galileo31dos01

You ever noticed how plasma or rockets sometimes don't appear in the middle of the screen but rather a bit to the sides? That's when what you're shooting at is a bit out of alignment. This was implemented because doom originally also had to play decent without there being the precision of a mouse when aiming. When you're aiming at a diagonal angle (as in: not north/east/south/west), the odds of a rocket hitting something that is not in your field of view is relatively high due to doom's "thing metrics", which is further amplified by the small field of view you are playing with.

To explain this a bit further: If you look at things in Doom top-down, as if it was 2D game, everything that moves or can be picked up has a square hitbox, all sides being equally long. But if you draw a diagonal line through the square, from one corner to the other, that line will be longer than the sides of the square.

So if you shoot a rocket at a diagonal angle, the rocket is "wider", because of how this diagonal, imaginery line of its hitbox works. If you're standing next to such a corner, this makes the odds of the rocket's hitbox connecting with that corner higher. If you then add the possibility that your rocket doesn't eject from the centerline, but instead a bit to the side, you have a recipe for desaster.

Understood, thanks.