Things about Doom you just found out

[Stupid Bunny]

FUN FACT

 

You know the donut sector type that appears like two times in all the IWADs?  Well a few years back I accidentally discovered, and recently decided to actually exploit, a fun thing where, if you put multiple "hole" sectors with the same tag inside the raising donut sector, the raising sector will move faster.  It seems that, for every hole sector you add, it adds the same speed value to the donut; if you put 20 holes into the donut, the floor will move up 20x faster than it normally does.  If you operate the donut with a dummy sector (making sure to build the dummy first), then you can create a floor that shoots up at whatever speed you want, plus however many separately lowering pillars you want at the same time.  Fun stuff!  I love the donut floor.

 

To see it in action play this speedmap I went and made

Edited November 29, 2021 by Stupid Bunny

[spd7693]

Blockmap bug detected - Hell Revealed map 32: 

Spoiler

 

 

 

Occurs if you shoot in either outdoor area with the SSG and the majority of the pellets get absorbed by the sky. 

[Uni]

I only recently noticed that TNT:Evilution's BOSSBACK graphic shows an edit of the E3 red hellish sky textures. It never occurred to me that they modified it just for the graphic lump, I find it really interesting. I Might even try to edit it myself and use it as an "official" sky texture, looks cool.

 

[spd7693]

Pinkies and spectres actually CAN KILL GHOST MONSTERS! Two screenshots from Hell Revealed map 26: 

 

A ghost imp is infighting with the spectre. 

 

 

Here a spectre bit me and I had to move, but a second after this the imp died. Couldn't screen it though, because with spectres and homing revenant rockets around you, it's tough to make screenshots lol. It can't have been the cyberdemon, because as you see, he's looking in the other direction (and wonders where the revenant that hit him is) and can't have been the baron, because the baron was infighting with the cyberdemon too. It occurred a few times. 

 

If someone can somehow test it for me in not so hectic circumstances, I'll appreciate it. But trust me, pinkies and spectres can kill ghosts! 

[Dusty_Rhodes]

8 minutes ago, spd7693 said:

Pinkies and spectres actually CAN KILL GHOST MONSTERS! Two screenshots from Hell Revealed map 26: 

 

A ghost imp is infighting with the spectre. 

 

 

Here a spectre bit me and I had to move, but a second after this the imp died. Couldn't screen it though, because with spectres and homing revenant rockets around you, it's tough to make screenshots lol. It can't have been the cyberdemon, because as you see, he's looking in the other direction (and wonders where the revenant that hit him is) and can't have been the baron, because the baron was infighting with the cyberdemon too. It occurred a few times. 

 

If someone can somehow test it for me in not so hectic circumstances, I'll appreciate it. But trust me, pinkies and spectres can kill ghosts! 

What port are you playing on? Maybe it's a fixed bug? Maybe you discovered something really cool!

[Pechudin]

34 minutes ago, spd7693 said:

*stuff*

 

Spectre and Pinky's attack is not a hitscan, it simply checks if the target is within range. So, if a ghost monster is within range, then it deals the bite damage. Same reason why rocket splash can kill ghosts, it simply checks if the target's (x,y) position is within the blast radius.

[The_MártonJános]

If you raise the exit bridge in E2M2 the unconventional/speedrunner way (i.e. from the nukage ditch below) and then bypass the linedef which activates the nearby crushers like demonstrated in the following image:

^{Light green indicates the approximated position of said linedef. Also do this carefully because once you raise the bridge, that portion of nukage is inescapable.}
... then you proceed to traverse the crushers, they will activate anyways, but now with slow damage instead.

It is worth noting that you must NOT cross the "light green" linedef even prior during your in-level time (and then stop it by crossing the linedef responsible for that action) else the crushers will be fast even after you pull this off. The same applies vice versa, if you perform the trick successfully, certain death awaits you under those giant wooden stumps no matter which linedef brings them into motion again.

[spd7693]

4 hours ago, Dusty_Rhodes said:

What port are you playing on? Maybe it's a fixed bug?

 

GLBoom+, but I think it's applicable in Vanilla too as @Pechudin said. I also think spectres/demons can kill each other if they somehow get infighting provoked, even in Vanilla. 

[Dusty_Rhodes]

27 minutes ago, spd7693 said:

 

GLBoom+, but I think it's applicable in Vanilla too as @Pechudin said. I also think spectres/demons can kill each other if they somehow get infighting provoked, even in Vanilla. 

Okay, I missed his reply. Good find man! I didn't know this. Very cool.

[Pechudin]

19 hours ago, Dusty_Rhodes said:

Okay, I missed his reply. Good find man! I didn't know this. Very cool.

 

Just wanted to add that, ALL monster melee attacks are distance checks. So, Revenants, Imps, Hell Knights, Barons and Cacos could also kill ghosts.

 

But not the player! Your punch IS a hitscan. Also, the chainsaw.

[spd7693]

I knew about the monsters that they can kill ghosts with mellee attacks, but only those, who also have ranged attacks. Because I know they can infight - like my avatar shows anyways. But I didn't know about the pinkies and spectres, because they have only a mellee attack. For instance, lost souls can't kill ghosts as far as I know. And they don't have a ranged attack, they attack by charging at the target. So that's why I wasn't sure about pinkies and spectres. 

[Scypek2]

3 hours ago, spd7693 said:

I knew about the monsters that they can kill ghosts with mellee attacks, but only those, who also have ranged attacks. Because I know they can infight - like my avatar shows anyways. But I didn't know about the pinkies and spectres, because they have only a mellee attack. For instance, lost souls can't kill ghosts as far as I know. And they don't have a ranged attack, they attack by charging at the target. So that's why I wasn't sure about pinkies and spectres. 

 

That is their ranged attack, they just shoot themselves at the enemy. It works exactly like a projectile, which leads to a whole bunch of weird behaviors.

[RjY]

On 11/24/2021 at 8:25 AM, Gibbon said:

So it really just agitates the imps inside the secret door and they will open it the moment the imp in the cage sees you

 

Reminds me of this comment:

// P_NoiseAlert
// If a monster yells at a player,
// it will alert other monsters to the player.

Which as you know is wrong: it's not the cry of the caged imp that alerts the others but you firing your weapons.

(That said, I do wonder if anyone has ever experimented with calling P_NoiseAlert from A_Look?)

 

 

On 11/24/2021 at 7:03 PM, MoreMending said:

Soul Spheres aren't actually called Supercharges, and that "Supercharge!" is just the message that displays when you pick it up, and nothing other than a message.

 

FWIW the Doom Wiki seems to believe the opposite: the page for supercharge begins "The supercharge powerup (called soul sphere in the manuals) [...]" and the page for soulsphere is a redirect to it. Perhaps this is justified by noting that the game engine source code does not contain the string "soulsphere" (with or without the space). On the other hand, the sprite name prefix is "SOUL", not "SUPR" or some such.

 

 

 

On 11/29/2021 at 4:50 AM, Spectre01 said:

Just had Dead Simple trigger the step to the exit platform twice [...] I assume this has something to do with the last 2 Arachnos dying at almost the same time.

 

FWIW there was a good thread about this recently if you missed it.

 

 

 

On 11/29/2021 at 3:39 PM, Stupid Bunny said:

It seems that, for every hole sector you add, it adds the same speed value to the donut; if you put 20 holes into the donut, the floor will move up 20x faster than it normally does.

 

Unfortunately a multi-pillared donut will fail in Boom. Only the lowest-numbered pillar will lower, and the moat will rise at normal speed. The Boom developers apparently felt that starting multiple thinkers on the rising moat was a bug. Well, I don't disagree. But one could ensure the moat was only started once, while starting all pillars, instead of breaking out of the search loop at the first sign of trouble.

 

Oh well, enough moaning. If you like unusual or novel uses of the donut special, I suggest a look at Curse of the Donuts (300minvr map02).

[Burgish]

Hexen's freezing ice death effect doesn't work on Lost Souls.

[Quill]

Most of the sprites in Strife seem to use Doomguy's as a base.

For example:

 

[Dusty_Rhodes]

1 minute ago, dotQLL said:

Most of the sprites in Strife seem to use Doomguy's as a base.

For example:

 

I always had my suspicion that was the case. Makes sense.

[Stupid Bunny]

23 hours ago, RjY said:

Unfortunately a multi-pillared donut will fail in Boom. Only the lowest-numbered pillar will lower, and the moat will rise at normal speed. The Boom developers apparently felt that starting multiple thinkers on the rising moat was a bug. Well, I don't disagree. But one could ensure the moat was only started once, while starting all pillars, instead of breaking out of the search loop at the first sign of trouble.

 

Yeah.  I already found this out the hard way >:(  Fortunately I got it to work in PrBoom+ by manually switching the compat settings to use Doom's floor building behavior, but as yet I can't get the same thing to work in GZDoom and would absolutely love it if someone could explain why the compatibility setting doesn't work there

[Kyka]

22 hours ago, dotQLL said:

Most of the sprites in Strife seem to use Doomguy's as a base.

For example:

 

What do you think that thing hanging around Strifeguy's neck is? Nightvision? A gasmask? Binoculars? A fancy dress snout?

 

I had never noticed it before

[RjY]

3 hours ago, Stupid Bunny said:

I would absolutely love it if someone could explain why the compatibility setting doesn't work there

Sorry to say it looks like a compatibility setting is not implemented there. [1] (compare [2])

[Alfonso]

A doom beta for NEXTSTEP was released days before the DOS version.

https://groups.google.com/g/comp.sys.next.announce/c/nXg-xigfHrU/m/b-LH48Np66oJ

The question is which one of you still has it?

This is history, people.

[RjY]

59 minutes ago, Alfonso said:

A doom beta for NEXTSTEP was released days before the DOS version.

Interesting, so in some sense we celebrate Doom's birthday two weeks too late?
Reminds me of the funny idea of Christmas supposedly being in September :).

59 minutes ago, Alfonso said:

The question is which one of you still has it?

This is history, people.

I am likely mistaken, but is not the file linked from NEXTSTEP#External_Links on the wiki?

[Cacodemon345]

5 minutes ago, RjY said:

I am likely mistaken, but is not the file linked from NEXTSTEP#External_Links on the wiki?

That seems to be the release version from what I saw.

[Alfonso]

7 minutes ago, RjY said:

Interesting, so in some sense we celebrate Doom's birthday two weeks too late?
Reminds me of the funny idea of Christmas supposedly being in September :).

I am likely mistaken, but is not the file linked from NEXTSTEP#External_Links on the wiki?

 

2 minutes ago, Cacodemon345 said:

That seems to be the release version from what I saw.

That's just an updated version for 1.2 shareware, i think.

Even then the wad is a bit different than normal 1.2

https://groups.google.com/g/comp.sys.next.announce/c/x5bgCfoaQ74/m/O6ZyOBMPHG4J

Imagine the differences between this november 1993 release and the final one.

[smeghammer]

Not so much Doom as Eureka Editor...

 

3D view, hold CENTRE MB + mouse move will look left or right (mouse move left/right) and raise/lower viewpoint (mouse move fwd/back).

 

How annoying was THAT to find after using this editor for the last 18 months...

[Scypek2]

On 12/7/2021 at 5:19 PM, RjY said:

 

// P_NoiseAlert
// If a monster yells at a player,
// it will alert other monsters to the player.

 

 

Maybe it was going to work like it does in wolf3d, initially? The knife there is actually silent... until you stab someone, then everyone's alerted again.

[RjY]

14 hours ago, Cacodemon345 said:

That seems to be the release version from what I saw.

14 hours ago, Alfonso said:

That's just an updated version for 1.2 shareware, i think.

 

Fair enough. Sorry about that. Thanks to both of you. It did seem too obvious a solution to have been overlooked.

 

14 hours ago, Alfonso said:

Even then the wad is a bit different than normal 1.2

Imagine the differences between this november 1993 release and the final one.

 

Agreed. Having somehow missed it for six years I stumbled on d2temp this summer. It was utterly fascinating to go through.

 

10 hours ago, Scypek2 said:

Maybe it was going to work like it does in wolf3d, initially? The knife there is actually silent... until you stab someone, then everyone's alerted again.

 

I think you must be right. I always thought that comment, like most, was a later addition by Bernd Kreimeier. But now I look and it turns out it is actually present in the Heretic source, so it must be much older. In other words it was not wrong as written, it is only out-of-date. Thanks for leading me to the correction.

That means I was wrong about the P_LineAttack comment too. "if damage == 0, it is just a test trace that will leave linetarget set" is not the case, you still get blood splats. The real "test trace that leaves linetarget set" code is P_AimLineAttack, which also handles autoaim. But the comment is there in Heretic too, so in this new light it seems to be another case of being true when it was written but never updated along with the code it refers to.

 

I've never bothered to look at the Heretic source much, but it seems there is a lot to learn from it.

[Maximum Matt]

On 12/10/2021 at 8:12 PM, RjY said:

I stumbled on d2temp this summer. It was utterly fascinating to go through.

It is awesome.

[RjY]

EDIT: it turns out there was already a thread about this years ago. Apologies to printz. I thought I'd found something new. Oh well it was new to me :). 

 

________

 

Waving your fist around reduces the amount of smoke from a revenant missile.



Here is a missile orbiting the player. Observe that the smoke is thinner and there are fewer sparks after the punch. (The animation is slowed down slightly in the hope that it is easier to see. It is admittedly subtle.)

Technical explanation

P_SpawnPuff tests that the range of the most recent line attack (hitscan) is exactly MELEERANGE. If so it assumes the bullet puff is the result of the player having punched a wall (or a barrel / anything with the MF_NOBLOOD flag) and fast-forwards the newly-created MT_PUFF actor past the part with the light flash.*

P_SpawnPuff appears to assume that it is only called as part of PTR_ShootTraverse (via P_LineAttack). It retrieves the range of the most recent line attack from a global variable attackrange which it assumes has just been set by its caller. However A_Tracer calls P_SpawnPuff to create (some** of the) smoke following a homing revenant missile.

As a global variable, attackrange has static storage duration. Its value may linger indefinitely. Thus the test in P_SpawnPuff remains relevant even in unrelated bullet puff spawns, such as those created by homing revenant missiles. If attackrange changes from some other value to MELEERANGE the amount of smoke from the missile visibly reduces as the spawned MT_PUFF actor is made to expire early.

________
* Note that the chainsaw sets range to MELEERANGE+1 to subvert this, so that it still sparks on walls.

** A second actor MT_SMOKE, that is essentially a longer-lived MT_PUFF, is also spawned as part of the trail in A_Tracer. It might have helped to make this invisible because it does a good job of hiding what I am trying to show, but I preferred the true picture.

Edited December 12, 2021 by RjY

[Xeriphas1994]

On 11/24/2021 at 2:03 PM, MoreMending said:

Soul Spheres aren't actually called Supercharges, and that "Supercharge!" is just the message that displays when you pick it up, and nothing other than a message.

 

On 12/7/2021 at 11:19 AM, RjY said:

FWIW the Doom Wiki seems to believe the opposite: the page for supercharge begins "The supercharge powerup (called soul sphere in the manuals) [...]" and the page for soulsphere is a redirect to it. Perhaps this is justified by noting that the game engine source code does not contain the string "soulsphere" (with or without the space). On the other hand, the sprite name prefix is "SOUL", not "SUPR" or some such.

 

FWIW (or is it TLDR), the rules page actually talks about this:

• First priority should be given to names appearing in-game; such are the most readily recognized terms, as players see them continually while they play.  Failing that, use names that appear in the manuals or documentation.
• For more technical subjects, look first at the source code, and then for terms associated to programs by the community (if these are commonplace).
• Some concepts or gameplay phenomena have no specific "officially licensed" name. In such cases, use the most widespread community appellation. Thing is a good example of this, as a term used by fans to describe sprite related game entities in the Doom games.

IIRC the supercharge was part of the motivation for this, along with the vanilla zombies which moved from Trooper / Sergeant / Chaingunner to their current titles.  The player is only guaranteed to have the HUD text available, not the manual or source code or editing apps or community discussions, so it takes precedence.  I suppose our early users mixed in some common sense too, e.g. Chainsaw rather than Chainsaw! Find some meat.

[spd7693]

The cyberdemon in Hell Revealed map 30 actually can teleport to the upper ledges. From there you can infight him with whatever you want and easily beat the map. 

 

Yeah, I finally beat that map on UV without cheats. If you're smart, everything's possible.