Things about Doom you just found out

[Gibbitudinous]

Hence why Quake (and most modern Doom source ports) has the HUD show your armor type, because it's actually relevant information.

 

E: More so in Quake since it has three different armor types compared to Doom's 2.

Edited October 16, 2023 by Gibbitudinous

[Hellektronic]

3 hours ago, Gibbitudinous said:

Hence why Quake (and most modern Doom source ports) has the HUD show your armor type, because it's actually relevant information.

To be honest I just thought that signified it was above 100%... which would technically be better armor, if it didn't add a defense bonus and was just above 100%.
 

Spoiler

Everybody knows though, if you don't use the classic Doom HUD you're a traitor to the cause.

I realized Quake does it, only somewhat more recently.

[zokum]

On 10/9/2023 at 3:55 PM, jo2ukegappy said:

 

Could be a set of stairs leading to a lower area. 

That's irrelevant. When the door is open, it should be visible from the outside area sticking out of the ceiling of that building. The door is 112 units tall or something like that, the sector difference between sky and door area is maybe 48 units at most. 112 - 48 - 4 = 60 units taller than the top of the building. You should clearly be able to see this from the outside area, but not in the Doom engine due to the way it works. You could postulate that the door works like a garage door, but given the wood construction and lack of seams, that isn't a very good explanation :) If the courtyard sky ceiling was ~56 units taller, it could work, but the area would look less impressive. In Doom you often have to choose between realistic or better looking, and in many cases, good looking won out.

[TheUltimateDoomer666]

This is not related to the game itself, but some (not all) UK copies of the Depths of DOOM Trilogy box have the border of the id logo embossed. Also, these alternate boxes have much "deeper" embossing, especially around the Cyberdemon's hips and the edges of the games' box shots. The entire box is also glossy, while on the more common US-style box only certain parts are glossy, such as the game covers and screenshots.

[Gez]

On samedi 14 octobre 2023 at 3:13 AM, Hellektronic said:

I just figured the higher armor amount was the bonus, but no- the armor is actually more effective. Quake 1/2 is the same way.

I say this mainly considering that games now, even id Software games, made armor generic and purely based on amount. See: Quake 3, Doom 3, Quake 4, Doom 2016, Quake Champions, Doom Eternal

Heavier armor doesn't improve damage resistance in these games, it's just a higher amount of armor percentage. Doom 2016 and Eternal take it a step further- the armor absorbs a complete 100% of damage until drained, making it similar to suit power in the Half-Life games.

There's also Hexen armor, which uses a different system in that armor protection is directly proportional to armor amount. The value the game shows is divided by 5 to give you an armor on a scale of 20 instead of a scale of 100, but if you multiply it back by 5, your armor value is your armor damage absorption. So if you have 16 armor, that means 16*5=80% damage absorption. This also means that armor protection drops quite fast. If you have 16 (actually 80) armor in Hexen, and you take 50 damage, the armor absorbs 80% of that (so 40), you take 10 damage but your armor now is just 8 (actually 40), so if you again take 50 damage this time the armor will only absorb 20 damage, letting you take the 30 remaining points.

 

Whereas armor in Doom, Heretic, and Strife offers constant protection rate until depleted.

[Scypek2]

The staircase down to the crate storage in E2M7: Spawning Vats closes not one, but two timed doors behind you. If you back away fast enough to bounce the first one on your head, you're treated to this sight.

 

[RjY]

4 hours ago, Scypek2 said:

The staircase down to the crate storage in E2M7: Spawning Vats closes not one, but two timed doors behind you. If you back away fast enough to bounce the first one on your head, you're treated to this sight.

 

The wiki points this out as one of the best places to see the tutti-fruitti effect in the original game.

Edited October 18, 2023 by RjY

[Melodic Spaceship]

I just found out that both Crispy Doom and DSDA-Doom have a resurrection cheat that's activated by using the IDDQD cheat while dead.

[Individualised]

This is more like something I just realised than found out but Quake and Doom 2 share something in common... they both only have 2 bosses, one of which is on level 7 of both games and the other is on the final level of each game.

[Finnisher]

On 9/23/2011 at 6:32 PM, Nasesrtyhcfhk said:

The Berserk pack lasts the whole level.

Quality of life significantly improved.

 

This!

I only found it out in 2022 when @Savvyjones01 told me about it even if I played since 1993 (with breaks).

 

I always thought it ran out after the screen effect was gone. Needless to say some of my gripes of low ammo counts are now invalid, lol.

[Pechudin]

To continue onto my earlier discussion about projectiles in Doom missing you even when you are sitting still if shot from a great enough elevation angle/distance, the same happens with the Rev missle, unless it is homing, then it will hit you. Seems the homer adjusts for this error.

[zokum]

39 minutes ago, Pechudin said:

To continue onto my earlier discussion about projectiles in Doom missing you even when you are sitting still if shot from a great enough elevation angle/distance, the same happens with the Rev missle, unless it is homing, then it will hit you. Seems the homer adjusts for this error.

They can miss when firing from a great distance due to too low precision on the Z axis movement of the projectile. They can still hit you from any distance, but the "safe" spots become larger and larger the further away you are. The homing ones however keep adjusting, and will therefor also update the z-axis movement as it approaches.

It should be noted that Doom projectiles move at a constant speed in X,Y and as high a Z-speed as needed. This means that no matter the elevation, the projectile will have the same travel time. In practice this means that monsters above or below you fire faster projectiles. When monsters fire from above and fairly straight down, the projectiles will travel quite quickly. This effect makes it somewhat harder to dodge projectiles, and can be used to increase the difficulty. Monsters are a fair bit away, but the projectiles will travel quicker than you would normally expect. This behavior is probably changed in some of the ports as it is a bit counter-intuitive and a bit of an oversight.

[Oxyde]

Not "Doom" directly related per say, but, while I understand GZDoom's name refers both ZDoom and OpenGL, it also stands for Graf Zahl Doom.

[SupremeBioVizier]

If you watch the movie A kid in Aladdins Palace from 1997 there a a scene where a man is playing doom on a laptop in the desert and they use a demon pain sound for some camel scenes, which matches up great with real camel sounds.

[philcul]

2 hours ago, SupremeBioVizier said:

If you watch the movie A kid in Aladdins Palace from 1997 there a a scene where a man is playing doom on a laptop in the desert and they use a demon pain sound for some camel scenes, which matches up great with real camel sounds.

Lol it's the other way around: Some of doom's demon pain sounds are camel sounds! (Also used in Banjo Kazzooie, but in that case for a camel.) 

[Gez]

Lions and camels and bears, oh my!

 

It's the zombie and imp death sounds that are camel sounds; the pain sounds are human screams and moans. But the speed and pitch are often shifted to make them non-recognizable.

Edited October 21, 2023 by Gez

[Maximum Matt]

On 10/19/2023 at 12:58 AM, Scypek2 said:

The staircase down to the crate storage in E2M7: Spawning Vats closes not one, but two timed doors behind you.

Yeah, why does it need two doors?  They are the ol' thirty-second timed ones, right?  

[drygnfyre]

Something I learned recently, but it's more about Quake.

 

Somewhat famously, id tried their hand at being a publisher and not just a developer. Quake was on an encrypted CD that contained the full game (as well as some others). You could get a hex editor and extract the CD keys to register the game. This let a lot of people get the game for free, and caused id to stop trying to be a publisher. Anyway, what I learned recently was the encryption technology was not limited to just games, and a lot of CDs from the era used the same setup. Which means you could also hack those and get free software. Unlike today, there wasn't much to stop people from either hacking the CD keys, or just installing the software, asking for a refund, then just promising not to reinstall it.

 

I was familiar with the Quake story but I didn't know just how common that setup was in the 90s. I guess a lot of people were getting free software.

[Hellektronic]

I just learned that the random number generator in Doom has a bias towards higher values, which I never knew.

Some ports adjust the RNG, but... I'm almost starting to think I don't approve of that. Hm.

[drygnfyre]

5 minutes ago, Hellektronic said:

I just learned that the random number generator in Doom has a bias towards higher values, which I never knew.

Some ports adjust the RNG, but... I'm almost starting to think I don't approve of that. Hm.

Something I learned regarding it in the past couple years was it's not a range, like I always thought. It's a fixed series. Like, the damage dealt from bullets, I always thought it was 5-15 points of damage. Instead, it's either 5, 10, or 15. There's also some scenario where it's impossible to deal max BFG damage due to limitations in how the RNG works.

[HeatedChocolate]

Something I learned somewhat recently is that the chaingun has the same accuracy thing as the pistol. Tap-firing will always be 100% accurate, suppose this is why I've gained a newfound appreciation for the weapon. That and running and gunning zombies/imps with it is too much fun.

[Edward850]

24 minutes ago, drygnfyre said:

There's also some scenario where it's impossible to deal max BFG damage due to limitations in how the RNG works.

No spread weapon does (meaning the shotgun, SSG and BFG). The shotgun has a max hypothetical damage of 105 but has only been observed to hit 100, and the SSG has a maximum hypothetical of 300 but only hits 245. The BFG seems to only hit at most about 3500 points (curiously the exact number is not listed) out of a hypothetical 4280. This is because both the RNG table distribution doesn't have values that allow of enough consecutive high rolls, but also because the spread, damage and pain chance are all done in a linear order, so damaging a monster and its own pain chance for once tracer directly affects the results of the next tracer. There's a funny discussion in quantum theory to be had that one bullet from a shotgun succeeding/failing to hit a target directly causes the next bullet to hit or miss from the same shot.

Edited October 22, 2023 by Edward850

[drygnfyre]

19 minutes ago, HeatedChocolate said:

Something I learned somewhat recently is that the chaingun has the same accuracy thing as the pistol. Tap-firing will always be 100% accurate, suppose this is why I've gained a newfound appreciation for the weapon. That and running and gunning zombies/imps with it is too much fun.

Yeah, I didn't realize the first two shots are hitscan until watching some guy do it on a let's play. And it's still pretty quick to just do two-shot bursts. I started doing that and now I like the chain gun a lot.

[Finnisher]

2 hours ago, drygnfyre said:

Yeah, I didn't realize the first two shots are hitscan until watching some guy do it on a let's play. And it's still pretty quick to just do two-shot bursts. I started doing that and now I like the chain gun a lot.

 

All shots are hitscan but the first 2 have a spread of 0 or 100 % accuracy.

 

After that it rolls rng for each shot for the spread if you keep fire held, the spread is pre-defined though, angle between hitlines is fixed.

 

Decino has a bunch of analysis videos on Doom if you wanna learn more, very useful and interesting.

[Async Unicorn]

In E3M4, there are two candelabras and blue bottles on the left, which indicate that you should walk here to allow you to press all three switches and to raise the floor under these crusher holes.

Edited October 22, 2023 by Vanilla+Unicorn

[Hellektronic]

Demons really don't like the feeling of stairs on their little feet. Pinkies generally wont climb stairs. Kind of strange, I didn't remember this from past playthroughs.

[Maximum Matt]

Dude demons can totally climb stairs - you're probably thinking about wads that have monster-blocking linedefs or something

[peach freak]

19 hours ago, Vanilla+Unicorn said:

In E3M4, there are two candelabras and blue bottles on the left, which indicate that you should walk here to allow you to press all three switches and to raise the floor under these crusher holes.

 

 

Hm, I wonder if anyone's asked Sandy about that, I've always just gone up the middle, as long as you don't get too close to the crushers you won't set them off.

[Lucius Wooding]

1 hour ago, Hellektronic said:

Demons really don't like the feeling of stairs on their little feet. Pinkies generally wont climb stairs. Kind of strange, I didn't remember this from past playthroughs.

 

Pinkies are fat, and unless the stairs are fairly wide and straight, as well as being lined up in a non orthagonal direction, it can be difficult for pinkies and many other monsters to fit. 

 

Spoiler

 

Steps

  Players can use steps up to 24 unit in height.

  Can be any depth and width.

  Monsters can be reluctant to use steps.

  This is engine dependent so you cannot depend upon what you witness play

  testing on one engine.

  Generally, monsters will not descend or ascend a stair:

    1. If the step height is greater than 24 units

    2. If the next step is smaller than they are.

       If monsters need to use the stairs then they should have

   32 unit deep treads.

3. If the steps are too steep.

 

Monster sizes and usable steps

   * Monsters will go up first step when height is <24.

   * Monsters will go up 1 or 2 high steps, where they would not

     go up 3 or 4 lower steps.

   * The lower bound is usually difficult for the monster, but

     they will succeed.

   * Sometimes the monsters will not descend steps that they will go up.

     This happens with 8 unit high steps, and ceases after adding one more

     step, such that a few 7 unit high are also present.

   * Monsters have extra trouble with curved and angled steps.  They do not

     take into account the angles, but use simple x,y measurements, and

     consider themselves to be squares.

     Multiply the needed step depth by 1.414, measured at 1/2 monster

     width from the inside of the curve (because that is where they

     will go, shortest distance to the player).

Consider increasing the radius of the inner wall

(1 unit radius = 1.57 units step depth).

 

Source: http://doomlegacy.sourceforge.net/hosted/level_design_r3.txt

This is a useful mapping resource in general, there's a useful chart for various monster types around page 22. Some configurations that seem fine might trip certain monsters up a bit if they aren't spacious enough.

[DoomGappy]

On 10/16/2023 at 4:48 AM, zokum said:

That's irrelevant. When the door is open, it should be visible from the outside area sticking out of the ceiling of that building. The door is 112 units tall or something like that, the sector difference between sky and door area is maybe 48 units at most. 112 - 48 - 4 = 60 units taller than the top of the building. You should clearly be able to see this from the outside area, but not in the Doom engine due to the way it works. You could postulate that the door works like a garage door, but given the wood construction and lack of seams, that isn't a very good explanation :) If the courtyard sky ceiling was ~56 units taller, it could work, but the area would look less impressive. In Doom you often have to choose between realistic or better looking, and in many cases, good looking won out.

 

I misunderstood your previous post as "where does this door lead to?", but now I understand what you meant. The door simply vanishes into thin air when it raises. That's a really interesting observation. This could be easily solved by using a lift as a door instead.