What's something about Doom that you absolutely hate?

[Gez]

21 minutes ago, Arrowhead12 said:

Just remembered two more small things:

 

I dislike that there are no symbols anywhere on the HUD to indicate that I have either Berserk, or a Backpack.

For the backpack, your max ammo indicator on the HUD should hint you.

 

Berserk, yeah. GZDoom has that on its alternative hud where the health icon (normally a medikit) becomes replaced with a berserk pack.

[Arrowhead]

6 minutes ago, Gez said:

For the backpack, your max ammo indicator on the HUD should hint you.

True enough, but I find that that area of the HUD becomes 'part of the background' after a while. I hardly ever notice the adjusted ammo counts during gameplay, but your point still stands of course. Still wish there was some kind of clearer indication.

 

I'll have to give the alternate HUD a try!

Edited November 23, 2019 by Arrowhead12
spelling

[Nine Inch Heels]

The one thing I hate in classic doom is what I call "the fucking safety pin", which is in effect when you switch from say the SSG to rocket launcher or BFG. The game just doesn't let you hold down fire and the shots go off, no, you have let go of fire, and then press it again before something happens. That shit made me develop the habit that is "rapid spam clicking" whenever I switch to RL or BFG in order to get the weapons to fire as soon as possible when I swap weapons mid-combat, and I honestly wish that was a habit I didn't feel "encouraged" to develop, but there it is, and I hate it, I really do.

[Loud Silence]

"Quit Game" option in menu.

[The_SloVinator]

2 hours ago, Spectre01 said:

Absolutely hate? Not much, otherwise I wouldn't be playing the damn game and doing something else. Dislike? Most of the vanilla engine bugs and quirks that affect playability. I would be a long list to mention all of them, so I'll add melee hitboxes and blockmap to what @The_SloVinator already mentioned. I get that it's an old-ass game, but can't id at least update the engine to fix some of the shit in the many re-releases they are throwing out?

Those two things as well. Forgot about those.

[Doomkid]

1 hour ago, Nine Inch Heels said:

The one thing I hate in classic doom is what I call "the fucking safety pin", which is in effect when you switch from say the SSG to rocket launcher or BFG. The game just doesn't let you hold down fire and the shots go off, no, you have let go of fire, and then press it again before something happens. That shit made me develop the habit that is "rapid spam clicking" whenever I switch to RL or BFG in order to get the weapons to fire as soon as possible when I swap weapons mid-combat, and I honestly wish that was a habit I didn't feel "encouraged" to develop, but there it is, and I hate it, I really do.

Oh man, fuck this garbage! Applies in DM as well especially on BFG heavy maps - gotta spam the hell out of that fire button as soon as you walk over it!

[Graf Zahl]

2 hours ago, seed said:

 

I am more inclined to see this as a feature rather than a workaround or limtation of the engine (considering the Raven games never had it anyway). Certain enemies from Doom, notably the Cacodemons, become basically useless in many scenarios without infinite height.

 

You may see it as you like, but the real reason for this design decision is that the movement code is a 2D algorithm with a poorly added z-axis. This causes several problems with movement and the easiest way to avoid them was to disallow vertically overlapping actors. Sometimes I wonder what might be possible if there was the option to play Doom with proper movement/collision checking code. I'm sure that there's maps that would break, but I'm also sure that there's maps where this will magically improve handling quite a bit. Raven got around the problem, but it required adding a special flag so that non-moving actors like decorations are not subjected to it, as it can cause quite a bit of havoc.

 

Also for trivia's sake: In Heretic the floating enemies are not allowed to overlap either, and ZDoom interestingly provides a flag for this, but never applied it to the Cacodemon or Pain Elemental. But if this is such a bothersome aspect, nobody's preventing you from autoloading a small mod that fixes it.

[Boomslang]

When doom mods with awesome guns and weapons have anti-brutal doom features

i tried to combine brutal doom with  DoomRL_arsenal because i loved the weapons, and the gameplay changes, and i get this every time i combine them both and it makes me really fucking pissed. 

[Linguica]

Responding without reading the thread:

• That the game was designed for 320x200 at 35hz, not 320x240 at 30hz
• The half assed PWAD loading routines that made custom sprites impossible without resorting to trickery and only worked for flats by accident if you constructed your PWAD right
• Liberal usage of I_Error() in places where it wasn't necessary, resulting in potential tricks being shut down because the engine will intentionally quit if you try to exploit them, and/or being annoying in general (the engine stops drawing segs after 256; it could have just stopped drawing visplanes after 128. It doesn't HAVE to quit with an visplane overflow error message.)
• Infinitely tall things, of course
• Elastic collisions are completely pointless and annoying (they only happen because Carmack unknowingly ADDED THEM IN in an attempt to debug the collision code)
• Visplane matching routine starts from the wrong end of the list, resulting in constantly suboptimal visplane counts and more overflows than necessary
• The Doom Source License

[Gez]

31 minutes ago, Boomslang said:

When doom mods with awesome guns and weapons have anti-brutal doom features

These things are motivated by the fact the mods are not compatible, but the problems are not necessarily immediately obvious. Putting some jokey problem like this serves two functions: the first is make it obvious the mods aren't compatible, the second is telling people not to complain to the mod author.

[seed]

18 minutes ago, Linguica said:

 

• The Doom Source License

 

Can you elaborate on this?

[Linguica]

14 minutes ago, seed said:

Can you elaborate on this?

 

The Doom source code was originally released under the "Doom Source License" which was a random made-up license id threw together. It restricted people to "educational use" and forbade commercial exploitation. The worst part, however, was that it wasn't a proper "copyleft" license that required people to release the source code for any new ports they made. This most famously backfired in the case of "glDoom" which was the first high profile attempt to port Doom to an OpenGL hardware renderer. It worked, and worked well, but as it was under the Doom Source License, the author chose to keep the source code to himself while he worked on it. Then, of course, he lost all the data and the port died immediately. I think John Carmack was somewhat embarrassed by this, and within a year he was convinced to re-license Doom under the GPL to prevent such a thing from happening again.

[TheNoob_Gamer]

24 minutes ago, seed said:

 

Can you elaborate on this?

Well,

Quote

This licence permitted use the source code for educational purposes only. It explicitly forbid selling the source code or using it for commercial gain as well as distributing the source code.

 

[ETTiNGRiNDER]

3 hours ago, Graf Zahl said:

Also for trivia's sake: In Heretic the floating enemies are not allowed to overlap either

And it's a workaround for some sort of bug that I guess comes from allowing monsters to fly over things still having some issues.  They checked against regular Gargoyles and Disciples of D'Sparil but forgot to include the Fire Gargoyles in the check, and in vanilla those can get stuck to other monsters in some situations.  Seems like when they get up against walls together for the most part but I'm not entirely sure.

 

I guess in Hexen they got the 3D movement code ironed out a bit better.

 

3 minutes ago, Linguica said:

I think John Carmack was somewhat embarrassed by this, and within a year he was convinced to re-license Doom under the GPL to prevent such a thing from happening again.

Somewhat of a tangent but it reminds me of something that's been bugging me, what exactly is the status of the Wolfenstein 3-D code these days?  It was released under a similar sort of thing initially but I don't think I've ever seen a re-release of the DOS code under GPL.  But there are some ports of it under GPL so I guess they got special permission for that?  Or what?

[CBM]

16 minutes ago, Linguica said:

 

The Doom source code was originally released under the "Doom Source License" which was a random made-up license id threw together. It restricted people to "educational use" and forbade commercial exploitation. The worst part, however, was that it wasn't a proper "copyleft" license that required people to release the source code for any new ports they made. This most famously backfired in the case of "glDoom" which was the first high profile attempt to port Doom to an OpenGL hardware renderer. It worked, and worked well, but as it was under the Doom Source License, the author chose to keep the source code to himself while he worked on it. Then, of course, he lost all the data and the port died immediately. I think John Carmack was somewhat embarrassed by this, and within a year he was convinced to re-license Doom under the GPL to prevent such a thing from happening again.

I remember glDoom, these days my go to engine is GZDoom

[Malurek]

I still think freelook in vanilla DOOM .WADS takes away from gameplay.  In modern times with modern mods, like the Brutal DOOMS, Beautiful DOOM, PB etc, it works because it is modded to function in a way to act like a modern first person shooter.  Using freelook with Vanilla versions, and no mods, it's actually very, very clunky.

 

It's a lot easier to use modern mods with freelook and no crosshair, then it is to play unmodded DOOM with freelook and no crosshair.  Could just be a ME thing though.

[Mr. Freeze]

no create-a-wrestler 

 

Seriously though, I'm having trouble finding something I outright hate. Doom to me is a perfect game. 

[Dubbag]

Pain Elementals! And the fact that Satan isn't in the game. Icon of Sin is NOT Satan people LOL.

Edited November 23, 2019 by Dubbagdarrel

[Poncho1]

Hit detection. More often than not it works, but there are always those moments when your shots should hit but don't. So annoying.

[[Vitz!]]

9 hours ago, Graf Zahl said:

Infinite height would also rank high on the list. It was lust a lame workaround for the buggy movement code Doom got.

Workaround? Wasn't the infinite height something they did to save space/due to hardware limitations? I remember hearing about that somewhere... Though I don't see this impacting in the size of the program that much...

[Liberation]

Although it's probably a bit petty, the lack of an episode selection menu in D2 like in UD is something that has bothered me over the years.

 

Also the original way of adding new content with Deusf and the other programs was a faff, but that point is kind of moot in this day and age.

 

So not a lot really. 

[kaleb.]

how lost souls take 2 shotgun shots. it should really only take 1

[seed]

42 minutes ago, Poncho1 said:

Hit detection. More often than not it works, but there are always those moments when your shots should hit but don't. So annoying.

 

*Blockmap bug intensifies*

[Gerardo194]

No idea...

[Gez]

46 minutes ago, [Vitz!] said:

Workaround? Wasn't the infinite height something they did to save space/due to hardware limitations? I remember hearing about that somewhere... Though I don't see this impacting in the size of the program that much...

Nah, they could have done it properly and it wouldn't have been in any way more computation-intensive.

 

They decided to split movement in two different steps, one done horizontally, another done vertically, with P_XYMovement() and P_ZMovement(). They're separate mostly because it grew out of Wolfenstein 3D which didn't have vertical movement.

[Cursed Lemon]

Getting shot by former humans before the fucking door even opens halfway

[HorrorMovieRei]

Things such as how beefy lost souls are and imps sometimes surviving a point blank shotgun are annoying, but not enough where I'd consider it warranting "hatred". Things I actually hate are infinitely tall actors, and the DISGUSTING stray pixel on the SSG which can both be fixed with mods/sourceports, which of course, are both things already mentioned. However, one thing I would also say I "hate" is the invulnerability filter. Picking up the ol green orb and having my eyes suddenly assaulted by pure, blinding white everything is not fun. Even less so when it starts running out and the blinking makes me feel like I'm about to go into a seizure. Maybe my eyes are just sensitive, or maybe I spoiled them too much with "dark themes" on websites, all I know is that picking up a god sphere is always a bittersweet feeling because of the garish filter.

[Gaia74]

the cyberdemon goes from being a powerful boss to a recurring enemy after

[Swalzi]

It's been mention already. I don't hate it with the burning revenge of a dragon, who lived aeons and was scarred by a repulsive human 36 years ago. I just dislike it.

The safety pin for the rocket launcher and BFG.

That pin has killed me more times than save me from accidentally killing myself or waste ammo. Constantly clicking the button when switching to the rocket launcher is lame because there's downtime when switching weapons. if I'm ever to release a Zdoom wad, I'll remove those safety pins.

[Graf Zahl]

2 hours ago, [Vitz!] said:

Workaround? Wasn't the infinite height something they did to save space/due to hardware limitations? I remember hearing about that somewhere... Though I don't see this impacting in the size of the program that much...

 

No, it was really just a lame attempt to prevent more serious problems. In particular this one:

 

4 hours ago, ETTiNGRiNDER said:

And it's a workaround for some sort of bug that I guess comes from allowing monsters to fly over things still having some issues.  They checked against regular Gargoyles and Disciples of D'Sparil but forgot to include the Fire Gargoyles in the check, and in vanilla those can get stuck to other monsters in some situations.  Seems like when they get up against walls together for the most part but I'm not entirely sure.

 

 

In the end the sad conclusion is that Doom's movement code is quite broken. The shortcuts it takes are basically the only thing that prevents me from adding movable sectors à la Build to GZDoom - but with the current movement code that won't really work and show all sorts of serious issues.

 

Regarding lame attempts, one of the more idiotic things id did was to un-count the Lost Soul as a monster, but ended up doing it in a way that cost more time to implement and test than to actually fix the monster counter!