Talk:Revenant

Vertical tracking
Removed from the article:
 * Also, their missiles can only turn on a horizontal plane, not a vertical one: if a Revenant fires from above, all the player needs to do is move backwards and the missile will eventually impact on the ground.

It is true that from a great vertical height or short horizontal distance, there is a high chance of a tracking revenant fireball impacting the ground, but given a sufficient shallow angle a tracker can and will level off with the player and continue to track them. This is easy to observe on The Courtyard (in Vanilla 1.9). Clear out all the monsters except one or two revenants, and have them fire at you. If you are about half way across the courtyard and backing up quickly, the trackers will level off before impacting the floor and continue to track you. -- 11:22, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Rencarnated Arch Vile
"Their height appearance also makes it unclear as to what they may have been in life, as they look taller than the game's human characters and do not resemble any other in-game monster"

idk how to upload pics but anyone with doom II can spawn both these characters together side by side with while using zdooms freeze code and see for themselves that the arch vile seems to be the only other demon that fits the height, spawn poster and (less rigored) appearance of the Revenant.
 * Thanks for your edits, but I've removed the section speculating about the Revenant being a reanimated Arch Vile. Other than some superficial similarity in their appearance, I don't see that there's any real basis for this kind of speculation. It's best to stick to what we know for sure. Fraggle 16:40, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Rockets orbiting the player
I think it would be nice to have here some short explanation on this phenomenon, or a link at least. i couldn't find any, can somebody provide one? Mikerakhabit 21:54, April 24, 2010 (UTC)


 * You mean other than the two links that are already right next to that sentence? Okay, how about this one.     Ryan W 02:49, April 25, 2010 (UTC)


 * It seems that you don't get my point. These demos indeed demonstrate the effect, but they hardly explain anything. What causes this effect? Some action on the player's part? Or a something in a map layout, or else? My knowledge of Doom internals is average at best, but I'm by no means a layman either, so to speak. Anyway, would you kindly explain this from the technical point of view? Mikerakhabit 03:31, April 25, 2010 (UTC)


 * Sorry. It's usually safe to assume someone hasn't done much reading before asking a question.


 * I'm no expert either, but by all accounts the limited turning radius is an intrinsic property of the missile. In theory, you can make this effect happen anywhere you have enough maneuvering space.  Try watching Ledmeister's demo (linked above) in slow motion with IDDT, maybe.    Ryan W 05:27, April 25, 2010 (UTC)


 * I think this is natural. There is a phenomenon like this in the real world. The earth is attracted by the sun. but earth moves in an orbit around the sun which resembles a rocket attracted by a player which sometimes causes it to move in an orbit around him. Although the way the rocket tracks the player does not follow the rule of gravity - as the rocket turns toward the player rather than accelerating toward him - but this is as close as I could get for a real world phenomenon.

← ← ← Orbiting is caused by the fact that a homing missile cannot arbitrarily adjust its angle within a single state. The missile advances its state once per 2 tics, and hence the angle is adjusted once per 2 tics as well. Angle adjustment aims to reduce the deviation from head-on course at the target to 0° -- in other words, the missile tries to adjust itself so that it goes straight at the target. Maximum amount of angle adjustment within a single advancement is 16.875°. However, we need to remember that the missile is mobile; what is more, unless the missile is pointed directly at the target (in other words, its deviation from the head-on course is 0°), its movement is going to be adding some deviation away from the ideal head-on course each time a movement step occurs. If the missile is far away from the target, the angle deviation caused by its movement is going to be negligible. In contrast, if the missile is both close enough to its target, and simultaneously its velocity's direction is pointed sufficiently away from the head-on course, the missile's movement will be causing more deviation from the ideal angle than each adjustment step could correct, at least for some time. If we imagine a theoretical scenario where the missile just so happens to be at such a distance from its target, and have such a velocity's angle to the target that each movement step between angle adjustments adds exactly as much deviation as a single adjustment removes, then we have a missile that is perpetually going in a circle, with the target always in the circle's center; in other words, orbiting. The specific "sweet spot" described does not have to be exact for orbiting behavior to happen, though: the described example is what would be needed for the orbit to be shaped like a "perfect" circle ("perfect" within the limitations of Doom engine, of course) with the target directly in center. However, the target does not necessarily have to be placed exactly in the center of the orbit, nor does the orbit have to be an exact circle; the orbit could be elliptical instead. For those reasons, a wide range of initial conditions could end up in creating a stable orbit. --31.60.42.217 19:58, 2 May 2022 (CDT)

Choosing melee vs missile attack
I read here that even when the revenant is hurt, it will only fire a missile if at least 60 units from the target:. Ryan W 23:08, June 10, 2010 (UTC)
 * No. If hurt (MF_JUSTHIT flag is set), P_CheckMissileRange returns true before range is even actually checked. So it retaliates with a missile even at point-blank range. The rest of the time, there is a safe zone between 60 and 196 units; but whenever the rev is made to enter its pain state, then the MF_JUSTHIT flag is set to trigger a retaliation rocket. --Gez 00:01, June 11, 2010 (UTC)

walking in between attacks
Does any one know how long (statistically) does a revenant walks around before it attacks again?