2M4: Deimos Lab, shooting this part of the wall raises the floor of this crusher sector, while the other parts of the wall and the one behind me will just open the door to the secret nearby.

WHY DOES IT DO THIS?!!?!?!!?

[Gez]

Pacifist runs forbid using crushers and telefragging "deliberately", which is weird. I thought the only rule was "don't shoot to hurt monsters".

 

https://www.doomworld.com/forum/topic/117014-pacifist-ruleset-reform-debate-2020/

[Scypek2]

While looking everywhere for one piece of information (documentation of that thingy where you put a special //comment in your DECORATE and Doom Builder reacts to it), I stumbled upon a bunch of pages in the Doom Builder Reference Manual that just say "B". Compiler Configurations? B. Scripting Configurations? Also B. You're welcome. I assume it stands for big mood. (Though maybe it's just a bemporary blaceholder)

[DoomedPerson]

Shotgunners and normal zombies are just recolored versions of The marine, why did i not realize that earlier

[Gez]

51 minutes ago, Scypek2 said:

While looking everywhere for one piece of information (documentation of that thingy where you put a special //comment in your DECORATE and Doom Builder reacts to it)

Editor keys

[Maximum Matt]

• In E1M5, that balcony thing in the slime near the start, you know the one where you walk on it and the 'catwalk' to progress slowly rises out of the slime?  When you are on it (the 'catwalk'), you can straferun back onto that same balcony.  Totally useless but yeah, you can do that.
• In E2M1, in the room with the green bricks and the platform with the demons, and the two buttons, one to lower that platform and the other that opens up to a teleporter to a secret hallway with some bonuses?  Yeah, that's a single use button.  You don't go in it straight away, and let the door close on you, you're locked out of that secret.  
• I'm still learning things about goddamn oldschool Doom 1.

[hawkwind]

The former human is not fullbright when firing, yet the other "human" monsters are. An Id oversight.

[seed]

2 hours ago, hawkwind said:

The former human is not fullbright when firing, yet the other "human" monsters are. An Id oversight.

 

And this was also recently fixed in the Unity port.

[EANB]

If you exclude Map 8 and it's gimmicks, there are only 11 Barons in Doom 2 on Ultra Violence.

[Scypek2]

Jumping (ZDoom style) off a 8 unit tall step is enough to make doomguy go oof.

[Doomkid]

I could be wrong, but I think the ZDoom jumps are just a pixel shy of an oof, so even jumping off a 1px tall platform should do it! Either that or I’m losing it

 

(I was also sad to see Zombiemen lose their camouflage in dark areas.. one of the only strengths the poor things had, callously ripped away!)

[Chip]

26 minutes ago, Doomkid said:

one of the only strengths the poor things had, callously ripped away

Their other strength is being a total dick in a slaughtermap when you have 3 health, and out of nowhere they appear, and look at that! Your last save was at the start of the level!

[DNSKILL5]

In some user made  levels that have enemy corpses already resting in the map, if you’re playing with crouch enabled then you can often hide behind some of the enemy corpses, especially the caco. I don’t think designers of some of these levels took this into consideration, because one I played just recently has a caco corpse not far from a spawn point. Resting behind the caco with a chaingun, you just plow any unfortunate deathmatch opponent away as soon as they spawn and they won’t be able to see you. 

[Starduster]

PRBoom+ has some useful cheat codes that mostly start with tnt. One of them, tntem, kills all monsters in a map, which I find very helpful in routing speedruns. idrate is another cool one.

[Faceman2000]

The same guy that made the travesty known as Habitat (Chris Buteau) also made the really solid first map of Icarus, and these are his only known maps.

 

That’s, uh, quite the jump in quality there Chris.

[jmac]

I just noticed today that you can see chunks of the revenant's skull go flying during its death animation. A really minor detail, but I thought it was interesting that I'd gone all these years playing the game without noticing it.

[Maximum Matt]

16 hours ago, Faceman2000 said:

The same guy that made the travesty known as Habitat (Chris Buteau) also made the really solid first map of Icarus, and these are his only known maps.

Yeah, that one surprised me too, because that level kicks ass.

The Icarus one, I mean

[Andromeda]

Eh, I liked Habitat better.

[BoxY]

Although I knew about it before as a kind of fun fact, I didn't realise until recently just how important the weapon sprites being slightly offset to the right was to actual gameplay. It's particularly important for shotgun and SSG because if you aim slightly right-of-centre of the enemy sprite you can sometimes get a couple of extra pellets to hit and make some kills more consistent. Of course it's irrelevant to anyone who plays with a crosshair enabled, but for auto aim/no crosshair it makes a difference.

[ZeroTheEro]

Attempting to save after dying in vanilla doom will force you to pistol start.

This is not preserved in the Unity-wrapped Doom Classic.

[Edward850]

5 hours ago, ZeroTheEro said:

Attempting to save after dying in vanilla doom will force you to pistol start.

This is not preserved in the Unity-wrapped Doom Classic.

It's more accurate to say it doesn't let you save at all in vanilla if you're dead (unless it's multiplayer). 

[Scypek2]

Saving after dying is fun in wolf3d. You walk around with no health like a zombie, the hud is all glitched, and you don't even have any weapons for a while (they come back after a while if you keep trying to use them, not sure what exactly triggers it).

[Maximum Matt]

13 hours ago, Andromeda said:

Eh, I liked Habitat better.