Talk:E1M1: Hangar (Doom)

Overall article layout
When I write something on a talk page (as opposed to Central Processing or a User talk: page), I get a reaction about one time in 50. Because these changes might conceivably be applied to hundreds of other articles, however, I thought I would make a few remarks.


 * The Final Doom walkthroughs (and some in Ultimate Doom also) have an "Overview" section which is never used. If general comments about the map's style or architecture are really necessary, there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with putting them at the top of the article (as in E2M8: Tower of Babel, for example), since that part is so short.  Similarly, if general comments about the map's difficulty or population would be helpful, IMHO they can go at the top of the "Strategy" section (as in MAP32: Go 2 It) without significantly distracting the reader.


 * The walkthroughs for E1M1 (before I changed it) and MAP01: Entryway provide an instructive contrast in style. E1M1 grinds through each detail of every room and passage (occasionally even telling you which direction to shoot in), pausing to note the differences between difficulty settings, and mixing in all three secrets even though they are also listed in their own section.  This seems like it would really distract a neophyte player who is just looking for the exit, for example (and on a large level such as MAP21: Administration Center, no one would plow through the entire thing).  MAP01's walkthrough, on the other hand, makes no mention of monsters, secrets, or even non-secret caches like the green armor, but simply gives the route to the final switch.  Then it talks about the goodies.  I have tried this latter, "layered" approach here (and so do many commercially published walkthroughs, for the same reasons).


 * Fredrik is of course welcome to complain about my new map. :>


 * The numbering of paragraphs in the "secrets" section is now inconsistent with "one secret sector = one numbered paragraph". This is intentional, because that equation cannot be used on every level without leading to quite ungainly exposition (e.g. the long staircase in E4M3 and the buggy sectors in E4M7).  To make a virtue of necessity, IMHO, we therefore want to offer the reader lists of things to improve his life expectancy, as opposed to merely lists of things that will improve his secrets tally.  Players who wish to complete max runs can simply count off the bold-faced items.


 * I really don't see why we need actual articles about Unreal or Half-Life.


 * No, I couldn't think of a better name than "points of interest". :>    (I thought we needed a place to put, e.g., the soul sphere on the tall post in MAP17: Tenements.)

Ryan W 23:50, 12 February 2006 (UTC)


 * I like your changes. By the way, I think the statistics tables could be improved in many respects. I might work on that when I get some time over. Fredrik 13:00, 14 February 2006 (UTC)


 * "When I write something on a talk page ... I get a reaction about one time in 50". This is because your writing style is inappropriate for a talk page. You need to write shorter paragraphs, and fewer of them, and never ever complain about the audience or use the words "rather" or "awfully". Ashley Pomeroy 22:07, 15 July 2006 (UTC)


 * That first sentence meant, "When I make major changes to established articles, do our founding editors not react because they approve, or because they don't notice/care?" Not very clear, I guess.


 * You have suggested elsewhere that shortening articles is an end in itself, but I'm afraid I still don't see why, let alone how the same logic applies to talk pages. In general, I write long comments on talk pages for two reasons.  First, for the same reason that people write long comments in code: when someone reads the work years later, after we all have gone, and wonders why it was written as it was, the more information they have the better.  Second, I have found that when conversing in plain text with people I have never met, terse statements are far more likely to be misinterpreted as insults.  (Also, in this instance, I thought I had better explain myself quite thoroughly, since I was proposing that 300+ other articles be revised in the same way.)


 * When have I complained about the audience?   Ryan W 01:11, 16 July 2006 (UTC)


 * "In general, I write long comments on talk pages for two reasons". You are a narcissist who loves the sight of his own writing. When you complain that no-one responds to your questions, it sounds desperate and lonely. Ashley Pomeroy 21:22, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Paralyzing database lookups for COMPET-N tables
The parser times out when I try to load the article. Perhaps putting all Compet-N data in a single template isn't a good idea. Fredrik 09:27, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree. This seems like a bad idea. Fraggle 11:50, 10 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Whoops, I didn't know that edit had even been applied! I'll try to fix it.
 * In the meantime, if someone has a better idea for how to avoid updating multiple tabulations of records in parallel, I'd love to hear it. :Z   Right now I'm just thinking about splitting Template:Competndata up by IWAD, which is more scalable anyway.    Ryan W 16:34, 10 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Update: even that was too large to load (or edit), so things have been returned to their original state. I guess we'll just have to update two sets of tables in parallel whenever Adam Hegyi posts new records.    Ryan W 18:07, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Walkthrough demos
Today I replaced the demo (even though it was recorded by me) which shows how to get 100% kills, items, and secrets on UV. Probably nobody will notice, but for the record, here is some of my reasoning.


 * For inexperienced players, AFAICT, pausing in one's exploration to fire/dodge is much, much easier than picking people off on the fly. There was an awful lot of the latter in the original recording.  (Heck, it was fairly rare in COMPET-N recordings before Adam Hegyi showed up.)  Completely new players should probably not be playing on UV, but if they do, I show them how to turn their back to the windows without taking any damage at all, and how to always have cover whenever they face even one sergeant without the chaingun.
 * In addition to the careless frontal assaults I had used in all four skill levels, the original UV recording awakened far too many monsters away from the main "front" where I couldn't attack them, then ignored them until they suddenly appeared in non-reproducible locations (mostly in the computer room). Now, if a monster is moving, either he cannot reach me or I am running toward a place where I can shoot that monster.
 * I now use the extra switch to enter the courtyard from the west. My main concern at that point is to reach the medikit, in case the newbie is severely injured (so far there has been only 8% health to pick up).  The health at the end is guarded by many more monsters, and this route allows me to fight the two sergeants in the passage one at a time, instead of waking up the second one by opening the brown door.

Ryan W 21:27, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Revisions to walkthrough demos today. The highlights:


 * More forgiving footwork to reach the secret elevator (all four).
 * More logical harvesting routes (all four).
 * Better divide-and-conquer strategy in the zig-zag room (HMP and UV).

Ryan W 20:46, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Monster-blocking linedefs not flagged as monster-blocking: can monsters pass through?
When standing in the start room, has this ever happened to you? So far I have only seen this (very, very occasionally) in PrBoom+/ultdoom_compatibility. If our engine mavens tell me I'm full of shit, however, I'll try to make a real vanilla demo. Ryan W 15:50, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Non-deaf sergeant in secret passage climbs stairs into central courtyard.
 * Sergeant next to green armor descends stairs into start room.


 * I don't recall seeing them do those things. If you feel you've really seen that in Doom v1.9u behavior, do try and see if you can catch such occurrences in a demo. Who is like God? 17:16, 5 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Here is the non-deaf sergeant [[Media:E1m1clip.lmp|escaping from the secret stairwell]] (file info). It happens at about 29:40.  If this is a garden-variety noclip issue, fine, but why the monster can't ascend the stairs in the first place is an AFAIAA an unsolved problem .    Ryan W 13:37, 7 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Here is the green armor sergeant coming down the stairs to shoot me (fast-forward to about 122:50). I forget exactly what were trying to prove about the engine, but there's no reason to think it's E1M1-specific &mdash; it's a stock map, meaning the linedefs/sectors are completely ordinary.  Updated DWF link which explains nothing: .    Ryan W (living fossil) 01:01, 18 February 2018 (CST)

Music inspiration
This is a recurring source of controversy, and not only on this site. Years ago, the article stated:


 * The music for this level is likely inspired by the band Metallica. The track that inspired the music is disputed, though "Master Of Puppets" and "No Remorse" are the most popular suggestions.

but this was removed by an anon editor. Then another anon editor said:


 * Also, it is believed that the level's name is inspired by the Megadeath song "Hangar 18".

which was commented out by Gez with the reply


 * Really? Who believes that? The Doom Bible refers to a "hangar two" that is a secondary hangar that "fell into disuse" and now serves to store junk and stuff. It was the first map of the first episode. I think it is much more likely that the level's name is a reference to Hangar Two than to Hangar 18.

See Talk:Doom music for more E1M1 threads. The question is hard to resolve because it is so heuristic; one person listens to two songs and hears similarities, but another doesn't hear them, which produces an impasse. Until we have some balanced way of presenting this, or until we can show that the community as a whole has taken sides, is it better to leave the item out? We could duplicate the footnote in Doom music, but that sort of brings us back where we started. Ryan W 05:30, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Inconsistent data: shareware vs registered/Ultimate
I noticed that the secret sector numbers listed here don't match the ones (83, 86 & 87) I get in UltDoom's DOOM.WAD (via DeePsea and another tool). Indeed they match the ones in DOOM1.WAD v1.9. The Things table also appears to be from the shareware, as UltDoom includes a Berserk pack on skills 1-3 which isn't listed now (I stopped comparing after encountering that discrepancy). On the other hand, the Map data (and the map image) is from UDoom, as all counts are slightly lower in the shareware variant which doesn't have the shortcut from the starting room to the courtyard.

How to handle these differences? Always go for UltDoom; or shareware; or list both with clear labeling; or...? I haven't checked yet whether similar differences exist on other E1 levels, nor between registered DOOM.WAD and shareware. --Xymph (talk) 15:43, 3 May 2016 (CDT)


 * Ryan W or other administrator may fix me if I'm wrong about the following. It's an unwritten rule that thing tables only have single player things. The berserk pack of E1M1 is a multiplayer-flagged item, so it's not listed. This naturally means that such thing tables should have phrases that tell about this fact, but, AFAIK, they haven't been used so far.


 * There's a separate multiplayer thing column for Heretic thing tables, but the vast majority of Doom thing tables do not have it (I think MtErebus added some with the multiplayer column recently). All Strife thing tables lack it. --Jartapran (talk) 14:40, 4 May 2016 (CDT)


 * My bad, I know of that convention but neglected to check the MP flag and only saw the Berserk entry in DeePsea. That still leaves the secret sectors issue though. If all other data is from the UltDoom variant, then those should be too, right?
 * As for general things table improvements, that's a topic Gez just initiated. --Xymph (talk) 15:32, 4 May 2016 (CDT)


 * The latest versions of the commercial games should be used as sources for wiki articles. Thus, the secret sectors should be changed to the Ultimate Doom sectors. They're wrong indeed, well spotted. --Jartapran (talk) 15:51, 4 May 2016 (CDT)


 * Thanks for that link Jartapran. (Wow, my demo research improved an article?)  It's true that we didn't start out including multiplayer things, but it's also true that the tables slowly grow over time &mdash; one user systematically counted barrels &mdash; and IMO multiplayer data really ought to be listed for completeness.  That's one question I hope is addressed by Gez's thread.


 * About differences between releases, how many old-school Doom players have read this article and not noticed that? :D   The change descriptions are based on this, which was forked from this, which IIRC was compiled from id's changelogs and other period sources such as Leukart's FAQ and doom2.net.  I'm therefore fairly confident that that this map and TNT 31 are the only anomalies.


 * When describing vanilla play, we generally default to Ultimate Doom and to Doom II v1.9 because that's what most readers will have (from a repackaged compilation or XBLA or whatever). In an article about a specific map, however, it is certainly appropriate to detail prior versions.  I don't think we have enough examples for a "best practice" yet, but you might see here, or more obnoxiously here.  HTH.    Ryan W (talk) 16:55, 4 May 2016 (CDT)


 * fairly was appropriate ;) as it turned out E1M4 and E1M8 also had numbering anomalies that can't be explained by a simple typo or accidental swap.


 * Heh, I meant architectural anomalies that might truly have shuffled sectors between published versions. If a map was structurally unchanged then the error must have occurred later, during research.


 * I was about to flame the 2005 contributors again for not posting their code, but at least some of these errors are mine .  Using DOOM1.WAD would be an especially bizarre oversight because I bought the Collector's Edition specifically to play Doom II, before the wiki even existed.  (I'm looking at DeePsea now and your changes are correct.)  The only hypothesis I have is that I tried to save time by copying from some other walkthrough or FAQ, assuming the numbers were common knowledge.  Or perhaps I'm Doomguy 2000 in disguise, slowly sabotaging all content.  >:(    Ryan W (usually gone) 20:03, 15 May 2016 (CDT)

Evolution of routes and tricks?
Even after surveying DSDA &mdash; which we weren't doing in the AdamH era &mdash; I couldn't decide whether these mini-trends belonged. So here they are.

More generally: Speedrunning an IWAD map has 20+ years of history, during which theories come and go. Should these sections confine themselves to modern optimized performances (like how the source release superseded inferential FAQs), or include the older approaches as well?


 * NM speed and NM100S aren't maxkills but have been known to traverse the courtyard, for the armor or just to reduce hitscanner exposure.
 * NM pacifist did this more often than UV pacifist, again before people were in the habit of grinding direct routes for weeks .  NM pacifist is an informal category.


 * It saves time when the next-to-last door is held open by a monster. This requires much less luck than the E1M6 traps, e.g., because the doortrack bug can occur.
 * In older runs, NM speed may use infighting more deliberately than UV speed (e.g. to avoid being targeted from all sides in the zig-zag room). The player seems to hitch slightly in approaching the nearest sergeant, until he is distracted by someone behind him.  I haven't played NM in a decade and misinterpretation is very possible.

Thanks to anyone who puts up with all this. Ryan W (living fossil) 14:25, 20 June 2020 (CDT)