cheapest strategy ever

[monkeyofevil]

whats the cheapest strategy you have ever used in a doom game and worked.

mine would be in doom64
on the last level ABSOLUTION, you first get all your ammo and choose what gun your going to use. now if you had the demon artifacts you could easily get the invulnerability, hit the 3 switches, and kill off any remaining monsters. however i didnt, so i had alot of demons to fight. so i just thought a random action, "im going to run along the arena wall(the arena was a circle so it was easy) and hope that the monsters would accidentally hit eachother, start fighting, and kill eachother. well this worked so well, that i ended up fighting only three monsters, and then the motherdemon came, but i saved so much ammo in my bfg and other weapons it was an easy fight.

[Sigma]

While that is very much a strategy, I am of the opinion that is what you are supposed to do had you not gathered the demon artifacts. ;)

[FATAL]

Doom doesn't really allow the usage of any cheap tactics. Probably one of the few is that due to the player being so fast it's easy to just skip battles.

[rustyslacker]

Straferunning/wallrunning?

[The Gatekeeper]

I've used the "Make the demons attack eachother while doging all other fire and saving ammo for an even bigger boss fight!" Thats not cheap!

[FATAL]

Straferunning/wallrunning?
Those are just plain cheating, I can't even classify them as cheap tactics.

[Grazza]

lol @ fatal

One of the cheapest tricks, but a very effective one, is the door trick. Stand behind a door rapidly opening and closing it, while the monsters infight on the other side. Very efficient from both a health and ammo viewpoint, and also sometimes the only chance to survive certain areas when playing on Nightmare.

[monkeyofevil]

While that is very much a strategy, I am of the opinion that is what you are supposed to do had you not gathered the demon artifacts. ;)[/QUOTE}

yes, im sure id made a level where the obvious strategy to run in a in a circle and let the monsters kill eachother. come on, do you really think thats what id had in mind.

[QUOTE=Gatekeeper]I've used the "Make the demons attack eachother while doging all other fire and saving ammo for an even bigger boss fight!" Thats not cheap!

first of all, i didnt know that the motherdemon was coming the first time i played it. second of all, i never thought it would work, i just did it for the hell of it. second of all, i dont use that tactic on purpose.

and one more thing. how is strafing/wallrunning cheating. you think its cheating to strafe behind a corner, strafe out, shoot, then strafe back to the corner is cheating. sometimes thats the only thing you can do.

[FATAL]

Oh you don't know the concept of strafe- or wallrunning.

Doom has a bug that allows you to run much faster if you run diagonally, and when dragging along certain walls you can gain incredible speeds.

[The Gatekeeper]

Oh you don't know the concept of strafe- or wallrunning.

Doom has a bug that allows you to run much faster if you run diagonally, and when dragging along certain walls you can gain incredible speeds.

Yeah but he was playing Doom 64! Not normal Doom!

Now, how do you think you beat this level

http://img105.imageshack.us/img105/7578/doom20032eh8yi.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

You get them to fight eachother while strafing to avoid all the rogue shots that miss their target and go towards you, and you could be strafing against a wall!

PS: the new beta of Doomsday has a glitch that stops you from running against walls! I have it and it happens all the time!

[ace]

yes, im sure id made a level where the obvious strategy to run in a in a circle and let the monsters kill eachother. come on, do you really think thats what id had in mind.

They couldn't have had anything "in mind." It's up to the player what to do in a fight, and the designer won't be able to predict what every single person who buys the game is going to do unless there's only one surefire way to beat it. But chances are that most players who aren't up for such a fight or don't want to take the time to do it will use a similar strategy. I've done this numerous times in I-don't-know-how-many maps for Doom. Hell, I did it while I was testing my own map. The point is that it's the easiest way to beat it and so most people would have played it out that way unless they really wanted a big challenge.

Yeah but he was playing Doom 64! Not normal Doom!

That wasn't the point. Even if you don't have the ability to do that in D64, he didn't understand what strafe-running/wall-running actually was.

Also I truly don't think that screen you shot from NUTS is possible to beat at all. Especially seeing as it would slow one-tenth of a crawl with all of those models on-screen as soon as the monsters started moving (not that it would be much faster without models). ;)

[Johanbeyl]

PS: the new beta of Doomsday has a glitch that stops you from running against walls! I have it and it happens all the time!

It's not a glitch in Doomsday. The defs of some of the soundpacks you are using may be causing this.

I quote Dani J666 ( one of the developers ) :

"If you are using ANY modified THING definitions they will need to be upgraded to work with Doomsday 1.9.0-beta4 and jDoom.

In beta4 I have commonised the jDoom/jHeretic mobj flags (there are around a dozen new flags to play with in your TC), however this means you will need to update your THING definitions appropriately. For example, there is now a mobj flag which determines IF said THING can slide along walls, if this flag is missing from a modified PLAYER definition then obviously - it won't slide."

Read post nr 132 in http://forums.newdoom.com/showthread.php?p=474208#post474208 as well. It solves it.

Regards.

[The Gatekeeper]

Thanks Johanbeyl! I had the pack installed! I would recomend Sycraft's soundpack for all the games!

I actually nicked that screenshot from a screenshot thread in the Doomsday HQ forum! (it's not like the screenshot or the WAD is copyright, although reproduction in any way is still bad) It's not mine!

Strafing and wallrunning is all good! You may not know the name of it, but you still do it anyway. You don't really need to know that it is what it is!

[FATAL]

Strafing and wallrunning are very silly and there should be an option in all ports to disallow it.

[Sigma]

yes, im sure id made a level where the obvious strategy to run in a in a circle and let the monsters kill eachother. come on, do you really think thats what id had in mind.

Id Software did not design Doom 64. Midway did. And yes, I am quite sure that is what the level designers intended (no obstructions in your path, switching monster types between spawns, Invulnerability wearing off early into battle, et cetera). Even the official strategy guides and various other strategies on the internet document this. Without gathering the three demon artifacts, the player is limited to his basic weapons. Using a rocket launcher is dangerous because of the vast amount of Lost Souls. The shotgun and super-shotgun are close-range weapons and using them in the pit area of the arena is dangerous because of the magnitude of enemies. The BFG, demon weapon (Unmaker) and plasma rifle deplete the same ammunition reserve (that you should save for the Mother Demon).

When I played this map on "Watch Me Die," I died my first attempt at the Mother Demon. My second attempt I beat it without losing any health (or very little health). I simply ran in circles around the arena letting the other monsters kill each other. Quite simple. I believe once a player develops an idea of how big the battle is, he will do precisely that (something I am sure Midway was more than aware of).

Futhermore, like other Doom games, the manual informs you of monster infighting.

Create chaos among the demons by maneuvering them into a crossfire. If a demon is hit by another demon, they'll fight it out. Sometimes, it's nice to leave the room and let them get it out of their system.

[monkeyofevil]

good point, i never thought of it that way. i only thought it was cheap because of an unintentional result. i didnt know many other people would do that.
well, i apologize.

[Grazza]

Furthermore, manoeuvres designed to exploit an enemy army's poor positioning and lack of manoeuvring space have been a part of military strategy for millennia. Look up the Battle of Cannae for a famous example. OK, so you didn't necessarily get infighting, but they can end up fouling each other up in a way that has a very similar effect. Another example (and a closer analogy) from that era was that if Hannibal's elephants could be induced to panic, they were just as likely to go on the rampage in their "own" battle lines. A smart commander will always seek to use whatever advantages he can find to tip the odds in his favour.

On the topic of straferunning and wallrunning, I find it ugly when these standard aspects of movement in the Doom engine are not used when they could be employed to good effect. It's like someone using the backstroke in a freestyle swimming event. I can't even force myself to watch demos where the player consistently fails to exploit these possibilities (except if it is an unusual demo category that expressly forbids them, obviously). Moreover, I always greatly appreciate it when a map author has deliberately allowed some shortcut tricks based on these ideas (and other such ideas). I regard that as highly elegant mapping.

[Ffabbia]

The Great E2M4 'Crusher Cheese Fest' (Ultraviolence skill)

The cheese begins upon locating the first of the many Barons within the mission. Simply lead him back to the large room with the crusher, activate it by running through, and then stand behind it. allowing him to walk into the crusher, and killing him without firing a single shot.

......Repeat for second baron behind the key door......

This will allow you to save valuable ammo which can be better used elsewhere in the game.

Upon encountering the final two Barons in the sunken rooms near the end of the level, be sure to plant a shotgun shell into the foremost Imp, whilst standing in the corner, so as to make them all fire back at you, and also hit the Baron with splash damage. Stand back and enjoy the scrap. Repeat for second Baron in the next 'sunken room'.