Hitscan enemies were a mistake

[Lila Feuer]

I wonder if he would prefer the Quake II method of hitscanners, where they only hit by tracking your last known position, effectively making you circle strafe a Gunner for instance at point blank range as his machine gun attack misses you completely. Which I find hilarious and would never happen in Doom.

[Ghastly]

That is a way to do it, but at that point, though, they may as well be really fast projectiles because you deal with them in exactly the same way.

[scwiba]

Like everyone's saying, hitscanners add variety to encounters and force you to think and prioritize in ways you wouldn't otherwise.

On 7/28/2017 at 7:19 PM, hardcore_gamer said:

Do you agree that Doom/Doom 2 would have been better if zombies shoot projectiles instead of being hitscan?

Quite the opposite: they're an integral part of Doom that's often forgotten in newer games that try to be "like Doom." Casual players, game journalists, and modern devs look back and see Doom as that shooter that was all about dodging projectiles. Yes, weaving in and out of fireballs is part of what makes Doom so good, but it's only a part.

[Arctangent]

It's worth remembering that even modern id doesn't think hitscan enemies are "mistakes."

[GarrettChan]

4 minutes ago, Arctangent said:

It's worth remembering that even modern id doesn't think hitscan enemies are "mistakes."

I guess because Hell Razers have very long wind up time and have a very clear way to understand where they're attacking. Probably he's complaining something can hit you no matter what you do, not necessarily hitscanners (they are just a representative).

[Maes]

Besides, where do you place the limit between hitscan and very fast projectiles, from a gameplay perspective? How do you calibrate it? Close-range attacks should/would still be pretty much unescapable (if not for the notorious inaccuracy of most enemies). Distant attacks chasing/missing you Hollywood-style....that's what the built-in inaccuracy is there for in the first place. Would 100% enemy aiming accuracy be an acceptable tradeoff for limited hitscan speed?

 

[Lila Feuer]

I feel Max Payne should be a great example of a game where they modeled the bullets themselves as projectiles but the game's AI on the default difficulty becoming a perfect godlike murderer even at long distance and depleting full health in less than a second before long. It would make little difference and your odds of dodging or avoiding the attack would be about equal with the original hitscan method when taking into account horizontal spread.

[Maes]

Besides, Doom already has a built-in mechanism that shows what would happen if you had delayed hitscan attacks but with unpredictable spread: just pick up an invisibility sphere. *grin* For added value, try that with some mod that maximizes projectile speed and fire rate of arachnotrons and other monsters and see how "fun" it will be.

 

Besides, Doom has an inherent built-in maximum speed for pretty much everything: in theory, anything traveling close or faster than one blockmap/tic (about 128 units/tic in either axis) would be problematic for collision detection and break a lot of stuff (Hell, this starts happening at much lower speeds already) so the engine itself would need to be significantly beefed up to deal with objects moving at such faster speeds. I don't have a hard numeric value, but any non-hitscan action that crosses more than one map block at a time would probably be problematic.

[idbeholdME]

How about giving all hitscanners laser pointers so you know where they are aiming all the time like everybody does with enemy snipers these days. Also a projectile indicator, so we don't have to worry about situational awareness. And a radar with enemy positions and some kind of "vision" ability, that lets you see enemies through walls.

 

Seriously, games need to start getting harder again, not easier.

[Maes]

Well, with Doom a positional radar would be wasted because enemies are "all around you, all the time, converging at your current coordinates". Similarly, laser pointers to know where enemies are aiming would be worthless, since they are always aiming dead-center at your current coordinates. Those features might make sense in some mod with stealth elements/mechanics, and Doom by itself has only a very binary concept of "stealth" (monsters either haven't been awakened and don't go after you or they have been awakened and go after you, always knowing perfectly where you are). And their numbers usually leave little room for subtlety (by modern FPS standards, in Doom you're grossly outnumbered, even in non-slaughter maps).

[idbeholdME]

I should have put "sarcasm off" after the first paragraph.

 

Simply put, no need to make the game easier than it already is.

[Maes]

I got what you mean, that's not the point. I just commented because some of these joke suggestions have actually been seriously proposed from time to time, but in the vein of giving a more "stealth" character to Doom's gameplay, rather than making it easier. In that sense, they'd be wasted, as you don't need to see 1000 laser dots to know that 1000 chaingunners have been set loose on your ass, or see a radar screen flooded with blips to know that you're in the middle of a Sunder or Chillax slaughtermap  ;-)