Things about Doom you just found out

[hfc2x]

22 hours ago, zokum said:

Doom originally had much more focus on elaborate light sectors, but during testing their testers ignored it completely. So they stopped adding these kinds of effects. You still see a few of them here and there, but they are not nearly as widespread as they could have been if their testers had paid more attention to what maps looked like. You see a few of these texture tricks here and there to avoid bad tiling and still have a nice bottom trim.

This was just Tom Hall wanting to make the game look more like real spaces. The reason you don't see this often is because they fired him towards the end of development. There's a reason it's only seen on specific maps, like E2M4 (think of the first secret) and E2M7, and it's because Hall made those maps. Sandy Petersen talked about this in a longplay decino and dwars recorded of The Shores of Hell, where they chat with him.

 

Romero liked his maps looking nice, but never really put much effort into light tricks, and Sandy didn't care at all. That's the reason why you stopped seeing those things. It had nothing to do with play testers.

 

Btw, this is the video I'm referencing:

 

[Li'l devil]

8 minutes ago, hfc2x said:

There's a reason it's only seen on specific maps, like E2M4 (think of the first secret)

Here you're probably wrong: the version of E2M4 from Alpha v0.5, which is the version of the game made not long before Hall was forced to resign, doesn't have that area before the teleporter at all (and the area after the final teleporter as well). Basically, in the original version of the map you didn't use teleporters at all, which brings me to one thing I've noticed: Tom Hall apparently really fought Carmack to add teleporters to the game, yet none of his alpha maps ever had them.

 

Actually, there's a similar thing with Sandy: he was apparently the guy who came up with super shotgun (at least that's what he said himself), yet his Doom 2 maps are the ones that often don't have the SSG at all, especially the maps where the SSG is an absolute necessity like Barrels o' Fun. So yeah, this is sketchy!

[Individualised]

2 hours ago, Li'l devil said:

 Basically, in the original version of the map you didn't use teleporters at all, which brings me to one thing I've noticed: Tom Hall apparently really fought Carmack to add teleporters to the game, yet none of his alpha maps ever had them.

A lot of line actions weren't implemented until really late (even the press release beta has a surprising lack of them). My guess is that Tom Hall did convince John Carmack to add them, but only as a general understanding that they would be added when the engine had matured enough and he didn't survive at id Software to see them implemented. Same applies to flying monsters, in the press release build Cacodemons and Lost Souls don't fly.

Edited February 1 by Individualised

[hfc2x]

2 hours ago, Li'l devil said:

E2M4 from Alpha v0.5, which is the version of the game made not long before Hall was forced to resign, doesn't have that area before the teleporter at all

That version of Doom was built on May 1993. Tom Hall didn't suddenly stop working on that map shortly before the release of that particular version and left the map intact like that. He left id Software on August that year, and he did a ton more work, including creating other maps that have been solely attributed to Petersen over the years:

In the same video I posted above, Sandy himself claims the teleporter puzzle in E3M5 courtyard (that relies on light tricks to tell you the correct way out, wink wink) was an idea by Tom Hall, that Sandy says he didn't feel like removing from the map.

 

Besides, the starting area of E2M4 has all of the Tom Hall tells, like all 2-sided linedefs having textures on both sides:

 

And also the entire map fitting neatly within a predefined outline:

 

This last fact is specifically because Tom Hall always made his maps fit a building outline first, and then filling the outline with the actual map.

 

About the SSG, I think it probably was Sandy saying that they should include it in the game, but the Doom Bible already mentioned a weapon that sounded suspiciously similar to the SSG:

 

This obviously didn't make it into the released version of Doom, but (this is just my theory) I think Sandy must have read that and he thought it was a cool concept, so he went and asked the rest of the guys to make it a thing for Doom 2. I suppose that means he technically "got it into the game", but I don't think he necessarily invented it.

[Faceman2000]

Huh. I was totally unaware that John said Tom started E3M6. It doesn’t look anything like a Tom Hall map to me - of course, we have very little to go off of when it comes to Tom’s hell maps.

[Individualised]

I get the impression that Sandy Petersen did a lot less than is attributed to him; I've heard mention of a lot of his Doom 2 maps being originally started by Shawn Green for example. I've kinda became used to things in Doom (and 90s video games in general) not being attributed properly unfortunately, it either seems that no one remembers anything about who did what back then.

[hfc2x]

1 hour ago, Faceman2000 said:

Huh. I was totally unaware that John said Tom started E3M6. It doesn’t look anything like a Tom Hall map to me - of course, we have very little to go off of when it comes to Tom’s hell maps.

I don't think it's literally that Tom Hall made E3M6. What I'm assuming is that Sandy basically created his own version of E3M6 based on whatever unknown previous version of E3M6 Tom had made that incorporated the same themes and gimmicks. However, this is just me speculating over the fact maps like these exist:

 

Edited February 1 by hfc2x

[Plerb]

John Romero claiming Tom Hall started E3M6 is news to me. That one always felt like a quintessential Sandy-only map. Him having some (direct) role in E3M5 feels more plausible to me, even if the only person who claims this is known for misremembering everything about Doom's development. I actually asked Tom a couple months ago if he remembers working on E3M5 (and MAP28/COMM1), but he didn't seem to remember anything on the top of his head, saying he needed to retrieve his notes from storage to give an answer.

 

How much do we know about what Tom Hall did between Doom 0.5 and his departure in August, anyways? The only thing I can think of is E2M1, which isn't in any alphas, but was confirmed by just about everyone to be started by him. E3M7 also looks like it was mostly laid out by Tom, even past the opening area from 0.5.

[Individualised]

Hear me out; I'm pretty sure that 0.5 E1M1 was probably repurposed as the original version of Hell Keep, around the time of the press release version, with the "extended" version above being the original version of Warrens, probably done by Sandy, rather than it being a later version of 0.5 E1M1 done by Tom Hall. 

 

When Inferno was moved from episode 2 to episode 3, the maps were no longer appropriate in terms of difficulty level for their placement in the game, so they were replaced with almost entirely new maps by Sandy (apart from certain set pieces in Warrens).

Edited February 2 by Individualised

[hfc2x]

46 minutes ago, Individualised said:

Hear me out; I'm pretty sure that 0.5 E1M1 was probably repurposed as the original version of Hell Keep, around the time of the press release version, with the "extended" version above being the original version of Warrens, probably done by Sandy, rather than it being a later version of 0.5 E1M1 done by Tom Hall.

I have a similar, but different theory (which would be obvious by now). I think Sandy saw both the original and extended versions of the E1M1 map, and he thought it was not a bad idea, so he proceeded to make his very own interpretation of the concept from scratch, which became the E3M1/E3M9 we know today. This is probably what happened with E3M5 and E3M6. I don't think the 0.5 E1M1 map by Tom was ever intended to be a hell map or even a map meant for the final game at all, since it's pretty clear (at least to me) it was always meant to be just a "feature demonstration" map.

[Dark Pulse]

On 1/6/2024 at 6:24 AM, Li'l devil said:

I've just realized that mancubus shouts "I AM MARBLE" when attacking. It makes a lot of sense.

No no no. It's "HUMP YOUR MOM!"

[yakfak]

I love that doom.exe is smart enough to call up the music lump, look at it to see if it's valid and choose not to play it if it's not supported. i was 100% sure it'd crash on encountering an impulse tracker file

[plums]

@yakfak neat, it's surprising what is and isn't validated by the engine. Sometimes bad files are ignored, sometimes they crash, sometimes the engine tries to use them anyhow, it's always a mystery!

[Tiramisu]

In DOOM 2 MAP05's weird optional switch puzzle room, the three switches have arrows that point to the door they open (two of them pictures below, with fullbright vision). They're super hard to see in the dark, so I'm not surprised it took me so long to notice them!

 

Edited February 9 by Tiramisu

[Individualised]

Sandy Petersen's name is misspelt in the Doom 32X credits

[Scypek2]

Thanks to German Peter's video, I just realized that the Icon of Sin's lava brain is misaligned. They added a bunch of detail to make the animated lava texture more seamlessly fit this one specific 64x32 hole, and then they misaligned it, so the detailed corner bits are in the middle instead. Not that the details would really be visible at a 320x240 resolution...

[GermanPeter]

1 hour ago, Scypek2 said:

Thanks to German Peter's video, I just realized that the Icon of Sin's lava brain is misaligned. They added a bunch of detail to make the animated lava texture more seamlessly fit this one specific 64x32 hole, and then they misaligned it, so the detailed corner bits are in the middle instead. Not that the details would really be visible at a 320x240 resolution...

It also has this metal "bar" on the left side which always bothered me. It's not there on the other side so I have no idea what's up with it.

[act]

23 minutes ago, GermanPeter said:

It also has this metal "bar" on the left side which always bothered me. It's not there on the other side so I have no idea what's up with it.

yoo shit its this fucking guy 

[Scypek2]

25 minutes ago, GermanPeter said:

It also has this metal "bar" on the left side which always bothered me. It's not there on the other side so I have no idea what's up with it.

 

Yep, that one I'm more familiar with. The left side of the Icon is too long and it's tiling, which is the most noticeable on the upper texture with the horn.

 

While we're on the topic, the "dumbest misalignment in Doom II" award probably belongs to the various walls on MAP31. Somehow, Sandy managed to misalign a bunch of 128x128 textures on a grid-based level by making some of the decorative textures too long. As for the dumbest misalignment of Doom 1... I think this pair of textures from E3M4 takes the title.

 

[GermanPeter]

2 minutes ago, Scypek2 said:

While we're on the topic, the "dumbest misalignment in Doom II" award probably belongs to the various walls on MAP31. Somehow, Sandy managed to misalign a bunch of 128x128 textures on a grid-based level by making some of the decorative textures too long.

 

Wow, no kidding. Never noticed that.

[gemini0]

On 9/6/2023 at 4:26 PM, Gibbitudinous said:

Less a thing I just found out and more just realized: how weird it is that seemingly nobody used the evil eye sprite as a shootable switch prior to John Romero doing it in SIGIL. With how much eye-shaped objects are synonymous with shootable switches thanks to series like Legend of Zelda, you'd think that somebody would've had that idea in a Doom wad long before 2019 and that it probably would've caught on pretty quickly, but that's simply not the case afaik.

SIGIL 1 and 2 have absolutely ruined me. Whenever I see an evil eye I instinctively shoot it, whether it's in a crevice or not. I have wasted so many bullets...

[Amaruψ]

On 1/19/2024 at 6:39 PM, Maximum Matt said:

Now why in the circlestrafing hell would Saint Romero DO such a thing?!!!???!?!!?  Nobody can tell me that goddamn Bromero ACCIDENTALLY put that there...

 

At least I'm glad that he didn't put anything out there that actually contributes to 100% items.

[Wahrnehmungskrieg]

Something which seems obvious to me now in hindsight (thinking of eg monster pop-up traps etc.): but if you create a scenario in which the sector you are in instantly snaps downwards by some significant amount (eg any action raising the platform to a lower floor), you're snapped to the new floor height of that sector instantly, as though your shoes were stuck to that floor as it shot down. I mean, the reverse case makes sense to me (being pushed up by the sector as it instantly 'jumps' up) but in the case where the sector 'pops' down, you don't fall down but you're instantly on the lower level (and if you play on GZdoom, the effect becomes so instant it's disorientating. The difference here between GZdoom and eg DSDA-doom with uncapped framerate is something I don't quite understand).

 

It's obviously something that's the case for all floor-lowering actions but in most cases the floor moves at some predetermined rate where it makes sense that you follow the platform.

 

Though, it all makes sense in hindsight since I imagine the same code governs both the moving upwards and moving downwards cases (correct me if I'm wrong), and because so many other things in Doom follow a similar idea, I have no idea why I didn't realise until now that this would be the case also. But it's an interesting emergent property. Mix it with the MBF21 insta-kill-floors and change-texture on the line action for hilarious trolling potential (though I think there are some other, more interesting uses for it, and not just for, say, a 'reverse ambush', which I imagine someone must have done before).

[Klear]

32 minutes ago, Wahrnehmungskrieg said:

But it's an interesting emergent property. Mix it with the MBF21 insta-kill-floors and change-texture on the line action for hilarious trolling potential (though I think there are some other, more interesting uses for it, and not just for, say, a 'reverse ambush', which I imagine someone must have done before).

 

You can use it to make earthquakes. I was experimenting with it a bit at one point and it looked pretty good.

[zokum]

On 2/9/2024 at 7:52 PM, Individualised said:

Sandy Petersen's name is misspelt in the Doom 32X credits

It could be they took it from Id's own 1.0 graphics. They also list Dave Taylor as David. Could be correct, but I have never seen anything than Dave (D) Taylor listed as his name, so I am inclined to believe he is called Dave, not David. His own archived web page uses Dave.

[peach freak]

Doom E2M2:

 

You can press any of the four walls (not just the wall with the switch) in the secret area with the Soulsphere next to the Blue Key to lower the secret back down to the floor.

[DynamiteKaitorn]

If the DooM Wiki is accurate, the Cyberdmon is the fastest enemy in DooM 1 (not counting the Lost Soul's charge attack) and 2nd fastest behind the Archvile (Nightmare difficulty not included for either game).

[rita remton]

just found out in udb (ultimate doom builder), there are some really nice positive status messages such as "created a lovely drawing", "created a handsome rectangle", etc. i wish more apps are like this :)

[rita remton]

On 2/11/2024 at 2:20 PM, Wahrnehmungskrieg said:

if you create a scenario in which the sector you are in instantly snaps downwards by some significant amount (eg any action raising the platform to a lower floor), you're snapped to the new floor height of that sector instantly, as though your shoes were stuck to that floor as it shot down.

i use this as a trap in a vanilla map i'm currently making for a cp, and yes, a bit disorientating. wish there was a slower method but fast enough so that the player could not cheese the trap nor loose the element of surprise for what awaits the player below. the "floor lower to lowest floor" is too slow for this.

[hfc2x]

On 2/11/2024 at 11:20 AM, Wahrnehmungskrieg said:

Something which seems obvious to me now in hindsight (thinking of eg monster pop-up traps etc.): but if you create a scenario in which the sector you are in instantly snaps downwards by some significant amount (eg any action raising the platform to a lower floor), you're snapped to the new floor height of that sector instantly, as though your shoes were stuck to that floor as it shot down.

This exactly is how some of the monster traps in E4M7 are constructed. The concept is the same, although in that case, it's the monsters who "reverse-raise"? (AKA insta-lower) to your position.