Things about Doom you just found out

[Platinum Shell]

That Doom originally had a bunch of points pickups. Kind of wish that stayed in the game.

[Tristan]

Found it completely by accident. All this time and I never knew

EDIT: E2M4, right at the start

[LigH]

What/where is that? I don't remember...

[The_MártonJános]

LigH said:

In MARBFAC2 (MWALL4_2).

"A Taste Of Things To Come"

I guess the taste is well-served in the very first encounter, E2M5, when you get hurt if you stand directly in front of the texture. Since then, I find that texture overly obnoxious.

[BaronOfStuff]

Linedefs 280 and 282 in E2M4 of The Ultimate Doom actually trigger stuff!
280: Shooting this opens Sector 213 (Chaingun secret), although it's not really needed (since shooting Linedef 406 does exactly the same thing).
282: Shooting this raises the floor of Sector 142, preventing the crushing ceiling from being activated.

I only found this out because a recent session of dicking around in Registered Doom (1.2) resulted in getting stuck in Sector 120; unlike later versions, Linedef 407 does absolutely nothing if you manage to get to the secret before the door closes.

[_bruce_]

Eris Falling said:

"muh ...no quoting an image"
Found it completely by accident. All this time and I never knew

EDIT: E2M4, right at the start

Loved this one when I first discovered it - Map10's first one kinda reminds me of this.

[Doomkid]

In BEX format, adding more firing frames to a weapon (firepistol, fireshotgun etc) causes it to use more ammo. Okay, that's no surprise. BUT, every damn source port seems to handle this differently! In some, if you have 1 bullet left and fire a shot (which uses a second bullet due to the added firing frame), you'll be left with -1 bullets. In other source ports, this has been accounted for and simply goes to 0, preventing the 'negative ammo' side effect.

This is where shit gets weird. If you try making that weapon use 'unlimited" ammo type rather than 'bullet' ammo type, firing the gun can lower the ammo capacity of an unrelated ammo type. I added an extra firing frame to the pistol so it fired 2 shots, then made it have unlimited ammo. Each shot fired lowered my shell capacity by 2... Going from 50 to 48, 46 and so on. Firing the gun until you have a negative shell capacity of course renders the shotguns completely useless and made it impossible to pick up shells off the ground. To clarify, I had not altered a single variable related to shotgun behavior, shotgun shells, etc. The modifications were only to the pistol.

Let's recap that. I added an additional firing frame to the pistol and made it have unlimited ammo, resulting in the gun using shell capacity as ammo... What the hell is that all about? Can anyone more knowledgeable than me please explain this phenomenon?

When im at my pc I can provide the BEX file to clarify what I'm saying. Confusing as shit.

[scifista42]

@Doomkid: It's a bug and can be reasonably explained. Each hitscan or projectile firing codepointer (FirePistol, FireShotgun etc.) ALWAYS decreases your ammo count by 1 in each call - that's why 2 firing frames take 2 ammo. WHICH ammo is determined by the weapon's ammo type property - each of the values "points at" a specific ammo counter to be decreased. Unfortunately, the "Unlimited" (and "Unknown") value points to the maximum shell capacity counter, as it seems. It wasn't designed to be used with codepointers that decrease ammo, only with Punch and Saw that don't take any ammo.

By the way, it happens in vanilla DEH too, not just BEX.

Also it's a known fact that ZDoom-based ports handle DEHACKED and its ammo-decreasing code differently ("more smartly"). In normal situations, it doesn't let your ammo count go below 0. But the "shell capacity" bug is still in there.

[Tristan]

Well this sure seems familiar...
http://i.imgur.com/T098EB5l.png

[_bruce_]

Eris Falling said:

Well this sure seems familiar...
*enormous image*

Dang - cool find!

[William Blazkowicz]

The ogre in Quake 1 has the Quake logo on it's robe/shirt.

[Jaxxoon R]

I heard about that tablet but could never find a picture of it. Nice to finally see it.

[Rumia]

Only just now noticed that the passage leading to the red key room in Doom 2 MAP04 has a light switch. Huh.

[Platinum Shell]

Rumia said:

Only just now noticed that the passage leading to the red key room in Doom 2 MAP04 has a light switch. Huh.

Toggle-able light switches in general are under used in maps.

[sector666]

I don't know. I recently saw someone playing Map04 for the first time in a long time, and he was just utterly confused what the light switch did, flipping it multiple times and saying "What did that do?" (This was in the red key room as he missed the switch in the room where the lights actually toggle).

Funnily enough he flipped the switch many times before checking the previous room (where the lights do toggle) but he had flipped it an even number of times before he checked that room (meaning the lights were turned back off again as if nothing had happened). Then he came back in the red key room, flipped the switch another even number of times, scoured both the red key room and the light toggle room (which was off yet again), and gave up trying to figure out what the switch did.

I don't really blame the guy. If someone's going to put a toggle-able light switch in a level, it better be damn visually obvious what it's doing at the moment you flip the switch. Otherwise someone can keep inadvertently flipping it an even number of times and have no idea what is going on.

The fact id got it wrong in that level makes me wonder how often it would be done badly if it was found in more pwads. All you have to do is have at least one switch located where you can't actually see the lights toggling on and off, and it's potentially confusion city.

[BaronOfStuff]

sector666 said:

I don't know. I recently saw someone playing Map04 for the first time in a long time, and he was just utterly confused what the light switch did, flipping it multiple times and saying "What did that do?" (This was in the red key room as he missed the switch in the room where the lights actually toggle).

Funnily enough he flipped the switch many times before checking the previous room (where the lights do toggle) but he had flipped it an even number of times before he checked that room (meaning the lights were turned back off again as if nothing had happened).

That switch in the red key room only turns the lights off. Flip it once, twice, five or ten times. Off, and only off.

[joe-ilya]

You can't reveal a secret while dead.

[kb1]

Eris Falling said:

Found it completely by accident. All this time and I never knew

EDIT: E2M4, right at the start

I think that secret is actually shown in one of the IWAD demos from an old version, like v1.2.

[Platinum Shell]

sector666 said:

I don't know. I recently saw someone playing Map04 for the first time in a long time, and he was just utterly confused what the light switch did, flipping it multiple times and saying "What did that do?" (This was in the red key room as he missed the switch in the room where the lights actually toggle).

Funnily enough he flipped the switch many times before checking the previous room (where the lights do toggle) but he had flipped it an even number of times before he checked that room (meaning the lights were turned back off again as if nothing had happened). Then he came back in the red key room, flipped the switch another even number of times, scoured both the red key room and the light toggle room (which was off yet again), and gave up trying to figure out what the switch did.

I don't really blame the guy. If someone's going to put a toggle-able light switch in a level, it better be damn visually obvious what it's doing at the moment you flip the switch. Otherwise someone can keep inadvertently flipping it an even number of times and have no idea what is going on.

The fact id got it wrong in that level makes me wonder how often it would be done badly if it was found in more pwads. All you have to do is have at least one switch located where you can't actually see the lights toggling on and off, and it's potentially confusion city.

Not really. If I press a switch and I notice it flicking lights on and off, I'm going to understand that the switch is for turning the lights on and off. One time light switches that are in totally different areas where you can't see the effect (such as a generator room) are fine, but I agree with toggle-able being inappropriate in such cases.

[joe-ilya]

You don't end the level if you step dead on the 11 sector effect.

[BaronOfStuff]

kb1 said:

I think that [E2M4] secret is actually shown in one of the IWAD demos from an old version, like v1.2.

Yep, the first demo in the IWAD.

[Da Werecat]

I recently found out that it's safer to play on UV than on HNTR. UV is usually well-tested, and it's highly unlikely to encounter a situation where all monsters are present, but 90% of supplies are missing (because someone wasn't paying attention to flags).

[The_MártonJános]

joe-ilya said:

You don't end the level if you step dead on the 11 sector effect.

But you do when your corpse crosses a linedef action 52. ;)

[Krazov]

I just found out that, when it was released, "Doom II: Hell on Earth" costed 50 quids (which was a lot back then). I never think about prices of old games.

[Koko Ricky]

I've been replaying Doom and Doom 2 lately, and I had no idea how many misaligned textures there are. Obviously, with a total lack of Doom Builder in 1993, there was no convenient way to keep this from happening, but there's way more misalignments that I had previously thought.

[Linguica]

Early 3D games in general didn't care that much about aligning textures, really.

[Krazov]

I can imagine that in 320x200 it wasn't that noticable.

[Koko Ricky]

Linguica said:

Early 3D games in general didn't care that much about aligning textures, really.

Other examples? Not that I think Doom is alone in this, I'm just genuinely curious.

[The_MártonJános]

The texture SHAWN1 is different in UD and Doom 2. Due to the lack of the SILVER* resources in the former, of which the right edge of the texture in the latter constitues of, the UD version has a cement wall-esque looking end on the right, which most resembles the texture STONE minus those white rods accross it (if so, the flattexture FLAT5_4 to mention instead).

[Gez]

And in any case, it'd look a lot better if they had used patch AG128_1 instead of overlapping W13_1 as the background.