Things about Doom you just found out

Sigvatr said:

Explosions infinite z height == bug

Not a feature?

It's more like yet another thing showing that Doom was a 2D game with 3D added as an afterthought, as far as the worldsim goes. Keep in mind that Id's previous games had been 2D platformers and the perfectly flat Wolfenstein 3-D. Same reason you're blocked by a Cacodemon flying far above you, or you can activate a switch buried underground.

Encryptic said:

Were you using a source port or playing in Chocolate Doom?

I was using SDL Doom, which is almost exactly the same as LinuxDoom (just uses SDL for display and sound), so has the vanilla limits... Chocolate Doom and doom2.exe may also crash with VPO in that room, if you look at it wrong. ;)

Alien Vendetta was meant to be vanilla-compatible, but I guess some bugs always lurk here and there. Heck, I even once got VPO with Chocolate Doom while playing njdoom2.wad MAP15, and that map design is from 1994 without very much detail...

Edit: here's where it happens exactly. Stand with your back against the highlighted (yellow) sidedef at the bottom of the screen, so that you can see down both hallways at the same time:
http://img101.imageshack.us/img101/7544/av21k.png
You might have to adjust the view by turning slighly left/right a few times or get in the exact right spot...

40oz said:

Demons cannot instigate infighting.

Sigvatr said:

They are also really bad at infighting.

lol

infdemon.zip

Megamur said:

And when I inevitably get sent one of those PM's, I'll tell you that they didn't have Doom Builder back then, and you have no excuse. :)

I'll send PM back saying I'm using Yadex, since that's the best option for me. ;)
(well it does have 3D preview, but you have to do x/y offset calculations by hand)

BTW, it seems like a lot of av.wad was made with DEU or derived editors. Pretty impressive what can be done with the old tools.

hex11 said:

Pretty impressive what can be done with the old tools.

Yeah but check out the build times on even mediocre SINGLE wads. Minute-long BSP build times also meant that you could only do so many tests/corrections before throwing the sponge.

Sigvatr said:

They [Demons] are also really bad at infighting.

For that matter, they are really bad at fighting in general due to their extremely delayed stop-and-attack pattern (compared to other monsters). A melee-only monster that sucks at melee, heh.

I see imps/knights/barons provoking demons all the time, with the demon uselessly chasing them, reaching them, and attacking, but with the other monster never stopping moving, and thus the demons bite nothing but solid air, while the other monster concentrates on you. It may take several attempts before the demons even manage to land an attention-diverting bite.

They even manage to miss full-frontal attacks, somehow, if the distance isn't just right, so they can't be really relied on to be efficient damage dealers in infighting. I've seen Demons being taken down by imps simply because they still managed to miss most attacks, while the imps clawed AND moved a bit every time.

I usually see Demons connect an attack when their target stops to shoot at me or at it. Also I've been pleasantly surprised when the demon gibs its target.

NiuHaka said:

... Also I've been pleasantly surprised when the demon gibs its target.

x2 - cool moment!

Man... I just found out that running in with a berserk punch doesn't do any more damage than waddling in like a little old lady with a berserk punch.

Maes said:

Yeah but check out the build times on even mediocre SINGLE wads. Minute-long BSP build times also meant that you could only do so many tests/corrections before throwing the sponge.

Well a lot might be due to the general inexperience of everyone at the time, and lack of easy access to information (some probably only had a shovelware CD with DEU and a bunch of wads, but no Internet access).

That said, build times don't seem so bad in some cases: subway21.wad (55+ hours), uac_dead.wad (4 weeks), sudtic.wad & teutic.wad (a few weeks, with pausing). And those were all DEU+BSP projects.

Long BSP and even doom.exe startup times explains a lot of the unaligned textures. Heck, id even had a special -wart parameter just so they could reload the map with IDCLEV instead of having to exit and restart... I wonder if anyone else used that though? These days it's not a big deal, SDL Doom gets me from the ksh prompt to a rendered player1 start area screen in less than one second (and this is on an old used/free laptop...)

Edit: actually, it takes about a second, if you count the time for the screen melt to complete.

Now that I know how demon attacks work, I occasionally forget they can actually harm you. As long as you aren't right up against them when that last frame of their bite animation kicks in, you're completely safe. I'll sometimes actually throw myself at them just to keep them from pushing me into a corner, then backing off before that bite frame shows up, then moving back in, which keeps them constantly biting air and largely unable to move.

Really, demons are deadliest simply as being meatwalls. Almost nothing halts your frantic escape from an ambush better than some stupid pinkydemon standing in front of the exit. They have just enough HP that nothing short of a perfectly on-target SSG blast will one-shot them, so if you're stuck with a shotgun or chaingun, getting them out of your way before the other, actually-threatening enemies rip you open is going to be a problem. There's also few things more frustrating than accidentally sidestepping into one of those blasted things when trying to evade projectiles from other enemies.

Berzerker pack or chainsaw is best way of dealing with pinky. It's quick and no ammo wastage.

NiuHaka said:

Waddling in like a little old lady with a berserk punch.

Sounds like somebody went to Catholic school and ran afoul of the nuns who decided a ruler across the knuckles wasn't enough.

Ah, those kinds of nuns. But they don't move like old ladies...
http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic431750_md.jpg
http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic438597_md.jpg

Nor does this one (NSFW).

No joke, I have seen zombiemen take out demons before.

Doom 64's sounds are from the PSX doom, which I thought these are from Doom 64 original. Does this mean there are different sounds for the Revenants, Archviles and Spider Masterminds?

Gotta check a video for hearing those.

Encryptic said:

Sounds like somebody went to Catholic school and ran afoul of the nuns who decided a ruler across the knuckles wasn't enough.

As much as I would love to say "Yes, it happened to me" I'll have to admit that it happened to 40oz instead.

40oz said:

... Unfortunately walking around like an old lady can do the same damage.

Wait, so not everyone punches every Demon to death even when you don't have Berserk or a Chainsaw (assuming of course you're not backed into a corner by 5+)?

As long as you're not in a teeny tiny area it's not hard to punch down even 4 Demons simultaneously without a scratch. I'm a hoarder so the ammo saving is great.

ultimatecarl said:

Wait, so not everyone punches every Demon to death even when you don't have Berserk or a Chainsaw (assuming of course you're not backed into a corner by 5+)?

As long as you're not in a teeny tiny area it's not hard to punch down even 4 Demons simultaneously without a scratch. I'm a hoarder so the ammo saving is great.

Psh! Are you kidding? I usually even ignore Berserk unless I'm feeling spunky. I can't be bothered to stick around punching stuff when I can shoot it instead. I wish I could shoot the light switches in my house instead of having to walk up to them to flick them.

I just found out about the elaborate story Tom Hall had originally intended for Doom. I already knew there was one, but I didn't know the details until some 20 minutes ago when I was browsing through the Doom wiki. It's interesting to think how different the game might have been, but it also sounds a bit like it would have been less mind-blowingly action packed.

Sigvatr said:

No joke, I have seen zombiemen take out demons before.

I once saw a shotgun guy take out a revenant, the revenant walked under a crushing ceiling first though. It was awesome

Sigvatr, didn't you say once an Imp took out a Cacodemon with FULL HEALTH?

C30N9 said:

Sigvatr, didn't you say once an Imp took out a Cacodemon with FULL HEALTH?

That's not very difficult. Cacodemons are relatively large as far as monsters go and an imp can hit them fairly easily with their projectiles. It works best when the cacodemon is flying around in an open space though and the imp has plenty of area to move around.

Grazza said:

lol

What exactly is causing that to happen?

C30N9 said:

Sigvatr, didn't you say once an Imp took out a Cacodemon with FULL HEALTH?

I actually saw a single UV-fast Cacodemon take out the Spider Mastermind on E3M8 before. Spider got itself "stuck" near the stairs trying to shoot at the Caco, while the Caco just barraged it with fireballs from above. Was awesome, wish I had been recording a demo because I tried to get it to happen again after that and never could.

NiuHaka said:

Psh! Are you kidding? I usually even ignore Berserk unless I'm feeling spunky. I can't be bothered to stick around punching stuff when I can shoot it instead. I wish I could shoot the light switches in my house instead of having to walk up to them to flick them.

Open up your house in Doom Builder and set all Switch linedefs to Gun activated.

PRIMEVAL said:

Open up your house in Doom Builder and set all Switch linedefs to Gun activated.

Oh, duh! I don't know why I didn't already think of that. Thanks.

Marcaek said:

What exactly is causing that to happen?

I recorded using -complevel 0, which tells Prboom-plus to emulate Doom version 1.2.

In this mode, recent versions of Prboom-plus emulate the 1.2 version of the Demon's attack (a short-range hitscan, I think), which can be misdirected, and therefore provoke infighting.

C30N9 said:

Sigvatr, didn't you say once an Imp took out a Cacodemon with FULL HEALTH?

Well how about three imps killing a cyberdemon? See this demo on this wad. I recall Eugene Kapustin arranged something similar with a few demons eating a cyberdemon.

my FDA for jodwin's brtslv11.wad has a single demon chewing through a cyberdemon. it's near the end of the demo in the penultimate fight. it's a little cheapened by the fact that it's boom compat and the demon froze the cyb over a ledge.