Crouching Tiger?!

[Chipper35]

Random question: In any game (system), the search for balance is a constant. When a player is crouching.......does that impact monsters' accuracy.....since the player is presenting a smaller silhouette?  If so, what/where in the code is that built in??

Edited November 9, 2019 by Chipper35

[Alper002]

Depends on the source port implementing the crouch, since crouching isn't part of vanilla.
Sadly I can't answer your question on how monster attacks behave with it, but you can try to see how it behaves on your own, I think.

[Master O]

Hidden Dragon?!

[Maximum Matt]

Chow Yun-Fat Doom.  Someone get on it

[Master O]

54 minutes ago, Maximum Matt said:

Chow Yun-Fat Doom.  Someone get on it

 

God of Gamblers Doom

 

*wonders how many people will get that reference...*

[Chow Yun Thin]

On a level surface, it seems enemies will aim slightly lower to hit you when you're crouching. If you're standing when an enemy throws a projectile, you can duck under it (tried it with Imp fireballs, Baron green stuff, even Cyberdemon rockets). I don't think I'd remember to do that in the thick of it, though.

[Gerardo194]

I remember that movie...

[Chipper35]

My exceedingly unscientific observations have revealed that, playing Ultimate Doom via GZDoom, monster accuracy seems SLIGHTLY worse when you crouch and the monster(s) is some decent distance away from you. It seems (compared to standing) that their accuracy is just about 5% worse........but again: I didn't do an extremely scientific analysis of this.

[Demon of the Well]

Other than hitscanners (which strike a "random" point within a given target field, relative to actor positions at the time of the attack), monsters in Doom have "perfect" aim, without fail -- they will always fire at exactly where you're standing (i.e. directly at your hitbox), and if you remain static, you'll be hit. There are certain fringe cases where they can miss as a result of being at certain elevation/distance differences relative to your position -- a recent consistent-ish 'real world' example of this I remember seeing is that if you remain stock-still at the start of m05 in Jaska's "Lost Civilization", the arachnatron who begins firing at you from the top of a roof much deeper in the map will see its shots just barely pass over the top of your head/hitbox -- but generally speaking projectile-firing monsters can be considered to always accurately target your position at the moment they fire, no matter the angle or distance (and irrespective of terrain or obstacles which might be in the way, provided they're considered by the engine to have line-of-sight). Interestingly, by and large this continued to be true of projectile-firing creatures in games which came out well after Doom itself did (i.e. into the Build and Quake eras), and even holds true for such creatures to a large (though not quite so absolute) degree even in present-day FPS games, whether they be 'retro' or 'modern' in style.

 

I don't know for sure, since crouching is an almost entirely superfluous and combat-irrelevant feature even in 99% of WADs for sourceports which allow it, but I'd readily surmise (i.e. I'd bet money) that crouching will not change the maxim of perfect creature aim as a general rule, especially as far as the possibility of having it cause shots to go slightly 'wild' is concerned -- this is almost certainly just your imagination, at least if we're talking about stock gameplay (and not a game with other mods also in effect). What I *could* see happening is that being in a crouch would presumably cause your hitbox (which the monsters aim perfectly at under normal conditions) to shift down slightly on the z-axis, which might slightly increase the rare vertical 'misfire' range mentioned above in some particular circumstances.(?) I'm not sure if all ports which allow crouching actually make this shift in calculation, but in my limited experience with crouching in Doom, (G)ZDoom at least seems to, at any rate (which, as other posters have said, can in some circumstances allow you to crouch-duck shots fired at you, provided they were fired pre-crouch).

 

(there are some asterisks here -- i.e. mancubi don't target all six shots in a volley at you, with three hardcoded to fly wide relative to your position at the moment of release; revenant tracker missiles obviously follow somewhat different/special rules, and of course hitscanners are a different ballgame, etc.)

Edited November 13, 2019 by Demon of the Well

[Cynical]

On 11/13/2019 at 2:38 AM, Demon of the Well said:

Interestingly, by and large this continued to be true of projectile-firing creatures in games which came out well after Doom itself did (i.e. into the Build and Quake eras), and even holds true for such creatures to a large (though not quite so absolute) degree even in present-day FPS games, whether they be 'retro' or 'modern' in style.

This really only holds in Id or 3D Realms games, or games that are trying to be like Id or 3D Realms games.  By the Quake era, enemies randomly leading the player was common -- Unreal is the earliest example of this I know of, but it was routine in the later '90s and early 00s.

[D.Vile]

On 11/9/2019 at 6:11 PM, Chipper35 said:

Random question: In any game (system), the search for balance is a constant. When a player is crouching.......does that impact monsters' accuracy.....since the player is presenting a smaller silhouette?  If so, what/where in the code is that built in??

 

This was definitively a problem in Monolith’s Blood. In that game crouching was completely busted. Enemy projectiles could never hit a player lying on the ground because the monsters’ aiming code didn’t take into account the player’s decreased hitbox size. In fact, the player’s crouching hitbox is literally so small and close to the ground that you can even use it to pass under a swarm of enemy zombies.