Difference between revisions of "Talk:Berserk"

Revision as of 21:55, 24 December 2008

Has anyone else noticed that you can only gib monsters with the berserk fist after the red haze wears off? oTHErONE _(Contribs) 08:50, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Not me. -- Jdowland 10:31, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

I seem to recall that this demo contradicts it.    Ryan W 21:10, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Did you mean that you can ALSO gib them after the haze wears off? Because I do that all the time. B10Reaper 19:37, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Palette effect

Any volunteer programmer to explain the exact functionality of the red haze effect (described in st_stuff.c)? The UDS says palettes 3 and then 2 are used, but that's a pre-source description, and we could still describe the duration and final blinking effect in addition. Who is like God? 19:41, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Gameplay description...

and temporarily increases the damage inflicted by the fist, the increase dropping with the gradual decrease of red haze, but never going away fully.

increases the strength of the player's punch attack tenfold until the level ends

(Emphasis added.)  Ahem.  So which one is it?  I don't know the source code well enough to identify a gradual change in damage, but there are some very long Tyson demos which I think would look very different if the power decreased with time.    Ryan W 12:01, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

The latter. I've reverted the wrong edit. -- 128.240.229.7 17:44, 12 December 2008 (UTC) (Jdowland, not logged in)

You will notice that, if you had read it, it said "but never going away fully" because it is far more powerful right when you pick it up. That makes the first edit right, and it goes with the second one. "Temporarily increases the damage of the fist" is a bad edit. It makes it sound like it goes away. If you read the edit I just put back in, you'll notice that it says there is still a damage increase at the end of the sentence. B10Reaper 19:42, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

"temporarily" may be misleading, I agree.  But how much more powerful is it at the beginning?  15x damage?  20x?  100x?    Ryan W 22:40, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Is it in the source somewhere? I just play the game, I don't know how to read the source, but it takes one punch to kill a pinky with the haze and without it it takes me 2, on ultra violence so I am not sure. I am gonna go double check that later, but I am pretty sure its 1 and then 2 B10Reaper 17:52, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

The situation you just described would be easy to check with a demo.  Go to E2M4, pick up the berserk pack, wait 3 minutes for the haze to disappear (maybe shooting at some monsters during the 3 minutes so you don't get killed), then open the nearby trap with all the spectres and start punching.  Chances are, two or three will go down on the first hit.

I'm no expert on the source myself, but I'll post what I've seen, in case one of our programmers wanders by.  Here is the function for the player's punching attack:

   void A_Punch ( player_t* player,
                  pspdef_t* psp ) 
   {
       angle_t angle;
       int  damage;
       int  slope;
    
       damage = (P_Random ()%10+1)<<1;
   
       if (player->powers[pw_strength])
       damage *= 10;
   
       angle = player->mo->angle;
       angle += (P_Random()-P_Random())<<18;
       slope = P_AimLineAttack (player->mo, angle, MELEERANGE);
       P_LineAttack (player->mo, angle, MELEERANGE, slope, damage);
   
       // turn to face target
       if (linetarget)
       {
           S_StartSound (player->mo, sfx_punch);
           player->mo->angle = R_PointToAngle2 (player->mo->x,
                                         player->mo->y,
                                         linetarget->x,
                                         linetarget->y);
       }
   }

The bolded section multiplies the damage by 10, and never by any other amount.  The part where the hit points are actually subtracted from the target is contained in P_LineAttack (see the function PTR_ShootTraverse in p_map.c), but both of those are general "path following" and collision detection algorithms: if they behaved differently when red haze was present, then every hitscan weapon would be affected (and maybe every monster melee attack too!).

As they say at Wikipedia, however, one can't prove a negative.  The only way to be 100 percent sure of this reasoning is to check every function in the entire program and make sure there is no reference to the red haze.  I think only certain people know the code quite that well.   :>     Ryan W 19:15, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Strange, I could have sworn the damage lessened for some reason. I've got the full version, i'll test it fully on both the computer versions of doom 1 and 2, and the 360 port of doom to see where my idea came from, maybe i'm actually mistaken. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by B10Reaper (talk • contribs) .

This topic has been checked and double-checked numerous times in the past, even by people who know the source code thoroughly and there is simply nothing controversial or unclear about how it works. The damage dealt during the red haze and after it is the same. -- Janizdreg 22:43, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Janizdreg, it's a fair question, aside from the argumentative tone.  Was there code in the article to support the old description?  No.  Are there external links in the article showing that this has been discussed "in print" by the experts you mention?  No.  Is there any previous statement on this page that it was uncontroversial (as opposed to, say, added to the article in this manner)?  No.  Obviously such revisions could be made, and IMHO would improve the article, but because it is such a slow process, I think we have to expect these kinds of threads.

I fully agree - the article and other articles that deal with the berserk fist damage don't exactly provide much backup for the claims. I'll see if I can dig up one of the old discussions about the topic at some point. -- Janizdreg 00:16, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

Another example: there is a monthly discussion at Doomworld about arch-viles being targeted by other monsters, but somehow people would rather answer the same question over and over than add code excerpts to Arch-vile, Monster behavior, and/or Monster infighting.    Ryan W 06:40, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

and STILL you fail to take out "temporarily" from the edit? If you want to try and sound intelligent, then don't put in something that contradicts its self 2 words later, I fixed it for you yet again. B10Reaper 23:58, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

I'm sorry if my previous message insulted you, that wasn't my intention. And thanks for fixing the "temporarily" part, it was indeed a mistake on my behalf to leave it untouched. Improving these articles collaboratively is what wikis are all about, after all! :) -- Janizdreg 02:49, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

B10Reaper, please read the whole article before assuming some bit in it is wrong. There's no need to repeat information, and it's perfectly reasonable to leave details such as exactly how much it lasts and in what way to the sections below the head of the article. On the same grounds, it does not state the exact increase in damage at the top. All this is because the purpose of the start of an article is to give a characterizing overview of the subject without emphasizing any details that can be given more thoroughly and in their place later. Who is like God? 11:49, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

You might as well write "The berserk pack does nothing whatsoever, haha" if you want to put in details that entirely negate the rest of the article, i see that would be a fitting addition. Had you read the entire discussion, you would notice that "temporary" was agreed to be misleading, because it implies that the bonus goes away and is only there for a limited time. Please read the entire discussion before deciding to put in your own edit from your own beliefs. Reading your summary for edit, by your logic any health bonus should be listed as "temporary" because you can lose it if you are shot or injured in any way. If you want to use such backwards logic, please apply it to every article and not just the ones with an active discussion that agrees on the edit you just undid. B10Reaper 21:50, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

I wouldn't call armor and health either temporary or permanent, as it's not inevitable you will lose their benefits, but generally do. You can't progress through an episode using the power of a single Berserk powerup, however. It is always temporary when playing though the whole game, a notion which fits perfectly in a vague general introduction to the item. I guess you could say that if you were to warp to a level with the intention of playing just that level, a berserk powerup be permanent, although arguably that's a more advanced way of playing (using cheats or command line parameters to get to separate levels).

Anyway, to get something out of this dispute, I've now edited the article a bit more to make it more robust. Since there's no need to go into details of duration at the top (it's basically a descriptive intro; things like exact damage and duration are at home below), I even removed "temporary" in case it confuses anyone like you say. I also added to the detailed sections. Avoiding details at the top gives more reason to expand the detailed sections, otherwise the detailed sections end up pretty weak, as they were, with half of the "combat characteristics" section just repeating something said above. My apologies, in any case, if I was kind of rude here or there. Who is like God? 02:55, 25 December 2008 (UTC)