Interesting revenant fireball behavior

[General Rainbow Bacon]

So I was playing map 13 of dmonfear today and I had a strange occurrence. While evading a revenant's fireball I hid behind a wall
and it just happens that the windows in said wall are spaced so that I created a perpetual circling fireball. Check out this demo. I wonder why this is able to happen.

http://www.mediafire.com/download/vuc6g3t8vqfkn3v/GRBdfear13.lmp

[Jaxxoon R]

Very interesting. I've purposefully gotten missiles to orbit me before and then used them against others monsters, but not this.

[General Rainbow Bacon]

Yeah, you should be able to do this yourself pretty easily actually. Just get one to follow you and then hide behind the midpoint of that wall.

[Foxpup]

It's a well-known phenomenon. Just like real-life homing missiles, revenant fireballs have a limited turning radius, and will miss their target if they are unable to turn fast enough. The fireballs will continue turning to try to hit the target, and end up going in circles if they still cannot hit it. Though this is rarely seen in real life, as unlike revenant fireballs, real missiles are designed to detonate if they detect a near miss, in the hope of doing splash damage. Also, a real missile loses speed as it turns, reducing its manoeuvrability and eventually causing it to fall out of the sky if it still hasn't exploded, so it cannot circle a target indefinitely like a revenant fireball can.

[Doomkid]

In some slaughtermaps, you can get a revenant fireball tornado happening - it's an awesome (and deadly) spectacle.

[General Rainbow Bacon]

Well, I knew it could happen, as fireballs have circled me before. But being able to observe it happening safely and indefinitely was what I thought made this instance cool and unique.

[clamgor]

Well that was rather interesting.
Didn't know about this.
I gotta experiment with this behavior.

[Fellowzdoomer]

I remember back in 2009 I was playing skull tag in co-op. On map27, I finished a revenant off, but I was by the head kabob, the missile aimed for me, then I run back and it circled the kabob.

Then I decided the kabob was cooked enough.

<Barney Calhoun: OK, time to take it off the grill>
*steps in path*
<Barney Calhoun died>
<Barney Calhoun: Dammit!>

[MFG38]

Interesting indeed, and pretty cool. That must be pretty hard to intentionally pull off.

[Fellowzdoomer]

Anybody think of making a map that can have this occur, then you can use the revenant fireballs as a shield?

[kb1]

MFG38 said:

Interesting indeed, and pretty cool. That must be pretty hard to intentionally pull off.

It's actually pretty easy, in the right setup:

* One Revenant
* Big room
* No other monsters around

Get him to fire a homing missile, run towards it, and step out of the way in time. Then, kill the Rev, and it'll circle around you! I had never seen it, before reading about it. Then, when I tried to make it happen, it was kinda easy - few tries is all it takes.