Things about Doom you just found out

[peach freak]

Doom E3M9:

 

It's possible to get trapped near the fake exit. The door that leads back to the long hallway with the Demons (which requires a Blue Key) is only marked as a D1 door, not DR, so if you open it and it closes without stepping through, you won't be able to open it back up and you won't be able to finish the level.

 

Found this out while playing on Nightmare, I opened the door to get back to the starting area, a Demon that respawned passed through, I had to take care of it, and by the time it was dead the door had closed and I couldn't open the door back open.

Edited March 16, 2021 by peach freak

[Optimus]

It's not for classic Doom but for Alien Vendetta MAP25 but this puzzled me so much and I didn't know this so many times I've played this. This map has a serious level design bug. One of the boxes holding monsters ready to teleport will have one linedef as two sided by mistake. This way, it's possible that a lot of arachnotrons (maybe if woken up early when you are at certain places on the map) will spill outside the boundaries of the map. I've played this map before and this didn't happened previously, so possibly I was in a place on the map that drove them towards the teleporter and not towards the opening linedef, so they would come at me before I ever realize. Now seeing them walking outside the boundaries of the map was a big bad surprise to me and I idclipped to finish them all. That's a serious level design error on AV that maybe wasn't caught at the time.

[Altazimuth]

Boom introduced a deh/bex string called SAVEGAMENAME. Replacing this with a string up to 7 characters will change the name savegames use for a WAD. By using this you can give a mod unique saves, making the lack of save slots in many ports a non-issue. Even Chocolate Doom appears to support it.

I'm surprised I've never seen this used before.

[Rathori]

8 hours ago, Altazimuth said:

Boom introduced a deh/bex string called SAVEGAMENAME. Replacing this with a string up to 7 characters will change the name savegames use for a WAD. By using this you can give a mod unique saves, making the lack of save slots in many ports a non-issue. Even Chocolate Doom appears to support it.

I'm surprised I've never seen this used before.

 

Btw PrBoom+ has a command-line argument that lets you set the saves folder, so you can have separate set of save slots per WAD, or multiple sets of saveslots per WAD, or whatever you want. Just add "-save <folder name>" to your shortcut/batch file/GOG Galaxy custom executable/whatever else you use. Here's an example for Sunlust:

prboom-plus.exe -file sunlust.wad -save saves-sunlust

I named my saves folder "saves-sunlust", but you can call yours whatever you want, and make sure you create that folder in your PrBoom+ folder before running the game, otherwise it won't work and it would just save in the default location.

 

I've never checked if other source-ports support this, but I wouldn't be surprised if they do too.

[Gokuma]

I got blasted by an Arch-Vile or two and my corpse slid into a teleporter and telefragged a Cacodemon.   Press F and score one posthumous kill for me.

[Maximum Matt]

On 3/16/2021 at 4:23 PM, peach freak said:

Doom E3M9:

 

It's possible to get trapped near the fake exit.

Cool - I was just telling my brother the other day that there were parts in OG Doom where you can get trapped (he didn't think so) - the main one I remember is the yellow key door in E2M4 that can stop working if you mess with it, I was trying to think of other places. Thanks!

[Stupid Bunny]

On 3/16/2021 at 8:01 AM, Altazimuth said:

Boom introduced a deh/bex string called SAVEGAMENAME. Replacing this with a string up to 7 characters will change the name savegames use for a WAD. By using this you can give a mod unique saves, making the lack of save slots in many ports a non-issue. Even Chocolate Doom appears to support it.

I'm surprised I've never seen this used before.

 

Interesting.

 

So wait do Chocolate Doom and Crispy Doom support BEX formatted DEHACKED lumps?  Game changer and new Thing I Just Found Out if true

[Gokuma]

On 3/17/2021 at 7:49 AM, Maximum Matt said:

Cool - I was just telling my brother the other day that there were parts in OG Doom where you can get trapped (he didn't think so) - the main one I remember is the yellow key door in E2M4 that can stop working if you mess with it, I was trying to think of other places. Thanks!

 

E2M7 if you drop off the platform with the yellow key without getting it.

 

EDIT: I was mistaken.   No trap there.

 

Feel free to remove any undeserved Like.

Edited March 20, 2021 by Gokuma

[peach freak]

21 hours ago, Gokuma said:

 

E2M7 if you drop off the platform with the yellow key without getting it.

 

You don't get trapped there, the door leading out of that area is a normal door (that leads you to the area with the Red Door and exit). From there, you can loop back around to the Blue Door/start of the level and grab the Yellow Key again.

[Gokuma]

Oops, you're right.   I was somehow thinking you end up on the other side of the yellow door.

[SiFi270]

You may have been thinking of the version from The Lost Episode, where you need the red key to get back to the starting area, but you also need the yellow key to get the red one.

[Gez]

On jeudi 18 mars 2021 at 2:20 AM, StupidBunny said:

So wait do Chocolate Doom and Crispy Doom support BEX formatted DEHACKED lumps?  Game changer and new Thing I Just Found Out if true

The capacity to load BEX lumps is programmed in the engine, however it is normally disabled. It was supposed to only be used for loading the Freedoom IWAD.

 

The thing is that the Freedoom maintainers wanted to avoid having to include Doom's strings in their data files, which the old DEHACKED format demands for string substitution, because it could be construed as unlawfully putting these strings under Freedoom's license. BEX string substitution, being based on identifiers instead of complete strings, was much safer in this respect. So in order to properly support the Freedoom IWADs, Choco had to support BEX string substitution. But IIRC this exception was only enabled for Freedoom.

 

Another thing that went along with it was support for embedded DEHACKED lumps. However, that one can be used with other wads if you remember to use the proper command line toggle; because it corresponds to just saving you the hassle of extracting the lump and loading it up separately, so it's kind of like the -merge and -nwt toggle in spirit.

[Stupid Bunny]

11 hours ago, Gez said:

The capacity to load BEX lumps is programmed in the engine, however it is normally disabled. It was supposed to only be used for loading the Freedoom IWAD.

 

The thing is that the Freedoom maintainers wanted to avoid having to include Doom's strings in their data files, which the old DEHACKED format demands for string substitution, because it could be construed as unlawfully putting these strings under Freedoom's license. BEX string substitution, being based on identifiers instead of complete strings, was much safer in this respect. So in order to properly support the Freedoom IWADs, Choco had to support BEX string substitution. But IIRC this exception was only enabled for Freedoom.

 

Another thing that went along with it was support for embedded DEHACKED lumps. However, that one can be used with other wads if you remember to use the proper command line toggle; because it corresponds to just saving you the hassle of extracting the lump and loading it up separately, so it's kind of like the -merge and -nwt toggle in spirit.

 

Interesting.  So just to be clear, is there only one BEX format?  Or are there different, overlapping sets of codepointers between MBF, Boom, Retro etc.?  And if so is there some kind of matrix or something of which sourceports support which sets of codepointers?  I'm not too concerned about Choco compatibility rn (my maps won't come close to running in it, because visplanes), but Crispy compatibility is of great interest to me and if I can get into some extended deHackery while keeping it compatible with as many limit-removing ports as possible, then I'd at least like a better concept of how to approach that.

[Gez]

BEX itself is basically just an alternative syntax for DEHACKED; it gives a more convenient, more abstracted, and less limited way to do the kind of things DEHACKED did.

 

BEX support therefore only requires a more complex parser (BEX syntax is quite different from regular DEHACKED syntax, and since both can be mixed in the same file, the parser has got to be able to handle both at once). Boom didn't bring more actor functions, so BEX does not bring in new codepointers.

[peach freak]

Doom E1M5

 

In my entire life of playing Doom I just realized/noticed that you do not need to hit the switch in the room with the Blue Key, I always assumed hitting it opened up a path at the bottom of the stairs to the Blue Door or something, instead of just opening up a shortcut back to the central area.

 

Laugh away.

[KVELLER]

10 hours ago, peach freak said:

Doom E1M5

 

In my entire life of playing Doom I just realized/noticed that you do not need to hit the switch in the room with the Blue Key, I always assumed hitting it opened up a path at the bottom of the stairs to the Blue Door or something, instead of just opening up a shortcut back to the central area.

 

Laugh away.

 

I'd say that's partly because of how easy it is to end up going through the maps by memory, without really knowing what switches do or where keys are. It just becomes second nature.

 

I remember that the first (and last) time I played the original games on Nightmare, I realised how I didn't know most of the crucial points necessary for progression in a lot of maps, which really made getting to the exit as quickly as possible quite hard. I distinctily remember being shocked when I got to E2M6 and couldn't remember where any of the keys were, despite having played the games for like 15 years at that point.

[DisgruntledPorcupine]

Pretty sad, but I only just realized a couple weeks ago that shotgunners walk faster than zombiemen.

[Lone2401]

Not necessarily about Doom, but Super Turrican 2 features a  familiar looking plasmaball used as the player's weapon in the mode 7 vehicle levels. It looks fairly out of place among the other sprites so I wonder if it was a placeholder that got left in, or maybe that sprite is just a stock asset.

[KVELLER]

7 hours ago, DisgruntledPorcupine said:

Pretty sad, but I only just realized a couple weeks ago that shotgunners walk faster than zombiemen.

 

...I had to go to the ZDoom wiki and look at the code for both classes to see for myself. I can't believe I never noticed this.

[QuaketallicA]

I somewhat recently discovered the secret in E1M5 that has the Computer Area Map (without looking it up, obviously). It always bugged me that I was missing one secret, so it's always nice to find something new in these maps I've played a million times. Weird thing about this secret is the texture is not misaligned before you've found it, but after you open the door to it, once the door closes the texture will be misaligned. I don't know if this was intentional or something Romero missed when designing the level.

[Azuris]

I've learned that the Chaingun is a quite good Torch.

 

,

 

[Gokuma]

The Plasma Rifle can gib a shotgun guy!

 

Did it in Zandronum yesterday and did it in vanilla doom.exe today!

[Wagi]

On 3/20/2021 at 3:04 AM, peach freak said:

Doom E1M5

 

In my entire life of playing Doom I just realized/noticed that you do not need to hit the switch in the room with the Blue Key, I always assumed hitting it opened up a path at the bottom of the stairs to the Blue Door or something, instead of just opening up a shortcut back to the central area.

 

Laugh away.

If you play this level on Nightmare, you will learn never to hit this switch *very* quickly.

[Pegleg]

On 3/21/2021 at 5:39 AM, Azuris said:

I've learned that the Chaingun is a quite good Torch.

 

I remember a good friend of mine playing Doom at my house (probably late 1994, maybe early 1995). I'm pretty sure it was Doom 1 and he said, "Where's my light?" I was confused and asked him what he was talking about, so he selected the chaingun, fired it, and said, "Ah, there's my light!"

[continuum.mid]

Most of the hell section in Perdition's Gate, as well as maps 6, 9, 19, 29, and 30 of TNT Evilution (some of my favorites), were either designed or co-designed by mapper Jimmy Sieben. Alongside Tom Mustaine and the Casali brothers, I think he's one of my new favorite 90s mappers.

[Pegleg]

On 3/20/2021 at 3:04 AM, peach freak said:

Laugh away.

 

Don't feel bad. Back in 1994, when I first played Doom (ITYTD), I didn't get the chainsaw secret in E1M2. I got it when I replayed it on UV. For the longest time, I just assumed that the chainsaw was only accessible on UV. That made sense to me, and I wasn't bothered by it, because I rarely used the chainsaw anyway. It didn't occur to me until later (as in, decades later) that this wasn't the case.

[Final Verdict]

6 minutes ago, Pegleg said:

 

Don't feel bad. Back in 1994, when I first played Doom (ITYTD), I didn't get the chainsaw secret in E1M2. I got it when I replayed it on UV. For the longest time, I just assumed that the chainsaw was only accessible on UV. That made sense to me, and I wasn't bothered by it, because I rarely used the chainsaw anyway. It didn't occur to me until later (as in, decades later) that this wasn't the case.

 

You think that's bad. Try not noticing that the Cacodemon and Baron share part of the same corpse texture for 28 years, the guts/tongue is exactly the same.

 

I only noticed it the other day, almost 3 decades later. The irony being that I had both eyes for all that time, yet somehow I noticed it almost 30 years later with one eye. 

 

If that doesn't make you feel better, I don't know what will.

 

[omx32x]

57 minutes ago, Final Verdict said:

 

You think that's bad. Try not noticing that the Cacodemon and Baron share part of the same corpse texture for 28 years, the guts/tongue is exactly the same.

 

I only noticed it the other day, almost 3 decades later. The irony being that I had both eyes for all that time, yet somehow I noticed it almost 30 years later with one eye. 

 

If that doesn't make you feel better, I don't know what will.

 

how about the fact that many people to this day dont know that the sight in the super shotgun disappear in the reloading animation

[SiFi270]

decino's April Fools video left me wondering if a vanilla/Boom-compatible Buddha mode was possible with DeHackEd, so I tried just removing the player's death state, which lead to me still dying, but bobbing in place after I did. The next thing I tried was removing the shootable flag, which had some pretty interesting results. Monsters notice you, but don't do anything about it, and even seem to forget about you if their sight sound playing repeatedly is any indication. Splash damage has no effect, nor do damaging floors, including the ones that bypass God mode and end the level. Boss cubes can't telefrag you, so they just leave the player and the monster stuck in the same space like they would on any map other than 30. Even then, it's easy enough to kill your way out.

 

EDIT: It seems you can't do the same with HHE. For some reason, the player already doesn't have the shootable flag.

EDIT2: Well I feel stupid, I forgot all about HHE having the wrong thing IDs because it was made before SotSR. Now it works. I wanted to see if the IDDQD easter egg would kill you, but it doesn't.

Edited April 1, 2021 by SiFi270

[Simomarchi]

Maybe it is a known thing, but I've Just found out that Doom2 not only added new monsters and a weapon, but also fast doors and locked switches. Interestingly, however, there is no locked switch in the entirety of Doom2.