weird sight issue

[volumetricsteve]

I'm on a roll today!

In the map I'm currently working on, it's massive, but it bottle-necks at a point where an elevator takes you from the first part of the map to a huge underground space. Probably....4000+ units away, there's an arch-vile that - like clockwork - books it across what looks like a real-life mile to hang out at the bottom of this elevator shaft....other enemies down there are also very aware of the player before the player gets anywhere near that area too. Oddly enough, in the room the player actually starts in..the hidden monsters there wait patiently until they hear the first gunshot go off. So..somehow, these 4000+ unit away monsters know I'm there, but the ones 200 units away don't know I'm there unless I intentionally draw attention to myself.

What gives?

Regardless of what might be wrong with the level, is there some kind of built-in doom builder tool that makes it so monsters only know you're there if you enter certain sectors? I'm considering using the "deaf" option, but if there's something else I'd be just as curious

[scifista42]

volumetricsteve said:

Oddly enough, in the room the player actually starts in..the hidden monsters there wait patiently until they hear the first gunshot go off.

Do they have a direct line of sight to the player (not blocked by any solid map geometry, even if transparent) AND are they turned plus-minus 90° towards him?

[volumetricsteve]

the monsters in the room act as I hoped they would, they're way down in a pit. Some are facing the player, some are not, I tried to keep it random.

The ones way far away are on a whole separate floor...behind an elevator...behind a room...and behind a wall...some of them may also be facing the player, but I'd think at that distance it shouldn't matter. Plus, there's no clear line of sight that I can see.

[scifista42]

Assuming no gunfire, monsters will only activate when the conditions I mentioned above are satisfied: Having a line of sight + facing the player plus-minus 90°, regardless of distance.

http://doomwiki.org/wiki/Monster_behavior#Initial_state_and_alertness

If you still think they behave oddly, would you post the map?

There is a possibility of incorrectly built REJECT table which will prevent monsters in certain sectors from seeing anything in other sectors even if there was a direct line of sight actually.

[volumetricsteve]

I'll have to do more tests...if room height isn't a factor in being "line of sight" to a monster, that might be the issue. In which case I'd need a linedef that I could "opaque" and "unopaque" at will.

Given how reject tables work, I might just need to redefine some sectors.


I *could* get you the level...but only if it goes to you directly, and I'll hold onto that as a last resort. Hopefully I can work this out with the ideas you've given me.

Thanks again

[scifista42]

volumetricsteve said:

if room height isn't a factor in being "line of sight" to a monster,

It is a factor and should work intuitively alright - unless there are such extreme height differences as 32768 map units between the lowest and highest planes in the map - then again, this applies to vanilla engine, I don't know how well other ports handle such extreme cases.

[volumetricsteve]

Ok, so a few things...

I realized I was saving in a non-reject format, so that did me exactly no favors. Saving in a pro-reject format fixed a lot of issues...however...not all of them.

Oddly enough, the huge underground room I described now suffers a lot less of the monster "see through" problem. Now it's down to about 2 or 3 monsters, which, by the time I get down there, I find their corpses, so they'd clearly been duking it out among themselves for some reason. When I get down there, no other monsters seem to have been previously alerted to my presence, just to two or three that killed eachother off.

is that a bad reject table?

[scifista42]

No, because REJECT table can only prevent monsters from seeing the player even though they should have, but it can never make them see the player even though they shouldn't have - because when the REJECT table says that line of sight is potentially possible, further geometrical calculations will take place to confirm it.

Keep in mind that they can see the player through midtextures, even fully solid-looking ones. Sometimes they activate seemingly after seeing only the player's tip of a head, so that you don't even notice, particularly if they're too far away for you to hear their activation sound. Also, unless they're flagged as "deaf/ambush", they will be alerted by gunfire if its "sound" propagates to the sector where they stand, and this happens regardless of distance (I don't refer to standard hearable sound here, but to software-emulated "sound" that propagates through all neighboring sectors and makes monsters alerted, and this propagation can only be stopped by 0-height sectors or linedefs with a "Block Sound" flag, never by sheer distance).

Finally, if you're playing in vanilla or a vanilla-like port or compatibility, this bug might be taking effect, which is actually capable of working in reverse and making monsters see the player where they shouldn't.

[volumetricsteve]

I was confused when I read your post but I re-read mine and I see where we're headed now...I didn't mean to say I thought the reject table was responsible for those monsters hearing me, I was trying to suggest there might be a leak that the REJECT function didn't prevent them from hearing me the same way quake 3 maps get hull leaks out of the blue sometimes. It clearly prevented a lot of other monsters from hearing me, previously the whole underground region was well aware of my presence way before I got there, but now it's restricted down to the last two or three. What's especially weird is the corpses I found were really...really far apart....and I might have to send you a chunk of this level or some screenshots or something, the way the monsters are set up, i'm confused as to how these monsters in particular got woken up and other ones in between didn't.

I'll tinker with sound barriers later to see what that does, I'm certain there is no straight line of sight from those monsters to where the player is above ground, so reject should be disallowing all lines of sight between the lower and higher floor.

I'm testing exclusively in gzdoom for now.

[scifista42]

Hopefully it's clear that monsters that are not flagged as "deaf" will activate upon hearing a sound without necessarily having line of sight at all, as well as they would activate upon having a line of sight without necessarily hearing sound at all. Monsters that are flagged as "deaf" will only activate upon having line of sight - hearing a sound will merely put them into a "full spacial awareness" state when they will able to detect having line of sight even if you approached them from behind.

[volumetricsteve]

I see, but that's interesting for a whole bunch of other reasons..

going back to the few monsters who seem to wake up before I arrive...one of them must have thought they had a viable target somehow...through the floor and the elevator shaft, and may have inadvertently hit the other, maybe waking them up and starting a brawl. This might mean I only have one monster waking up by surprise.

Either way, to really explore this more, I may have to send you some screenshots once I get home.