Chaos Serpent's in HeXen don't attack correctly

[Guest]

The Chaos Serpent's in HeXen don't attack correctly in ZDoom. In ZDoom their fireball is incorrectly aimed directly at the players centre rather than being offset by the above centre spawn position of the fireball.

[TheDarkArchon]

IIRC, this was deliberate as the original programming meant the serpents were missing anything shorter than the original Hexen player classes, including custom classes.

[bgraybr]

If thats true, its a poor reason to change the original behavior. If modders want a shorter player class, then they can add a new Chaos Serpent with DECORATE and offset its attack however they want to.

[Graf Zahl]

This was changed because it was creating more problems than just that. Most importantly, the broken way Hexen used prevents them from hitting crouched players, which is a critical issue.

[Guest]

What were those critical problems, if I may ask?

[Akira_98]

the broken way Hexen used prevents them from hitting crouched players, which is a critical issue.

[Guest]

It surely should not matter if the Chaos Serpent can't shoot a crouched player (i.e. the missile always goes over the players head) as the original game had no crouching. The Serpent also can't shoot a pig player or bad guy, but that is surely a feature of the original game.

[wildweasel]

This was changed because it was creating more problems than just that.

[Enjay]

It surely should not matter if the Chaos Serpent can't shoot a crouched player (i.e. the missile always goes over the players head) as the original game had no crouching. The Serpent also can't shoot a pig player or bad guy, but that is surely a feature of the original game.

I disagree. Having 1 (er 2?) monsters that cannot hit crouched players when all others can is silly. OK, crouching was not in the original game but as a Zdoom feature, it should be properly supported (and is).

Also, this issue used to cause problems when Chaos serpents were imported into games other than Hexen (before it was possible to redefine them via DECORATE) and it could also cause problems with redefined players in Hexen.

The original system is the result of lazy or crude code anyway and, as soon as you became aware of it, it just seemed silly and an obvious kludge just to get the serpent's fireball to match up with the height of his mouth whilst sacrificing the logical functionality of the behaviour. Zdoom does it better and with the extra freedom allowed in Zdoom, the improvement is essential IMO.

[Graf Zahl]

The original system is the result of lazy or crude code anyway and, as soon as you became aware of it, it just seemed silly and an obvious kludge just to get the serpent's fireball to match up with the height of his mouth whilst sacrificing the logical functionality of the behaviour. Zdoom does it better and with the extra freedom allowed in Zdoom, the improvement is essential IMO.

The interesting thing here is that Doom 2 faced the same problem with the Revenant but guess what: Id found a solution that produces correct results.

[Enjay]

The interesting thing here is that Doom 2 faced the same problem with the Revenant but guess what: Id found a solution that produces correct results.

I had a sneaking suspicion/recollection that the revenant had a similar issue.

Wasn't the original mechanism something like the fireball was spawned at the normal default height then instantly raised to appear at shoulder height?

[Graf Zahl]

No. That's the mistake Hexen made.

Doom2 did it the other way around: It raised the revenant's z-position, spawned the missile and lowered him again. As a result the aim was calculated correctly.