Things about Doom you still don't understand

[Edward850]

28 minutes ago, Lucius Wooding said:

You could also simply make a series of 1px wide linedefs with progressive offsets on each one and they'd have the same effect as scrolling right. Couldn't be simpler.

Only if you are using a port that doesn't have interpolation, otherwise you'll still see the subpixel offsets. Even the official port has that now.

[Mr. Cowboy Zombie]

7 hours ago, Lucius Wooding said:

You could also simply make a series of 1px wide linedefs with progressive offsets on each one and they'd have the same effect as scrolling right. Couldn't be simpler.

Simpler, xD

[Wagi]

On 9/12/2022 at 6:46 PM, Alex S. said:

Why does the word 'fuck' appear in HERETIC.EXE at 0x8A15C?

It also appears in Doom, a printf format string "fuck %d". It appears to be leftover debugging code for the automap. They have code that tests for a condition where an automap line's coordinates escape the boundaries of the screen, and it prints "fuck 0", "fuck 1", "fuck 2", etc. for each time that condition occurs. It obviously doesn't ever seem to happen in practice, of course.

[Scypek2]

21 hours ago, HERRGOTT said:

In Heretic there are left and right scroll.

 

On the walls, perhaps... but at the same time, the scrolling floors can only scroll the texture east in vanilla. I can see how one direction of scrolling may be easier to code than another - I don't know much about how rendering works, but I know wall textures are drawn line by line in a certain order, which could make a texture scrolling "upstream" a lot less elegant to implement than the opposite. John Carmack was known for liking to keep things simple, even if it created all sorts of limitations that the others had to pester him to get rid of. Without Hall's and Romero's insistence, we wouldn't have had pushable walls in wolf 3d, teleporters in Doom, or maybe even sectors inside sectors. I may be wrong about the specifics of the last one, so feel free to correct me, but I know that the view from the beginning of E1M2 used to create some sort of infinite loop until the renderer was reworked.

 

It's true that most linedef actions (and other rendering-unrelated stuff, like monster AI) was created by Romero, but since a scrolling texture is a visual effect, I imagine it might have been more fundamental.

[Maximum Matt]

I'd like to know why, when you're noclipping around a level, minding your own business, if you walk on a damaging floor, then go through a wall into the void on that same floor, you continue to take damage.  

[Kyka]

59 minutes ago, Maximum Matt said:

I'd like to know why, when you're noclipping around a level, minding your own business, if you walk on a damaging floor, then go through a wall into the void on that same floor, you continue to take damage.  

 

Because life is not fair.

 

Also because I believe that sectors continue indefinitely until cut off by something else, such as another sector. (Hardly a technical explanation, but I'm not a technical guy.)

[Edward850]

3 hours ago, Maximum Matt said:

I'd like to know why, when you're noclipping around a level, minding your own business, if you walk on a damaging floor, then go through a wall into the void on that same floor, you continue to take damage.  

 

2 hours ago, Kyka said:

so because I believe that sectors continue indefinitely until cut off by something else, such as another sector. (Hardly a technical explanation, but I'm not a technical guy.)

That's pretty close to the answer.

The misconception is in @Maximum Matt's own question, "void space". There is no void space in Doom, the BSP used to identify sector locations has no void condition as after all it's binary. The BSP lookup checks A and B which must contain either a sector or a branch to another A and B, and you keep going down each branch until you find your sector location.

 

So evidently when exploring "outside" the map, you are still doing these AB lookups to plant you in a sector nearest to you, and thus will still have sector effects and heights apply.

 

Incidentally Doom's software renderer is accidentally effective at showing you this visually, as the flats keep drawing until they reach the bottom of the screen with no seg to cut them, which usually lines up how the BSP places you as well from the node tree.

 

This is also the same problem as to why a lot of things like enemy targeting and explosions stop working if you only have one sector in the map, as BSP lookups no longer work. You need a minimum of two sectors to have a complete BSP.

Edited February 12, 2023 by Edward850

[Quasar]

3 hours ago, Edward850 said:

This is also the same problem as to why a lot of things like enemy targeting and explosions stop working if you only have one sector in the map, as BSP lookups no longer work. You need a minimum of two sectors to have a complete BSP.

Incorrect from a technical POV. Various versions of the game have had problems with this case but it was because they were doing it wrong, not because there isn't a way it can be handled properly.

[Ordon]

i still have no idea how the armor works

[philcul]

40 minutes ago, Ordon said:

i still have no idea how the armor works

 

Take a look at this! :)

 

 

 

[Ravick0]

I don't understand why id gave the supershotgun's pellets vertical spread without 'fixing' it in the original shotgun.

(Sorry for the bump, but I guess it wouldn't worth a new thread just for saying it.)

[ALilGrayBoi]

Despite being a doom mapper, I still have no idea how all that sector and linedef stuff works

 

Also I don’t understand how id though the pain elemental and lost souls were good enimies

[Scypek2]

The Lost Soul is pretty great in concept - you dodge it, then it can attack again from another direction! A hundred times more interesting than another boring fireball thrower. But in the end, it all comes down to balance... and while most Doom enemies are very good in that regard, Lost Souls always feel too damn bulky, given how well they can dodge and how tempting it is to place swarms of them.

 

In Deadliest Dem(o(li)ti)on, I decided to nerf them down to 1 hp and also double their delay before charging, so that they aren't going to slam into you immediately after hitting a nearby wall, and fighting them with melee weapons actually becomes a good idea. They're still pretty deadly with their fast movement and high damage, but disposing of them is no longer a problem as long as you're paying attention. That seems to have fixed pretty much 100% of their issues, and now fighting them (and Pain Elementals, another nicely unique enemy) is a joy.

[ObserverOfTime]

I still don't understand why Doom had proper, separate episodes you could select, only for that feature to completely disappear in Doom 2. It just feels different selecting a map halfway through the iwad from the proper menu compared to, say, idclev'ing to the urban maps in Doom 2.

 

I guess the episodic nature of Doom lent itself to the the shareware model quite well, like you want the rest of the episodes you gotta pay up. That's all fine and well. I like how the episodes are roughly organized by theme and style and follow a progression of sorts, still don't understand why this was disposed of during Doom 2's development. Also, I understand that Doom's episodes are not the most flexible thing in the world and that adding support for a 5th and 6th episode in a vanilla port is not straightforward from a mappers perspective, but still. The episodic concept was great, I don't understand why it didn't carry on.

[Li'l devil]

It baffles me that Doom is so much more popular than Blake Stone. Blake Stone is the superior game!

[The_MártonJános]

31 minutes ago, Li'l devil said:

It baffles me that Doom is so much more popular than Blake Stone. Blake Stone is the superior game!

Bold claim to make in this very place, friend.

[nathanB404]

Why did doom eternals story end on a dlc? 
 

 

 

what were they thinking!?!?!?

[TF_Doomer]

2 minutes ago, nathanB404 said:

Why did doom eternals story end on a dlc? 
 

 

 

what were they thinking!?!?!?

I agree with this one and I’m not paying for it (Not like I had to pay for eternal it came with my PS+ but still) both the dlc story packs together could have been it’s own game with a few tweaks here and there but as the joke goes DOOM eternal is a 60$ Soundtrack that comes with a free game.

[vanilla_d00m]

I don’t understand why I’m playing DOOM again.  I knew for shure I was done playing, must be a 90s nostalgia thing.

[JadedFanatic]

On 4/17/2024 at 6:18 AM, ObserverOfTime said:

I still don't understand why Doom had proper, separate episodes you could select, only for that feature to completely disappear in Doom 2. It just feels different selecting a map halfway through the iwad from the proper menu compared to, say, idclev'ing to the urban maps in Doom 2.

There are semi-episodes contained in the level order, though they're never properly marked. Entryway through to Circle of Death/O of Destruction! are Episode 1 (The Space Station), The Factory through to Gotcha! are Episode 2 (The City), and Nirvana through to the Icon of Sin are Episode 3 (Hell).

[vanilla_d00m]

Forgot to add this.  Why the BFG9000?  How about BFGTrillion??

 

I don’t know.  Imagine all those laser balls if it was called BFGTrillion!

[EraserheadBaby]

Binary Partitioning

How to change the music on my levels

scripting a multifunction switch

Exactly how to use the enemies effeciently

What people want to play in a level.  I feel I'm having trouble finding the fun. 

[Edward850]

5 hours ago, EraserheadBaby said:

Binary Partitioning

It's literally in the name; Binary. Geometry you want to render is sorted into a tree. If you want to find a particular piece of geometry, you start at the root of the tree and look at A and B. If the point matches A more, you search into A, otherwise go to B. Each point of the tree is the same AB test until you reach the end of a branch which contains only a piece of geometry with no branch, this becomes your result.

 

This is similar in concept to Binary Searching, in which a sorted list of entries by value is faster to search if you search it by halves by the value you have. You start half way, and if the value you want is less then what's there, you go to the left side and search halfway of that, and so on. (Assuming values are sorted small to large.)

 

5 hours ago, EraserheadBaby said:

How to change the music on my levels 

In its simplest form, simply stick in some music into your wad with the same lump name of the matching slot. https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Doom_II_music

E.g to replace the music for map01, you call it D_RUNNIN.

 

5 hours ago, EraserheadBaby said:

scripting a multifunction switch

Question has too many answers. Ask a more detailed question (including what port standard you're aiming to support) in the appropriate place.

Edited April 23 by Edward850

[Ravick0]

On 4/14/2024 at 2:25 AM, ALilGrayBoi said:

Also I don’t understand how id though the pain elemental and lost souls were good enimies

 

I find Lost Souls to be good enemies, but they are often used in swarms, what end up making they annoying.

I believe that, if used in low numbers as initial enemies, more or less just like the zombieman, when the player still have low amo, they make good foe. I've done it here for a first map of a community mod some friends and I are working on.
 

On 4/17/2024 at 2:18 AM, ObserverOfTime said:

I still don't understand why Doom had proper, separate episodes you could select, only for that feature to completely disappear in Doom 2. It just feels different selecting a map halfway through the iwad from the proper menu compared to, say, idclev'ing to the urban maps in Doom 2.

It got me for some time too, but I a friend recently said that id (he said John Carmack) find that many people didn't actually realize there was more Doom to play after the shareware episodie. So they make Doom2 that way to it to be obvious that the end was far way and there was more leves to beat.
 

On 4/17/2024 at 3:13 PM, Li'l devil said:

It baffles me that Doom is so much more popular than Blake Stone. Blake Stone is the superior game!

Hey, are there source posts for Blake Stone? O_õ

[Andromeda]

30 minutes ago, Ravick0 said:

Hey, are there source posts for Blake Stone? O_õ

Yep!

https://github.com/bibendovsky/bstone

 

I believe ECWolf also aims to support it in the (distant?) future.

[ALilGrayBoi]

6 hours ago, Ravick0 said:

but I a friend recently said that id (he said John Carmack) find that many people didn't actually realize there was more Doom to play after the shareware episodie.

I admit. The first time I beat knee deep in the dead I already started downloading doom 2 because I thought that was the end of the game. Then I realized there was more episodes 

[LegendaryEevee]

I would like to know why on my UV Max Run of DooM II's Map 6 The Crusher the spider demon did not end up getting crushed.  Before exiting I had to run back to kill it. 

    The crusher dropped enough to prevent her from attacking, but would not drop any lower to damage her This is the run! it's the first time I've seen the crusher not kill the spider demon not sure what went wrong. This could help make future runs faster thank you in advance.

[Edward850]

3 hours ago, LegendaryEevee said:

I would like to know why on my UV Max Run of DooM II's Map 6 The Crusher the spider demon did not end up getting crushed.

As you should surely know from previous times you have used the crusher, walking past the top of the stairs turns it off. That's exactly what you've done here.

[LegendaryEevee]

1 hour ago, Edward850 said:

As you should surely know from previous times you have used the crusher, walking past the top of the stairs turns it off. That's exactly what you've done here.

Actually you've got me on this one normally when I run this map I let the crusher take it out before I go for the plasma rifle I guess I never really pay much attention to it until I had to get all kills and rushed so to understand when you step on the platform under the crusher it stops where it is?  Great quirk to know going forward thank you will alter my route to take out everything else in the room and grab the key surely by then she would be dead and can grab the Plasma on the way out huge help thanks

Edited April 27 by LegendaryEevee

[Edward850]

Ye, the crusher is normally perpetual. It turns off and stays where it is the moment you cross into it. The importance of this also changes per skill level as the blue key is in different locations, one is in the crusher.

Edited April 29 by Edward850