Things about Doom you just found out

[Biz!]

The icon of sin is the mother, gives birth to them. And the mother demon is the gym trainer, makes them stronger, according to the manual

[Uni]

@RjYAgain, the dead marines observation is really interesting. While I somewhat noticed the lack of dead bodies the more I progressed through episode one, it never clicked to me that it might implied you being the first to make it that far. In my mind it was rather a lack of attention by Romero.

 

Regarding E3M6, I vaguely remember someone from the community tweeting Sandy about it and he actually verified the entire scene. Again, showing that Sandy had a lot of ideas to add to the universe of Doom.

 

Yeah I only discovered the shootable mechanic of that room in E2M4 only very recently but again, it's an interesting idea. 

 

I think those discoveries and theories are my favorite part about Doom, just the fascination of what they were thinking back then and what inspired them to make it as such. Never gets old.

[Scypek2]

23 hours ago, RjY said:

Fun fact: they are the only placed imp corpses (thing type 20) in all of Doom and Doom2.

 

Now there's something I never thought of before! Now I'm wondering what are the statistics of other decorative monster corpses. The only one I can specifically remember is a dead cacodemon in a prison cell of MAP31, and of course all those dead lost souls that are invisible now.

[Albertoni]

19 minutes ago, Scypek2 said:

 

Now there's something I never thought of before! Now I'm wondering what are the statistics of other decorative monster corpses. The only one I can specifically remember is a dead cacodemon in a prison cell of MAP31, and of course all those dead lost souls that are invisible now.

 

All the data is in the wiki, but it's per-level.

[RjY]

3 hours ago, Uni said:

Regarding E3M6, I vaguely remember someone from the community tweeting Sandy about it and he actually verified the entire scene.

Indeed, it was in this very thread, which goes around in circles.
I absolutely share your thirst for discoveries, it's why I'm still here.

38 minutes ago, Scypek2 said:

Now I'm wondering what are the statistics of other decorative monster corpses.

Way ahead of you ;)

[Scypek2]

1 hour ago, Albertoni said:

All the data is in the wiki, but it's per-level.

 

Is it? I can find listings of monsters, items and even barrels, but no corpses or Tall Green Columns in sight...

 

1 hour ago, RjY said:

Way ahead of you ;)

 

Are you just going to say that and not share your thrilling discoveries?

[Maximum Matt]

On 9/13/2021 at 7:53 AM, RjY said:

• Dead marines in episode 1. Starting from E1M5 there are no more marine corpses. Implying you are the first one who has made it that far. Did you pay attention to the placement of player corpses? Or did your brain, like mine, quickly learn to tune out decorative objects that have no obvious gameplay effect, to avoid distraction from the main goal of not getting killed.
• The altar scene in E3M6. Are those demons worshipping human technology, in awe of its destructive power? I don't know, I didn't even stop to look. I just jumped down off a ledge to grab some weapons off a pedestal -- and unsurprisingly, got ambushed. Supposedly there, it is also shown how lost souls are created, from the ritual sacrifice of imps. Would you notice this when the monsters all wake up on sight and immediately move out of position? Would you notice afterwards that the imp corpses are specifically placed, they are not just regular monsters that happened to fall there in combat? I didn't. Fun fact: they are the only placed imp corpses (thing type 20) in all of Doom and Doom2.
• The Remorseless Eatin' Machine of E2M4. You walk in the room -- the floor drops -- you're surrounded by monsters -- you can't back out. You dive for cover through an odd-looking machine -- argh! The ceiling! Too late you realise what all those blood pools were telling you. But do you notice, in your haste, that the machine has two eyes and you just ran into its mouth? You can even "kill" it if you shoot at the right spot. I paid no mind to the placement of the eyes for nearly 20 years, because again, the brain tunes out decorative objects with no gameplay effect. Nowadays, I wonder if the evil eye sprites were created specifically for this construct.

This is awesome.

I gotta ask:

• Are there dead marines in E2 and E3? I know, I could check myself, but I don't wanna spend two hours wandering around the levels counting corpses.  I DO know E4 has some (especially the end of E4M6) but yeah
• Now, of the placed corpses, it's only the baron, cyber and spider mastermind that AREN'T available right? And the D2 enemies? (I remember being surprised seeing a demon corpse at the start of Plutonia map02)
• The bit where you can 'kill' it - you mean where you go around the back of it, shoot one of the walls and the floor raises up to the ceiling? That was intentional?? I seriously thought that was an oversight for so long - thank you for that!!

[Uni]

@Maximum MattThe are definitely more corpses lying around in E2, E3 and E4.

 

There aren't any Doom 2 monster decorative corpses available, only from Doom.

 

 

 

Edited September 14, 2021 by Uni : Originally posted from a phone.

[Gez]

On dimanche 12 septembre 2021 at 11:53 PM, RjY said:

Supposedly there, it is also shown how lost souls are created, from the ritual sacrifice of imps. Would you notice this when the monsters all wake up on sight and immediately move out of position? Would you notice afterwards that the imp corpses are specifically placed, they are not just regular monsters that happened to fall there in combat? I didn't.

There are two dead imps near the pillars -- one of which has a beating heart -- but I don't really see how we can extrapolate lost soul creation from there. There's an entire row of lost souls looking at the altar -- with one imp looking away as a combo breaker, which means there's a lot more lost souls than dead imps.

[RjY]

13 hours ago, Scypek2 said:

Are you just going to say that and not share your thrilling discoveries?

 

I'm sorry. I probably spoke too soon. It's just your post appeared when I was in the middle of running searches for the other monster corpse types. I found it a funny enough coincidence that despite the late hour I was not able to resist the urge to reply.

Here are the numbers for placed monster corpses. The game defines six types, 18 to 23 -- troopers, sergeants, imps, demons, cacodemons, and lost souls.

map    tr sg im dm cd ls tot
E2M5    3  1  -  -  -  3   7
E2M6    -  1  -  -  -  -   1
E2M7    -  -  -  3  -  -   3
E2M9    -  -  -  -  4  -   4
E3M2    -  3  -  -  -  -   3
E3M6    -  -  2  -  -  -   2
MAP14   -  4  -  -  -  -   4
MAP15   -  1  -  -  -  -   1
MAP17   -  1  -  -  -  -   1
MAP29   1  -  -  -  -  -   1
MAP31   -  1  -  -  1  -   2
total   4 12  2  3  5  3  29

The most common type is a dead sergeant. I think this is because there's no other way to place a dead sergeant. Troopers, on the other hand, can be impaled on spikes, and so forth. Or you can hang a mutilated corpse from the ceiling. I speculate that bodies simply lying on the ground, identical to defeated enemies, seem dull in comparison.

As previously mentioned, dead imps are only found in the (disputed!) lost soul raising ritual scene in E3M6. Dead demons are similarly unique, only appearing in the storage bay in E2M7. I think this is a deliberate warning: dead demons, several eviscerated marines, but then the door slams shut behind you and you realise in horror there are a lot more in there with you, still quite alive.

Dead cacodemons only appear at the start of E2M9. We all know why they're there; to hint that monster infighting is the solution. I'll quote the Doom wiki: "The fact that there are preexisting corpses of each monster type in the other monster's room suggests that this was the designer's intended strategy." Sadly, dead barons are only available as wall textures. Come to think of it, even the much-maligned Doom novels get in on this: the first humorously misunderstands the game mechanics to establish that barons and cacodemons attack each other on sight, which the protagonists exploit several times to save themselves (sorry if this is wrong, it's been years since I read it).

Finally, a few dead lost souls were left in E2M5, despite their transience. I expect this was an oversight.

Placed monster corpses become rare in the sequel. You mentioned the cages at the start of MAP31. Another interesting scene is on MAP14. The blue key building, surrounded by monsters, has dead sergeants in the all four of the front-facing windows, with chaingunners behind them. Conclude what happened there what you will.

[Uni]

@RjYThere's also a dead sergeant below the yellow key door in MAP15, but it's not quirky or thought-invoking by any stretch of imagination.

 

I also always found the two dead troopers among the alive bunch on E2M5 quite peculiar. 

[Scypek2]

I found out that Hexen's fighter, cleric and mage have separate sound effects for all the voice noises they make, but all of them are just the same thing slightly pitched down for the fighter and up for the mage. Even the gibbing sound is pitch-shifted like that.

[KubaloBlackMT]

Does anyone know why the Hell Map 20 is named "Gotcha!". what got me, it's not creepy or intimidating like other map names, it's not a trap based map in my opinion either. That would be something I'd like to find out. I've had that thought pop up in my mind for a while now, but every time I do it only lasts for a second and I continue on playing without question.

[Ar_e_en]

The "KeenDie" enemy death action lowers all floors tagged 666 on ANY map. I always thought that all special death triggers where hard-coded for specific maps (Barons in E1M8, Mancubus in MAP 07, etc.), but I guess "KeenDie" is an exception.

 

EDIT: Correction time! Turns out that "KeenDie" actually OPENS any door tagged 666, it does not lower any floor tagged 666. My mistake.

Edited September 18, 2021 by Ar_e_en

[Faceman2000]

2 hours ago, Ar_e_en said:

The "KeenDie" enemy death action lowers all floors tagged 666 on ANY map. I always thought that all special death triggers where hard-coded for specific maps (Barons in E1M8, Mancubus in MAP 07, etc.), but I guess "KeenDie" is an exception.

This was used to pretty good effect in D64D2 where they gave KeenDie to the Cybie so that you can’t finish the level without killing them.

[Wadmodder Shalton]

Appears nobody knows about this, but I was thinking recently that Episode 4's sky texture in Ultimate Doom is partially the same source material as Episode 3's ending cutscene graphics.

So technically yes, it's recycled graphics for Episode 4's sky texture.

Edited March 16, 2022 by Wadmodder Shalton

[Scypek2]

I was well aware of that, but didn't realize that the dark blob in the middle was originally smoke from the burning city!

[KubaloBlackMT]

There's a million things that people had just found out about this game so I have no idea if anyone knew this ( I'm pretty sure EVERYONE knew it):

the answer for the bridge puzzle in e2m2 is on the ceiling! I never pay attention to ceiling, so you could literally put a message on the ceiling that says KubaloBlackMT is a weiner-eater and I would never see it.

[BaileyTW]

Revenants are shorter than they appear, like significantly. I think they're actually imp height, cause I'm playing Plutonia 2's map 20, Lurking Fear, right now and for the first cyberdemon encounter I'm trying to get a high cyberdemon to shoot at some revenants also above me and I notice just how many rockets go right through their skull but don't actually hit them.

[Gez]

28 minutes ago, BaileyTW said:

Revenants are shorter than they appear, like significantly.

Yes, height 56, like the imp*. With a hardware renderer, you'll see plenty of instances of headless revenants when they walk through areas with low ceilings and their top get clipped off by the geometry.

 

It's not a problem in the original software renderer because the way it works, it overdraws the sprites anyway.

 

Most sprites get clipped a bit in hardware renderers (unless putting in code to specifically compensate for that but it's not exactly performance-friendly) but usually it's not too much of a problem, just a pixel or two in height at the feet. With the revenant, you get dramatic results.

 

* and also the demon and spectre, the arch-vile, all three types of possessed zombies, the Wolfenstein mobs, the player, and our flying friends the lost soul, cacodemons, and pain elementals. 56 is pretty much the default height for mobs. The exceptions are baron, knight, arachnotron and mancubus at height 64, spiderdemon at height 100, and cyberdemon at height 110.

[Edward850]

8 minutes ago, Gez said:

Most sprites get clipped a bit in hardware renderers (unless putting in code to specifically compensate for that but it's not exactly performance-friendly)

Seemingly not the case, of the two hardware renderers that account for software clipping. If Strife: Veteran Edition on the Nintendo Switch is any indication, the extra draw pass to render the overdraw is of no impactful cost at all, and that's with a cheap GL 1.5 renderer with its Nvidia driver basically emulating the pipeline at this point (OpenGL is really quite slow on the Switch, comparatively speaking). Doom64's renderer is faster still, managing to be the only one of maybe two games tops being 1440P on the Xbox One S, though the trick there is we didn't use a zbuffer for sprites at all, instead relying on the original clipping algorithm from the N64 code (which yes came with the same inaccuracies, but we made no attempt to fix those, the levels didn't really demand fixing them).

[Graf Zahl]

15 minutes ago, Edward850 said:

Seemingly not the case, of the two hardware renderers that account for software clipping. If Strife: Veteran Edition on the Nintendo Switch is any indication, the extra draw pass to render the overdraw is of no impactful cost at all, and that's with a cheap GL 1.5 renderer with its Nvidia driver basically emulating the pipeline at this point (OpenGL is really quite slow on the Switch, comparatively speaking).

 

You'd feel the impact once maps get larger, though. If there's virtually nothing to render a few added polygons won't matter much, but this stuff adds up - and at some point will complicate matters because the depth buffer is not what it is supposed to be to make this work.

Where it will definitely stop working is when being combined with 3D floors, models or voxels which need an intact depth buffer to display properly, or some depth based postprocessing effects.

 

[Ripper]

1 hour ago, BaileyTW said:

Revenants are shorter than they appear, like significantly. I think they're actually imp height, cause I'm playing Plutonia 2's map 20, Lurking Fear, right now and for the first cyberdemon encounter I'm trying to get a high cyberdemon to shoot at some revenants also above me and I notice just how many rockets go right through their skull but don't actually hit them.

From what I've seen in the map editor (and from YT videos from a certain Dutch Doomtuber :))
Revenant's height is exactly 56 map units

It's the same as the zombiemen, shotgunners and player marines.
It could be one of many oversights during Doom 2's development cycle.

Naturally, the sprite makes the revenant seem much taller.
This explains revenants' heads clipping through low ceilings and projectiles passing through the top of their sprites.

[Scypek2]

I just found out while doing some dehacked work: arachnotrons are unique in that upon seeing you, they freeze in place for more than half a second before giving chase. They're the only monster to do such a thing, and it's probably related to the startup noise they make when alerted - the length of the sound and the delay are about the same.

[KubaloBlackMT]

On 5/2/2021 at 10:19 PM, BaileyTW said:

Half a fact I just now found out and me wanting to post my accomplishment somewhere. Finally beat Scythe's map 30 for the first time and with 100% kills and secrets and it uh...took me a while. 1 hour and 8 minutes an 51 seconds. Just found out if you have a single map time above an hour your time will be replaced with TIME SUCKS, thankfully still had the total time to show my time.

This is actually really interesting to me because while going through SLADE I randomly came across the WISUCKS graphic " it says sucks" and was wondering what the purpose of it was. I had originally assumed it was supposed to be a multiplayer thing for dying a lot like " Player1 Sucks".

[RjY]

Burning Barrels

 

It turns out there are no burning barrels in Doom2's city episode. This was a surprise given that future post-apocalyptic cities in media seem to be full of the things.

 

So I wondered, where, if not in the city episode, are they? Well, Barrels o' Fun, obviously, and a couple in a secret level. But the first ones are on Circle of Death.

 

And I realised, they are another one of those subtle hints, such as we were talking about on the previous page; a warning of what you are about to face.
 

[DynamiteKaitorn]

Unless it's just a weird bug, I found out that in MBF when you exit a map via secret exit, it uses a tiny bit of extra memory than simply warping to map31.

I noticed this since my recent DooM project, I can warp and save happily in map31 but leave map 15 and NOPE! MBF is upsett-spaghetti!

I know it has the intermission text screen but it's juuust enough to cause a Z_Malloc crash under the right condition.

[Naarok0fkor]

One of my two Doom ultimate versions is much harder than the other...

[TuomasGaming]

Medikits give 25 health instead of 40.

[Kain D.]

Two things:

 

1.When a player exit a level in mid air, part of the falling animation is transferred to the next level. And a player kinda crouches when the next map is started.
I discovered this in GLBoom+, I don't know about other source ports.

 

2.Some of the attack frames of monsters are lit, some aren't. This is strange. It means, that in complete darkness a Cyberdemon, or a Hell Knight will be completly invisible, in contrary to a Revenant for example.