Things about Doom you just found out

[Scypek2]

Turns out thrown grenades in Harmony do a lot more direct damage than the ones fired out of a grenade launcher. Half of the time, they can kill a Phage in one hit! A nice tradeoff between that and the convenience of a gravity-unaffected projectile.

[Moustachio]

If an enemy is throwing a fireball and is attacked on just the right frame by an enemy from behind, the attacked monster will appear to still face the player while throwing. Makes it look like the monster is throwing an epic behind the back trickshot.

[Faceman2000]

1 hour ago, Moustachio said:

If an enemy is throwing a fireball and is attacked on just the right frame by an enemy from behind, the attacked monster will appear to still face the player while throwing. Makes it look like the monster is throwing an epic behind the back trickshot.

This is actually only true for Hell Knights and Barons - their attack state doesn't tell it to face the player like the other attack states, resulting in this funny bug.

[tomas7777]

Vertex wobble on walls. Likely related to fixed point precision. Can't unsee it now...

Spoiler

 

[RjY]

On 8/1/2023 at 12:50 AM, baja blast rd. said:

The archvile's maximum range for an unprovoked attack is 1088, according to both the source code and testing it out. 896 is a common value given but is based on a misreading of the source code. ~1024 is sort of correct, and the value I've seen most commonly referred to in mapping and speedrunning spaces, but not precise. 1088 seems to be the precise maximum value.

 

Partial credit for getting the right answer but not showing your working ;)

Seriously though I think I always believed it was 1024, because my experiments as a new player suggested it was about that, and why wouldn't it be a power of two, everything else is. Over the years I never got hit by an archvile blast during normal play in a situation where I knew I was more than 1024 units from the instigator when its arms went up. And it's a piece of the code that I've never had reason to study closely. So, thank you for drawing attention to it.

 

On 8/1/2023 at 6:58 PM, Faceman2000 said:

This is actually only true for Hell Knights and Barons - their attack state doesn't tell it to face the player like the other attack states, resulting in this funny bug.

 

I remember debugging this :)

[ludicrous_peridot]

Even before ORIGWAD, that is before modders learned to edit geometry of the levels, or build original levels from scratch, they posted online edited vanilla levels with alternative things placement. Must have been a short-lived genre though...

[Scypek2]

I knew Sandy Petersen was responsible for not just the levels, but also level names, intermission screens and pretty much all the text in the game, but apparently he's also responsible for balancing hitpoints and making sure the game had a shotgun. What a legend.

[Faceman2000]

2 hours ago, Scypek2 said:

making sure the game had a shotgun.

I suspect he misremembered that. The shotgun was implemented extremely early on as we can see from the alphas - far earlier than Sandy was on the team - and while admittedly there are several examples of weapons from that stage that didn't survive through till the end - the SMG and rifle, for example - they all live on in another weapon. It just seems really unlikely to me that they would have wanted to cut it out.

[Scypek2]

Seems weird to me too, and I imagine Sandy didn't have to fight too hard for it, but it doesn't seem too out there for me to imagine, either. Tom Hall had to fight to have secrets in wolf3d and teleporters in Doom. Who knows what else they considered cutting out in the name of streamlining, however briefly.

[Individualised]

Sandy Petersen is known to also completely make shit up, almost as much as Tommy Tallarico. I found an obscure interview from him a while back where he claimed to have done all of the level conversions for the SNES version, and went into detail about the conversion process and even correctly recalled which maps were cut - but we know this is impossible because John Coffey did the SNES level conversions, and id Software pretty much did nothing for the SNES port other than approving changes (they would have been hard at work doing Quake and to a lesser extent, supervising Doom 64 as well - no room to be involved with a last-gen console port with that tight schedule). I don't think he's doing it out of malice (unlike Tallarico) but his memory is definitely not serving him in recent years and his word cannot be trusted unless there are other sources to back it up.

 

I don't know about Petersen's contributions to Doom 2's level names, but many of Doom 1's level names existed before Petersen joined id, though many of them were assigned to different levels. Doom levels and their names were always separated from each other, the level names are solely names of locations for story purposes and they assigned levels to locations towards the end of development. That's why you always see ex-id employees refer to levels by their level IDs and not the names they were given. Doom 2 did this a bit less and they did try to actually give the levels themselves names (Tricks and Traps, Barrels o' Fun) but there are even some examples of this in that game - The Catacombs used to be assigned to MAP04, and back then "The Focus" would have been the name given to it (which makes sense given the level's design). The map called "The Focus" in the final game was quickly drafted up and placed in MAP04 after they cut a level (a late-game hell level which was merged into The Spirit World) and needed a new level to fill the gap. I actually have a lot more to tell about that topic, including why Doom 2's levels often don't match the theme of the episode they're in. (it wasn't always like that - techbases actually looked like techbases, and at one point the level order was nothing like the final) Jaguar Doom and it's derivatives also have examples of this, with 2 new maps taking names of maps from the original game and Fortress of Mystery being called Dis.

Edited August 4, 2023 by Individualised

[Maximum Matt]

3 hours ago, Individualised said:

techbases actually looked like techbases, and at one point the level order was nothing like the final

Do tell, good sir, I would love to know

[Individualised]

13 minutes ago, Maximum Matt said:

Do tell, good sir, I would love to know

It would be better suited for a much more comprehensive standalone post, I'll probably write one in the future, but some key points are that;

• levels found in John Romero's source data dump for a July 29th, 1994 prototype of Doom 2 have much different texturing from the final. I remember The Crusher being one great example, looking much more techbase/Knee-Deep in the Dead than the final
• July 29th, 1994 was the exact date the level order was re-arranged to be much more like (but not exactly matching) the final. Before that date the level order was almost completely different from the final - with only Entryway, Industrial Zone, Wolfenstein and Grosse being in the same slots as the final. Underhalls was originally a hell level, as MAP25! I imagine the original version was probably much more expansive - unfortunately the July 29th version is already techbase-y and short like the final. For what it's worth there is a map included with the files for the final version of Doom 2 in Romero's source data dump allocated to MAP34 which is a variant of Underhalls but it seems to match one of the final versions.

It goes a bit deeper than this but like I said, I'd rather write up a big, separate post talking about everything. I suspect that everything was changed around and the texturing was made much less thematically correct to the settings of the levels in order to give the game a separate identity from Doom 1. Some of the July 1994 levels look like they could have come straight out of Doom 1.

Edited August 5, 2023 by Individualised

[Maximum Matt]

9 minutes ago, Individualised said:

The Crusher being one great example, looking much more techbase/Knee-Deep in the Dead than the final

Yes, The Crusher was one of the levels that got majorly redesigned before release

14 minutes ago, Individualised said:

July 29th, 1994 was the exact date the level order was re-arranged to be much more like (but not exactly matching) the final. Before that date the level order was almost completely different from the final - with only Entryway, Industrial Zone, Wolfenstein and Grosse being in the same slots as the final.

I would love to know the original map order, please show me or provide a link!!

15 minutes ago, Individualised said:

It goes a bit deeper than this but like I said, I'd rather write up a big, separate post talking about everything.

Please do, that would be epic

[Individualised]

12 minutes ago, Maximum Matt said:

I would love to know the original map order, please show me or provide a link!!

https://tcrf.net/Development:Doom_II:_Hell_on_Earth_(PC)#Early_Progression

"/old Slot" is the level order before July 29th, 1994; "/temp Slot" is the level order for the July 29th, 1994 prototype

 

Worth nothing though that the old level order can only give an idea of what they were going for and doesn't necessarily mean they wanted it to follow that exact order; some maps have duplicate older versions in multiple slots. This is mainly relevant towards the last few maps of the level order, since there was no final boss map yet. The map that TCRF calls "(alternate The Spirit World)" was actually a map originally designed for Doom 1 (the Doom 1 version of the map even has the artefact items) but cut, later revived for Doom 2, but ended up being merged into The Spirit World. That map was called... The Catacombs. So what was supposed to be The Focus ended up becoming The Catacombs in the final, and The Catacombs got mixed in with The Spirit World.

Edited August 5, 2023 by Individualised

[Maximum Matt]

Fascinating.  Thankyou sir

[Redneckerz]

Doom's Data Utility License contains a spelling error in id's address field.

[whatup876]

According to Adrian Carmack, a character from the movie Funhouse was used as reference for Cybie's face.

And if anyone here has a linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adrian-carmack-43822492/

[Ar_e_en]

In Boom or higher - if you place an enemy on a lift platform and the distance from the lift floor to the ceiling is smaller than the enemy height, then once the lift is activated - the lift will work and unless the enemy moves - it will repeatedly go up and down.

In Vanilla (or limit-removing) - The lift will never move.

 

There's a similar trick that works with doors, however - it works in all compatibilities. 

[St. Mildly Annoyed]

I'm almost definitely looking too deep, but doesn't the first few sectors of limbo look like the quake logo.

 

 

 

[Edward850]

Far too deep. Aside from anything else, that section of map was one of the first few things made for Doom.

[G19Doom]

There’s at least 3 things I could think of that that area might resemble, and the Quake logo isn’t one. 

[nicolas monti]

33 minutes ago, Edward850 said:

Far too deep. Aside from anything else, that section of map was one of the first few things made for Doom.

 

Yep, the alphas, there were even some linedef with crate texturing if I'm not wrong.

[Maximum Matt]

Wasn't Commander Keen supposed to be Quake or something?

[Individualised]

4 minutes ago, Maximum Matt said:

Wasn't Commander Keen supposed to be Quake or something?

After Commander Keen 1 id started working on a 2D platformer called Quake. That project never came to fruition but they re-used the name Quake for several projects over the years, such as a top down RPG, and an FPS which ended up being what we got. So while Quake technically started development in 1990, way before Doom, the game we know as Quake actually started development in late '94.

[Plerb]

It was initially titled "The Fight For Justice" but Quake was to be the name of the player character.

Edited August 15, 2023 by Plerb

[Maximum Matt]

So Quake is officially the first FPS ever then.

[Pegleg]

3 hours ago, Individualised said:

the game we know as Quake actually started development in late '94

 

I recall reading an article about John Carmack that talked about him working on the engine that would power the next game (which ended up being Quake) while the rest of iD was finishing Doom 2, so this statement tracks. And considering that there weren't really any substantive improvements in the engine for Doom 2, it makes sense that he was spending his time working on the next engine.

[BeachThunder]

8 hours ago, St. Mildly Annoyed said:

I'm almost definitely looking too deep, but doesn't the first few sectors of limbo look like the quake logo.

 

 

 

🤔🤔

[Maximum Matt]

They invented Marvel too

[Klear]

American McGee was a big inspiration of Aleister Crowley when he made his tarot:

 

 

 

 

Edit: I just realised this is the wrong thread. These obviously true things belong here, we should keep this thread for made up bullshit.

Edited August 15, 2023 by Klear