Doom Hell Knight Sprite

The Hell Knight is a monster introduced in Doom II.It is a weaker cousin of the Baron of Hell, with tan rather than pink skin, and different sounds when alerted or slain.Although it is much easier to kill, its attacks are just as potent as a baron's. Being functionally equivalent to the Baron of Hell except for having only half as much health, the weaker Hell Knight serves better as a medium. Hell Knight Sprite name: BOS2 Tough as a dump truck and nearly as big, these goliaths are the worst thing on two legs since Tyrannosaurus rex. Drag the mouse over the monster to look at it from other angles.

From DoomWiki.org

The Hell knight is introduced in Doom II as a weaker version of the baron of Hell. This new monster has a tan torso, as opposed to the baron's pink coloration. The manual for Doom II describes the Hell knight as follows: 'Tough as a dump truck and nearly as big, these Goliaths are the worst things on two legs since Tyrannosaurus rex'. The same description was previously used for the baron in the original Doom manual.

In terms of gameplay, the Hell knight is identical to the baron of Hell, merely with half the hit points. As a result, it is a medium strength monster that is more vulnerable than the baron to small arms fire (eg., the shotgun or chaingun), but much more durable than an imp. It allows Doom II maps to host a weaker monster, albeit with high attack power, giving the player a decent amount of challenge without slowing down the action.

• 6Other games

Combat characteristics[edit]

Hell knights emit wake-up and death cries similar to those of the baron of Hell, though higher in pitch (and in the case of the death cry, shorter in length and raspier). Possessing 500 hit points, Hell knights present a significant challenge to the player, although less than that of a boss monster. Hell knights have both melee and distance attacks, scratching at close range and throwing green fireballs from a distance. Their attacks are identical to and just as lethal as those of the baron.

Tactical analysis[edit]

Hell knight fireballs are faster than imp and cacodemon fireballs and inflict heavy damage. They have a low pain chance that makes the rocket launcher, plasma gun and super shotgun the most effective weapons against them. The chaingun and shotgun are also effective at close range. It is not recommended to use a melee attack due to their own scratching melee attack; however, five punches from a player powered up by a berserk will usually kill one. A player attempting such an attack must move in quickly to attack and quickly withdraw to avoid the counterattack.

Roughly speaking, killing a Hell knight requires either 50 bullets, 6 seconds with the chainsaw, 8 close range shotgun blasts, 3 point-blank super shotgun blasts, 3 rocket hits or 23 energy cell shots. A single close range hit by the BFG9000 easily dispatches a Hell knight but it is usually a waste of ammo unless attacking several simultaneously.

Hell knights are less of a threat than weaker monsters because attacks are simple and generally easier to predict. With sufficient distance, the projectiles can be dodged without much difficulty, but at closer range they can be more difficult to avoid and potentially lethal.

Since Hell knights have half the hitpoints but the same amount of potential damage to the player, two barons of Hell would be significantly easier than four Hell knights. Most maps will avoid 'packs' of Hell knights for this reason.

Hell knights and barons of Hell throw the same projectiles. Contrary to popular belief, this has nothing to do with the fact that Hell knights and barons do not infight with one another in the PC version of the game. Rather, there is a hard-coded exception for these two enemies which causes them to consider each other as belonging to the same species. This exception was overlooked when the Doom II source code was combined with the Atari Jaguar code base to create the Sony PlayStation port of Doom II, and as a result, barons and knights infight in both that game and its offspring, Doom 64. The only way for barons and knights to infight in the PC version of the game is for one to damage the other with a barrel.

Notes[edit]

• The Hell knight's death sound is based on a recording of a jaguar with extra effects added.
• All of the Hell knight's animations are identical to the baron's. While the color swap effect could have been accomplished by applying a translation, just like those that are used to recolor players during multiplayer games, a full second set of sprites is instead included with the recoloring already applied.
• There is a coloring mistake in one of the Hell knight's attack frames: while most of the Hell knight's frames depict the creature with brown hooves, the errant frame depicts the Hell knight with gray hooves instead.
• The official French name of the monster is chevalier de l'enfer.

Data[edit]

1. These tables assume that all calls to P_Random for damage, pain chance, blood splats, impact animations, and backfire checks are consecutive. In real play, this is never the case: counterattacks and AI pathfinding must be handled, and of course the map may contain additional moving monsters and other randomized phenomena (such as flickering lights). Any resulting errors are probably toward the single-shot average, as they introduce noise into the correlation between the indices of 'consecutive' calls.
2. Assumes that direct hits are possible, which does not occur in any stock map.
3. Hardcoded exception to infighting negates damage (excepting indirect damage caused by exploding barrels).

Appearance statistics[edit]

In the IWADs the Hell knight is first encountered on these maps per skill level:

The IWADs contain the following numbers of Hell knights per skill level:

Of the maps covered on the Doom Wiki, the following have the highest numbers of knights in single-player:

This data was last verified on April 28, 2020.

Other games[edit]

Doom 64[edit]

Though overall similar to the standard Hell knight, the variant found in Doom 64 is less pale in color, and more closely resembles Doom's baron of Hell.

One quirk of the game is that they can deal and receive missile damage to and from barons of Hell, so infighting between the two monsters is possible.

Doom RPG[edit]

In Doom RPG, the baron of Hell and the Hell knight both belong to the 'baron' monster class. There are three variations, identified by color:

• Ogre (green torso, red hands, brown legs)
• Hell knight (brown torso, brown hands, pink legs)
• Baron (pink torso, orange hands, brown legs)

As in the original, the Hell knight is not as powerful as the baron, though both are more powerful than the new 'ogre' variation. This class of monster is especially weak against attacks from shotguns.

• Ogre

• Hell knight

• Baron

This page details one or more prototype versions of Doom II: Hell on Earth (PC).

While no prototypes of Doom II's WAD file (used for most game data) are known to exist, the Doom betas released by id throughout 1994, along with the earlier bootleg version, all have some support for the game. These give some insight into Doom II's development, and while it's not a complete picture, it's still pretty interesting.

• 1All Versions
  • 1.3Monster Behavior
• 2Bootleg v1.3/1.4
  • 2.3Monster Behavior
• 3Sybex v1.25
  • 3.1Monster Behavior
• 4Beta v1.4
  • 4.1Line Actions
  • 4.2Monster Behavior
• 5Beta v1.5
  • 5.2Monster Behavior
• 6Beta v1.6

All Versions

Loading Doom II

Simply having DOOM2.WAD in the same directory as a beta executable is enough to load it, since like the final version they give it priority over the registered or shareware version of Doom. However, certain required resources are not present in the final WAD. These resources are in the registered DOOM.WAD, however, so the following command line can be used to load the game without modifying anything:

This will load the resources from DOOM.WAD, then reload those from DOOM2.WAD, replacing any shared between games and fixing sprite and flat graphic loading.

General Differences

• The episode selection and 'Read This!' menus are still present.
  • Changing the episode only affects the sky, music, and map names used. The game is already set up to load levels from MAPxx lumps like the final version.
• Doom filenames are used for music and the intermission level names.
• The level names on the automap are still from Doom. MAP10 = E2M1.

Monster Behavior

Arachnotron

• Uses the Spider Mastermind sounds.
• Does not fire plasma, instead it has a chaingun! This chaingun fires with the same sound as the player's, unlike the Heavy Weapon Dude and Spider Mastermind.
• Crashes the game when killed, due to using a sprite frame not present in the final version.

Bootleg v1.3/1.4

A version of Doom leaked on April 8, 1994. It shouldn't be confused with the official v1.4 beta. The internal version is actually 1.3, but the startup text in the most widely available copy has been hacked to read 1.4 instead of printing the version number integers. This is the first version of the engine with support for Doom II, however at this time it doesn't expect DOOM2.WAD, but instead DOOMR.WAD, so you will need to rename your WAD file and adjust the command line appropriately.

General Differences

• Progression between levels still uses Doom behavior:
  • Completing MAP08 will show the episode 1 end text.
  • MAP09's exit leads to MAP04, since E1M9 was a secret level.
  • MAP10 and beyond will crash the game on exit.
• The intermission screens use Doom's backdrops.

Things

Most things aren't present in this version, meaning very few maps can be played. MAP01 and MAP13 work.

Monster Behavior

Arch-Vile, Heavy Weapon Dude, Revenant

• Placeholders:
  • Use Shotgun Guy sprites for their walking animations, but Heavy Weapon Dude sprites for their attacking and dying animations.
  • Use the Heavy Weapon Dude's attack.
  • Use former human sounds.

Hell Knight

• Uses the Baron of Hell sprites and sounds, but already has half its health.

Mancubus

• Uses the former human sight, pain, and death sounds. Has no action sound when firing.
• Fireballs use the same sprites as the Baron of Hell projectiles.
• The final death frame is not used.

Sybex v1.25

This is a shareware version that came with The Official Doom Survivor's Strategies & Secrets guide published by Sybex. Its files are dated April 21, 1994. Strangely, despite the lower version number, this appears to be an intermediate version between v1.3 and v1.4. The engine now expects DOOM2.WAD and the startup text reads 'DOOM System Startup' instead of 'DOOM Operating System'.

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Monster Behavior

Heavy Weapon Dude

• Now identical to final.

Mancubus

• Now uses the Baron of Hell's sight sound before firing.

Beta v1.4

id's official v1.4, released on June 28, 1994. Unfortunately, it requires eight textures which are not present in either WAD and will refuse to run levels without them.

Line Actions

Sliding Door

124 can be used to create a horizontally sliding door! Anyone familiar with Doom's renderer knows that a sector can only change vertically, the result of using a static BSP tree defined in the NODES lump for each map. To work around this limitation, a door created with this action isn't a sector at all: the line's front side middle texture animates through GDOORF1-4 when activated, while the back animates GDOORB1-4. When the animation is complete, the blocking flag is unset from the line. Activating the door a second time will play the animation back in reverse and reset the blocking flag. This action's reliance on these animated textures is why a separate WAD must be loaded to play this beta, and is likely why this line action has been restricted to Doom II.

These doors are far from perfect, since the blocking flag doesn't block hitscans or projectiles, meaning they pass through the doors like they're not even there. The animations are also very choppy and unconvincing, a result of only using four frames. The code for these doors is actually still present in the released source code, but the action to activate them has been commented out.

Monster Behavior

Pain Elemental

• Uses final sprites, but behavior is identical to a Cacodemon.

Beta v1.5

id's second shareware beta, released on July 8, 1994. As the code for sliding doors is still present, you'll still need GDOOR.WAD linked above to run levels. Jorman uo loop indira.

General Differences

• The intermission screen now uses the TITLEPIC as the backdrop, but darkens it. The final version has its own INTERPIC graphic for intermissions.

Monster Behavior

Arch-Vile

• Uses former human sounds.
• Attack is identical to the final version, but it uses the teleport fog sprites as a placeholder for the fire, and plays BFG firing sounds.

Pain Elemental

• Now has final behavior.

Revenant

• Jumps before firing a rocket!
• Always fires homing rockets.
• Rockets use the same sprites as the Cyberdemon and player's do, but with a smoke trail like the final rocket.

Beta v1.6

The last shareware beta, released on August 3, 1994, predating the release of Doom II by a little under two months.

General Differences

• The GDOORx# textures are no longer referenced.
• Level progression is now similar to the final version, but without the text screens.