Errata for Unofficial Doom Specs
Preliminary Draft of UDS 1.666 Errors. r0.02, 20.08.1995
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UDS errors:
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From Robert Fenske, Jr. (rfenske@swri.edu), 1995:
- line types 105 and 111 descriptions are switched
- only the cycling crushing line types lock out further sector actions
(just mentioned by Steve Benner)
- creatures will not attack through 2-sided lines that do not have
the 2S bit set; they did in v1.2 but do not in v1.666 or higher
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From S.Benner@lancaster.ac.uk (Steve Benner), 1995:
- Linetype 4 (W1: Door open & close) can be activated by monsters
as well as players;
- Linetype 46 (GR: Door open) DOES require tagging: it can be used
on any line, as remote from the door sector as you like. Only
fist, chainsaw, bullets and shotgun shells activate this trigger;
plasma and rockets have no effect. Bullets and shot from monsters
will activate it, so this is a kinda monster-activated trigger;
- The CLUNK sound attributed to certain linetypes in the UDS is not
a function of the linetype in use. It only occurs if a SW_ texture is
in use on an Sx active linetype and sounds in addition to the
sound of the linetype action;
- Linetype 141 is termed a silent crusher in the UDS. This crusher travels
silently but makes a CLUNK at each end of its travel;
- All self-building stairs have the crush characteristic,
not just 8-unit ones;
- Linetypes 56, 94, 55 & 65 (Floor up to LIC-8, CRUSH) do not lock out
further actions, unless something gets caught in them *and* does not get
killed. Only lesser monsters are killed by this crusher, so if anything
above a Demon gets caught in them, it will be held forever. I suspect
this is a bug: if you activate a release trigger, you can hear DOOM moving
the floor forever!
- Linetypes that move floors up by Short textures seem to move the floors
by 96 (or is it 78?) units if there is no short texture in use. Can anyone
confirm the way these work?
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NEW From S.Benner@lancaster.ac.uk (Steve Benner), Aug 15 1995:
- LINETYPE 49 in v1.2 this line was S1: lower ceiling to floor+8, no crush;
its function changed in v1.666 (and above) to S1: start/resume slow crusher
- LINETYPE 78 & 85 : No operation.
I can't get these to do anything under any circumstances. Which is odd,
'cos I'm sure I once did. If anyone has any *different* info on these
(from EXPERIENCE, that is, not just from reading it somewhere) can they
let me (S.Benner@lancaster.ac.uk) know urgently please. Thanks.
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UDS lacks:
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From S.Benner@lancaster.ac.uk (Steve Benner), 1995:
Different linetype actions behave differently in multi-sector groupings.
Mostly multi-sector groupings behave independently of any grouping. Grouped
floor movements, for example, will all calculate their movement end points
irrespective of any other movements that will occur at the same time. There
are two exceptions to this rule of independance:-
1. Lighting level changes.
The linetypes that switch lights to "brightest adjacent" or "dimmest
adjacent" are sensitive to sector groupings. If you tag more than one
sector to such a trigger, DOOM will look to find the *lowest numbered
sector* of the group. It is this sector's neighbours that will be examined
to determine the light level to switch *all* of the tagged sectors to. This
explainns why sometimes this action appears to have no effect.
2. Slow crushers
Slow crushers calculate their travel independantly if any other crusher
in a crusher chain, but their downward speed of movement can be affected by
anything which gets caught in them. Any slowing of one crusher in a chain
(where by "chain" I mean any crushers moving together operating from one
trigger) can be passed to any other crusher engaged in downward travel at
that time. This effect seems to occur at random (unpredicatably, anyway: I
suspect that nothing is random in DOOM, otherwise LMPs wouldn't work).
NOTE: I have not checked to see whether this effect only happens amongst
crushers which are truly linked through their tag numbers, or whether it
applies to all crushers in motion at any instance: any takers to check that
out?
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From a13231@mindlink.bc.ca (drake o'brien), 1995:
Well, I don't know anything that doesn't come straight out of the UDS by
Matt Fell. The procedure in the UDS is a bit hard to follow if you go at
it linedef by linedef, sector by sector, finding the lowest-numbered
2-sided linedef whose right side faces each succeeding sector.
AAAUUUGGGHH. But you should be able to make rising steps of any shape if
you follow these rules:
1. Make sure all stair sectors have same floor texture.
2. Flip all perimeter linedefs so the 1st sidedef (right sidedef) faces
OUT (except when perimeter linedef is 1-sided, of course).
3. The remaining linedefs separate the rising stairs. Flip all these so
the 2nd sidedefs face in the direction you want the stairs to rise.
Simple as that.
If you follow these rules then you follow the rules of the UDS. Well, I
don't pretend to be exhaustive, I might have missed an item meantioned in
the UDS. But rules 2 & 3 cover the UDS on the 'lowest right-sided
linedef' issue by a simple process of eliminating other possibilities.
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From a13231@mindlink.bc.ca (drake o'brien), 1995:
My tests have shown that necessary & sufficient conditions for medusa &
doom-error free textures on a visible normal sidedef of a 2-sided linedef
are:
1. no void columns
2. no 2 patches can share a line segment on the x-axis.
I threw in condition 1 because it has to hold for any texture to be
doom-error free, because otherwise we get "generate lookup, column
without a patch" ugliness at startup. So I would call any texture for
which these conditions hold 'transparent'. Condition 2 must necessarily
hold, even when one of the patches in question is nothing but 100% pure
cyan.
I have found that in defining a transparent texture, whatever y-offset we
might set the pointer to a patch at in deutex's texture1.txt file, doom
will ignore that value and play the patch as if we had defined the
y-offset to be 0. (note: here I'm talking about the co-ordinates of the
patch in the texture definition, *not* about the y-offset given the
texture itself when applied using a level editor)
I have found that when playing a transparent texture on a 2-sided linedef
doom will tile the texture once and once only. When no flag is set doom
will tile each patch in the texture down once from the ceiling. When the
below unpegged flag is set doom will tile each *patch* in the texture
down once from the height given the texture in texture1.txt. For
example,
TRANSP 256 128
* PATCH1 0 0
* PATCH2 64 32
* PATCH3 196 64
where patch1.bmp is 64x42, patch2.bmp is 128x32, patch3.bmp is 64x8,
satisfies the conditions for a transparent texture. If applied with
y-offset for the texture set at default 0 and with the lower unpegged
flag set then all three patches will tile down once and once only from
128 pixels above the floor.
Now suppose there's no cyan in the bitmaps. Applied to the normal wall
of a 1-sided linedef something quite different occurs. I expected a lot
of tutti-frutti since there are huge void spaces in the texture
definition. But in fact I found that in this case doom tiled each patch
down from the top of the texture and kept tiling until it hit bottom, and
of course on a 1-sided linedef doom tiles from ceiling to floor however
large the space to be filled is. The tiling over the voids wasn't
perfect. There was a 1 pixel line of tutti-frutti between the tiles.
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NEW From: Raphael Quinet, 14 Jun 95
(a couple of news postings from Rapahel Quinet, Frans P. de Vries,
and Deagol (smclean2@warp10.smartlink.net), which I merged w/o keeping
track of who said what).
Found an interesting 'cheat' code for heretic.. its really a sound
debugger, but Its interesting nonetheless.. type 'noise' and a
sound debugger will come on the screen.
The table header is: NAME MO.T MO.X MO.Y ID PRI DIST
*NAME = the name of the sound effect, one from 'gldhit' through 'amb11'
contained near the end of the .exe, 141 effects in all (anyone care
to make an annotated list? :)
*ID = identifying number <duh>
Each sound has a number associated to it, like in Doom. These
numbers are also used by the sndserver in UNIX ports of Doom. Doing a
"strings" or "od -s6" on the sndserver shows the list of sounds.
*PRI = priority. Given that only a limited number of sound effects can
be played simultaneously (usually 3 or 4), there has to be a priority
associated to them so that only the important ones are played when the
a sound channels are full.
The ambient sounds (wind, laughter, steps,...) have a low priority (1 to 80)
and the "attack" sounds have a high priority (320). Thinking of it, I
suspect that the sound priority was the last unknown field in the sndserver
commands (see the articles that I posted here two weeks ago).
*DIST = distance (obviously), 0 is at the players position
You will notice that the ambient sounds are always played at the
player's position (distance = 0, coordinates = player's coordinates).
This is interesting, because the sounds are actually activated by
special "sound things" that can be far away from the player.
*MO.T, MO.X, MO.Y = MO.X and MO.Y show the coordinates of the source of the sound.
These are the coordinates of the Thing which created the sound, with two exceptions:
- the ambient sounds, as explained above (always at the player's position)
- the doors and lifts. In that case, the coordinates are the ones of the
center of the sector which was activated. It's interesting to see how
the center is computed: create a WAD with doors of various shapes and
sizes (even with more than two sides) and see what you get.
MO.T represents the type of the Thing which created the sound (0 for doors).
But I'm not sure about the mapping to the Thing numbers in the WAD file.
Here are a few examples:
Name Thing Type (WAD file) MO.T (sound debug)
Player 1 1 97
Player main arrow ? 91
Player secondary arrows ? 93
Phoenix rod shot ? 86
Morph ovum (pick up) (30) 10
Time bomb (pick up) (34) 14
Time bomb explosion ? 15
Golem 68 102
Golem ghost 69 104
Golem leader 45 103
Golem leader projectile ? 107
Flying gargoyle 66 124
Flying gargoyle leader 5 125
Sabreclaw 90 121
Ophidian 92 113
Maulotor 9 140
Maulotor shots ? 141
Maulotor fire trail ? 142
Doors - 0
Note: the numbers in the table are related to the thing which produces them,
not to the sound effect itself. For example, look at what happens when you
shoot with the ethereal crossbow:
- shooting sound: bowsht (id = 18), mo.t = 91 (main arrow)
- main arrow hitting a wall: hrnhit (id = 14), mo.t = 91 (main arrow)
- other arrows hitting a wall: hrnhit (id = 14), mo.t = 93 (secondary arrows)
There are some "?" in the table above because these things cannot be
put in a WAD file, and thus their number is unknown. For example, you
cannot put a flying projectile in a WAD.
When you get an artifact, usually MO.T is 97 (player). But some of them
have a different value (10 for the Morph Ovum, 15 for the Time Bomb). I
think this is because there is a special light effect when you pick up
these objects.
Maybe I should take a look at the exe with HHE or another tool. The MO.T
numbers can certainly be found somewhere...
I discovered a few other interesting things:
- Doors opening and closing have a high priority (400). This ensures that
you hear the doors even if lots of monsters are shooting at you (pri = 320).
The teleport sound has a high priority too (pri = 500).
- When you press a switch, the sound is associated with the player (mo.t = 97)
but the moving floor or doors have their own sound, coming from the center
of the sector (and mo.t = 0).
- When the Maulotor sees the player for the first time, the "wake up" sound
is associated with the player (mo.t = 97, dist = 0) and not the Maulotor
(mo.t = 140). The same happens for D'Sparil: the first sound (sbtsit)
and the sounds played when he resurrects (sorrise and sorsit) are coming
from the player. This explains why you hear them so well.
- The sounds with the highest priority (2000) are the sound of D'Sparil
summoning his disciples (soract) and D'Sparil dying. They are also
associated with the player.
- Most ambiant sounds are played from the player's position (mo.t = 97 and
dist = 0). However, this is not the case for wind (mo.t = 197, id = 130)
and waterfalls (mo.t = 160, id = 129).