Things about Doom you just found out

[Phobus]

Kyka said:

Question for anyone who understands the Doom code far better than me (i.e everyone). For monsters such as imps/barons and hell knights whose sprites are the same for melee and ranged attacks(except that in the first case you get that scratching sound, in the second case you get a projectile): If a baron is close to you and is part way through its melee attack and then is struck by another monster which is far away, will the baron attempt to 'scratch' that monster, or will the baron's projectile come out as its new opponent is at a distance instead of within melee range?

They use what's called a "combo" attack when in melee, so whatever is most appropriate at the point of calling the attack pointer is used. This means that an Imp or Baron that is right in your face and trying to scratch you will just throw their attack if you step out of melee range. So they would indeed turn and fire at the new target mid-attack (or in the Baron/Knight's case, they probably won't turn and just fling the slime out of the arse, due to the lack of a final A_FaceTarget call).

[Guest]

Thanks Phobus. I should have figured this now that I thinK about it, as never in my Dooming 'career' has a Baron ever 'missed' with its melee scratch attack, but always throws if I move out of range. I just thought it might be different with barons/hellknights, as in that they might behave in the same way as revenants towards other monsters.

Cheers.

[qoncept]

I just learned the other day that in coop, if an Arch Vile has one player targeted with its fire and that guy hides behind cover, the in-progress attack can transfer to a new target. The hard way.

[TwinBeast]

I think this was sort of finding about it again, I did use dehacked some years ago. Now some days ago I was just doing some testing and noticed the state editor can't add/change actions to/in states that didn't already have an action.

And then that discussion about armors.. In Quake, there's code that prevents you from picking up worse armor.

[purist]

qoncept said:

I just learned the other day that in coop, if an Arch Vile has one player targeted with its fire and that guy hides behind cover, the in-progress attack can transfer to a new target. The hard way.

Slightly different but I'm certain I've seen an archvile target a monster due to infighting, so I've watched only to receive the damage myself without warning! Other times the targeted monster gets the damage. Is this a case of what Jimi noticed, something else or a fabrication of my memory?

[qoncept]

Sounds like a monster changing his target mid-attack, like Phobos was just talking about. The Arch Vile starts his attack, then you shoot him and he targets you before dealing the damage.

I always thought it would make more sense if the Arch Vile did damage while his target was, you know, ON FIRE? Maybe timed damage like a damaging floor?

[TomoAlien]

purist said:

Slightly different but I'm certain I've seen an archvile target a monster due to infighting, so I've watched only to receive the damage myself without warning! Other times the targeted monster gets the damage. Is this a case of what Jimi noticed, something else or a fabrication of my memory?

Arch-Viles do infight. Also, the thing is that Arch-Viles locks on the target instantly.

[purist]

I didn't shoot at the AV while it was attacking the other monster. I just watched like in TomoAlien's pic yet at the point of explosion I took the damage. I wonder if the monster it was targeting escaped his line of sight.

[TwinBeast]

purist said:

Is this a case of what Jimi noticed, something else or a fabrication of my memory?

I'd say fabrication of your memory.. I noticed dehacked stuff, though I had thought of altering arch-vile.

[peach freak]

I've experimented with that, and I believe that is the case. If you back away from an Imp/Hell Knight/Baron of Hell in the midst of a melee attack, then a fireball will come out instead.

[Grazza]

purist: Which port/settings? This could have been a result of "monsters remember previous target" behaviour.

For a demo where a baron "scratches out of its arse", see my post here. RjY's post immediately below it explains what actually happened.

[LigH]

It appears to be possible to give a BFG shot (and probably any bullet) a very strange behaviour, and I wonder if that is related to the attributes given, or related to the exact source port used (in my case: Risen3D 2.2.012) ... it looks like "speed running" for me, or rounding bugs.

I played a bit with DeHackEd (WhackEd3) and altered response times and attributes like speed and dimensions of BFG Shot items. The result: Shot blasts seem to travel preferably along the coordinates in 45° steps. Not exactly only along these directions, but "bent away".

First I thought: Oh, are they now enemy-seeking, even through walls? But it is not related to enemy positions, only to the angle you move away from N-S or W-E, towards NW-SE or NE-SW (and similarly upwards and downwards).

Thing 36 (BFG Shot)
Speed = 6553600
Width = 262144
Height = 131072
Bits = 201393680

Thing 43 (BFG Hit)
Bits = 201327120

[Maes]

purist said:

I didn't shoot at the AV while it was attacking the other monster. I just watched like in TomoAlien's pic yet at the point of explosion I took the damage. I wonder if the monster it was targeting escaped his line of sight.

If the monster the Archvile was targeting dies or goes out of range before the attack sequence completes, the Archvile doesn't "waste" it: instead it uses it instantly against the next available target, which for an awakened archvile always means the player. It's thus never safe to watch awakened Archviles infight other monsters, even if you don't provoke them. The only exception is if the Archvile was never awakened by spotting a player and it doesn't end up facing one during any phase of its attack.

[peach freak]

E4M5 of Ultimate Doom

You can press spacebar on the pillar in the room with the Red Key and find a Box of Rockets, lol

[Scypek2]

First door on MAP16 has an x offset set to 32, so sides of the texture meets in the middle. And it still looks cool.

[arttu98]

The monster spawner cube makes sound.

[TomoAlien]

arttu98 said:

The monster spawner cube makes sound.

Well, this is excusable because the sound is really silent and it pretty much always is being silenced by the spawned monster's cry.

[peach freak]

During the cast of monsters endings in Doom II-based games, left clicking on your mouse brings you back to the start of cast of monsters. So if you were on the Hell Knight and left-clicked your mouse, you would be brought back to the Zombieman.

[Krispy]

That one monster that you can never find but can always hear through the walls is probably a glitchy lost soul spawned by a pain elemental.

[betabox]

Gez said:

On the wiki someone wrote that it was Adrian Carmack.

I don't know how to verify that; other than asking Tom Hall directly I guess.

e: http://www.doomworld.com/pageofdoom/olddoom.html

That would be correct, Adrian Jules Carmack. I don't know the details, but Tom Hall apparently an issue or two with Adrian. If you cycle through more of the flats, you'll find a "Tom is King".

[Dragonsbrethren]

The 8 key selects the chainsaw in vanilla. Not sure how I've gone this long without knowing that, other than never trying it before. I knew it was bound to 8 in ports, but always assumed that giving it its own key was something Boom or one of the earlier ports did.

[Guest]

peach freak said:

E4M5 of Ultimate Doom

You can press spacebar on the pillar in the room with the Red Key and find a Box of Rockets, lol

*loads up ultimate doom.*

*goes to red key room.*

*uses pillar.*

*discovers that peach freak was correct.*

[reboot]

Just found out why Doom was ported to linux:

[40oz]

In deathmatch, weapon pickups give you 5x the ammo it normally would if you were playing single player. I always thought that was a skulltag thing but I think all ports do it.

[printz]

peach freak said:

E4M5 of Ultimate Doom

You can press spacebar on the pillar in the room with the Red Key and find a Box of Rockets, lol

That's why I like unmarked secrets, they can remain unknown for many years. It's best not to score them though, to make them even less likely to be found, and less frustrating for completists.

[Darkman 4]

40oz said:

In deathmatch, weapon pickups give you 5x the ammo it normally would if you were playing single player. I always thought that was a skulltag thing but I think all ports do it.

They do? Back when I played ZDaemon in 2006 (or 2007) I'm pretty sure I got the normal amount of ammo from each pickup.

[Acid]

That you can walk up 24px stairs. Seriously, I thought that it was 0-16px, not 24 :/

[printz]

Darkman 4 said:

They do? Back when I played ZDaemon in 2006 (or 2007) I'm pretty sure I got the normal amount of ammo from each pickup.

Maybe it's a difference between how much ammo the guns give in -deathmatch and in -altdeath? I don't know, because apparently people choose -deathmatch over the more Quakesque -altdeath, so I've never got to play -altdeath online to see.

[abyrvalg]

Found out few days ago that you can sometimes save some momentum and move for 1 tic after teleporting. It's pretty much impossible to notice in a normal play, so it's not a big surprise that i've never known about this. Spotted it while building a demo. More info here: http://www.doomworld.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=1062946#post1062946
Could anyone explain what causes this behavior?

[qoncept]

jongo said:

Found out few days ago that you can sometimes save some momentum and move for 1 tic after teleporting. It's pretty much impossible to notice in a normal play, so it's not a big surprise that i've never known about this. Spotted it while building a demo. More info here: http://www.doomworld.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=1062946#post1062946
Could anyone explain what causes this behavior?

id didn't want to create Portal, but they wanted to give just a hint that they could have.

Without looking at the code, I'd imagine the check and action for teleporting happen before movement, so you would always move for 1 tic after teleporting.