Talk:Lost Soul floating backwards

This is a bug? I thought they were supposed to do that. Ryan W 17:38, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)


 * I think it's a bug that they continue until they hit something no matter how long it takes. At least, quite odd. Fredrik 18:23, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)


 * Hmm-m, and cacos do it as well actually. Should the name of this article be changed? Or maybe flying monsters were just designed to be a bit insecure. Ryan W 21:42, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I think this article should be merged into Monsters fleeing, since both are special cases of the same AI idiosyncrasy. Cacos and pain elementals crab away halfway (or all the way) to the back wall almost every time they take damage. Any monster who knocks into an obstruction, or a pack of monsters in front of it, trying to reach the player will eventually turn around and run backward or sideways for a while (this is how the teleportation trap in MAP24: The Chasm works).

CarlosHoyos's map would remain, of course. (I don't even want to think about the excruciating trial and error that must have been required.)

Opinions? Ryan W 22:17, 26 Sep 2005 (UTC)

Nobody said anything for a week, so I tried merging this article's information into Monsters fleeing. I think it worked out well enough that we don't need this one anymore. If you disagree with either the idea of the merging or its execution, fine, but please explain. :>   Without harder evidence that the two phenomena have different causes, I really think this is the best we can do. Ryan W 00:05, 4 Oct 2005 (UTC)


 * The things are different. Monster "fleeing" occurs because when forced back by weapon fire, the lack of friction makes it difficult for flying monsters it to regain control. With the lost soul, when it's attacked and does NOT go into it's pain state (Which is rare), It repeats it's charging animation until it hits anything, therefore losing ALL control (They can't even change direction, unlike PE's and Caco's). IOW, I say keep it TheDarkArchon 20:09, 21 Nov 2005 (UTC)


 * Hmmm. They do sound different, now that I think about it.


 * I'll remove the VfD template, but that doesn't solve the basic problem, which is that the article doesn't contain any of the information you have written here. And it sounds as though someone familiar with the relevant frame tables (i.e. not me :>  should ideally be the one to complete it.   Ryan W 19:34, 15 Jan 2006 (UTC)

I think that the Monsters fleeing article is a little unclear. It predominantly describes the desired retreat behaviour in doom, although the article is actually about when that goes wrong, which only happens with floating monsters. The "state" of the monster impacts the precise behaviour of the bug. With lost souls, as TheDarkArchon observes, the effect is exaggerated by the LS being hit whilst charging. However I think they are precicely the same bug none-the-less. -- Jdowland 23:56, 16 Jan 2006 (UTC)


 * So what you're saying is, there are four distinct behaviors to consider:
 * The "desired retreat behavior" (e.g. the Cyberdemon on E2M8: Tower of Babel finding his way around those green boxes, or Demons/Spectres emerging from a trap on E1M5: Phobos Lab and running past the slower-moving humanoids to reach the player first).
 * The "desired retreat behavior" exaggerated to the point of not being constructive (e.g. the Barons in 12.WAD from Maximum Doom "feinting" by stomping all the way back to the far wall of the courtyard for no good reason).
 * Shooting a flying monster, who then has trouble regaining his bearings due to a "lack of friction" (this is pretty easy to demonstrate with any caco in the first room of MAP24: The Chasm). EXAMPLE: Fast-forward this demo to 49:00 or so, and watch on iddt as I shoot the caco a couple of times.  That ' s what should be written up.   Ryan W 11:41, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
 * The situation described above by TheDarkArchon, which is a special case of item 3: you shoot a Lost Soul during his charging sequence and he passes his pain chance check, which results in him staggering backward in a straight line until he hits something. (Although frame tables still do not make much sense to me, I have seen this happen &mdash; thank you for jogging my memory.)
 * As currently written, Monsters fleeing is about item 2, and describes item 1 for background (for the benefit of our less seasoned readers), and this article is probably about item 4 (although it's hard to tell). You're saying that Monsters fleeing should be about item 3 and this article should be about item 4.  Is that right?


 * I think that item 2 is worth mentioning somewhere on the wiki, at least as an "oddity" (maybe it's a bug, or maybe id meant to program it like that, to simulate a homicidal rage that sometimes clouds the demons' more cerebral path-finding reasoning). I also seem to recall that in item 4, the Lost Soul doesn't necessarily keep wobbling until he hits a solid object &mdash; but if that's what it says in the code, then fine.    Ryan W 01:10, 17 Jan 2006 (UTC)


 * I understand the frame sequence for the lost soul well enough: A_SoulAttack starts the charge and the charging animation is looped until something is hit. Once it hits something, the game changes it's state from attacking to chasing again. -- TheDarkArchon 09:22, 17 Jan 2006 UTC

I wonder who is disputing this... I frequently and deliberately make lost souls charge backwards with the pistol/chaingun. You even take damage if they hit you while going backwards.


 * The disagreement is not about whether or not it happens, but whether or not it is a bug (rather than simply one of many differences between game physics and real-world physics, or even a side effect of the creatures' "dumbness" which was programmed into the engine on purpose). See discussion here, which really should be merged at some point.    Ryan W 21:15, 25 September 2008 (UTC)