Most probable reason Demons were changed after 1.2

[Quasar]

After putting in the code for Doom 1.2-style demon attacks, where they fire a MELEERANGE bullet attack, I did some testing and found that it's not at all infrequent for two pinky demons (spectres are not subject interestingly, because of the way they turn side to side) to get into what appears to be a "shouting match" - they stand there directly adjacent to each other biting at the air, not doing any damage because the other demon is *just* out of range.

I've never seen this happen in the PSX port, so I started digging into the Jaguar source and I found:

#define MELEERANGE 70*FRACUNIT

Ah ha! So the console versions have a larger melee attack range, 70 vs vanilla's 64, which fixes this.

Rather than change MELEERANGE for the PC version likewise, they apparently just decided to change demons to a direct melee attack. I think this above issue is probably the most likely reason, as two demons stopping to have a loud argument is completely hilarious, and pulls you right out of the game.

[fraggle]

I for one would like to see a video of said shouting matches.

[Foxpup]

Actually, the "shouting matches" happen whenever a demon gets into a fight with another monster, as their attack is so slow that the target will almost always move out of range before the attack connects. Demons are (or were) especially likely to avoid the attacks of other demons due to their high speed, though even a zombieman who has enraged a demon with a stray bullet will manage to slowly stroll out of danger as often as not (which is also pretty hilarious to watch). This has nothing to do with the changed attack, and it was most likely changed simply to be more consistent with the other monsters' melee attacks.

[Quasar]

Foxpup said:

Actually, the "shouting matches" happen whenever a demon gets into a fight with another monster, as their attack is so slow that the target will almost always move out of range before the attack connects. Demons are (or were) especially likely to avoid the attacks of other demons due to their high speed, though even a zombieman who has enraged a demon with a stray bullet will manage to slowly stroll out of danger as often as not (which is also pretty hilarious to watch). This has nothing to do with the changed attack, and it was most likely changed simply to be more consistent with the other monsters' melee attacks.

This is not the same thing you are talking about. This is two monsters standing perfectly still, both trying to attack each other and doing no damage. Monsters that do true melee attacks are given an extra allowance on the distance they can reach which accounts for their radius. The Doom 1.2 Demon bite attack, on the other hand, adds in NO such allowance - it spans a distance of precisely 64 units and must intersect the midpoint of the other monster to do any damage (since the originating monster will, except in the case of spectre blur on its target, face directly toward the midpoint, which is the intersection between the hitscan attack and the diagonal across the target's hitbox that is checked for an intersection).

The point is that Demons are not capable of getting into this situation in the first place when they only have a true melee attack.

Try to give some consideration toward who you're talking to before blithely dismissing somebody's point. I've been working on Doom in multiple forms for ~12 years and know the difference between the v1.9 chasing phenomenon, which is merely due to timing, and this phenomenon.

[Fellowzdoomer]

I've seen a nightmare spectre argue with a normal demon during my game play of PSX DooM.

[Quasar]

Fellowzdoomer said:

I've seen a nightmare spectre argue with a normal demon during my game play of PSX DooM.

I think PSX actually doesn't treat spectres as being difficult to aim at like vanilla does. However, I am confused that you say this happens at all in PSX. I figured the extra MELEERANGE would prevent it. Maybe not?

Also for whatever it's worth, it can be asymmetric - I've had some Demons succeed in killing Nightmare spectres, who have twice the health, several times while testing the 1.2 code in EE. Given that EE currently makes the nightmare spectre harder to hit, this suggests that the NS isn't getting any damage in at all, whereas the demon's attacks are hitting. I am not sure where the asymmetry arises from, but it does seem sensitive to the world axis alignment of the monsters - all the times this asymmetric situation happened, the monsters were aligned to the north and south of each other.

EDIT: actually I guess it's *because* of the inaccuracy in that case. Sometimes the demon turns to the side and his hitscan crosses the NS's diagonal, whereas the NS always bites toward the demon's midpoint. That probably solves that mystery.

[Maes]

Foxpup said:

Actually, the "shouting matches" happen whenever a demon gets into a fight with another monster, as their attack is so slow that the target will almost always move out of range before the attack connects.

I'd call this "butt biting" rather than "shouting match", as the demons end up biting the air just behind their targets, as they nonchalantly ignore them.

[kb1]

Quasar said:

...Try to give some consideration toward who you're talking to before blithely dismissing somebody's point. I've been working on Doom in multiple forms for ~12 years...

You took the words right out of my mouth. Bravo. Been there.

And, on point: I was pleasantly surprised to find out that the attack was changed. There's something really cool about the alphas and betas! It's almost like thinking about the "Good ol' days". That old attack is a "legitimate" behavior, since it was in old Doom, making it an especially interesting and rare sight. I agree with your conclusion - after Doom 1.0 (0.99?), id was not interested in tweaking gameplay, they were just bug-fixing to solidify the product.

[Foxpup]

Quasar said:

This is not the same thing you are talking about. This is two monsters standing perfectly still, both trying to attack each other and doing no damage.

Sorry, my mistake.

Quasar said:

Monsters that do true melee attacks are given an extra allowance on the distance they can reach which accounts for their radius. The Doom 1.2 Demon bite attack, on the other hand, adds in NO such allowance - it spans a distance of precisely 64 units and must intersect the midpoint of the other monster to do any damage (since the originating monster will, except in the case of spectre blur on its target, face directly toward the midpoint, which is the intersection between the hitscan attack and the diagonal across the target's hitbox that is checked for an intersection).

Now that we both know what we're talking about, that's not the whole story. The demon's original melee attack has no allowance for the target's radius, but the real problem is that the demon's AI thinks it does (since it's the same AI used for all melee attacks), causing demons to attack prematurely against wide (radius > 20) targets (such as other demons). Making all melee attacks consistent was no doubt easier than fixing the AI to recognise different melee attacks.

[david_a]

Quasar said:

(spectres are not subject interestingly, because of the way they turn side to side)

Can you expand on this? Do you mean that a pinky attempting to bite a spectre would turn side to side, or does the partial invisibility actually change the spectre's behavior?

[Belial]

In Mr Smiley Head's Safari the final boss is a Mastermind with the Spectre fuzz flag set. I always wondered what made it turn side to side once it started firing.

[Quasar]

david_a said:

Can you expand on this? Do you mean that a pinky attempting to bite a spectre would turn side to side, or does the partial invisibility actually change the spectre's behavior?

I meant in the case of two spectres biting each other, but the case of a pinky and a spectre is also implicated, though only the pinky will be the one turning at random in that case and so as I mentioned above, it's a one-sided match in that case and the demon likely wins the battle by inflicting damage successfully.

[40oz]

I always wondered if spectres caused monsters to have sloppy aim when infighting, but I guess by the time a monster is instigated to fight the specter, its already too close for it to make any difference.

[kb1]

It's the quirks that IMHO make Doom so interesting. Most of the monsters have something unique to their behavior, besides just the stats (health, radius, etc). And, I would guess that some of them were unintentional, like the baron not turning towards its target, or the pistol guy not lighting up when firing. Had Id been more careful, we might have ended up with a less diverse, less dynamic product.

[VGA]

The glitches are interesting, but the game is overall better without them and the bugs and limits.

[Keyboard_Doomer]

fraggle said:

I for one would like to see a video of said shouting matches.

Happening in the PSX TC version :)

[myk]

Quasar said:
I've been working on Doom in multiple forms for ~12 years [...]

But it wouldn't be the first time that through careful examination people have come up with ideas and explanations about bugs and what id did or didn't do about them back then, when later id were even surprised the bug or quirk existed at all.

As far as the released versions are concerned, id wasn't that much more aware than the mass of tens of thousands of avid players providing input. They were not that likely to cover bugs people didn't complain about and some more or less evident ones were never corrected.

[clamgor]

fraggle said:

I for one would like to see a video of said shouting matches.

I second this.

Probably really easy to recreate it with a custom monster in DECORATE-- or you could just record a video using Doom 1.2.

[fabian]

Quasar said:

Try to give some consideration toward who you're talking to before blithely dismissing somebody's point.

The arrogance in your tone when someone *dares* to question your point can be annoying.

[dew]

^ Butt biter.

[Doomkid]

Keyboard_Doomer said:

Happening in the PSX TC version :)

Maybe one of them bit one of the barrels, or something? Even then, Im not sure why that would occur in the first place. That IS weird.

[Quasar]

fabian said:

The arrogance in your tone when someone *dares* to question your point can be annoying.

I suppose it came off worse than I meant it. I just felt he was dismissing what I was saying without considering that I must have thought it through far enough to know it wasn't the same thing as what happens with the vanilla Demon bite and monsters being able to move out of range of it before it hits (in this case, the monsters don't move but cannot get into hitting range at all). Mostly just a misunderstanding.

Regarding the PSX TC, it has the same problem EE is currently having, as it has the (I believe 64 unit?) 1.2-style bite attack implemented through DECORATE. Increasing the range to 70 to match the PSX binary might make this behavior less common, though if what that one guy said earlier was true, it may even still happen there under the right circumstances.