Things about Doom you just found out

1 hour ago, Shepardus said:

Just press pause/esc while the wipe screen is going?

Ok saw it. I was pressing it right after the melt animation ended.

6 hours ago, amnion said:

you can still press this switch after it's lowered

You can also press both sides of the switch in E2M1 before raising it to open the wall with the red key and lower the teleporter for the plasmagun. Doom is 3D huh? jk

The first map in Akeldama also has a switch that's supposed to raise and block the exit after pressing another switch, but you can press the linedef before it raises to get the blue key.

Thanks to NoisyVelvet I learned there are only two maps in Doom2 that have neither rocket launcher nor barrels (UV, single-player). Naturally I wondered for which maps this was the case in the other IWADs, and discovered two in Ultimate Doom, two in TNT, and three in Plutonia. The full list is below, spoilered in case the reader would like to think about it first :).
 

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On 6/23/2023 at 3:53 AM, NaturalTvventy said:

Switch textures don't animate when they also have a switch texture assigned as upper/lower. 

A bug all too familiar to Eureka users.

In that last room of E1M9, the monster closet next to the exit switch opens then closes again, I'm pretty sure it's the only one in Episode 1 (if not the whole of Doom 1) that does this (not stay open).  The linedef opens both the closet and a nearby door with imps, so when you attack the imps, the specters get alerted and emerge, then by the time you've killed the imps and ridden the elevator back up, the closet has closed again, making stooges like me wonder where the extra specters came from.  

i knew about john romero's head in icon of sin for some reason only just found it it says backwards "To win the game, you must beat me, John Romero"

im stupid

On 6/15/2023 at 1:39 PM, sq. Tiramisu said:

If you pause the game immediately after starting a stage, Doomguy will make an angry face in the HUD, like he's annoyed with you for taking your time with the options instead of getting on with the action!

For the record this happens because in order to effect "don't do anything immediately" the game pretends a newly-spawned player has both Fire and Use pressed at map initialization. If the game is paused before these flags are reset, the status bar face will after a short delay go into rapid firing / "rampage" mode and begin to grimace.

(That reminds me, a questionable choice in that part of the code is that rampage takes priority over invulnerability. Surely if you were invulnerable you would remain serene and impassive regardless of your actions and surroundings? IMO it makes much more sense if invulnerability is prioritized over everything, except maybe death (because if you turn on god mode after death, you're still dead))

On 6/27/2023 at 12:35 AM, Maximum Matt said:

In that last room of E1M9, the monster closet next to the exit switch opens then closes again, I'm pretty sure it's the only one in Episode 1 (if not the whole of Doom 1) that does this (not stay open).  The linedef opens both the closet and a nearby door with imps, so when you attack the imps, the specters get alerted and emerge, then by the time you've killed the imps and ridden the elevator back up, the closet has closed again, making stooges like me wonder where the extra specters came from.  

Heh, did you also see this in the Ultimate Doom Demos thread or is it just a big coincidence? Weird how I saw your post a bit after reading that thread. For my part I had the "wait-a-minute-I-don't-actually-know-how-they-get-there" realisation some years back (I wouldn't be surprised if it were one of Sandy's "fingerprints") but had no idea you could get stuck in there if you were fast enough.

7 hours ago, RjY said:

That reminds me, a questionable choice in that part of the code is that rampage takes priority over invulnerability

I remember trying to only fire my weapons in small bursts as a kid because I was afraid my god mode wouldn't work otherwise. When I got telefragged on MAP30 (after killing monsters for ages because that was the only thing I could think of), I assumed I died because I held fire too much and disabled my invulnerability until I got killed.

This reminds me of a related thing - why does Doomguy grimace if you pseudo-resurrect yourself with IDDQD after dying in vanilla?

3 hours ago, Scypek2 said:

This reminds me of a related thing - why does Doomguy grimace if you pseudo-resurrect yourself with IDDQD after dying in vanilla?

For the exact same reason RjY pointed out, you were likely holding down attack when you died, and nothing clears the status when you're dead. IDDQD doesn't revive you but it does force your health to 100 which is all the status bar cares about, so the status bar returns to running the standard priority but you're still running the player death thinker, which does not clear any actions.

16 hours ago, RjY said:

but had no idea you could get stuck in there if you were fast enough.

Me neither - that means it's yet another......

THING ABOUT DOOM I JUST FOUND OUT ABOUT!!!!!!!1!!!!

On 6/24/2023 at 11:20 PM, RjY said:

Thanks to NoisyVelvet I learned there are only two maps in Doom2 that have neither rocket launcher nor barrels (UV, single-player). Naturally I wondered for which maps this was the case in the other IWADs, and discovered two in Ultimate Doom, two in TNT, and three in Plutonia. The full list is below, spoilered in case the reader would like to think about it first :).
 

  Hide contents

Doom2: MAP12, MAP29
Ultimate Doom: E2M1, E2M5
TNT: MAP01, MAP10
Plutonia: MAP02, MAP11, MAP18

 

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A bug all too familiar to Eureka users.

Map29 has a few other curiosities. It has a box of rocket ammo, but no rocket launcher. It think it is also the only map in Doom and Doom 2 that has a Cyberdemon, but no rocket launcher. Rockets VS rockets is an iconic fight, but Romero skipped that trope on this map. No idea about TNT or Plutonia, don't know them well enough.

On 6/25/2023 at 7:20 AM, RjY said:

Thanks to NoisyVelvet I learned there are only two maps in Doom2 that have neither rocket launcher nor barrels (UV, single-player). Naturally I wondered for which maps this was the case in the other IWADs, and discovered two in Ultimate Doom, two in TNT, and three in Plutonia. The full list is below, spoilered in case the reader would like to think about it first :).
 

  Reveal hidden contents

Doom2: MAP12, MAP29
Ultimate Doom: E2M1, E2M5
TNT: MAP01, MAP10
Plutonia: MAP02, MAP11, MAP18

I take it this is including DM-only weapons? Just off the top of my head I know E1M1 doesn’t have a RL in singleplayer.

1 hour ago, Faceman2000 said:

I take it this is including DM-only weapons?

Multiplayer only. Co-op and DM have the same spawns, so this is true for co-op in this case.

1 hour ago, Faceman2000 said:

I take it this is including DM-only weapons? Just off the top of my head I know E1M1 doesn’t have a RL in singleplayer.

E1m1 has barrels though. And if you meant map01, it has a rocket launcher even on single player. In Doom 2 you get a surprising amount of weapons quite early in the game compared to the original game. The first map gives you a shotgun, a chainsaw and a rocket launcher. In all honesty, the rocket launcher could have been omitted on single player. By the time you get it, there's not much left of the map, there's about one situation where it can be handy, the outside imp pack. I think it's a bit too much firepower this early in the game.

I think it's a great addition. There's no ammo for it, so it's not particularly overpowered, and it gives a nice impression of Doom 2 shaping up to be a more action-packed no-nonsense thing alongside the chainsaw and the enemies right in front of you at the start. Way more fun than the more obvious shotgun -> chaingun -> rocket launcher progression.

Not just but worth showing: graytall in Knee-deep in the Dead, a remnant of the alpha versions

On 6/11/2023 at 12:08 PM, Lippeth said:

This isn't something I currently know, and it's probably not the most interesting question but it's something I often think about and am curious to find out. I know that the source code was released for the Linux version of Doom and not the DOS version, but what explains the absence of DOS Doom's almost green hue to the grey colors in every source port? It's a small detail I guess, but is one of the few reasons I often prefer using vanilla Doom over other ports. It just adds a certain amount of je ne sais quoi that makes DOS Doom so addictive.

I actually find this really interesting. It almost looks like the PLAYPAL is slightly different, but assuming you're running the same doom.wad that can't be the case. Will have to poke at this sometime...

More something about a wad that I just realized: Speed of Doom is essentially the plutonification of Alien Vendetta, taking AV's style of imposing brown architecture and retooling it into a more focused combat experience.

@plums@ludicrous_peridot A part of me almost wonders/hopes if DOSBox's VGA color emulation (or something else in emulating DOS, or even DOS itself) might be part of reason for the subtle color difference. If that's the case, it might be fun to poke around in the DOSBox source code to see what's there, and if it would ever be worth trying to incorporate such a feature to a source port, if it's even a factor. It is just a half-baked speculation, but I hope that it was at least worth mentioning.

A couple of hours ago I found out there used to be another pinky death animation.

I wonder if this was intended to be used as a gibbing animation, if so, has anybody reused it.

Also, while most people may have already noticed, hell knights have brown hooves and horns while barons are black/grey.

barons also have a couple miscolored pixels as well.

On 6/29/2023 at 10:30 PM, Scypek2 said:

I remember trying to only fire my weapons in small bursts as a kid because I was afraid my god mode wouldn't work otherwise. When I got telefragged on MAP30 (after killing monsters for ages because that was the only thing I could think of), I assumed I died because I held fire too much and disabled my invulnerability until I got killed.

Interesting, it occurred to me afterwards that one could misinterpret the face this way. Your post shows it is more than a theoretical concern. I figured it was unlikely because the screen remains inverted, but of course god mode does not have that visual effect.

On 6/29/2023 at 10:30 PM, Scypek2 said:

This reminds me of a related thing - why does Doomguy grimace if you pseudo-resurrect yourself with IDDQD after dying in vanilla?

On 6/30/2023 at 1:44 AM, Edward850 said:

[...] you were likely holding down attack when you died, and nothing clears the status when you're dead. [...]

Indeed, thanks Edward, you are of course correct but I think there is something worth adding. player->attackdown is rather more "sticky" than one would intuitively expect. It remains set for the entire duration of the firing animation and is only cleared on the weapon's return to its "ready" state when A_WeaponReady is called -- the latter of course never occurring if the player dies during the animation, as in that case the weapon immediately lowers instead. The point is, even if the player only clicked the fire button, the status bar face behaves as if it were pressed for dozens of tics, or forever if the player dies during the sequence.

To illustrate this stickiness I made the rocket launcher's firing animation take 100 tics and the rampage face appeared every time I fired it, even with just a tap of the key. Something for those considering making Dehacked weapons with firing delays over 70 tics to bear in mind. You can see Doomguy's frustration...

21 hours ago, St. Mildly Annoyed said:

A couple of hours ago I found out there used to be another pinky death animation.

 

I wonder if this was intended to be used as a gibbing animation, if so, has anybody reused it.

 

Also, while most people may have already noticed, hell knights have brown hooves and horns while barons are black/grey.

barons also have a couple miscolored pixels as well.

At 150HP, the Demon would be pretty hard to gib too, even harder than the player (obviously the player getting up to 200 health and having armor can make him much harder to gib). The only things potentially capable of gibbing a Demon would be:

-Telefrags

-Maximum damage roll from a rocket (160) with <10HP remaining

-Direct hit from BFG (200+ damage roll needed depending on health, a 400+ damage roll would gib it regardless of health, 300 would gib it as long as it's not at full health, and a 200 roll would gib it with <50 HP remaining)

-Berserked Fist (160 damage roll would gib it if at <10 health, 180 with <30, and a max damage roll of 200 would gib it with <50)

On 7/1/2023 at 4:57 AM, Lippeth said:

@plums@ludicrous_peridot A part of me almost wonders/hopes if DOSBox's VGA color emulation (or something else in emulating DOS, or even DOS itself) might be part of reason for the subtle color difference. If that's the case, it might be fun to poke around in the DOSBox source code to see what's there, and if it would ever be worth trying to incorporate such a feature to a source port, if it's even a factor. It is just a half-baked speculation, but I hope that it was at least worth mentioning.

This could be the case indeed (and I thought as much but did not actually persevere to investigate :) - despite myself actually running Doom/ports in DOS/VGA/SVGA most of the time). So far what I found out was that Doom 1.1 and subsequent versions had different treatment of the same Playpal, but I think this is NOT what @Lippeth has meant by his post! I might advise looking at DosBOX-X specifically for your investigation as Jon Campbell is extremely responsive and helpful when it comes to questions or change requests.

For 1.1 specifics, though, I made it part of Tartar source port, as I am overall very curious about this specific 1.1 version of the game.

In map 26 Abandoned Mines, in the big secret area right behind the starting room (with the teleporters and the plasma gun), for some reason one of the cacodemons in the western monster closet (that gets triggered by jumping off the catwalk into the nukage) sometimes fails to get alerted and keeps the other two trapped inside, unless you shoot it or get close to it.  It only seems to happen sometimes (when you trigger the linedef at the end of the catwalk, and not the other ones along the way), and only to that specific caco.  It's real weird, as sometimes it works normally and they all come out as normal, but sometimes that one just sits there staring at you while the other two are trying to get past him.  What am I missing here?

On 7/1/2023 at 4:21 AM, St. Mildly Annoyed said:

Also, while most people may have already noticed, hell knights have brown hooves and horns while barons are black/grey.

barons also have a couple miscolored pixels as well.

Technically the ones having the miscoloured pixels would be the knights, since they were done later.

4 hours ago, Maximum Matt said:

[...] sometimes that one [cacodemon] just sits there staring at you while the other two are trying to get past him.  What am I missing here?

Summary: this happens due to a combination of a small pillar that may block line of sight to only the central cacodemon, and a REJECT table anomaly.

The player begins to step off the catwalk (sector 2), into the space above the slime floor (sector 0), over line 433. The closet doors open and create a line of sight to the cacodemons in the closet (sector 8).

If the player steps off the catwalk in the right place, about a quarter of the way along from the south end of line 433, the central cacodemon's line of sight is blocked by a pillar (line 373 etc.) of which the two behind are clear. I've attempted to illustrate this, below.

Now, if at that point the player reacts quickly to stop himself falling and retreats to the catwalk, a REJECT table anomaly comes into play. While sector 0 (the slime floor) is visible from the closet (sector 8), it turns out the catwalk (sector 2) is not. Monsters in the closet are prevented from seeing a player on the catwalk before a line of sight check is even made.

The player may now freely cross the catwalk and stand right in front of the closet next to the aforementioned pillar, while the central cacodemon remains dormant and the two behind, while awake, never react to his presence or try to attack, until he either makes a noise, or steps off the catwalk into a different sector.

Apparently, when a demon gets damaged by a barrel, it attacks the thing that damaged the barrel first without making it blow up.

To put this into an example, a shotgunner shoots at a barrel without making it go boom, then lure an Archie and during its attack animation blow the barrel up, hurting the Archie. The Archie will then target the shotgunner, although you blew the barrel up so the Archie still should be targeting you.

I think (I am not 100% certain on this) the same goes to the Pain Elemental when it infights something. When it infights something, then kill it yourself, then the Lost Souls will charge at the infighting monster instead of you, who killed the Pain Elemental.

Doom's targeting system is weird sometimes tbh be honest.

10 minutes ago, thiccyosh said:

Apparently, when a demon gets damaged by a barrel, it attacks the thing that damaged the barrel first without making it blow up.

 

To put this into an example, a shotgunner shoots at a barrel without making it go boom, then lure an Archie and during its attack animation blow the barrel up, hurting the Archie. The Archie will then target the shotgunner, although you blew the barrel up so the Archie still should be targeting you.

 

I think (I am not 100% certain on this) the same goes to the Pain Elemental when it infights something. When it infights something, then kill it yourself, then the Lost Souls will charge at the infighting monster instead of you, who killed the Pain Elemental.

 

Doom's targeting system is weird sometimes tbh be honest.

Yeah, that barrel damage mechanic is how you can get same-type monsters to infight (Imp vs. Imp). If an Imp gets damaged by a barrel explosion where another Imp initially damaged the barrel, the Imp that got damaged from the barrel will go after the Imp who damaged the barrel initially. At first, all the fireballs he's chucking at the offending Imp won't do any damage, but eventually, he'll close in and they'll be able to fight and damage each other with melee attacks. This can also cause a monster to try to infinitely infight another same-type monster if they don't have a melee attack (Arachnotrons and Mancubi), which means no damage will ever be dealt.

For Lost Souls, they forget their target after one attack, including when released by a Pain Elemental infighting a monster. The Lost Soul released by the Pain Elemental will be directed towards the Pain Elemental's target, but after the Lost Soul attacks the monster, it will forget that target and come after you instead (unless you're in a sector where your gunfire hasn't been heard in, then the Lost Soul will just go to being idle). This is also another reason why Pain Elementals need to be disposed of quickly, they are awful at infighting and will just fill the room up with Lost Souls when attacking, and the Pain Elemental's target will always go after the Lost Souls and not the Pain Elemental itself.

On 7/1/2023 at 5:13 PM, peach freak said:

 

At 150HP, the Demon would be pretty hard to gib too, even harder than the player (obviously the player getting up to 200 health and having armor can make him much harder to gib). The only things potentially capable of gibbing a Demon would be:

 

-Telefrags

-Maximum damage roll from a rocket (160) with <10HP remaining

-Direct hit from BFG (200+ damage roll needed depending on health, a 400+ damage roll would gib it regardless of health, 300 would gib it as long as it's not at full health, and a 200 roll would gib it with <50 HP remaining)

-Berserked Fist (160 damage roll would gib it if at <10 health, 180 with <30, and a max damage roll of 200 would gib it with <50)

I feel this makes it a bit more likely to make it a unused special gib animation, as this seems to be perfectly in line with what I would imagine a rocket launcher-based death animation would be.

On 7/2/2023 at 10:19 AM, Andromeda said:

Technically the ones having the miscoloured pixels would be the knights, since they were done later.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I meant there were a couple around the right side of the barons groin, so the hell knight couldn't be the only one with miscolored pixels, considering it's just a tan recolor of the baron with brown hell keratin.

If you shoot an Archville pointblank with the Super Shotgun while there casting it will cancel the attack.

It's not always consistent but it might save you in a pinch.