MONSTER GLOSSARY

NOTE: Be aware that these "rules" can only be assumed to be true with "official" id versions of DOOM and DOOM 2. The authors of projects based on the GPL'd DOOM source code (such as BOOM, ZDOOM, etc...) may have changed the way these things work (newer versions of ZDOOM allow flying monsters to fly above other monsters, whereas the id versions of DOOM do not). I have not tested these rules with the DOOM source code ports.

NAME
The name the monster is given in DOOM and DOOM 2 documentation. This will sometimes match the "Curtain Call" but most of the time it does not. The blue Nazis from MAP31 and MAP32 of DOOM 2 have no official name.

CURTAIN CALL
The name the monster is given in the end of game animation at the end of DOOM 2. Not all monsters are displayed there.

HIT POINTS
How much damage it takes to kill the monster in question. Your pistol does 10 points of damage per hit. Monsters are not affected by acid or lava.

DISTANCE ATTACK
The visual representation of the attack a monster can use against you from a distance. This can be the image of a shotgun blast, an animated missile or fireball flying past you or the pillar of fire as an Arch Vile tries to turn you into pork riblets.

DISTANCE ATTACK DAMAGE
The amount of damage that the Distance Attack can cause you.
NOTE: The damage values listed are the maximum that has been recieved with no armor on "Hurt Me Plenty" difficulty level. With the exception of the Arch-Vile, damage recieved will vary. I've recieved as little as 2 points of damage from a demon bite. The Arch-Vile attack always inflicts 83 points of damage on "Hurt Me Plenty".

DISTANCE ATTACK TYPE
The type of Distance Attack used by that species of monster.
The are three types of Distance Attack:

Notes on Distance Attacks:
Any monster that uses a "Bullet" Distance Attack can cause injury to any other monster in its line of fire, including members of its own species, that is to say that a Former Human can shoot and injure another Former Human. This often leads to a sort of "cannibalism" as a group of "Bullet" using monsters may end up locked in combat with each other.

Monsters using "Missile" attacks can cause injury to any monster in DOOM EXCEPT members of their own species. That is to say, an Imps' fireball can hurt any monster in DOOM except another Imp. The same holds true for any other species of montser that fires a missile.
There are two special cases regarding this:

  1. Barons of Hell and Hell Knights are immune to each others' fireballs
  2. Pain Elementals work on completely different rules (See the Pain Elemental page for an explination)

There are two species of monsters using "Special" distance attacks, the Arch Vile and the Pain Elemental. See the Bestiary pages for each of these monters for more information.

CLOSE ATTACK
The visual representation of the attack used by a monster in close proximity, usually a bite or claw attack. All Close Attacks are essentially the same. Not all monsters have a Close Attack. All monsters that have a Close Attack can injure members of any species in DOOM, including their own.

CLOSE ATTACK DAMAGE
The amount of damage a Close Attack can cause.
NOTE: The damage values listed are the maximum that has been recieved with no armor on "Hurt Me Plenty" difficulty level. With the exception of the Arch-Vile, damage recieved will vary. I've recieved as little as 2 points of damage froma demon bite. The Arch-Vile attack always inflicts 83 points of damage on "Hurt Me Plenty".

GOODIES
The items, if any, a monster drops when killed. Only Former Humans, Former Human Sergeants, Former Human Commandos and Little Blue Nazis drop items when they die. Specifically:

PAIN CHANCE
Chance out of 256, weighted by amount damage recieved, that a monster will flinch.

MASS
This determines how far your weapons can push a target. Super-heavy targets (like Keens) will never fly backwards from weapon impact, where lighter ones (like Lost Souls) can be thrown back pretty far.

HEIGHT
This is the number of "DOOM UNITS" (roughly one pixel height in the original DOOM/DOOM 2 artwork) a monster occupies vertically. Height is used in DOOM for two things:
  1. To determine whether a monster can enter a sector depending on the distance (in "DOOM UNITS") between the floor and ceiling. No monster can enter a sector whose height (the difference between the elevation of the floor and ceiling) is less than the height of the monster. Placing a monster in a room whose ceiling is lower than the height of the monster will result in a monster that cannot move.
  2. To determine if a bullet or missile attack has hit the monster. Bullets and missiles that are too high will simply fly over the monsters' head.
One important thing to know about height is that for movement purposes all monsters (including Players) are infinitely tall. This means that no two monsters can occupy the same X-Y coordinates, and that missiles that explode above a monsters head, no matter how far above, will injure that monster.

WIDTH
The width of the monster in "DOOM UNITS". This is used for three things in DOOM/DOOM 2:
  1. Calculating whether an attack hit a monster
  2. The minimum width of a sector a monster can enter
  3. How wide of a stair step a monster can walk onto
Monsters in DOOM are represented in the game engine as squares with sides of WIDTH length. This creates an interesting situation in that diagonal sectors must be wider than orthogonal ones in order for monsters (including Players) to move around in them.

SPEED
How fast does this monster move.

DOOM VERSION
What version of DOOM does this monster make its' first appearance. There are three possibilities:
  1. SHAREWARE - The shareware version of DOOM, Episode One - Knee Deep In The Dead
  2. REGISTERED - The full registered versions of DOOM, all three episodes
  3. DOOM 2 - DOOM 2

REACTION TIME (not displayed)
Monsters also have an attribute called "reaction time". Apparently this determines how fast a monster reacts to you, but I'm not sure. I did not list this attribute with the monsters as all monsters in DOOM/DOOM 2 have a reaction time of 8.

DOOM UNITS (general DOOM information)
A DOOM UNIT is a measurement system used in DOOM editors and in the graphics where one "unit" is roughly equivalent to one pixel in the artwork. Things get a bit dicey in that the horizontal and vertical scales are not a 1:1 ratio but closer to 5:8, as explained in Scott Ampoker's DOOM METRICS:

Occasionally, a PWAD designer wishes to create a Doom level based on an actual place (such as his office building or home). I undertook such a project using the actual blue prints as my reference. This creates the problem of equating Doom measurement units to real world units. There is no magic formula. The Doom engine does not appear to render things with consistent aspect ratio. For my project, I found that the following scale produced a satisfying result that "felt right" when walking through the level:
16 Horizontal Doom units = 1 horizontal foot
10 Vertical Doom units = 1 vertical foot