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40oz

Ways to slow monsters down?

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I've been contemplating the idea of a level where the player is expected to get to a location before monsters do. This is a pretty easy scenario to test in a small room, but I'm trying to consider this over a larger scale.

The idea being that if the player gets to a location quickly, he will gain a significant advantage, by getting access to better weapons. If he's too slow, the opposition gets exponentially larger the longer he takes. Kinda like a tower defense scenario where first it's a few ground troops and in time you deal with larger groups and eventually a full scale war.

Preferably without any technical line actions (I'd like the player to be able to see the monsters approaching and gauge what kind of time he has before things get too serious.) In any case, what are some ways to impede monsters' movement?

The only things I can think of are:

- simply giving the monsters a longer distance to walk
- A slow perpetual lift that automatically moves up and down so that monsters come up in small groups at a time
- thin hallways that funnel the monsters into smaller streams. (perhaps with walls made of raised floors that slowly lower, so over time the hallway expands in width)

Is there some kind of template for a maze I could use that monsters could navigate that wouldn't be too complicated for them to figure out? Is there some kind of rough terrain or weird shaped stairs I could make that would be more difficult for them to traverse over than flat ground? Are there monster activated things like lifts or doors that would buy me more time?

Anything.

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Ideas:
-Have the monsters teleported from a place where the player can see them, to a place where he can also see them (so that he can come up with a strategy)
-Use slow lifts - not perpetual, but normal - activated by monster's walk. They can either ride the lifts down, or up.
-A simple maze of monster blocking lines, I suggest this one: (notice the "hitches" on top and bottom, their presence and amount can modulate monster's advancing speed)

     (MONSTERS) (MONSTERS) (MONSTERS) (MONSTERS) (MONSTERS)

B                 B                 B                 B
B    BBBBBBBBB    B    BBBBBBBBB    B    BBBBBBBBB    B    BBBBB
B        B        B        B        B        B        B        B
B        B        B        B        B        B        B        B
BBBBB    B    BBBBBBBBB    B    BBBBBBBBB    B    BBBBBBBBB    B
         B                 B                 B                 B

                          (PLAYER)
-Any combination of the abovementioned ideas - mine and yours.

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A simple staggered pattern of block monster linedefs (or cracks in the floor, if you prefer) might work well enough. Just something to keep them from running a straight line, but that doesn't leave safe spots for the player to camp either. Something like this:

+----------------+
|                |
|    --------    |
|                |
|------    ------|
|                |
|    --------    |
|                |
|------    ------|
|                |
|    --------    |
|                |
+----------------+
Another idea is teleports, somehow, just because it creates a chokepoint when only one monster can use one at a time. Depends on your map layout.

Linedef type 88 is a WR lift that monsters can trigger, could also be useful for restricting the flow of a large horde. Of course with Boom actions lots of things can be triggered by monsters.

That's all that's coming to mind right now, hopefully it gives you some more ideas.

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Thanks for the input guys. I'm trying some fun stuff with line 88.
I made a test map where there is a large fort in the center of a much larger square outdoor area. There are caves on each corner of the square where waves of monsters pour out, surrounding the fort. I used line 88 to make gates around the fort that monsters can breach. In addition to that, I put raised teleport pads surrounding the the fort with a walkover "button" in the heart of the fort that drops the teleports down. So if monsters make it into the center of the fort, it lowers the teleports out, enabling all the surrounding monsters to teleport inside the fort, ascertaining the players death if he doesn't abandon ship in time!

the tricky part I think is devising an efficient way to awake the monsters all at once, but to send them in increasing increments over a long duration of time, like an hourglass that slowly expands in the middle. The way I think most maps do a similar scenario are using really high raised floors that take a long time to descend, but with the huge scale I'm focusing on, it will take a long time to test and will require a lot of testing and careful observation to see if its working and flowing the monsters in at the rate I want them in. Simply playing the map doesn't always give you the exact answers because of all the "behind the scenes" work going on. So being able to iddt and watch the flow of monsters get from point a to point b is what I'm looking for.

the more I do this the more I think I'm going to need to design a contraption outside the map bigger than the map itself.

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I have no technical advice, but maybe you could take some ideas from here?

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waking them all at one time should be easy. Create a small square, 16x16 or whatever, in each monster closet and assign it the same sector number as a sector the player will for sure be shooting in. Force him to shoot to open door to start or, maybe or force him to shoot a monster to progress somehow. Force him to make some noise.

It doesn't matter if the floor or the ceiling in the monster closet is higher or lower than in the the map the sound should "leak" through, alerting them all at one time. To the monsters they are just in the next room and will alert to the noise.

After reloading a save they will sometimes go dormant again so you may need to force the shooting action again at some point or add another alert sector to the monster closet to do it all again.

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