Talk:Monster

Just finished a test version for a new layout to be used in the "Data" section of the monster articles. With this new layout it should be possible to neatly fit all the dehacked data into the articles. Anyways, here's what the layout looks like:

Baron of Hell:

Sergeant: {| |cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0| {| | |- |
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|} Feel free to edit the layout if you have further improvement ideas - it's of course better to edit the layout now than after using it in the articles themselves. Janizdreg 21:35, 19 Mar 2005 (EST)
 * valign=top|
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 * }


 * Why not create a template with parameters? - Fredrik 13:23, 20 Mar 2005 (EST)
 * Could be good, though I don't know enough of that stuff to do it myself. Janizdreg 15:43, 21 Mar 2005 (EST)

vote for deletion
I think this page should be deleted. It offers nothing over the Monster categories; except more opportunities to be wrong and more maintenance :) Opinions? -- Jdowland 22:11, 7 Dec 2005 (UTC)


 * I strongly disagree. I like how the Weapons article provides a tight, simple overview without going into as much detail as the pages on individual armaments, and this article could be made to do that also (provided someone fleshed it out, of course).  Such articles are IMHO especially useful for neophyte players who are still trying to get a handle on the overall structure of the game.    Ryan W 08:44, 12 Jan 2006 (UTC)


 * I just made a first bash at this. I don't remember the other games too well (having played them either many years ago or not at all), so I only did Doom and Doom II, but I suspect that certain of our other editors could fill in the Strife part (e.g.) almost effortlessly.   :>    Ryan W 00:39, 16 Jan 2006 (UTC)

today's revert
An anon user changed "at the end of each IWAD" to "at the end of Doom II and Final Doom", saying, Each IWAD -> Doom II and Final Doom as the old one implies Doom I as well.

To be honest, I thought the huge heading saying "Doom II/Final Doom" would take care of that problem. But in any case, the changed version was incorrect, since the Icon appears twice in Final Doom, not just at the end. Ryan W 22:03, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Section heading
This article would benefit from a description of the monster AI, particularly the way they mill about when activiated but not in sight of the player. The AI is more advanced than Gauntlet, whereby the monsters simply take the shortest route to the player and do not attempt to walk around obstructions, but it is still very simple. Ashley Pomeroy 20:42, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Z-Sec's meaning
Any sources that state that name to mean Zombie Security? -- TheDarkArchon 18:03, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Arousal: loose end
The article says: Monsters normally remain activated indefinitely (even after respawning or resurrection).  Is this true even when the monster was killed by friendly fire without ever seeing/hearing the player? In other words, does resurrection/respawning "pin" the arousal bit to true, so to speak, or does the monster simply keep the arousal bit it already had? Ryan W 10:23, 4 March 2007 (UTC)


 * It is not true. I just tested it on Doom2 1.9. The actual circumstances seem a bit convoluted, but testing on map 11 with -respawn, it seems to me like:


 * If a monster is aroused by seeing a player, and later changes their target to a monster, and their monster target dies, they go back to sleep.
 * If a monster is aroused by hearing a player fire or by being damaged by a player, and later changes their target, and their monster target dies, they 're-awaken' as soon as their target dies (making their arousal sound), and immediately target the player.
 * If a monster is aroused by seeing a player, and later is killed by another monster, and then they respawn, they start asleep.
 * If a monster is: killed by a player, or aroused by player fire and/or by being damaged by a player but killed by a monster, and then they respaw, they start aroused and targeting the player.
 * It is as if, if they ever target the player by hearing the player fire or by being damaged or killed by the player (even if they 'hear' the player fire while targeting another monster), they stay targeting the player even through respawn (didn't test with Arch-Vile revival). But if they only target the player by having seen them with a line-of-sight, or never target the player, they don't.
 * At least, that is what 10 minutes of testing seems to show me. --Splarka (talk) 12:19, 4 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Wow, very interesting! I don't think I would dare put this in the article without a code citation, after some of the (ahem) spirited discussions that have occurred here, but with this information as a lead, someone who thoroughly knows the code might know exactly where to look.  Many thanks!    Ryan W 12:31, 4 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Hmm, a random observation spotted several weeks later: Lost souls target a player like any monster, but when attacking they sort of become a fireball (although shootable and with physical dimensions). When they hit a player, obstacle, or wall, they reset to an un-aroused monster. Now here's the thing: if they've been aroused by hearing a player or being injured by a player, they automatically target the player after such a re-awakening (not even the monster that last hurt them). However, if they only saw the player, and the player is currently not in their field of view, they remain asleep (unless the player has made noise or injured them after they awoke).
 * So someone who knows more than passing pseudocode should find out what exactly the difference is between visual and audio/pain arousals and targeting. Might be worth an article.
 * Also, I am not so sure if this statement is entirely appropriate: " However, there is a bug in vanilla Doom which returns all monsters to a dormant state if the player saves and then re-loads the game.". Correct me if I am wrong, but I seem to remember an early version of doom preserving monster targets in saved games (1.2 possibly)? --Splarka (talk) 04:00, 23 April 2007 (UTC)


 * I think I have discovered another wrinkle to this phenomenon: it seems that for the purposes of arousing deaf monsters, the engine treats "a sound has been heard" as a flag that can be set in a given sector and then not cleared. Or tries to, and sometimes messes up.  My examples, from E2M1:
 * The deaf trooper in the shotgun room (Thing 22) cannot quite see into the blue key area (sector 24) at the angle he is facing, so he does not awaken when I stand at the east window. But when I fire a bullet, he does!  Even weirder, if I move away from the window before shooting, he delays waking up until I move back to the window (did the noise improve his peripheral vision?).
 * In Splarka's list above, I can change the first situation into the second by making a sound in the room (whether or not any monsters have arrived yet). For example, on UV there are a demon and 3 imps in the next-to-last room.  Suppose I let them see me, retreat behind the blue door, then encourage infighting by opening and closing the blue door rapidly.  This infighting sometimes drifts back into the next-to-last room before it is resolved.  Once the infighting stops, the surviving monster becomes dormant.  However, if I have taken the precaution of swinging my fist once on both sides of the teleporter (not hitting anything, mind you), the surviving monster targets me instead.  If I have only swung my fist in one of the two rooms, said arousal can occur in that room but not in the other.
 * BUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUG! BUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUG!     Ryan W 12:16, 5 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Addendum: no, I'm not hallucinating this (still no code citations however).    Ryan W 00:07, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Move proposal
I propose to move this to monster. All links to monsters should still work, and it can be rewritten to a proper definition of monster first (since a monster is a type of technical entity in the game, a subclass of thing). The case of the final boss has been brought up since it isn't a monster in the technical sense. It can be briefly described at the top (main article/definition), noting it as one of the sources for monsters (the others being the usual placement in the level, and pain elementals).


 * And scripting.  ;>     Ryan W 00:58, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Games
The way monsters from different games are listed here seems rather awkward. I think each game could have its page (Doom monster, Heretic monster, &c), with a disambiguation at monster (with a brief and general description of the monster entity). Additionally, the article says Doom 64 uses the same monsters plus a few more... but the monsters aren't identical, as they all look different to a degree. The only ones that might not be worth moving out might be the Doom RPG monsters, but even they may have their own characteristics, since that game is somewhat different (I haven't played it, so I can't say much). The pages may all have some similar information (because Heretic and Doom monsters share many characteristics, for example), but each would include its own details and particularities. Any thoughts? Who is like God? 21:53, 19 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Are there really enough details and particularities which differ between games, but not between monsters in a single game, to justify separate articles? I don't see it.


 * As a side note, I wonder how much of the large introductory passage in this article would be more appropriate in Monster behavior. That also affects how much game-specific material could reasonably be added to the split articles, and therefore (e.g.) whether or not Heretic monster would differ noticeably from the existing Template:Heretic monsters.    Ryan W 22:55, 19 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Monster behavior could be expanded with information about pain states, fast mode, respawning, and the like... perhaps the info on using teleporters could be moved there. Anything pertianing to "behavior". This article, on the other hand, is giving an overview of the monsters as a group of game characters entities, their relations, and how they appear in the game, and from it a reader can go to the specific monster articles for more details about each.


 * Perhaps the stuff from other games could remain here, but (PC) DOOM should have full-fleshed articles about anything, in my opinion. Heretic and the other games are not half as notable, so maybe they are okay having "exceptions" sections where their differences with DOOM are examined. Generally, any article that isn't game specific should refer to DOOM in particular, and then, in following sections, to other games based on it. It also makes sense in that they are based on DOOM and DOOM isn't based on them. Who is like God? 01:33, 20 April 2008 (UTC)


 * should have full-fleshed articles about anything  I think I see your point, but "anything" is a lot of things.  I don't know what we could say about, like, ASHWALL2 without drifting into fanfic.   :>


 * IMHO the notability of Doom relative to other Doom-engine games eventually emerges by itself in our article content, simply because so much more information exists (especially the technical stuff). Therefore, I would not support a policy that made Heretic and Hexen second-class, for example, because its biggest effect would be to drive away the few people who know everything about Heretic or Hexen.    Ryan W 21:34, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

Baron projectile attack
It can hurl bolts of green hellfire      ummmmmmmmmm ... who calls it that? Ryan W 19:40, 20 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I support using names from the game materials because they are concrete, but any word that accurately describes something is a good term to use (fire from hell; unreal flames hurled by a hellish monster or used on torches the monsters place in the areas they control). Plasma is a distinctive term that describes the stuff the plasma gun and arachnotrons shoot; a burst of energy from a tech device, evidently based on the scientific term and possibly a reference to a joke in The Terminator (recall the scene where the terminator enters a gun shop, looks at the guns in the store, and asks whether they have some "plasma rifle" model). Who is like God? 21:21, 20 April 2008 (UTC)


 * That is a very logical analysis, which totally ignores a couple of the sources you yourself listed on the policy page. An encyclopedia should do original research only for topics where no cultural precedent is available.
 * Leukart's FAQ calls it plasma (sections 3-9 and 10-9); not definitive of itself, I know, but probably reflects the Usenet consensus at that time, and influenced later usage
 * The source code mentions the term "ball" (S_BARBALL for its sprites)
 * Search Doomworld forums for "baron" + "plasma": 134 threads. Search for "baron" + "hellfire": 10 threads.
 * Even if you reject all of these as circumstantial, "hellfire" is too generic a choice; if used in an article without mentioning barons or hell knights, it seems ambiguous (do we mean those oven textures at the beginning of E3M4 perhaps?).   Ryan W 22:14, 20 April 2008 (UTC)


 * "An encyclopedia should do original research only for topics where no cultural precedent is available" is not how I would put things nor something I would apply to this case. An encyclopedia's point is to offer accurate information, and certainly not to repeat the usage of misleading terms (using them thus only if the misconception is mentioned explicitly). I'm not really doing "research" except on that reference, which I am not applying to the case (just stating why the id guys seem to have used that term for the weapon and by extension its ammo, in talk). Note that the monsters used round balls of energy during early stages of development, and a "fireball" can be a flaming ball with a trailing tail (the term is often used for meteorites and similar phenomena but made its way into gaming especially through the 3rd level D&D spell with that name). The ambiguity argument doesn't make any sense to me (less so considering the texture you mention isn't even green), although your comment made me observe it said "bolt" which wasn't very helpful (a bolt makes the reader think of lightning, energy, or shafts). Who is like God? 23:24, 20 April 2008 (UTC)


 * The terms accurate and misconception imply that there is some objective answer waiting to be discovered. That isn't the case here, as we are subjectively comparing one extrapolation to another.  For example, the statement "Monsters can become glued together when resurrected by an Arch-Vile" is a misconception, because we can look at the code and see that it is not permitted (or conversely, if we decide that it is permitted, record a demo).  On the other hand, with no canon to cite, the statement "Barons' projectiles are called 'plasma', not 'hellfire'" cannot be evaluated in such a deductive manner, only in a literary manner; and I suggest that it is not our place to cast aside the conventions of our community on an issue with no one correct answer.


 * I suppose Fredrik's ideas about original research could be interpreted to mean "every member of the community argues their opinion as myk is doing now, and from the sawdust of the innumerable collisions, consensus emerges, which therefore reflects present convention by definition." Neglecting the fact that many people have left the community since 1993, this is too idealistic an approach right now IMHO: the open-content nature of this site has not yet been accepted by the community.  On the Doomworld forums, one routinely reads complaints about technical errors in the wiki, each of which could be fixed in 20 minutes by an experienced programmer, yet somehow the vast majority of those errors are still here.  Interpretive and artistic questions are currently beyond the scope of the project, I fear.    Ryan W 15:39, 23 April 2008 (UTC)


 * "The terms accurate and misconception imply that there is some objective answer waiting to be discovered."


 * No, it means using language that can get the point across to a reader accordingly, without that reader needing to be biased.


 * Also, here we're nitpicking what terms to use for a single sentence describing the baron of hell; we are not presenting concepts or making interpretations or processes or events.


 * An encyclopedia shouldn't use a normative language editing approach like the one proposed for "plasma"; that selection is arbitrarily based on certain slang. Hellfire, on the other hand is a really nice term to use in that sentence, because it's being used to describe a fireball coming from a hellish monster.


 * "On the other hand, with no canon to cite, the statement "Barons' projectiles are called 'plasma', not 'hellfire' cannot be evaluated in such a deductive manner, only in a literary manner; and I suggest that it is not our place to cast aside the conventions of our community on an issue with no one correct answer."


 * The "cannon" is your friendly neighborhood dictionary, for the most part. If you aren't certain in such cases, leave it to those who are (I would, with a technical matter a programmer could handle netter... at most I'd talk about it). There is no one way to write a sentence, just better or worse ones, and among those, good ones and bad ones. The reader might as well think the baron is shooting what the arachnotrons shoot, with "green plasma". That's bad. And you can't expect them to browse forums or interpret the DOOM FAQ for references. You're supposed to give them straightforward information.


 * By the way, the example you gave about monsters getting glued together comes from people using Boom (or the like) to play, which suffers from that bug, where any technical description should imply the standard executables, unless noted otherwise. A note in the guidelines section indicating that any description should assume the standard executables unless noted otherwise should help clear this sort of issue. It would also help curb the habit of adding a link th the vanilla Doom definition on every technical article, which is superfluous.


 * Neglecting the fact that many people have left the community since 1993, this is too idealistic an approach right now IMHO: the open-content nature of this site has not yet been accepted by the community.


 * You're bringing the "recentism" argument to the wrong person, I can assure you that. Regardless, I'm happy to see you're aware of the problem.


 * On the Doomworld forums, one routinely reads complaints about technical errors in the wiki, each of which could be fixed in 20 minutes by an experienced programmer, yet somehow the vast majority of those errors are still here.


 * Actually, the wiki's greatest strength is its engine related technical articles, and its main weakness the (like you implied, often too recentist) organization and focus in some core articles, the style and clarity in many articles, and the lack of focus on design related subjects (the level articles are helping, but other articles certainly need fleshing out). So no, we should not stick exclusively to strictly technical matters taking others for granted. But if you're better at the technical stuff (it does seem to fit your more rationalist, objectivist, and normative approach), by all means do focus on that! Who is like God? 01:06, 24 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I thought I understood this until I got to the last paragraph, which suggests that we are no longer talking about the same thing. So I'm going to start numbering the points again.
 * This thread is indeed "nitpicky" in the sense that you haven't changed the description of the gameplay, only the word choice. At the same time, before anyone makes tens of thousands of related edits, I think we should be REALLY sure that it's an improvement...  Suppose we agree that "plasma" is a misleading term, and we send four people into four different rooms to think up a new one, and they come back with four different answers.  None has 10 years of community precedent to back it up ("slime ball" might be another suggestion).  How do we decide between them?  You seem to throw around words like "better" and "bad" as though it's something you can measure with a ruler and easily choose one over the other.  If the English language is really like that, I hadn't heard.
 * The "cannon" is your friendly neighborhood dictionary  Except that this particular change doesn't follow that criterion, because in the dictionary, neither hell nor fire is green.
 * I am NOT better at the technical stuff; quite the opposite. If I've suggested that anywhere on this site (or anywhere else on the internet), then I apologize, and I'll try not to do it again.
 * What I meant by the "20 minutes" statement was the following sequence of events: [a] Newbie posts technical question to Doomworld forums.  [b] Experienced forum user yells at them for not checking the wiki first.  [c] Programmer follows up to say that, actually, the wiki article is misleading or extremely incomplete.  [d] Thread sits there for a week, and 20-30 other programmers read it.  [e] A year later, another newbie posts the same question and the same discussion happens, because none of those 20-30 programmers visited the wiki to correct the errors.  (I realize this is off-topic, and I don't expect you or anyone else to know how to fix it right now.)
 * Ryan W 05:56, 9 May 2008 (UTC)


 * By good with technical stuff I mean suitable in mindset for dealing with and organizing more "logical" elements, not that you might know more about technical stuff than someone like fraggle or Graf Zahl. I mean like the way you just organized your reply into numbered points, or your ability to work with information tables and or with data like the REJECT glitch article. Technical data must not only be researched but also incorporated in a manner suitable for it.


 * You seem to throw around words like "better" and "bad" as though it's something you can measure with a ruler and easily choose one over the other.


 * It's not necessarily easy or else we wouldn't be discussing all this, but if you look back there were reasonings behind the (specific) application of "better" and "bad", a kind of analysis considering semantic aspects; and that the bad stuff had something wrong (contradictory or directly confusing) with it. The color green is on the fireball and the baron is from hell. We're just using descriptive terms here to give an idea to the reader about the sprite. "Ball of slime", for example, sounds like a ball of "nukage". The baron's fireball looks much more like the flame on the green torch than like green slime, and besides there is no sign of the ball being liquid, as its particles do not fall like liquid matter. Is that they are some sort of flame or energy in doubt?


 * I just think that "streaming ball of green hellfire" is a cool way of describing the tailed fireball of the hellish monster, not that it's the only way to call it, though I'd certainly stay away from terms that make immediate associations with other different game content (slime and plasma, as mentioned).


 * One more thing about "technical vs. descriptive" matters; perhaps it's easy to imagine how the FAQ and whatnot can be incorrect (either only half right or plain off track) in regard to a technical aspect (2+2=5 is not okay). There's no reason to assume that on a descriptive level (the words it uses to describe elements), it may not be doing poorly as well, at least as far as taking their use at face value in the wiki. The process to determine that either is good or bad may not be the same and the measures to take may be different, though each can be analyzed in its way. That we've brought up the FAQ gives me an idea: the article about the FAQ (or an associated one) could deal with inconsistencies and errors; more or less like we have a piece on engine bugs or we mention WAD bugs. Who is like God? 09:18, 9 May 2008 (UTC)