Rare kills

I was doing a practice run today on WAREHSE1, an annoying crate maze of a WAD from 1994. Just running around trying to figure out a half-decent route for a UV Max and suddenly - BAM! - wasted the Spider Mastermind with a single BFG blast.

I read with interest earlier discussions about whether this could happen in vanilla(-compatible engines), the most recent being this thread but never thought I'd witness it myself.

The demo was recorded with prBoom+ v2.5.0.9-test -complevel 3 (Ultimate DOOM/Doom95 compatibility level). Use prB+ and "-skipsec -15" to go straight to the only point of interest (the WAD sucks and so does the demo ;). Additionally, you can monitor the spider's health with "-trace_thingshealth 38":
-skipsec -15 -trace_thingshealth 38

Good thing I almost never run DOOM without "-record". :D

edit: thread title changed since no one else has single-shot Spider Mastermind kills to share.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

(Mod edit: achievement list below, sorted by weapon.)

BFG             #/shots  Dmg/shot

Mastermind        1       3000

ROCKET LAUNCHER ("Manual" max damage per rocket - 288)

                #/shots  Dmg/shot

Baron           4        250
Revenant        1        300 (glitch)


SSG (Max observed damage per shot: vanilla - 245, Boom - 255)

                #/shots  Dmg/shot

AV              3        233 1/3
3 demons        2        225
3 chaingunners  1        210

SHOTGUN (Max observed damage per shot: vanilla/Boom - 100)

                #/shots  Dmg/shot

AV              9         77,(77)
Hell knight     6         83 1/3
Lost Soul       1        100
3 sergeants     1         90

smm1shot_na.zip

Err... sorry to disappoint you, but it happens quite often, I think. In my p217 max runs (-complevel 4) I killed a mastermind with one BFG shot at least 1/3 of the time. A big surprise to hear it from such an experienced player :)

Where is the demo? Give! ;)

Thankfully I got one. UV invalid Max in 15:29 (I don't want it at DSDA, please, BTW). -skipsec 780

p2171529.zip

Thank you, vdgg. I just did another run on WAREHSE1 and another one-shot SM kill. So perhaps this is indeed not as uncommon as I thought. Grazza talks about 62% chance under "ideal" conditions. Looks like WAREHSE1 is a prime example of such conditions.

Well, not to waste this thread: anyone else got one-shot Spider Mastermind demos? Except those from ZDoom Bizarroland, of course. :)

edit: where were you with your "it happens quite often" when the above-linked discussions took place. :P

More uncommon events:

1. Arch-vile in 3 SSG shots

2. Lost soul in 1 SG shot (there's a par-lutz demo of mine - complevel 9, but it also happened twice to me in m210 maxes and teutic e3m3, unfortunately no demo)

3. Baron with four rockets (one of my darken2 MAP10 maxes + Andy Olivera's MAP10 TAS Max)


I don't know the odds of 1., but 2. and 3. have 1/64 probability




edit: :) at your edit. I'm not everywhere :)

Some uncommon events: 1 chainer and 1 shotgun guy killed with a shotgun blast.

3 chainers killed with a SSG blast.

All 3 demos playback with requiem.wad

rare.zip.zip

Here is something uncommon I managed to record a while back. I entered zombie state without any voodoo interaction. Had fast parameter and boom compat set - not sure if it has anything to do with it. Plays back with ngmvmt1.wad (thread somewhere below).

fgsfds.zip

j4rio: I was pretty sure zombification without voodoo dolls was impossible so I looked into your demo. It turns out a couple of fireballs go through the wall (a more likely occurrence with -fast) and strike the voodoo doll in one of the control sectors just before you become zombified.

Easy to miss, though, unless you're already looking for it :-) Try watching the demo with the map cheat on; -skipsec 150 or thereabouts will get you there faster.

RjY said:

j4rio: I was pretty sure zombification without voodoo dolls was impossible so I looked into your demo. It turns out a couple of fireballs go through the wall (a more likely occurrence with -fast) and strike the voodoo doll in one of the control sectors just before you become zombified.

mind blown

RjY said:

I was pretty sure zombification without voodoo dolls was impossible ...

Nice detective work, and a funny situation. (If that could be used deliberately in a situation where zombification was useful, it would be a strong "trick of the year" candidate.)

I do know of ways that don't involve voodoo dolls, but they need dehacked. Obviously you can set the player's starting health to zero (or negative, though that can have weird additional effects). More fun, you can set maxhealth to zero (or negative). Then when the player picks up a health potion, it's a case of "And Doomguy was a zombie." Presumably you can do the same thing via the maxsoulsphere value.

Regarding one-shot-kills (BFG/SMM), previous threads have discussed situations where one-shot kills are more likely, following on from some comments by Donce (IIRC). Firing in a pure north/south/east/west direction should help increase the chance, as does the positioning of the SMM relative to the blockmap. Hard to keep track of that in-game without planning, but in a set-piece, it should be feasible with suitable map knowledge in certain cases.

Edit: It was Donce's post here that prompted some of the comments above. I think the "lack" of demos with one-shot kills is mainly because people didn't regard them as exceptional enough to bother uploading them just as "curiosity" demos (after all, everyone has seen Doom Done Quicker - you can extract the demos from ddqr.wad using xwe and watch them normally). And there are probably demos that do feature them where the player didn't bother to mention it in the txt, and/or where verification is tricky (or impossible before prb+) due to the chance that the SMM was already damaged.

not sure if it was pure 3 ssg archie kill as I was shooting a bit around, but welp, looks like it is

plays back with hr2

uhhh.zip

j4rio said:
not sure if it was pure 3 ssg archie kill as I was shooting a bit around, but welp, looks like it is

Yes, it counts.
The damage distribution was 245+220+235 and the second arch-vile's thing number is 46

cool, I guess the odds of this are pretty low

I just crossed again this thread, and I wondered how weird is to kill 2 pinkies+ 1 zombie in a SSG hit :o

happened lately in my cchest3 map09 demo

It's impossible. According to doom.wikia.com, maximum SSG damage is 300, pinkies have 150 health. Even just two pinkies is nearly impossible because you need all 20 bullets to do maximum damage.

uh umh so some of the monster have for sure damaged a bit each other seems o,o
will up the lmp soon
or well, am i allowed to post external links to videos?

edit:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILoeIrmED_w
minute 03:21~

Videos are useless in such cases - post the demo here. It's either "for sure" or "it seems", not both; but with "-trace_thingshealth" there's no need to guess.

oh had no clue about that chance to track down the health of monsters
here it is:
(its actually a valid uv max run)

cch3-9-7-37.zip

You almost killed one of the demons in the first SSG shot (290 is his thing number):


Uploaded with ImageShack.us

prboom-plus.exe -iwad doom2 -file cchest3 -playdemo cch3-9-7-37 -trace_thingshealth 290 291 292 -skipsec 180

thanks! :>

Is it possible to kill an arch-vile with 3 rockets? I believe I just did that. I`m pretty sure it wasnt hurt by any infighting. Too bad I didnt record so I could double check and show you guys.

darkreaver said:

Is it possible to kill an arch-vile with 3 rockets? I believe I just did that. I`m pretty sure it wasnt hurt by any infighting. Too bad I didnt record so I could double check and show you guys.

According to The Doom Wiki, it takes 3 - 5 rockets to bring down an archie, 3.72 on average.

Sorry for double post, but at the end of this demo I killed an arch-vile in three rockets. I fire four, but I think he dodged the third one completely. It's on this wad.

sndy07-43.zip

Does someone know the real max damage to single target with BFG 9000? I don't care about the theoretical max (4280) but the real max damage when taking the pseudorandom number generator into account.

Paska said:

Does someone know the real max damage to single target with BFG 9000? I don't care about the theoretical max (4280) but the real max damage when taking the pseudorandom number generator into account.

Perhaps this post from Anders will help.

Grazza's post linked to Anders' post. Seems the minimum is 2639, and the maximum is 2728. 4mer then mentioned that the calculation was a tiny bit off, with the max being 2759, and the min being 2628. Either way, as long as all 40 tracers hit, you should be guaranteed to do at least around 2700 damage (assuming the ball hits).

when watching a demo how do you use commands such as "-trace_thingshealth"?

Best with a frontend, as outlined in this reply (that you never acknowledged, BTW) to an earlier question by you.

Thing is about doomer the computer that i can actually watch demos the screen on the computer is so small that i cant see the bottom half of the doomer program when i use it so i cant use the command line or put where i want to record the demo :S