Things about Doom you just found out

[Tarnsman]

That if you get caught between a ceiling and a rising staircase, it acts as a crushing floor.

[The_MártonJános]

Texture BROWNWEL

[Koko Ricky]

Been playing through PC Final Doom for the first time, as previously I've only played PSX Final Doom. So what did I find out? Well, the custom textures are out of place and hideous, for starters. That, and the maps taken out of the PSX version are...a bit boring, at least so far.

[purpleyoshi13]

TNT Evilution has 666 Patches.

[killer2]

purpleyoshi13 said:

TNT Evilution has 666 Patches.

What kind of patches do you mean?

[purpleyoshi13]

killer2 said:

What kind of patches do you mean?

When Opening TNT in XWE and go to the PNAMES lump, those Patches.

[Marnetmar]

Redstar said:

These aren't things that I just found out, but I did first discover them within the last year or so.

1.) Spectres are supposed to be invisible, not just a quirky monster. The graphical distortion is just a result of my computer's speed, so I've never had the intended experience with them.

Huh? Where did you get this?

[Gez]

Vermil said:

Nope. Key's appear on the automap in vanilla Heretic, if you play on skill 1.

That's interesting.

purpleyoshi13 said:

When Opening TNT in SLADE 3 and go to the PNAMES lump, those Patches.

Fixed that for you. :p

[Maes]

Marnetmar said:

Huh? Where did you get this?

I think he must have been using Doom95 or somesuch, which renders them as a tutti-frutti mess instead of the proper "fuzzy" effect.

Either that, or he noticed the difference between a proper hi-res port that also has a hi-res version of the "fuzzy drawing" effect and vanilla: with hi-res, spectres and players can indeed be near invisible or at least much harder to see than with lower resolutions, where you can at least detect that there's "something" there.

The only real difference that speed can make for -otherwise proper- fuzzy drawing, is that with a fast computer you see an almost liquid wavy pattern effect on fuzzy object, that does a quite good job at concealing shapes. Different resolutions and computer speed will change the speed, phase and direction of the pattern (due to aliasing, kinda like a wheel strobe effect. With slower computers the wavy pattern becomes more like random noise, but we're talking < 20 fps and vanilla (sub)resolution here.

Imagine how a slow computer would render a car's wheel animation if it was to keep "in sync" with its real-time rotation: it would seldom appear to be rotating at all and it would simply jump between positions now and then, while a fast computer would make it appear blurry like a real one.

[LigH]

Risen3D renders them very translucent with a changing "sparkly" texture. Not exactly the same, but not the worst solution for the used OpenGL rendering technology. I guess it could be simulated with modern Pixel Shader programs. But that will probably require a different base than Doomsday.

Unfortunately, it reveals a little flaw in the rendering in several steps: Dead spectres punch transparent "holes" into blood stains on walls and floors.

BTW, why do invisible spectres have visible blood?

[Maes]

LigH said:

BTW, why do invisible spectres have visible blood?

I always wondered what happens to other bodily fluids of invisible beings as well.

[Vermil]

LigH said:

But that will probably require a different base than Doomsday.

It's nothing to do with the port based off, rather the renderer. If Risen3D had an all new renderer rather than using the now aging Doomsday one, it would probably be possible to imitate the classic spectre fuzz effect using shaders (the Doomsday renderer predates shaders as we know them). Indeed the comparatively newer, though still old in years, GZDoom renderer features some very simple shaders for isolated things like a crude attempt to imitate the spectre's fuzz.

[The_MártonJános]

LigH said:

BTW, why do invisible spectres have visible blood?

Why do Knights, Cacos and Barons have red blood?

[LigH]

In Risen3D, Cacodemons have blue blood, Knights and Barons green.

[40oz]

I remember hearing (or mishearing) about how Evilution has isolated maps outside the normal maps that are made for deathmatch. It sounded like an awesome idea so I tried running the maps in deathmatch. At first I could hardly tell what the difference was in any of the maps. The only map that appeared any different was MAP03 power station. I was confused at first because I typed in IDBEHOLDA to see the whole map and saw that I was still in the same map. I seemed to remember doors at the bottom of all the stairs, instead there were just METAL walls. I checked the map out in a map editor. Turns out there were doors behind those walls, they just aren't activated from the inside. Theres a walkover line right in front of the player 1 start that removes those walls, so you don't even encounter them as an obstacle in the map.

That's fucking brilliant. I need to make sure my maps have that.

[Phobus]

I think some of the really popular megaWADs (AV, MM, etc.) have DM sections outside of the main maps that just share the theme - it's a good solution if you can't just shut off an area like you described.

In ZDoom and derivative ports it's really easy to do that, with DM-only objects being used to block areas or scripting - bit more impressive when you see that sort of work around in vanilla though, I'll admit!

[Gez]

Phobus said:

In ZDoom and derivative ports it's really easy to do that, with DM-only objects being used to block areas or scripting - bit more impressive when you see that sort of work around in vanilla though, I'll admit!

You only need a Boom-compatible port for that.

ZDoom lets you use MAPINFO to make a different DM episode, though. :p

[Lila Feuer]

That this community is hilarious for trying to put anything from other games into Doom because Doom is all everyone ever plays.

[Marnetmar]

Bobby Prince served in the Vietnam War.

[Untamed64]

SeanWJF said:

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

Out of curiosity, I'd like to see some proof

[Optimus]

tempun said:

In ZDooms only.

How the hell have I not noticed this before? I remember getting stuck at some WAD, couldn't find where the hell is the next key, looking at my map maybe even with IDDT and not noticing this.

[Maes]

Probably that Doom used Mode Y.

[Dr. Durr]

Untamed64 said:

Out of curiosity, I'd like to see some proof

Just shoot a barrel with the shotgun.
Instant proof.

[TwinBeast]

A cacodemon just bit me.. and I was just reading about it yesterday from the doomwiki that it's silent and it just happens. And then it just silently happend to me.

Maes said:

I always wondered what happens to other bodily fluids of invisible beings as well.

Doomguy is knee-deep in spectral poop. That's why he can move so fast, it's like a lubricant.

[Optimus]

The Cyberdemon and Spider Mastermind are not affected by the BFG blast but only the BFG rays after the blast. I only knew they took half damage from rocket launchers which is also not entirely true, I read in doomwiki that they just aren't affected by blast damage.

Makes sense now, killing a spider mastermind while running towards here and firing very very close one single bfg shoot, all rays in the view hit while from a far distance only very few in a narrower angle would hit. In the wiki there are two tables, 20 rays and 40 rays. I have learned that in old doom you need two BFG shoots to kill the spider while one in zdoom, that must be why the two tables 20 rays and 40 rays in the wiki, though it doesn't say anywhere why and only mentions 40 rays in the description.

Oh, and that's why I need much more shots with a Cybie. It's harder to make a good shoot from very close and stay there for the rays to hit, you would get a rocket in the face.

[Phobus]

The main BFG projectile does damage the boss monsters too.

[Optimus]

Phobus said:

The main BFG projectile does damage the boss monsters too.

Oh shit, I realized I misread the wiki entry. Forget what I wrote above :P

[Maes]

Tarnsman said:

That if you get caught between a ceiling and a rising staircase, it acts as a crushing floor.

Are you certain about that? In vanilla, unless a CEILING is tagged as a crusher and is not activated in one of the few crusher-specific ways, then it cannot damage you even if its forced to move in some other way or if the floor rises (vanilla has no concept of "crushing floors either).

What usually happens if you get caught in such a situation (ceiling moving but without it being marked as a crusher) is that it simply traps you (this is even exploited in order to pin monsters in-place in certain maps). A notable instance where this can happen is in CLEIM10.WAD in one of the computer rooms in E1M3 (I think) where there are some descending computer panels which form a maze, but it's possile to get trapped by them (without taking damage). Annoying, since you need to idclip or reload a game.

[vdgg]

@Maes: You may watch this demo recorded by me last year. Plays back with MM2, recorded with Doom2.exe 1.9. What happens in the 6th second - I cannot interpret it other way than being crushed by stairs (and escaping from that).

[RjY]

Vanilla has crushing floors. See linedef 700 (type 56, floor up to ceiling-8) on E2M4 for example.

Whether stairs crush or not is random as EV_DoStairs leaves the floor thinker field uninitialised. This suggests to me that stairs weren't meant to crush, because they didn't even think about the field when they wrote the stair building code, but we can't know for sure what the real intention was.

Unfortunately the UDS says that slow stairs don't crush and fast stairs do, which is not always the case, but the Boom developers picked it up as canon. For example there is at least one level in Cyberdreams that relies on slow stairs crushing.