Things about Doom you just found out

[zokum]

A close range just makes it statistically more likely that a specific target will be hit with multiple rays. The actual range from impact doesn't matter. This is unlike how most aoe/explosive weapons work in games. With those you get hit if you are in a certain area, often with less damage applied when far away from the center. With the bfg you may get hit in position X, but not in position Y, even if Y is closer to the player. It's not random.

A bfg secondary firing is more like a cross between a doom shotgun and a rail gun. You either get hit by a ray or don't get hit. If you call a bfg an aoe weapon, you would also have to call a shotgun an aoe weapon.

An important part about BFG usage is knowing that since those tracers do not have travel time, a well timed shot can hit an oponent far away instantly. In deathmatch using the rays to kill someone is the primary use of the weapon. When that is how it's used, thinking of it as an aoe weapon just breaks down as a model.

A well-known example is the map01 ledge kill. Aim a bfg ball straight from the chaingun hall down towards the plasma room. Quickly go to the other end of the hallway, and have your back to the start ledge. You can hit a player up on that ledge when the main bfg ball detonates. How much damage the other player takes, depends on how many, if any rays hit that player.

Sometimes you're luck in deathmatch and hit a player very far away with a ray. This happens on map07, especially in games with more than one player where it's often an acceptable strategy to fire of a continuous barrage of oportunistic BFG shots in order to score a cheap kill.

In my opinion, the BFG is a very quirky weapon, and very hard to master compared to the usual fare. Grenade weapons come close, with bouncing and 'mine laying' potential.

Edited October 4, 2018 by zokum

[Edward850]

4 hours ago, TakenStew22 said:

I am... so confused. But thanks for the info.

 

[Dragonfly]

I love how even though that video was dropped in 2016, it says about people not knowing how to use the BFG in 2018 (which currently is actually the case, heh)

Edited October 4, 2018 by Dragonfly

[TakenStew22]

2 hours ago, Edward850 said:

 

So educational.

[elend]

I just noticed today, that the sprite of the Zombieguy is based on the Doomguy's sprite. Silly me.

[kb1]

23 hours ago, zokum said:

In my opinion, the BFG is a very quirky weapon, and very hard to master compared to the usual fare. Grenade weapons come close, with bouncing and 'mine laying' potential.

If I had to guess, I'd say that they meant for the ball to send out the rays, but messed it up with a typo. Then, the mistake was realized by one person (maybe John Romero), and used against all the other Id guys for never-ending laughs during deathmatches! Finally, everyone got used to it, and therefore they left it as-is.

 

I'd like to think that's what happened. It's pretty funny if it's true :)

Edited October 5, 2018 by kb1

[SaladBadger]

It really doesn't feel like a mistake, if only because there's a comment saying "Spawn a BFG explosion on every monster in view." The comment remains in the Jaguar and 3DO sources so it isn't the result of Bernd's cleanup. The cone of rays matches the player's FOV (90) which is consistent with this. Besides, if they were emitted from the ball, it would be entirely useless on a miss, or the effect significantly dampened on a direct hit with a cyberdemon. The cyberdemon would almost certainly die, but it would have soaked a lot of the rays. So essentially there's no longer anything involved in one-shotting a cyberdemon other than aiming at a big guy who frequently stops for a fair amount of time.

[kb1]

Maybe not, but speaking of the physics, I can't say I understand what you mean in your comments, or what the justification for weapon's current function is. I suppose one could think that the rays were emitting from the gun, but the player's *current* angle should matter then. Using the angle at the time the ball was *shot* is somewhat consistent with the 90 degree spray coming from the ball, as it matches the ball's travel direction. Also 90 degrees makes sense to allow you to kill everything you see, but then why delay the effect?

 

In other words, there's a lot of single things that could have been done to make it make more sense, realistically speaking, which is what leads me to conclude that they were going for a realistic effect, but screwed up a step. For some examples:

• They could have made the rays happen immediately, or after a quick warmup. But then, why use the ball?
• They could have made the rays emanate from the ball, but then why not 360 degrees?
• They made the rays shoot from the player during ball impact, but why not use the *current* player's angle?

Any one of these would have made the gun effect make more sense, but maybe it wouldn't be as interesting (or deviously fun, especially when you're the only person who understands how it works - heh heh.) There's so many single things that could have clarified it, that I find it telling that they left it as-is.

 

In other words, I don't think *leaving* it that way was a mistake, but I think it might have been a mistake originally. The code could have been written from scratch in literally 15 minutes, or even a bit less, and they may have cut & pasted it from, say, the baron's missile code, and hacked on it a bit. All of the example changes I listed involve swapping out one single variable for another - it would be dead simple (pun!) to get it wrong, and, in most cases, it would be extremely obvious if it was wrong. Because of that, it just wasn't important to be very careful - they'd simply give it a shot, see how it worked, and tweak it to perfection. Like making a good stew: Throw in a bit of this, bit of that, give it a taste, adjust, try again.

 

It feels a lot like fast empirical design: Modify the weapon array, add a few frames, slap in a new weapon pointer, compile, run, IDKFA, then FIRE! CRASH! Go back, fix something, recompile, run, IDKFA, FIRE! Splat!

 

I think a lot of Doom was built that way - The quick change cycle, with lots of little mods, and tons of small, quick real life tests. It's one of the reasons I admire the code so much. I can just imagine it was a ton of fun to build that way, and the effects of that style tend to show. It gets quick results, but can be difficult to maintain. Not everyone's cup of tea. It's just a hunch.

Edited October 5, 2018 by kb1
Edited for clarity

[Linguica]

Entries in the IWADs were aligned on a 4-byte boundary, with padding added to lumps to make them fit perfectly into 4-byte words. This was apparently technically unnecessary, as IWAD versions before v1.2 didn't do it, but was possibly added as a consequence of Jaguar port development.

[Nine Inch Heels]

1 hour ago, kb1 said:

• They could have made the rays happen immediately, or after a quick warmup. But then, why use the ball?
• They could have made the rays emanate from the ball, but then why not 360 degrees?
• They made the rays shoot from the player during ball impact, but why not use the *current* player's angle?

It seems to me that all they wanted at some point was a "pseudo explosion" which didn't use blast damage to prevent suicides, and have it happen roughly in the direction the projectile travelled originally. I'm not saying they didn't take the "easiest" approach they could see to achieve that, but if they felt like it didn't work well enough, then surely things would be different today. Let's not forget that the first iteration of the BFG during the beta was supposed to simply fire a dense "flurry" of projectiles, which they later changed to what we have today:

[kb1]

2 hours ago, Linguica said:

Entries in the IWADs were aligned on a 4-byte boundary...

It's just pure speculation, but those consoles were even more strapped for memory than the PCs. They were looking for tricks to save memory, like the compression. At one time, maybe they considered storing the lump offsets divided by 4, which could afford 2 things:

1. Two new "flag" bits per lump entry, one of which could be used as a "Lump is compressed" byte. Didn't they instead add 0x80 to the 1st character of the lump name for that purpose?
2. They could store the offsets using 3 bytes instead of 4, for WADs up to 16Mb, or 64Mb with the divide by 4 trick.

Again, just speculation, but we know they went to pretty extreme measures for the PC version, with the flipped sprite rotations, and the texture definitions.

 

Due to the WAD structure, I was always hoping to find some "secret" old development data hidden within the IWADs, but, alas, no luck. :)

 

40 minutes ago, Nine Inch Heels said:

It seems to me that all they wanted at some point was a "pseudo explosion" which didn't use blast damage to prevent suicides, and have it happen roughly in the direction the projectile travelled originally. I'm not saying they didn't take the "easiest" approach they could see to achieve that, but if they felt like it didn't work well enough, then surely things would be different today. Let's not forget that the first iteration of the BFG during the beta was supposed to simply fire a dense "flurry" of projectiles, which they later changed to what we have today:

Very cool. Romero described it as "Christmas".

You could be right. I wasn't suggesting that they took an easy approach...rather that, as you said, they wrote something that seemed to kick ass, and then rolled with it. "Don't fix it if it ain't broke", and all that. I guess it's another question for Romero. I bet whoever made it that way got lots of mileage out of it, before giving away the secret.

 

I like to wonder about these things. I'm sure they had a blast making Doom.

 

 

 

 

Edited October 5, 2018 by kb1

[damerell]

On 10/4/2018 at 3:31 PM, Dragonfly said:

Wether that was how Zokum wants it to be 'felt' or not, that's how it comes across.

I don't think it remotely comes across that way if one reads Zokum's second paragraph, which explains the situation clearly.

1 hour ago, kb1 said:

It's just pure speculation, but those consoles were even more strapped for memory than the PCs. They were looking for tricks to save memory, like the compression.

The oddest story I heard about something like that is that BBC Elite (1984) has such weird keys because they're near each other in the keyboard lookup table and that saves a bit.

[FelixTheWolf]

If you look closely at an Imp that has died, you can see it's privates.

[EngineerKappa]

I was checking the Doom Bible and found out at one point there was an enemy called a "Flying Imp". This however is unrelated the Imps we know of today, which were called "Demon Troops".

 

It's probably just a coincidence, but Doom Eternal also has new winged imp-like enemies in it and that's just neat to me.

[TakenStew22]

5 hours ago, FelixTheWolf said:

If you look closely at an Imp that has died, you can see it's privates.

Case in point:

You can see it's butthole.

 

Edited October 6, 2018 by TakenStew22

[Dragonfly]

That's a shadow; but sure, if that's what gets you going, don't mind me.

[Doomsday]

The very naughty quit messages from the source code. (I think it was from the source code)

What im talking about

Fuck you, pussy!
Get the fuck out!

Suck it down, asshole!
You're a fucking wimp!

I feel like "Don't quit now! We're 
still spending your money!" Could of been used in the game but ok.

 

Edited October 6, 2018 by Doomsday1993
To show what im talking about.

[TakenStew22]

It was a very bad one though, I'll admit.

 

Edit: Thanks for deleting my very stupid joke, mods.

Edited October 7, 2018 by TakenStew22

[rehelekretep]

fair enough

[seed]

On 10/6/2018 at 2:33 PM, EngineerKappa said:

I was checking the Doom Bible and found out at one point there was an enemy called a "Flying Imp". This however is unrelated the Imps we know of today, which were called "Demon Troops".

 

It's probably just a coincidence, but Doom Eternal also has new winged imp-like enemies in it and that's just neat to me.

 

I dunno, perhaps they actually brought that concept to life in Eternal, this one seems too far fetched.

[Rathori]

I just found out that you can specify a save file directory as a command line argument for most source ports. Goodbye, mess of saves from different PWADs in save/load menus! Hello, separate set of save slots per PWAD!

[Aquila Chrysaetos]

9 minutes ago, Linguica said:

If you have a line type that is "lower to next" or "raise to next" and the game cannot find an adjacent lower or higher sector, respectively, it will instead jump instantly to the next-lowest or highest floor. This can be exploited in many interesting ways!

I never knew that the game worked this way. This explains many tricks I've been aware of but never knew how to use myself.

[ketmar]

this, plus missing low texture == floor monster alcoves. a real PITA to render with hw renderer, btw. DooM II MAP04 has the same bug with missing texture at the starting window; nobody at id noticed it due to original renderer floodfill bug.

[Rawrfunkle]

On 9/25/2011 at 11:32 PM, Grain of Salt said:

 

Agreed.

[DynamiteKaitorn]

in GZDB-BF, It is possible to dis-connect the default visual mode camera from the entity. Normally placing one down allows you to see in visual mode and helps show where you last were in visual mode when you go back to the 2D over-head view.

 

Here is a mock-up screenshot. And need I remind you there's only 2 entities on this map. that camera and the player start.

 

 

ps: I first had this occur in DooM (In DooM Format). This screenshot is from UDMF.

[Grain of Salt]

6 hours ago, Rawrfunkle said:

On 9/26/2011 at 5:32 AM, Grain of Salt said:

 

Agreed.

 

 

Edited October 19, 2018 by Grain of Salt

[ZeroTheEro]

Last night I found out that the background music used for nuts.wad is actually Led Zeppelin's song Kashmir.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvmuDH8cgG0

 

Edited October 25, 2018 by ZeroTheEro

[Koko Ricky]

Doom 64 has no contrast feature on its lines. The vertical gradients help add dimension, but without contrast, there's a slight flatness that is perceived.

[galileo31dos01]

It's always amusing to find these tiny brown linedefs (or any colour depending on the source port), when they aren't hidden switches. I believe mappers put those tiny sectors for sound propagation, and if this is right then I just found out the real reason for them. Yay me!

 

[ImpieEyez95]

-

Edited October 24, 2018 by ImpieEyez95
found solution