Question: should multi-hit attack windows for Magma/Storm remain as-is?

[morfidon]

Summary

While looking into an older player report @Ruler2112 about sudden difficulty spikes, I found that some monster families can perform more than one damage window during a single attack animation.

This may be intended legacy behavior, but from a player point of view it can also feel like "duplicated hits", especially on higher difficulties where incoming damage is already much harsher.

I am opening this mainly to ask for direction before changing anything.

Historical context

This came up in an older player report here:

• [Feature Request]: Button to Refresh Items #8498 (comment)

A maintainer replied that if this might be a DevilutionX-specific problem compared to vanilla, it would make sense to open a separate issue and investigate it:

• [Feature Request]: Button to Refresh Items #8498 (comment)

The same player later referenced the same perceived issue again here:

• Fix torn notes not combining when moved into inventory #8504 (comment)

What I found in code

In Source/monster.cpp, MonsterAttack() applies the normal attack hit once at:

• animFrameNum - 1

But there are also hardcoded extra hit windows for specific monster families:

• Magma family gets an additional MonsterAttackEnemy(...) call at frame 8
• Storm family gets an additional MonsterAttackEnemy(...) call at frame 12

So from a code perspective, some monsters really can perform more than one attack check during what the player may perceive as a single attack animation.

The open question is whether this is intentional legacy behavior that should be preserved, or an old gameplay quirk / bug that simply survived unchanged from the original game.

Personally, this transition has always felt a bit odd to me in Hellfire too, which is why I took a closer look.

From a player-experience point of view, the rapid repeated metallic hit sounds in these encounters can sound quite harsh, which further reinforces the impression that something is malfunctioning rather than clearly behaving as intended.

Why I am bringing this up

I am not claiming this is definitely a bug.

What I am saying is:

• the player report is not completely baseless
• the current implementation can plausibly be perceived as "attack duplication"
• the current presentation can make the behavior feel more like a malfunction than a clearly telegraphed mechanic
• the logic is currently hardcoded in MonsterAttack() for specific families, which makes the intent harder to read at first glance

Question for maintainers

Would you prefer one of these directions?

1. Leave it as-is

   • treat this as intended legacy behavior
   • maybe just add a clarifying comment and regression test

2. Refactor without gameplay change

   • keep the exact same behavior
   • but move these extra hit windows into monster data or a clearer abstraction instead of hardcoding them directly in MonsterAttack()

3. Revisit gameplay / telegraphing

   • if this behavior is considered too misleading or too punishing from a player point of view
   • for example by changing how it is represented, documented, or possibly balanced

4. Adjust sound presentation only

   • keep the existing attack windows and damage behavior unchanged
   • but reduce how harsh / stacked the repeated attack sounds feel
   • for example by rate-limiting repeated MonsterSound::Attack playback per monster or per attack animation

My personal preference would be option 4 first:

• it does not silently change gameplay behavior
• it directly addresses the most obvious player-facing "something feels wrong" signal
• and it still leaves room for a later refactor or gameplay discussion if needed

That said, I also would not be surprised if this turns out to be an old bug or design quirk that just survived for a long time because it became normalized.

I can follow up once direction is clear.

[julealgon]

harsh / stacked the repeated attack sounds feel

Is this observable in vanilla as well? I don't remember it being a problem back then, but I might be misremembering.

The first thing to triple check with this issue is to validate whether or not it is consistent with vanilla or not IMHO, and only then make a decision on what (if anything) to do about it.

[StephenCWills]

DevX behavior here is exactly the same as vanilla.
https://github.com/diasurgical/devilution/blob/9f01757243412bb154d02d9af65c804159e6e0ea/Source/monster.cpp#L2811-L2818

This issue freely admits that already

The open question is whether this is intentional legacy behavior that should be preserved, or an old gameplay quirk / bug that simply survived unchanged from the original game.

The question he was asking is if we should do anything about it, even if that "something" is just suppressing sound effects. The answer is no. If the enemy is hitting you twice, it should make the sound twice.

---

the player report is not completely baseless

IMO, that remains to be seen. He didn't specify that it was happening only with certain enemies. He also claimed that he was hearing himself get hit 3-6 times. So the details he provided (or the lack thereof) make it difficult to come to any real conclusion about whether he is:

1. Genuinely experiencing a bug
2. Experiencing this behavior of Magma/Storm type enemies
3. Anecdotally coming up with excuses for why the enemies are doing more damage than he thinks he should be taking

[morfidon]

What I found:

In the reconstructed original Diablo sound code, snd_play_snd() uses an 80 ms replay gate, and if the same sound is still playing it tries to duplicate the DirectSound buffer onto another channel rather than suppressing it. So overlapping repeated playback appears to be legacy behavior, not something DevilutionX newly introduced.

There’s also a very useful extra detail here: the original code had only 8 duplicate channels total, which means old hardware / DirectSound channel pressure may have made stacked sounds feel different in practice than they do now, even if the logic was conceptually the same. That part is an inference from the DSBs[8] array and duplicate-channel logic.

Preserving the original gameplay does not require preserving every rough edge of how 1996 DirectSound channel duplication happened to sound on old hardware.

The original game’s overlapping playback is legacy behavior, but it was implemented against an old DirectSound model with a small fixed pool of duplicate channels. On a modern backend, the same logical policy can produce presentation that feels harsher or more obviously stacked than intended. That is a reasonable basis for a targeted cue-level adjustment, but not for a blanket change to the whole sound system.

That seems like a good reason to consider a narrow presentation-side fix for a specific problematic cue, not a global change to audio playback?

I’m not arguing for hiding real hits. I’m arguing that the current audio path can make real clustered events sound like a bug. Vanilla already allows repeated sounds after an 80 ms gate and can duplicate the same sample onto another channel, so once Cave monsters generate several valid events close together, the result can be a stacked burst that sounds worse than the underlying gameplay actually is. Since Cave levels already contain naturally bursty families like Magma/Storm and Spitting Terrors, a presentation-only tweak would be about preserving gameplay while improving legibility, not masking mechanics.

So maybe instead of focusing on monster attack we should focus on what Ruler described as: "repeated metallic / armor-tink sounds". The reported “armor tinks” may come from block/got-hit sounds rather than the monster attack cue. That changes what the actual fix should touch.

I could add a tiny per-player cooldown in player.cpp and only apply it to the block cue and see where it goes and we could see how it feels afterwards asking Ruler for it.

[morfidon]

That's also interesting: "In 1996, even if the code wanted to play 20 sounds, the hardware/DirectSound layer acted as a natural compressor/limiter. By playing on modern hardware with virtually unlimited channels and high dynamic range, DevilutionX is technically "more accurate" to the code but "less accurate" to the original user experience."

So when a player is surrounded (especially in the Caves), the logic can trigger a massive stack of "block" or "got-hit" sounds. Without the original 8-channel limitation, these sounds stack linearly, leading to a harsh "machine-gun" effect that likely sounds much more abrasive than it did on 1996 hardware.

[StephenCWills]

DevilutionX has the same 80 ms gate that you mentioned before. Game logic runs every 50 ms. So even if you were completely surrounded in all 8 tiles around the player, and the enemies staggered their attacks perfectly, you'd still only get 8 sound effects layered on top of each other, just like in the original game. If the enemies' attack speed allows for it, or if you add in ranged attacks, then you might be able to reach 9 layered "armor tink" sound effects, although I'm not sure if that sound effect is really long enough to layer that many copies of it.

The actual difference between DevX and vanilla based on the logic you are highlighting here is that the vanilla code used the duplicate sound buffer array to limit the total number of duplicate sounds across all possible sound effects, presumably to limit the amount of overlap without also suppressing distinct sound effects. This wouldn't necessarily suppress the user experience of hearing your armor "tink" repeatedly in rapid succession, but it might do that in some cases when there are other duplicate sound effects using up slots in the array.

There is an argument to be made here with regard to Chain Lightning. We might want to consider reintroducing something similar to the vanilla logic in DevilutionX simply because the sheer number of duplicate sounds produced by that spell is enough to bring low-powered CPUs to their knees. There is also something to be said about the user experience of having to listen to all those overlapping sound effects. But this is almost certainly not the reason why Ruler2112 is complaining about the armor "tink" sounds, and the same "armor tink problem" does actually exist in vanilla regardless.

[morfidon]

You make a good point about DSBs[8].

The core logic is basically the same, but that global cap in vanilla was doing real work. Even if it was crude, it still acted like a kind of hardware-side limiter. In modern DevX we are much closer to hearing the raw mathematical result of the logic, and in some cases that just sounds worse. Chain Lightning is the obvious example.

So I agree that the armor tink issue is not some clean DevX-only regression. The underlying behavior is legacy-consistent.

But I do think it scales worse in Hellfire content.

Hive and Crypt encounters can be denser, faster, and more aggressive. When you combine that with a modern audio backend that does not have the same old 8-channel pressure, those repeated block sounds stop feeling like feedback and start turning into a wall of sharp metallic noise.

That is the part I think matters here.

I am not saying this proves a separate gameplay bug. I am saying the same legacy behavior can become much more abrasive in expansion content because the encounter profile is harsher, and modern playback lets you hear more of that overlap more clearly.

To me, that puts this in a very similar bucket to Chain Lightning.

In both cases, the problem is not that the game logic is necessarily wrong. The problem is that too many identical samples can fire inside a window that is too small for the ear to parse cleanly, so the result becomes noise instead of useful feedback.

So even if we conclude that the armor tink behavior is vanilla-consistent, I still think there is a reasonable argument for a narrow presentation-side fix. Not because DevX invented the behavior, but because the old behavior does not scale especially well in Hellfire-style encounters on a modern audio backend.

[StephenCWills]

Maybe I'm not being clear enough. There was no 8-channel pressure. The array of 8 duplicate sound buffers was for globally limiting duplicate sounds only. Any of the stuff you said about hardware or DirectSound limitations is completely irrelevant. You cannot assert that there was some cohesive vanilla experience while also arguing that it depends on the user's hardware or possibly also on the DirectSound version.

[morfidon]

Maybe I'm not being clear enough. There was no 8-channel pressure. The array of 8 duplicate sound buffers was for globally limiting duplicate sounds only. Any of the stuff you said about hardware or DirectSound limitations is completely irrelevant. You cannot assert that there was some cohesive vanilla experience while also arguing that it depends on the user's hardware or possibly also on the DirectSound version.

I think we may be talking past each other a bit.

I agree the hardware angle was overstated, and I’m fine dropping it.

But that still leaves the actual UX point.

My argument was not just "maybe old hardware sounded different." The bigger point is that once you have a system producing a large number of near-identical cues inside a very small window, those sounds stop functioning as readable feedback and start collapsing into noise.

That seems to already be accepted in principle for Chain Lightning - which was your addition right?

So my question is not really about vanilla hardware anymore. It is: if we accept that too many overlapping duplicate sounds can become a bad experience in one case, why would that same reasoning not apply to other burst-heavy situations as well - for example fast ranged enemies, puddle / projectile-heavy fights, or clustered block / hit feedback?

I’m not saying that proves a bug here by itself. I’m saying the underlying audio-presentation problem seems broader than just Chain Lightning.

[morfidon]

Maybe the cleanest future direction is to treat this as an audio-presentation problem rather than a gameplay bug.
I’m not suggesting changes to hit logic, AI, or timing.
What I’d suggest instead is a small overlap policy for specific high-frequency feedback cues - either a per-source cooldown or a configurable overlap rule per sound class.

That would also line up nicely with the kind of concerns already mentioned around Chain Lightning: same general issue, meaning too many near-identical cues inside a very small window stop being useful feedback and turn into noise.

[StephenCWills]

So my question is not really about vanilla hardware anymore. It is: if we accept that too many overlapping duplicate sounds can become a bad experience in one case, why would that same reasoning not apply to other burst-heavy situations as well - for example fast ranged enemies, puddle / projectile-heavy fights, or clustered block / hit feedback?

I’m not saying that proves a bug here by itself. I’m saying the underlying audio-presentation problem seems broader than just Chain Lightning.

The problem I have is that this problem doesn't really affect anything besides Chain Lightning (and Lightning to some extent). If you want to frame this discussion around the idea of getting hit in rapid succession, then I would consider that an entirely different problem for two reasons:

1. The 80 ms gate between playing the same sound effect is sufficient for disrupting the overlap to a degree that is acceptable for UX purposes.
2. Maybe the player's "got hit" sounds shouldn't overlap at all, since he only has one set of vocal chords.

Not only do I think this problem is entirely limited to Chain Lightning, but I also think it would be both sufficient and most useful to understand it from the perspective of Chain Lightning because it is by far the worst offender.

Lastly, if you refer back to the initial post of this issue, you will see that UX and oversaturation of sound effects is not the true focus of this issue. Out of all the suggested remedies for the issue at hand, this is the only one that I would personally consider to be a useful course of action.

Refactor without gameplay change

• keep the exact same behavior
• but move these extra hit windows into monster data or a clearer abstraction instead of hardcoding them directly in MonsterAttack()

If you want to create a separate issue about Chain Lightning, then that sounds fine to me too.

[Ruler2112]

The enemies that have the multi-hit phenomena did seem to be the lightning lizards & lava demons. The problem isn't the chain lightning - it does almost nothing as far as damage goes, but rather the melee attacks. I do not remember running into this in prior playthroughs with the original engine, but it's been probably close to 2 years and I might've easily forgotten or just rolled different enemy sets in the caves on hell difficulty.

I obviously have no involvement with this project except as a player & have no say on what is done about it. As a player, this just feels plain broken, whether from a legacy bug, intentional design, or flaw in the current implementation:

As I stated in the other ticket, I flat-out dominated the first 8 levels of the game. Rambo in the woods dominated. Frank Dux in the opening round of Kumite dominated. Anakin in the youngling chamber dominated. Never used a single heal in 8 levels, only left to identify / sell loot, and didn't pay any attention to where the monsters were in relationship to me. Even when swarmed by enemies, I was never in any real danger at all. Unique monsters were no different than normal. I cannot fully express just how easy it was. Frankly, it was rather boring as there was no challenge... it was almost like the monsters were from Nightmare difficulty rather than Hell.

The instant I hit the caves, I had to save scum every fight through them. If I had to face more than one enemy at a time, I had no chance at all, getting stun-locked by all the duplicate hits and seemingly 1-shot whenever a hit got through. (Dunno if this is accurate or not, but it felt like all the hits were either blocked/parried or all made it through. HP was either unaffected or dropped to 0 or very close to it on every hit.) Was hoping that things would be different once I got to Hell, but the game is pretty much unplayable due to there not being choke-points to limit the number of enemies that can engage me at once. (This game I'm playing rolled fire breathing winged demons and blue witches.) At least the duplicated hits don't seem to be on the enemies there, so I might be able to load up with 20-30 full heals and chug them repeatedly during every fight. (Heck, there's little else useful to spend the gold on except more strength elixers, which don't seem to do anything except change a number... my character will be maxed out on strength pretty soon regardless. I've started buying spell books, even though I only ever use the healing & town portal spells.) Frankly, playing like this feels more like work than anything & I play games to have fun, not get mad / stressed while saving every time I defeat 1-2 enemies because I'll get creamed if I aggro more than a couple creatures at a time, tops.

I 'new game scummed' for better equipment between normal and nightmare & again between nightmare & hell, so my character should be better prepared than most. Going from memory, my character is around 285 AC, 290HP, fast block, fastest recovery, and 75% resist all. Magic, dexterity, and vitality have all been maxed out. Strength is around 190. There are significant bonuses to all stats from item buffs. Griswold's Edge has been upgraded with every oil I've found throughout the normal & nightmare difficulties to have +48% to hit, around 28 max damage, and of course the inherent fast attack & knock-back. I have killed every enemy on every level in normal, nightmare, and everything but the crypt & hell levels of hell difficulty. As it is, I don't really stand much chance & it only makes me want to quit playing Diablo without finishing it and move on to something else.

The magnitude of the spike in difficulty this posed was absolutely ridiculous. Typical progression in a RPG is that the enemies get progressively more difficult as you continue in the game. When there are multiple difficulty levels, starting enemies should be about as hard as the end game enemies of the prior difficulty level. Running into a wall like this just kills the fun of playing. Lowering the difficulty of the enemies in the caves (possibly by removing the duplicate attacks) and increasing the difficulty of enemies on levels 1-8 (to make it less of a simple walkthrough) would be good changes IMO - would bring it more in line with other RPGs, both older & newer. Even IF it doesn't mirror vanilla behavior, it would make the game more balanced, challenging, & fun.

This is all just feedback for you from a long-term veteran of the first 2 Diablo games. I absolutely LOVE the fact that you've made an engine that runs natively on Linux & cannot wait for it the project to mature a bit more; I ran into several bugs just during a single run through the game. Last night, my entire laptop locked up while in the crypt so I had to forcibly power off, which is impressive in a bad way. ;) XD What you've managed to accomplish so far is very very impressive & I commend you for it.

Any plans to expand it to handle Diablo 2? :)

[qndel]

Any plans to expand it to handle Diablo 2? :)

No.

[morfidon]

That makes sense.

I agree the first step here should be the refactor you suggested:

• keep the exact same behavior
• move the extra hit windows out of MonsterAttack() into monster data, or at least into a clearer abstraction

I think that is the right place to start, because it gives us a cleaner model of what these families are actually doing without mixing that discussion with gameplay changes.

Separately, I agree Chain Lightning is a better place for the duplicate-sound / overlap discussion, so I would treat that as its own issue rather than continue mixing audio into this one.

The one follow-up I would still be interested in, after the no-behavior-change refactor, is whether the real caves spike might be coming less from the existence of the extra hit windows themselves and more from how several legal checks in a very small window interact with player state reactions.

More specifically, if the logs show that the disproportionate spike comes from repeated full player-state reactions from the same monster during a single attack animation, then maybe the later fix is not "remove the multi-hit family behavior", but something narrower, like preventing repeated StartPlrBlock() / StartPlrHit() style side effects from the same attack sequence.

That would preserve the family flavor and keep the extra-hit logic itself intact, while only targeting a potentially pathological interaction in caves when multiple melee attackers line up at once.

So my thinking would be:

• first do the refactor without gameplay change
• handle Chain Lightning separately as its own audio/perf topic
• only after that, if instrumentation supports it, revisit whether repeated player-state reactions, not just repeated attack checks, are the part that actually makes this feel disproportionate

[julealgon]

I flat-out dominated the first 8 levels of the game. Rambo in the woods dominated. Frank Dux in the opening round of Kumite dominated. Anakin in the youngling chamber dominated. Never used a single heal in 8 levels, only left to identify / sell loot, and didn't pay any attention to where the monsters were in relationship to me. Even when swarmed by enemies, I was never in any real danger at all. Unique monsters were no different than normal. I cannot fully express just how easy it was. Frankly, it was rather boring as there was no challenge... it was almost like the monsters were from Nightmare difficulty rather than Hell.

@Ruler2112 wait a second... are you saying all those issues you've been talking about, are actually from you playing on Hell difficulty and not on Normal?

Because if that's the case, there is really nothing to talk about here at all. Diablo is completely and utterly unbalanced in anything other than Normal (and one could argue it is highly unbalanced in Normal as well) so all of your points become basically moot.

I just want to make sure that's your scenario as I can then easily just ignore all similar posts going forward.

[Ruler2112]

Feel free to ignore me then @julealgon - I've been open about this being on hell difficulty from the beginning.

Gave up trying to play in hell on hell and started a new game in Nightmare. Got the Red Storm enemy in the caves this time & the duplicated hit thing that only my sheer stubbornness kept me playing in the caves on hell difficulty just does not exist here.