Infighting Question

[Bubbabooie]

Hello all,

 

I'm used to playing GZDoom and it seems that the infighting behavior is different in Eternity. I first noticed it in Ribbiks's crumpets.wad, map07; there is a part where you press a switch and a revenant and two chaingunners ambush you. In GZDoom, the chaingunners only need to shoot the revenant once before it switches targets; he seems more focused on me in Eternity. The monsters also seem to only infight for a certain amount of time before re-targeting me. Am I crazy? Maybe I am missing something during gameplay but I swear this is different. I've been messing with the compatibility options but it doesn't seem to affect this behavior. If this is all in my head don't hesitate to tell me.

 

(I am really enjoying Eternity, btw. Looks and feels nice.)

 

Thanks.

[printz]

It's something inherited from MBF. There are two places to look in: the bigger compatibility menu, and the smaller monster menu. Look for "monsters don't give up pursuit" and set it on. And there's also "monsters remember target" which must be off.

 

I admit I don't know which is the culprit, I never worked on those features, they're ancient, added from the 90s.

[Maes]

Vanilla Doom has a timer (120 tics? 130 tics? Something like that) during which a recently activated/target-switched monster will focus exclusively on its target, no matter how badly it's punished by other monsters (the Archvile is the exception, and it doesn't even have to cancel its delayed attack, it's simpy instantly redirected!).

 

Now, that amount of time is something like 3.5 seconds. Depending on the circumstances (e.g. monsters just fumbling around for a while), that might seem like no time at all (and might expire before you know it, leading you to think that infighting works "right away") OR you might be getting your ass handed to you HARD and FAST and thus feel like an Eternity (pun intended), with no relief (in the form of a distracting infighting) in sight. It can be VERY subjective. :-)

[printz]

@Maes: What you're describing is standard Doom behaviour; the problem is that MBF changed it as a user option which is currently active by default (I'm still going to page @Altazimuth, he did say something about defaulting it back to vanilla behaviour, which still will only work for new Eternity installs...). Even worse, if your map or mod relies on friendly (allied) monsters, they will only work correctly if these options are active! 

Edited April 27, 2021 by printz

[Maes]

@printz: Yeah I'm aware of that, but sometimes even Doom's normal behavior can be misinterpreted like what the OP said, depending on the circumstances and other subjective factors. Try e.g. replaying the same ambush from a savegame, it will not progress the same way twice. Sometimes it might seem like a breeze, sometimes like a chore. Sometimes you'll blast 'em all before they know what hit them, and sometimes they do the same to you. Sometimes you're positioned just right so they can't find their bearings, and sometimes they seem to have been born ready for you.

 

As for MBF's friendly monsters....weren't those at the center of a noticeable slowdown bug with NUTS.WAD-like maps, ages ago?

Edited April 27, 2021 by Maes

[Bubbabooie]

@printz Ok, I got it. I had "Monsters remember target" already set to off. You mentioned "Monsters don't give up pursuit"; I found "Monsters give up pursuit", which had been set to No. Toggling that option over to Yes replicated GZDoom behavior. Thank you. (What are the defaults? Maybe I changed these options when I was screwing around on my initial install.)

 

@Maes I wondered if it was vanilla behavior carried over to the source port. (Edit: I was also suspicious that I was just wrong, as you said; it's hard to do everything the exact same way every time -- but especially now that I've changed the options I'm more sure GZDoom does initiate infighting more quickly. Although there's still doubt!) I cannot remember playing vanilla and I didn't understand infighting way back then either. (It's been an... Eternity.) But GZDoom does not seem to have that timer. The way you described it is how it was happening in Eternity. Thanks.

Edited April 27, 2021 by Bobson_Dugnutt

[printz]

1 hour ago, Bobson_Dugnutt said:

What are the defaults? Maybe I changed these options when I was screwing around on my initial install.

For awhile, the defaults were in the way you experienced, but I think @Altazimuth fixed them to be more like vanilla Doom and GZDoom (paging him to be sure). But this would only appear updated if you installed Eternity anew. Otherwise your old settings would carry over as you upgrade Eternity and still have the old defaults set if you didn't change them.

Edited April 27, 2021 by printz

[Altazimuth]

I tried at least. comp_pursuit still appears to default to 0, though.

[Bubbabooie]

Thanks for the help. Interesting functionality that I wasn't aware of before. Always neat to know more about infighting.