questions about revenant missiles

[40oz]

1. Sometimes when revenants shoot homing missiles from a height above or below, sometimes the missile just continues to go straight into the floor or into the ceiling. However, if the angle is low enough, the missile will level out and chase me without crashing into the floor or ceiling.

Missiles have a fixed left and right angle to steer in when going towards its target, is it the same when going up and down? I doubt its nearly as sharp as its left and right angles, but sometimes it seems the angle is so steep it doesn't even try to level out. Is this because the missile isn't able to lead into stabilization before crossing the targets z height?

2. Revenants randomly switch between straight missiles and homing missiles. Do you think this behavior is intended for gameplay purposes or to reduce lag or crashes from generating all the bullet puff sprites and the tracking behavior? if gameplay, was it to make revenants harder or easier?

3. In the betas, the revenant shot homing missiles at a 45 degree angle away from the player. I think this helps visually demonstrate the fact that the missiles are homing and looks cooler. Why do you think this feature was removed?

EDIT: more q's

[VGA]

1. Try changing their speed to half and their damage to 0 with dehacked in Chocolate Doom and study them more easily

2. I believe it is for balancing and for them to be less annoying and more confusing, making gameplay more varied. Like they made the Mancubus fire 3 consecutive sets of fireballs in different angles. (They should have made them random as well)

3. I haven't played that way. But I guess they would blow on walls or pillars or other enemies in many cases. Especially with the way the monster movement/following code works. And what happens if the player does the bumping dance right on the face of a Revenant?

[scifista42]

This is Revenant missile's code for changing Z velocity:

    // change slope
    dist = P_AproxDistance (dest->x - actor->x,
			    dest->y - actor->y);
    
    dist = dist / actor->info->speed;

    if (dist < 1)
	dist = 1;
    slope = (dest->z+40*FRACUNIT - actor->z) / dist;

    if (slope < actor->momz)
	actor->momz -= FRACUNIT/8;
    else
	actor->momz += FRACUNIT/8;

It apparently tries to compute a "slope" towards its target, aka the optimum Z velocity to aim straight to the target, and change its actual Z velocity according to whether the computed optimum velocity is lesser or greater than its current velocity.

[Hoodie]

I think they took out the 45 degree angle bit because of the non-homing missiles, and I agree that there are 2 different types of missiles to make the gameplay more varied.

[Linguica]

Interesting that the homing rocket aims for a point 40 units off the ground, but the player's viewpoint is 41 units. I guess it's aiming right for your nose?

[BaronOfStuff]

So now Doomguy's nose is on his chest too?

[Maes]

BaronOfStuff said:

So now Doomguy's nose is on his chest too?

Well, if his eyes are on his chest, how could the nose be any highe?

[BaronOfStuff]

Maes said:

Well, if his eyes are on his chest, how could the nose be any highe?

Well it could be on the top of his head like some some weird whaleman. He's already a deformed mutant only 5 heads high so fuck knows how the rest of his anatomy is set out.

[Maes]

Heh for some reason this made me think of the shark enemy sprite from Rodland:

[BaronOfStuff]

Holy shit I haven't seen that game in years. Rodland is undoubtedly the manliest game ever; don't let anyone say otherwise without smacking them in the mouth for blasphemy.

(Seriously though it's a pretty fun game, albeit a fucking weird and easy one.)