Things about Doom you just found out

[GreyGhost]

Don't use multi-patch mid textures in a vanilla map - I'm writing that on the blackboard 100 times.

@Cell - ZDoom fixes that as well.

[Guest]

That's funny, coz I learned that just in the last couple of weeks too.

[hex11]

How can you easily tell if a texture is multi-patch? My editor (Yadex) doesn't annotate them any differently than other textures.

Is there a way to tell just by looking at the texture? I'm guessing all the SW* (switch) textures are multi-patch, but so is COMPBLUE apparently, and probably others?

[GreyGhost]

Slade and XWE are the weapons of choice. If all else fails - you can use DeuTex to extract texture lumps as formatted text files.

[_bruce_]

Sergeant_Mark_IV said:

Found this one last night. Despite the fact that all Doom maps have a totally abstract and unrelated names for it's levels that have nothing to do with their design, Doom 2 Map 19 is the only map that can with a name that fits with the level with a realistic accuracy. I never had opened this map in Doom Builder before, but now I could notice how it has a perfect medieval castle design. First you need to enter the gatehouse, and open the main gate, then it has a bridge to cross the water pit around the building, in the main gate, the two frontal guard towers, the four main guard towers on each corner, it even has an internal courtyard, maybe used for parties, important events, or something like that. Looking at this makes wish that more maps in Doom 2 could be more related to their names. This one just became one of my favorites.



This also makes me wonder, why the fuck they put a castle in the city levels? This map should have been placed in the slots of Map22, or Map24.

One of my favs regarding visuals is the room with the 5 teleporting pads.
Secrets/paths are also very nice in this map

[Vermil]

Sergeant_Mark_IV said:

Found this one last night. Despite the fact that all Doom maps have a totally abstract and unrelated names for it's levels that have nothing to do with their design, Doom 2 Map 19 is the only map that can with a name that fits with the level with a realistic accuracy.

Depends on what you are looking for. I mean Map24 is called 'Chasm' and features a pretty big one.

[Mr. T]

Or Entryway, or Underhalls, or The Crusher, or The Spirit World, Barrels o Fun, Refueling Base, O of Destruction, the list goes on...

[RjY]

hex11 said:

How can you easily tell if a texture is multi-patch? My editor (Yadex) doesn't annotate them any differently than other textures.

Edit: I mean, the place where it says "Medusa"

Edit2: on further investigation it seems you need the 1.8 alpha version (1.7.901)

[elic]

GreyGhost said:

Don't use multi-patch mid textures in a vanilla map - I'm writing that on the blackboard 100 times.

I don't think the Medusa effect is caused solely by multi-patch textures. I'm pretty sure it only happens if any visible portion of the mid texture contains two patches which share at least one column of pixels. For example, some those big sets of animated textures in TNT both have multiple patches and parts reserved for mid texture use.

[Tarnsman]

I just found the Backpack on Map 03 in Doom II for the first time less than a week ago. I still can't believe I missed something like that in a game I've been playing for about sixteen years.

[hex11]

RjY said:

Edit2: on further investigation it seems you need the 1.8 alpha version (1.7.901)

First time I heard of a version newer than 1.7.0... Is that a "stable" alpha? So far Yadex only crashed on me when I tried to merge more than two sectors together at once (Misc->Delete linedefs and join sectors).

[_bruce_]

Tarnsman said:

I just found the Backpack on Map 03 in Doom II for the first time less than a week ago. I still can't believe I missed something like that in a game I've been playing for about sixteen years.

Such are the coolest moments.

[Optimus]

Tarnsman said:

I just found the Backpack on Map 03 in Doom II for the first time less than a week ago. I still can't believe I missed something like that in a game I've been playing for about sixteen years.

Where was that? I just opened Map03 with Doom Builder and there was no backpack. Though, I remember years ago there was a little secret room that I can't find anymore and maybe depends on the version of my IWAD? It was on the water area with the pit, in the wall to the corner from the side of the entrance to the big area.

[Tarnsman]

Optimus said:

Where was that? I just opened Map03 with Doom Builder and there was no backpack. Though, I remember years ago there was a little secret room that I can't find anymore and maybe depends on the version of my IWAD? It was on the water area with the pit, in the wall to the corner from the side of the entrance to the big area.

Spoiler

It's in a little hidden room you can teleport into after you lift up the bridge to teleport to the last bit of the level. The teleporter to it is in the back of the room that opens up when you grab the blue armor at the beginning of the level.

[Guest]

Optimus said:

Where was that? I just opened Map03 with Doom Builder and there was no backpack. Though, I remember years ago there was a little secret room that I can't find anymore and maybe depends on the version of my IWAD? It was on the water area with the pit, in the wall to the corner from the side of the entrance to the big area.

Yeah it does depend on the version of the iwad you have. Earlier versions don't have that backpack secret.

[Xaser]

Processingcontrol said:

I don't think the Medusa effect is caused solely by multi-patch textures. I'm pretty sure it only happens if any visible portion of the mid texture contains two patches which share at least one column of pixels.

This is correct. Horizontal-only tiling of patches (provided there is no overlap) is allowed for midtextures.

Sergeant_Mark_IV said:

This also makes me wonder, why the fuck they put a castle in the city levels? This map should have been placed in the slots of Map22, or Map24.

MAP14 and MAP26 have always been a great mystery, for this very reason. They very clearly seem as if they should belong in each others' slots, except for difficulty (probably a justification as to why they are where they are to begin with ;)

[_bruce_]

Depending on sector lightlevel the floors/ceilings jitter and move when a dynamic light, local to a sector, does its job -> floors/ceilings getting ordered around by the engine to show themselves via fitting visplanes.

[Maes]

_bruce_ said:

Depending on sector lightlevel the floors/ceilings jitter and move when a dynamic light, local to a sector, does its job -> floors/ceilings getting ordered around by the engine to show themselves via fitting visplanes.

Actually that's a bug I noticed with Mocha Doom -I assumed that it's caused by numerical positioning accuracy between visplanes with the same texture but different light levels- and is only really visible at super-vanilla resolutions. Have you witnessed it with any other port? (I assume that ports with longer experience with hi-res modes have somehow worked around this problem)

[_bruce_]

Maes said:

Actually that's a bug I noticed with Mocha Doom -I assumed that it's caused by numerical positioning accuracy between visplanes with the same texture but different light levels- and is only really visible at super-vanilla resolutions. Have you witnessed it with any other port? (I assume that ports with longer experience with hi-res modes have somehow worked around this problem)

My tech and math skills are quite limited... your explanation is most likely to be true.
When switching render modes in my port the third mode arranges the vis planes differently because there are more criterias to be met for fusing and thus more planes -> the floor texels slightly change.

[Maes]

I focused on this part of your port:

_bruce_ said:

When switching render modes in my port...

You are referring to the modified truecolour Chocolate Doom one, right?

Because in thie case both Mocha and your port would have something in common: they'd both be using the standard vanilla visplane rendering functions at higher resolutions (if you are using proper high resolutions and not just screen multiplication, that's it). Or, in any case, they are both using the vanilla rendering functions.

I take that ports like MBF, Eternity etc. somehow must have added a correction to this problem along the way. The standard Doom visplane function is of extremely low accuracy anyway (trying to squeeze computations into 6.10 fixed point numbers). Not so long ago, Chocolate Doom was actually using a higher-quality version of the same function, only to replace it with the fuglier one for the sake of accuracy ;-)

[_bruce_]

Maes said:

I focused on this part of your port:



You are referring to the modified truecolour Chocolate Doom one, right?

Because in thie case both Mocha and your port would have something in common: they'd both be using the standard vanilla visplane rendering functions at higher resolutions (if you are using proper high resolutions and not just screen multiplication, that's it). Or, in any case, they are both using the vanilla rendering functions.

I take that ports like MBF, Eternity etc. somehow must have added a correction to this problem along the way. The standard Doom visplane function is of extremely low accuracy anyway (trying to squeeze computations into 6.10 fixed point numbers). Not so long ago, Chocolate Doom was actually using a higher-quality version of the same function, only to replace it with the fuglier one for the sake of accuracy ;-)

Very interesting - never knew that choco had a beefup for such internal affairs. Guess Fraggle realized it was a sin and retreated from such witchery.
No high res for now, though it's possible performance wise.
-> the hsv to rgb conversion is now only needed for the viewwindow so you only have a fixed penalty of viewwindowx times viewwindowy pixels which just takes ~1.8 megacycles per 64000 conversions.
Stuff like your port and the other enhanced ports is quite cryptic to me to be honest.

[Optimus]

KiiiYiiiKiiiA said:

Yeah it does depend on the version of the iwad you have. Earlier versions don't have that backpack secret.

Yeah, just found an archive with doom2.wad version 1.9 (mine was 1.7) and saw the difference. I do remember having found this hidden area in the past when my version was newer. It's not even marked as secret though.

I am wondering why newer versions which are supposed to fix important issues add also new secrets (for example a button behind a pillar in the green armor room in E1M1). Is it just a creative moment of the designers on the original levels that they decided to add? Or maybe these secrets were added to improve multiplayer?

[_bruce_]

Optimus said:

Yeah, just found an archive with doom2.wad version 1.9 (mine was 1.7) and saw the difference. I do remember having found this hidden area in the past when my version was newer. It's not even marked as secret though.

I am wondering why newer versions which are supposed to fix important issues add also new secrets (for example a button behind a pillar in the green armor room in E1M1). Is it just a creative moment of the designers on the original levels that they decided to add? Or maybe these secrets were added to improve multiplayer?

Multiplayer might be the best answer - adding a new path to the level... which they found to be essential.
Otherwise stuff they didn't find the time to do...

[Nasesrtyhcfhk]

Shotgun has same sound effect as explosion, just higher pitch.

[Mattfrie1]

I just found out there was a hidden teleporter in the exit room of TNT Map 01. Mind = Blown

[neubejiita]

40oz said:

I just found this secret area in E2M5. Before today I had no idea this place existed and had never seen anything like it before. Worse yet, I HAVE to figure out how to get at that plasma gun.

(don't tell me.)

God this game is fucking awesome.

http://www.securitronlinux.com/files/yadex.jpg

Just a walkover linedef to get into the area and you have to open the marbface door in that area and just walk out and kill 2 imps and get the plasma gun. This is a very cool area indeed.

[Marcaek]

You know, I think he meant it when he said "don't tell me". you should spoiler that, I'm sure he'd rather figure it out on his own.

[Dr. Durr]

Stuff passes through you with the Partial Invisibility.

[Vermil]

Certain things in Heretic pass through you when you are using a Shadow Sphere (the same things that pass through ghost monsters).

Though in Doom, the Partial invisibility doesn't make anything go through you.

[Gez]

Yeah, the shadowsphere makes you practically immune to undead warriors. Both ethereal and bloody axes will go throw you. I imagine it's also quite useful in deathmatch against the tomed mace and the phoenix rod.