Talk:Monsters attacking across tall ledges

This bug falls within the no-vertical limit feature (like the barrels that cause damage on a vertical scale). Strictly speaking, Doom is a 2-D game with a 3-D appearance; a similar effect is drawing a 3-D cube on a 2-D piece of paper. Therefore, vertical linedefs are only for show. Although, I'm still a bit concerned about the player's aiming feature. If you fire a rocket at a wall with a monster high on a ledge directly above, why doesn't that monster become afftected? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.199.178.166 (talk • contribs) .

Because pseudo-3D is not the same thing as making the z-axis completely irrelevant.  (Our own technical articles don't explain this very coherently, I admit, but see the "Doom Myths" page at classicdoom.com.)  If your reasoning were correct, the player could punch a monster from the bottom of a tall ledge, or hit a crowd of monsters with the plasma gun by firing it horizontally 30 feet over their heads, but neither of these things occurs.  Also, there is no such thing as a "vertical linedef".    Ryan W 02:38, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

It is possable for monsters to attack the player when he's on a ledge above them because all their attacks must have a target. The player's code prevents him from hitting the monsters because all of his attacks have a limit to his angle of vertical targeting. Monster attacks have no such limitation, thus allowing them to fire at targets indefinetly above or below themselves, at any angle, even a vertical line between itself and the target, at least thet is what it seems like. -drake raider

Ryan - I dont think this is right. I routinely stand at the top of ledges in vanilla Doom2 and punch Demons running far below or I can remember Heretic on level E4M6 - Halls of the Apostate where using the Staff on Sabreclaws running above, it would connect and eventually they would die. Punches do work, so does the Staff, even if the vertical distance is huge. IDLover 00:52, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

I have never seen a statement about this bug with an actual code citation, so IDLover may be correct.  In the source code, both player and monster hitscan attacks do seem to use the same LOS functions (PAimLineAttack, etc.), but I'm no expert, and Drake Raider's interpretation seems plausible also.  If Raven later made changes, I can't say I blame them.  :>

I routinely stand at the top of ledges in vanilla Doom2 and punch Demons running far below   If you could make a demo of this (on any publicly available map), that would be wonderful.  To disprove Drake Raider's explanation, the ledge must be at least 126 units high.    Ryan W 23:07, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

What about a Demo with MAP03 in Doom2? Towards the end if you have pressed the switches and released the Demons, you can be above them on the ledge and punch. Note: I have never found the pistol, shotgun, super shotgun, chaingun, plasma or BFG has any effect if you are out of sight with the monster roaming below. Rocket, yes, but that is because of the blast radius. And I am claiming that punches & chainsaw work even if the monster is not in your FOV, and any amount of vertical distance. How that squares with Drake's experience I do not know. Heretic I have found to be the same. BTW Heretic is based on the Doom 1.2 source code which is why you do not have LMP demo entries for Heretic in Compet-N, as Doom 1.2 source code was before the LMP size parameter was added in. A real shame. IDLover

184 units?  Go for it.  :D   (Now that I think about it, the limit may be 119 units, but whatever.)  Also, by this logic, shouldn't it be possible to punch the Demons from *below* the ledge as well?

which is why you do not have LMP demo entries for Heretic in Compet-N   Actually, I think it's because maintaining the archive for *one* game has taken over their lives as it is.  :>   See here and here.     Ryan W 00:53, 14 April 2007 (UTC)