E1M8: You Can't Cheat Death

As all of You know, You can't finish this map with 100% kills and be alive. It's special. Death is hard-coded into the game. It makes no sense when you think about getting teleported to Deimos (to other Anomaly, E2M1) as dead pool of once ass-kicking flesh and bones. Why that death is in the game?

You're committing a kind of suicide for a "mere" (oh come on.. who actually plays Doom for the plot? :) text screen. There's no intermission screen to boast about kill percentage. One can actually kill all of them (Doom Wiki: "Although these can very occasionally be defeated using a rocket launcher [1] [2], or in ITYTD using the chaingun (because all player damage is halved), the room essentially functions as a "special effect" whereby 100% kills is sacrificed in favor of plot development. As a result, a kill percentage as low as 28% (ITYTD and HNTR), 44% (HMP), or 63% (UV) can be considered maximal. In a real game, of course, the number will be somewhat higher due to infighting, unless the player is nearly dead before he teleports."). Has anyone achieved it? I tried but had to use cheats.

Contrary to the popular belief, they work there. But not all. IDDQD-granted invulnerability (the so-called God Mode) is taken off. But there's another way to be invincible - idbeholdv ! It's only temporary but works and is not removed upon entering the "death gate". It works every time. Via idspispopd I have noticed that not only the samll fraction of this room where player can move is damaging but all floors in this room deals damage.

Staying on topic with cheats: when I exited this room via idspispopd and entered it again but wearing iddqd, I lost it.

The "death chamber" is also a kind of ultra-secret room as it's not noted on automap. The most probable cause: it's off-map! Wiki shows on its map this "death chamber" but player doesn't see it.

What's Your opinion about E1M8 phenomenon? Does it have any value for You? Would You like to see that trick on other map? Maybe as a way to kill player and make a justification for pistol start on next level (kind of after-life) ?

Sorry for long and boring post. Just wanted to write these weird and dumb things. Long story made short: only one kind of invulnerability is removed upon entering the final teleporter on E1M8.

Thanks for attention. :)

the death gate is whatever, it was a cool effect to end the first doom ep but i had way more fun when traversd remastered ORIGWAD as e1m8's death room for 1994 Tune-Up (MAP31 "Original Sin")

i had an idea for a map that would probably not fly by modern standards, basically on map15 / map31 plot the whole thing out over the death exit floor where "dying" sends you on to the next, normal map but making it to the end is the secret exit, but if i had to guess it would just be judged as supremely annoying

You actually don't die at the end of this map, you exit with like 11 hp or something.

I don't think it can be used as an actual death exit. Correct me if I'm wrong but I remember it being uttered that the effect ends the level by the player arbitrarily being reduced to 11% health by the damaging floor and attacking monsters. Its either 11% exactly or any value below 11% I think.

I like it a lot. Wish I could exit my doom 2 levels that way.

40oz said:

I like it a lot. Wish I could exit my doom 2 levels that way.

Similar effect is somewhere in 2nd half of Plutonia (or TNT). Two teleporters. Pick wrong one and you'll start next map with low life %.

And I know that's it's not a real death. Then E2M1 should began with about 10-15% hp. Enough for the start.

RadTang said:

I tried but had to use cheats.

Contrary to the popular belief, they work there.

That cheats don't work in this sector is not a popular belief as far as I'm aware. Everybody knows that all cheats function normally (including IDDQD, as it happens - while degreelessness mode is immediately disabled, you still have your health reset to 100%).

RadTang said:

when I exited this room via idspispopd and entered it again but wearing iddqd, I lost it.

The disabling of degreelessness mode, along with the damage and other effects is a property of the sector type. It matters not how you enter the sector, or whether you previously entered such a sector beforehand.

RadTang said:

The "death chamber" is also a kind of ultra-secret room as it's not noted on automap. The most probable cause: it's off-map!

It is not. The lines are simply flagged as "hidden" (incidentally, so are the walls surrounding the star area) and hence do not normally appear on the map. Hidden lines are revealed by the IDDT cheat - try it and see.

RadTang said:

What's Your opinion about E1M8 phenomenon?

It is not a property of E1M8, it is a property of sector type 11. This sector type can be used on any map.

RadTang said:

Maybe as a way to kill player and make a justification for pistol start on next level (kind of after-life)

The player is not killed by this sector, and in fact, cannot be killed in this sector except by telefrag (which does not cause the level to exit - you must have health above 0% and less than 11% to exit). While within this sector, all damage is capped at the player's health - 1. The damage cap does not take armor into account, so if you have 50% health and blue armor and fire a rocket into a wall (which would normally be fatal), you will only take 49% damage, half of which is absorbed by your armor, leaving you with 25% health, which isn't even low enough to exit the level.

Foxpup said:

The player is not killed by this sector, and in fact, cannot be killed in this sector except by telefrag

Telefrag won't kill the player either. You'll just exit with 1% health just like any other time the last bit of damage caused to the player exceeds his current HP.

EDIT: Also, a player can actually survive a telefrag (the level doesn't immediately exit) if he has enough health and is standing on this type of damaging floor while telefragged.

EDIT2: Another discovery - You know how not even invulnerability can save you from instant death after being telefragged...? Well, not on sector type 11. You won't get any damage, you will just be stuck inside a monster :) (it's possible to kill it, though)

Keyboard_Doomer said:

Telefrag won't kill the player either. You'll just exit with 1% health just like any other time the last bit of damage caused to the player exceeds his current HP.

EDIT: Also, a player can actually survive a telefrag (the level doesn't immediately exit) if he has enough health and is standing on this type of damaging floor while telefragged.

EDIT2: Another discovery - You know how not even invulnerability can save you from instant death after being telefragged...? Well, not on sector type 11. You won't get any damage, you will just be stuck inside a monster :) (it's possible to kill it, though)

Hold on, I'm lost here. Does this means that telefragging doesn't deal "instant damage", or sector type 11 actually changes the "telefragging behavior"?

Zed said:

Hold on, I'm lost here. Does this means that telefragging doesn't deal "instant damage", or sector type 11 actually changes the "telefragging behavior"?

Fuck if I know. I would lean toward the latter but I think we need a Doom expert over here. But anyway, here is a demo of me surviving a telefrag in a test map I use to test all sorts of stuff with. It was recorded in the original Doom EXE so there's no source port trickery.

On closer inspection, the health - 1 damage cap applies even to telefrag damage. But I distinctly remember doing a test where this wasn't the case... I must be losing my mind.

You know, I've always seen E1M8 as the Kobyashi Maru of Doom - the no-win scenario. It's not about surviving, it's how you deal with your inevitable death. Do you face it head on, trying to take out as many monsters with you as possible? Do you try in vain to find a way out? Do you stand silently, grimly accept your fate? Do you cheat and give yourself an invulnerability sphere, buying you a precious few extra seconds to contemplate your fate? It's a test of character. As Captain Kirk himself remarked, "How we deal with death is at least as important as how we deal with life."

Thanks for explaining this to me. I've omitted some important parts. Anyway, similar feeling is in EP 2. You have killed Cyberdemon. But have you really won? Take a look down. You see that you're trapped. You win the battle but there's still a long war before you.