Something about Vanilla Doom you still don't quite get?

[Muusi]

With how long we've all playing Doom it's easy to assume we know the games like the backs of our hands but is there something you still don't quite understand?

 

I have something, and embarrassingly, it's something right away in Knee-Deep in the Dead. A mysterious door in Central Processing that's been the bane of my existence all these years and many times i've been stuck for minutes because of this one door.

 

THIS ONE! BOO!

 

After i've pushed the switch to the right on top of the stairs and i see this door open, i rush past enemies, HOPING i get through before it closes and i get stuck, again.

 

[OldDoomer]

I'm not privy 100% to the technicalities of Central Processing and I'm certain some will for sure correct me, but when you flip the switch at the top of the stair hallway this door is supposed to remain open. There is a lindef inside that area that when crossed closes the door; one of the myriad of traps on this level (Central Processing is a Romero level). My assumption is that you are potentially opening the door without the nukage area being cleared, then firing, which alerts enemies behind that door to move up and cross the linedef, closing the door. Central Processing on Ultra Violence actually has the most enemies out of any of the original Doom levels so it's very easy to create this circumstance of needing to fire in the nukage room after hitting the switch.

[msx2plus]

right on the money @OldDoomer - this line behind the door closes it and while the switch is set to "stay open", it's only an S1, so you can only use it once while the close trigger is repeatable.

 

[Major Arlene]

all of it

[Bucket]

I don't quite understand the logic behind the seemingly arbitrary sorting of game assets into WADs or the executable. Or why some things (level titles) have to be either a text string or a bitmap.

[Syn]

Vanilla's way of assigning code pointers to states is the bane of my existence. The one thing stopping me from using DeHackEd regularly.

[msx2plus]

24 minutes ago, Bucket said:

Or why some things (level titles) have to be either a text string or a bitmap.

this is the big one for me lol - i can only assume it's so you can have arbitrary styling on start/end screens but it strikes me as a waste. just store the alphabet a couple times and use it instead of storing so many bitmaps

[KeaganDunn]

The low visplane limit as of right now. I have yet to genuinely make a vanilla-compatible map.

[pcorf]

No more visplanes and the less common visplane overflow.

[The BMFG]

the fact (that for me at least) it is absolute to hell map in vanilla formats

[Syn]

44 minutes ago, The BMFG said:

the fact (that for me at least) it is absolute to hell map in vanilla formats

Agreed...going back from UDMF isn't easy.

[printz]

3 hours ago, msx2plus said:

right on the money @OldDoomer - this line behind the door closes it and while the switch is set to "stay open", it's only an S1, so you can only use it once while the close trigger is repeatable.

 

 

Wait, really? While I often found that door a bit dicey, I didn't know you can likely soft lock yourself!

[Spectre]

2 hours ago, Bucket said:

I don't quite understand the logic behind the seemingly arbitrary sorting of game assets into WADs or the executable.

This was done specifically to allow players to modify levels or create their own level packs.  When Wolfenstein 3D took off, people were editing the base file, making it very hard to un-mod their games when they wanted to play vanilla.  Id specifically separated the level stuff into WAD files to allow players to edit, create, or replace level stuff without effecting the actual base game, so they could always "un-mod" it.  There's a good section about it in the book Masters of Doom.

[Wavy]

My custom title.

[Edward850]

2 hours ago, Dunn (& Dunn) said:

The low visplane limit as of right now. I have yet to genuinely make a vanilla-compatible map.

Because it was 1993 and making a high frequency array dynamically reallocable would have eaten performance for the various pointer redirects it would had to have done, which is a problem when you are trying to make the renderer run at 35 FPS and are already struggling to hit that all the time on some systems. Better to make it static and only give it as much as your own levels needed due to equally limited RAM (they were targeting even 2MB as the minimum spec at the time).

Edited August 15, 2021 by Edward850

[Vaeros]

Sandy Petersen's maps.

[Optimus]

1 hour ago, printz said:

Wait, really? While I often found that door a bit dicey, I didn't know you can likely soft lock yourself!

 

While it never happens to me while playing this map, I have vague memories from my childhood that sometimes I would be too late and this door would close (but open later after). The OP reminded me of that, maybe this is something fixed in GZDoom (it does fix (manually?) a lot of other mistakes in the original IWADs from what I found out) so I never encounter it, but I remember myself shooting a rocket or two there to clean and then rush! Because of memories of the door closing and not being able to open it. I think though, it might be that the monsters can also trigger that line.

[Edward850]

1 hour ago, printz said:

Wait, really? While I often found that door a bit dicey, I didn't know you can likely soft lock yourself!

It reopens in 30 seconds, otherwise it would automatically break co-op and deathmatch.

Edited August 15, 2021 by Edward850

[The Almighty Egg]

THE HIT DETECTION

[Optimus]

2 hours ago, pcorf said:

No more visplanes and the less common visplane overflow.

 

I was puzzled not by the visplane limitations, but why the visplane error would crash and not just stop rendering visplanes, so at least they could handle it to stop render but not crash unexpectedly, as it's not hard to just say stop rendering visplanes if you are over the limit. Crashing to DOS is much worse than some rendering bugs in the distance. In the OptiDoom 3DO code I just made it to simply stop rendering any more visplanes if it reached the limit (which doesn't happen in the original maps but only on the additional loaded maps).

 

[Doomkid]

The way walls wiggle around if they’re really long has always perplexed me..

[Cammy]

The switch pillar puzzle in E3M4. Every single time I play that map, I hammer those things indiscriminately until stuff opens up the way I want. If we're being honest, the fact that that has worked for me every time means it's hard to even call that a "puzzle". Zero brain cells required.

[Shepardus]

Why enemies never want to attack me when I'm trying to get them to infight.

[Doomkid]

I’m pretty sure you just press the switches that face you as you enter the room, and the ones on the left side of each pillar, Cammy. That’s what I do anyway!

[Edward850]

17 minutes ago, Optimus said:

 

I was puzzled not by the visplane limitations, but why the visplane error would crash and not just stop rendering visplanes, so at least they could handle it to stop render but not crash unexpectedly, as it's not hard to just say stop rendering visplanes if you are over the limit. Crashing to DOS is much worse than some rendering bugs in the distance. In the OptiDoom 3DO code I just made it to simply stop rendering any more visplanes if it reached the limit (which doesn't happen in the original maps but only on the additional loaded maps).

 

Most logical guess is they chose a visplane limit to keep performance margins to (64 at the time) and so it would crash deliberately for their own purposes just to make sure their maps were kept within the margins.

[Cammy]

3 minutes ago, Doomkid said:

I’m pretty sure you just press the switches that face you as you enter the room, and the ones on the left side of each pillar, Cammy. That’s what I do anyway!

 

Sorry but this is still not the best solution - just checked Doomwiki and the most viable strategy is closer to mine

 

Spoiler

 

[Syn]

The best line of text I've read on any website right there. Adapting that into my vocabulary

Edited August 15, 2021 by SynDoom

[Optimus]

That's what I always do with these switches, that's true :)

[Marisa the Magician]

'O' of Destruction / Circle of Death

[Gez]

Why PNAMES exists.

 

They could have used the patch names directly in the TEXTUREx lumps and it would have made things so much simpler.