Things about Doom you just found out

[nxGangrel]

5 minutes ago, Nine Inch Heels said:

Translucent projectiles are hard to judge in regards to distance and trajectory when there's several ones coming your way at once. Simple as that. Don't believe me? Play a map with bunches of imps and revs with both ports and look at how consistent you can dodge. My money is on you dodging more consistently in PrBoom+.

I call bullshit. Maybe this is dependent on the player, but for someone like myself, it makes no difference. I can still see the fireball(s) the same regardless. I just find it a rather nice looking aesthetic

[Nine Inch Heels]

2 minutes ago, nxGangGirl said:

I call bullshit.

Try scythe2 m28 with both ports. Then call again.

[Graf Zahl]

Some sort of self-deluision...? :P

 

[Dragonfly]

Translucent projectiles are better because despite a fireball flying your way you can still keep an eye on the terrain and enemies behind the fireballs.

[Nine Inch Heels]

3 minutes ago, Dragonfly said:

a fireball

Now do that with ten. Or play something like SunLust, or hell revealed2. Now replace the ten fireballs with ten revenant missiles. Now add red background. At which point did you fail to notice a projectile, eventhough it was in your field of view, or simply misjudged its trajectory? Give it a try.

[Arctangent]

Well for one, ten of any transparent projectile won't blend in with a red background.

 

Because at that point, they've gone hot white.

[Dragonfly]

5 minutes ago, Nine Inch Heels said:

Now do that with ten. Or play something like SunLust, or hell revealed2. Now replace the ten fireballs with ten revenant missiles. Now add red background. At which point did you fail to notice a projectile, eventhough it was in your field of view, or simply misjudged its trajectory? Give it a try.

You imply that in my ten plus years of using ZDoom I've not played something like this. It's not a problem, but instead a benefit.

[Grain of Salt]

Graf, when are you removing the straferunning bug from zdoom?

[The_MártonJános]

@Dragonfly
Once projectiles are close/many enough to obscure your view in a way it affects gameplay, I guess you're pretty much done for by then anyway. They don't even need to be dozens of homing Revenant missiles.

[Bauul]

5 hours ago, scifista42 said:

Do liquid fall textures really need to be animated at all if you're scrolling them downwards via a line scroller?

Actually I reckon a static wfall texture simply scrolling downwards would look pretty bad.  Every part of the image would move at a perfectly equal uniform rate, which waterfalls don't ever do in real life.  The standard textures animated in different bits moving at different speeds, so it looks much more natural, even with the ultra-low framerate.

 

If you could layer an alpha layer over the top and scroll that a different speed, that might work through.

[The_MártonJános]

@Bauul
I swear I was meant to say the same thing yesterday in response, but I just got confused and lost in thought.
Grateful you put it into words instead, I couldn't have told it this neatly.

However, installing "SubSolutions#" into practice would require quite a couple of DECORATE* entries. Hardcore scripters could try over SubSolution #8 :D

Also. The debate "Are translucent projectiles helpful/necessary/etc." isn't over yet AFAIK, but I might add that we could thank the Lord nobody have ever dared to make stealth projectiles. :D Just imagine the following scenario:
 

Quote

Doomguy: (has Partial Invisiblity on, enters a new room and confronts a single Imp)
Imp: (launches fireball at Doomguy random direction)
Fireball: (quickly fades away and "disappears")
Doomguy: OMG where should I dodge? (strafes to the right swiftly)
Fireball: (suddenly reappears and impacts on Doomguy, causing severe minus 24 HP of damage)
Doomguy: (grins) Aie!! This burns bad!
Imp: (shoots another fireball)
2nd fireball: (fades into thin air as well)
Doomguy: Okay, we should put an end to this right now! (finishes off the Imp with a single shot)
2nd fireball: (impacts in a corner farther away)
Doomguy: Finally over with this crap! Let's just hope there aren't any Reven-
(sudden Revenant comeuppance interrupts)
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
Doomguy: OHMYGOD WTF WAS THIS
Revenant: (roams around swinging its arms) REURGH
Doomguy: OHNO OHNO PLSDONT PLSDONT SOMEBODY HALP THISISIT I'M DEAD MEAT

 

Edited June 22, 2017 by Cell

[Da Werecat]

17 hours ago, Bauul said:

The standard textures animated in different bits moving at different speeds, so it looks much more natural, even with the ultra-low framerate.

I disagree.

 

They have about the same animation speed for textures in Quake. Waterfalls look about as terrible there, no matter how good the actual textures are. I'd prefer scrolling any day.

[Memfis]

20 hours ago, Da Werecat said:

Meanwhile, turning the translucency off in PrBoom+ will turn it off entirely - goodbye windows you're supposed to be able to see through in Boom maps.

 

That's what notransl.deh is for. Not sure where to find it but at least vdgg has it for sure.

[The_MártonJános]

That Revenants are sorta glass cannons.

[Albertoni]

On 22/06/2017 at 11:21 AM, Cell said:

I might add that we could thank the Lord nobody have ever dared to make stealth projectiles.

Too late. Though mine spawn some bullet puffs on the ground, like wind lifting some dust. Definitely not an idea stolen from Galaxy Fight's secret boss, Rouwe. :P

[SaladBadger]

Based on the special definitions in DoomED and some stuff in the Doom source code, I've learned that id apparently was intending to use Buttons (like the green one and the red tall one I presume) as repeatable specials and Switches (the ones with the actual movable lever, like the green/red one, I guess) as actions performed only once, but like most of these things they tried to establish it wasn't actually stuck to at all.

 

Another weird scheme like this is that apparently repeatable keyed doors would say they need a keycard and unrepeatable keyed doors would say they need a skull key in the earliest versions of Doom, but this was revised in later versions, presumably since the designers didn't adhere to this at all, and there was no distinction in the code.

[Koko Ricky]

2 hours ago, Cell said:

That Revenants are sorta glass cannons.

What do you mean?

[Dragonfly]

"Glass Cannon": High Damage, Low Health. In MMORPG's this is a term often used to describe mages who do high damage but can't tank any damage.

[Baratus]

I've played DooM for over a decade and only in the last year have I learned exactly how the BFG works.

 

Also I only recently discovered that Revenants can die in just 2 SSG shots rather than 3. Maybe I was just a lousy shot this whole time.

[Da Werecat]

There are a lot of enemies that (usually) die in 3 SSG/RL shots. A long time ago, I too lumped revenants (and even cacodemons, IIRC) in this category.

[scifista42]

An average SSG shot does 200 damage if all pellets hit. Out of mid-tier monsters, Revenant has 300 HP, Cacodemon and Pain Elemental have 400, Arachnotron and Hell Knight have 500, Mancubus has 600, Archvile has 700, Baron has 1000. I aim to kill each enemy with the theoretical minimum number of average-damage SSG shots: 2 shots for Revenant, Cacodemon and PE, 3 shots for Arachtotron, Hell Knight and Mancubus, 4 shots for Archvile, 5 shots for Baron. If the monster manages to survive that number of SSG shots, I tend to switch to another weapon to finish them off with.

Edited June 24, 2017 by scifista42

[Guest Unregistered account]

Isn't the theoretical minimum SSG shots to kill an Archvile 3?

I know they have 700 health, but I've done it frequently before.

 

I think...

Edited June 24, 2017 by Unregistered account

[scifista42]

I admit I used the wrong term when I said just "theoretical minimum". I mean the theoretical minimum of average-damage shots, not the absolute theoretical minimum with damage randomization taken into account, as the latter is impossible to achieve consistently anyway, as it depends on a highly improbable RNG luck. In practice, each SSG shot does roughly between 100 and 300 damage - values close to 200 are vastly more probable than values close to either 100 or to 300, though - so it's certainly possible to kill monsters in a lesser or greater number of shots depending on RNG.

Edited June 24, 2017 by scifista42

[Gez]

The theoretical maximum damage from the SSG is 300 (if each of the  20 pellets deal 15 damage). Theoretical because it's not possible with the vanilla RNG. The maximum total with the vanilla RNG is apparently 225, according to the Doom Wiki. So no, it's not possible to kill an arch-vile with just three SSG shots, unless of course it has been weakened a bit before by clumsy monster attacks who hit it instead of whatever they were targeting, probably you.

[scifista42]

16 minutes ago, Gez said:

The theoretical maximum damage from the SSG is 300 (if each of the  20 pellets deal 15 damage). Theoretical because it's not possible with the vanilla RNG. The maximum total with the vanilla RNG is apparently 225, according to the Doom Wiki. So no, it's not possible to kill an arch-vile with just three SSG shots, unless of course it has been weakened a bit before by clumsy monster attacks who hit it instead of whatever they were targeting, probably you.

Or unless you're playing in a port like ZDoom that changes the RNG behavior, possibly turning the "theoretical maximum unachievable with vanilla RNG" into a practically achievable maximum.

Edited June 24, 2017 by scifista42

[baja blast rd.]

The Doom Wiki is wrong about lots of stuff. This is a better resource. The max SSG damage is 245 in Vanilla and a bit higher than that in Boom. 

[Gez]

3 hours ago, rdwpa said:

The Doom Wiki is wrong about lots of stuff. This is a better resource. The max SSG damage is 245 in Vanilla and a bit higher than that in Boom. 

I'm glad to hear that because it means that my Excel spreadsheet is correct and I'll be able to update the wiki with the actual values.

 

One of these days.

 

[Koko Ricky]

If it's truly random, then wouldn't 300 be an eventuality if you were to test it enough times?

[scifista42]

If it was truly random, then yes, it would. But it's not truly random.

[Arctangent]

Basically, Doom just has an array of numbers from 0 to 255 tossed in at random, and any time a "random number" is generated, it just looks a rng index variable, takes the value at that index in the array, bumps the index up, and uses that value to calculate a result. So there's actually nothing akin to true randomness within vanilla Doom, and if given the exact same inputs at the exact same time in the exact same version, it'll play out exactly the same. That's why demos work in the first place, but it also makes Doom a very reliable game to TAS.

 

Which is kinda amusing, because it's a pretty heavily RNG run in non-TA speedruns, given that the player cannot exactly keep track of every random call within a level in real time.