Why won't damaging floors affect monsters?

[MTF Sergeant]

You get hurt by slime and lava but monsters won't.

 

Why is it like that??

[bonnie]

they're frickin demons

from heck

 

they live for that kinda stuff man

[therektafire]

Well from a purely gameplay perspective it would probably make the game too easy if you could just easily get the enemies into a situation where they constantly keep killing themselves without you even having to fire a single shot.

 

But from a logical perspective I feel like it makes some sense as well since the demons are from hell and obviously hell isn't exactly the place with the most suitable environment for living things and since doom demons are biological it's likely they evolved immunities/defenses to protect themselves from really hot or acidic substances like lava or nukage, they would have to in order to survive. This explains some of the demons attacks as well like why imps shoot fireballs

[Jerry.C]

I think it was done like this because the monster AI simply cannot deal with the increased decisionmaking that is necessary to handle damaging environments without becoming a hazard to gameplay.

 

It is not just adding a check if a monster is in a damaging sector but for that to work in terms of gameplay, the monsters need to have some awareness of a damaging environment and some techniques to avoid it. None of that exists in Doom.

 

 

[seed]

From a gameplay perspective, I don't know, aside from making the player's life more difficult and not turning too much of the environment against the enemies.

 

From a logical standpoint, Doom's enemies come from Hell which is full of generally damaging or toxic things for humans, so it makes perfect sense to see them not being affected by something like damaging floor given the place they live in.

[Misty]

Because demons are used it, even zombies don't feel pain when they cross damage floors, because they're dead. Doomguy is still living human with all functioning nerves and such, so all nukage and lava hurts him. Simple. 

[leodoom85]

^^ Basically....Doomguy sucks, monsters don't.

And hurting monsters from the start would makes things much easier without breaking a sweat.

[WH-Wilou84]

55 minutes ago, Agent6 said:

From a logical standpoint, Doom's enemies come from Hell which is full of generally damaging or toxic things for humans, so it makes perfect sense to see them not being affected by something like damaging floor given the place they live in.

Lava and radioactive waste don't hurt monsters, but hot lead, explosions and plasma do. I don't think "logic" has anything to do with that :)
It's just a gameplay element. We should not try to read too much into it.

[Jerry.C]

9 minutes ago, WH-Wilou84 said:

It's just a gameplay element. We should not try to read too much into it.

With this community? Not going to happen! Apparently for some people, discussing the most inane aspects of the game is serious business!

[Phobus]

You can set it up in ZDoom so that enemies get hurt in damaging sectors. There's a few ways of doing it, so if you feel the need to find out what the game would be like if enemies could get killed by wading into nukage or lava, a small test set-up would do. You'll find that they blindly do it though, much like how they get crushed all too readily. Mappers would need to start blocking off damaging floors from ground-based monsters to stop them being dead or severely weakened if left to wander about the average E1 map for any length of time, for example. Either that or the AI would need improving as outlined above.

 

You can stick whatever story explanation you like on it, but it's simply a gameplay choice to make enemies less vulnerable and the environment more hostile to the player.

[94's the best style]

I mean, one could just make monsters treat damage floors like they treat high drops. They won't walk off pillars, but you can still knock them off from them. Most maps already give some sort of bridge trough the damage sectors, at worst it would block some monsters from entering other parts of the map, which is already done by most doortypes.

[Memfis]

I think the only logical conclusion is that they must be wearing radiation suits.

 

Oh god, imagine a mancubus trying to fit into one.

[Arctangent]

58 minutes ago, Memfis said:

I think the only logical conclusion is that they must be wearing radiation suits.

If that was the case, though, they'd occasionally take damage from the 20% floors.

[94's the best style]

2 hours ago, Arctangent said:

If that was the case, though, they'd occasionally take damage from the 20% floors.

That's such a random mechanic that I wonder why it even exists. 

[doom keeps me alive]

They've adapted to live in it. 

[Looper]

10 hours ago, Agent6 said:

From a logical standpoint, Doom's enemies come from Hell which is full of generally damaging or toxic things for humans, so it makes perfect sense to see them not being affected by something like damaging floor given the place they live in.

I thought hell isn't a nice place. The demons should suffer too!

[seed]

7 minutes ago, Looper said:

I thought hell isn't a nice place. The demons should suffer too!

Well they rule the realm so... nope.

[Jon]

For the boom++ effort I proposed (and implemented) instakill sectors that killed monsters too. 

[Gez]

In addition to the basic gameplay issue (monster AI limitations), having monsters be affected by damaging sectors would mean that the sector specials would have to be processed for every actor instead of just for the players, so it would have a big impact on performances (especially on vintage 90s hardware).

 

The P_PlayerInSpecialSector() function is called every tic. In vanilla Doom there are at most four players. If that function was called from P_RunThinkers() instead of P_PlayerThink(), it would represent a lot more processing every tic. Consider that monsters aren't the kind of actors, there are all sorts of decorative items, projectiles, pickups, corpses...

[Cruduxy Pegg]

Half the map would be dead unless the players are rushing or a ton of monster teleportation everywhere, no thanks!

[Fonze]

Id didn't want these poor fan-imps to die before getting the chance to greet the player with cake and ribbons in E1M6.

 

[Nine Inch Heels]

16 hours ago, TFK said:

You get hurt by slime and lava but monsters won't.

 

Why is it like that??

Because it would limit where you can use hurt floor, and what you can use along with hurt floor.

[silentzorah]

I wonder if there's a way to implement this, though.  Like, in the case of friendly monsters.  Doesn't make sense to have allied marines to run through lava, while Doomguy turns into a Doomburger.

[Roofi]

They have lava-proof/slime-proof pads under their feet.

 

Also another question : Why does the doomguy not die when he go across a fall of slime or lava although the liquid is supposed cover all his body and burn it?

Edited February 3, 2018 by Roofi

[94's the best style]

2 hours ago, Roofi said:

They have lava-proof/slime-proof pads under their feet.

 

Also another question : Why does the doomguy not die when he go across a fall of slime or lava although the liquid is supposed cover all his body and burn it?

The hazard falls are actually holograms made by the demons to trick you.

[Matthias]

On 3. 2. 2018 at 6:25 AM, TFK said:

You get hurt by slime and lava but monsters won't.

 

Why is it like that??

because life is unfair

[MattGuy1990]

On 3/2/2018 at 6:25 AM, TFK said:

You get hurt by slime and lava but monsters won't.

 

Why is it like that??

They're unearthly creature from dimension Hell. They don't suffer the same mortal limits that puny mortals do; lava is to them like water to swim into, radiation is like steam from the sauna, they don't feel the need to drink, to eat, or compassion. Nothin can stop them! (expect bullets xD)

 

Though, to be fair, lava and radiations don't hurt saved marines in Brutal Doom too. Mmhhhhhhhh............

[geo]

Because Cacodemons hover.

[kb1]

On 2/3/2018 at 3:01 PM, Gez said:

In addition to the basic gameplay issue (monster AI limitations), having monsters be affected by damaging sectors would mean that the sector specials would have to be processed for every actor instead of just for the players, so it would have a big impact on performances (especially on vintage 90s hardware).

 

The P_PlayerInSpecialSector() function is called every tic. In vanilla Doom there are at most four players. If that function was called from P_RunThinkers() instead of P_PlayerThink(), it would represent a lot more processing every tic. Consider that monsters aren't the kind of actors, there are all sorts of decorative items, projectiles, pickups, corpses...

True. But, I think that, if id had intended the game to work that way, they would have devised a different system. I am quite impressed at just how well they chose the right tool for the job so often, as Doom was being built.

 

Actually, I think it probably was the other way around: The engine was made a certain way, and the game was added on top of that, based on what the engine made possible. Most accurately, it was probably a little of both. But, one thing's for sure: They milked the available engine right up to its limits.

[KVELLER]

23 hours ago, kb1 said:

But, one thing's for sure: They milked the available engine right up to its limits.

While they made a fantastic job with Doom, I think Hexen should take the credit in that regard.