Things you used to believe before source code was released & studied

[resle]

So, this other thread really took me back to 1993, and I started recalling a few of the things I used to think about Doom back when its dynamics were still hidden within an inscrutable exe file.

 

For instance, I thought distance influenced damage, so a close range fireball or firearm blast would be deadlier. (That's true for the shotgun, but back then I had no idea it had a spread and multiple pellets were fired).

 

I thought the two barons at the end of E1 were stronger, sturdier than the others encountered in later episodes.

I thought there had to be a way to survive the exit of E1M8, I just hadn't found it yet.

Armor dynamics in general were just a complete mystery.

 

Finally, I somehow even got in my head that darkness made it harder for demons to hit you..

[RjY]

I thought there was more to missile damage than a simple multiplication factor. Imps did fire damage, barons did acid/slime damage, etc. Some time messing with Dehacked quickly dispelled that notion.

Nonetheless my mind seemed determined to believe there was a common principle governing damage numbers, convincing itself that "missile damage" was "equivalent number of bullets" (e.g. being struck by an imp fireball was like being shot three times by troopers). This notion was finally dispelled when I discovered the source code, which showed the calculation of bullet and missile damage was independent and had unrelated random distributions.

However, in spite of this clear desire to believe everything was unified somehow, I missed the link between player health and monster hit points, thinking they were two unrelated concepts. They are of course exactly the same: the player has 100 hit points and a trooper is effectively a player with 20% health. Happily I was able to sort this one out before seeing the source code: one day, having a saved game open in a hex editor, I set the line width to the magic value that made the thing table swim into focus, the player and monsters' health all in one neat column.

[ax34]

I thought running punch is stronger than standing one.

[Jayextee]

I thought forward velocity increased attack damage in general; my "evidence" being that SSG shots seemed to hit harder when I ran toward an enemy before firing. In reality, I was just closer and more of the hitscan spread hit.

That's about it, my perception of DOOM's workings was otherwise very grounded.

[Gez]

Back then I used to think the BFG damaged all enemies on the screen.

[DoomGater]

I did not think that there could be a better doom.exe than doom2.exe.

 

[out_of_service]

I used to believe that the SSG swingshot was an actual technique that could do extra damage.

[DoomGater]

29 minutes ago, Gez said:

Back then I used to think the BFG damaged all enemies on the screen.

Well...depends on your screen...:-)

[TheOrganGrinder]

For some reason I had it in my head that 1) arch-viles couldn't revive gibbed enemies, only those that left non-gibbed "intact" corpses, and 2) arch-viles revived enemies at one-half their standard health.

[Gregor]

1 hour ago, TheOrganGrinder said:

For some reason I had it in my head that  2) arch-viles revived enemies at one-half their standard health.

That one would be pretty nice actually.

[kwc]

I was 3 in 1993,
I thought that the developers or other players were playing remotely as the demons.

 

I don't think I would have needed the source code to tell me I was wrong though :P

[resle]

6 hours ago, Gez said:

Back then I used to think the BFG damaged all enemies on the screen.

 

Ah, this of course. 

And I chalked up demons not dying to the game being buggy.

 

 

Quote

For some reason I had it in my head that  2) arch-viles revived enemies at one-half their standard health.

 

And this too.

Conditioned by D&D rules on resurrection.

[Blzut3]

Biggest one for me is thinking that the Cyberdemon rocket was more powerful than the player rocket since they never seemed as effective in death match.  Obviously just confirmation bias now.

 

Also used to think the partial invisibility powerup did nothing in single player and that armor didn't actually do anything.  No idea how the effects weren't obvious to me (I was too young to read at the time so the manual wasn't going to be of help).

[resle]

I just realized that, still today - although I know for a fact that this is not how the code works - I "feel" enemy fire deals less damage if it just barely catches you instead of hitting your hitbox full frontal.

 

This is the one I still can't get out of my head after.. urgh... 30 years.

[Doomkid]

I used to think Arch-Viles "donated" a small bit of their health every time they revived an enemy, thus weakening them. After a while I of course realized this was BS.

 

Also wasn't exactly sure how the armor worked, and definitely had no clue blue was different from green other than the number. I always assumed it must do something, but I didn't know exactly what until embarrassingly late in my Dooming career.

 

On 4/10/2022 at 8:12 AM, kwc said:

I was 3 in 1993,
I thought that the developers or other players were playing remotely as the demons.

 

I don't think I would have needed the source code to tell me I was wrong though :P

LOL. Reminds me of how I used to think the pre-placed marine corpses and piles of gibs in E1 were enemies my dad and brother had already killed earlier...

[Alex S.]

13 minutes ago, Doomkid said:

I didn't know exactly what until embarrassingly late in my Dooming career.

Same. Decino is a proper lad though. He's got us covered.

[xX_Lol6_Xx]

I thought Doom was 2D

[Dexiaz]

On 4/10/2022 at 3:12 AM, kwc said:

I was 3 in 1993,
I thought that the developers or other players were playing remotely as the demons.

 

I don't think I would have needed the source code to tell me I was wrong though :P

 

LoL, it needs to be included in Doom Iceberg as "Master of Puppets mod existed since the initial game release" ;)

 

 

What about me, as kid I thought doomguy can't jump due to high gravity... and I thought (while looking at skybox) that everything happened on Earth (like, it was only a start of demonic presence here)

Edited April 17, 2022 by Dexiaz

[Faceman2000]

14 hours ago, resle said:

I just realized that, still today - although I know for a fact that this is not how the code works - I "feel" enemy fire deals less damage if it just barely catches you instead of hitting your hitbox full frontal.

 

This is the one I still can't get out of my head after.. urgh... 30 years.

Oh shoot, I didn’t even realize I believed this till you said it, but I definitely internalized that at some point. Geez. 

[resle]

One more:

 

I thought the Cyberdemon would squish you to insta-death if you came in contact with it.

 

Now, the thing is - I have clear memories of some console message saying "resle was squished by a cyberdemon", but also someone on a youtube playthrough or something saying "ah, damn I got the hoof" after coming too close to a cyberdemon and being instantly killed, with no rocket blast in sight. Have I been dreaming?

[Alex S.]

When I was young, I believed the monster placements were randomized each time a map loads.

[xX_Lol6_Xx]

43 minutes ago, Alex S. said:

When I was young, I believed the monster placements were randomized each time a map loads.

That would have been cool, now that I think about it...

[xX_Lol6_Xx]

1 hour ago, resle said:

I thought the Cyberdemon would squish you to insta-death if you came in contact with it.

Something similar can happen in the SNES port of the game, in that version the Cyberdemon actually has a melee attack that of course only triggers when in melee range.

[Alex S.]

47 minutes ago, Lol 6 said:

That would have been cool, now that I think about it...

Yea it really would be. It would ruin speedrunners though so I'm glad I was wrong.

[Faceman2000]

2 hours ago, resle said:

One more:

 

I thought the Cyberdemon would squish you to insta-death if you came in contact with it.

 

Now, the thing is - I have clear memories of some console message saying "resle was squished by a cyberdemon", but also someone on a youtube playthrough or something saying "ah, damn I got the hoof" after coming too close to a cyberdemon and being instantly killed, with no rocket blast in sight. Have I been dreaming?

Brutal Doom had this, might you be thinking of that?

[Chezza]

Not quite a Doom mechanic but...

 

As a child I got my games mixed and thought there was a secret Wolfenstein level that had a dead pinky demon on a operating table as if the Nazis were delving into Hellish demons, and the two universes were directly connected. It was my imagination. 

 

Also I've heard somewhere people once thought Demons would try dodge or run away depending on what weapon you were using. But it's just randomisation.

Edited April 19, 2022 by Chezza

[resle]

42 minutes ago, Faceman2000 said:

Brutal Doom had this, might you be thinking of that?

 

I personally wouldn't touch Brutal Doom with a stick which I am handling by using two more sticks, but you might be right for the youtube video side of that memory. It might have been part of a BD playthrough... hmmmm......

[Sneezy McGlassFace]

A whole bunch of things!

• Arch viles can't revive gibs,
• Arch viles can only revive a few monsters before running out of "mana" or something
• cybers can stomp me if I get close,
• cybers are immune to bullets and shells,
• the only difference between blue and green armour is %,
• if I collect enough health/armour bonuses I get a free megasphere,
• IDDQD gives a ton of invisible health points but I can still totally run out and die
• berserker only lasts as long as the red screen effect
• Everybody's Doom has different maps in it (cousin had some custom map pack)

[Kinsie]

On 4/10/2022 at 3:29 AM, ax34 said:

I thought running punch is stronger than standing one.

Ahh, the Marathon rule.

[Wavy]

Not many, but here you go:

• Doom 64's special map functions (like the crusher in MAP02) were hardcoded per-map and couldn't be changed. Turns out custom "macro" lumps are used for each map.
• Berserks only lasted until the screen faded from red.
• RNG values were truly random (i.e not using a big predetermined RNG table).

Edited April 19, 2022 by Wavy