Alternate map entrance/restart behavior

I thought of a small little tweak for when the player enters a new level or dies and restarts, a sort of merging of both. As it currently stands, you enter a new level with the same stats you exited the previous one with, which also includes that which is below the default. When restarting the level, you are set to pistol start stats.

So I was thinking, rather than this, would it be better to enter the level with your current stats but setting your health to 100% if it's below that (but not lower it if at or above 100%), and setting your bullet count to 50 if it's below that (but not if it's at or above 50)? These stats are then saved and used when the level is restarted, so that it's no different between entering or restarting the level. You get to keep all your old extra stuff without being left at any disadvantage when compared to your baseline stats.

Quake also has the health and ammo restore feature if you exit the previous level damaged.

I like the default behavior, it sometimes makes for strategic choices. While entering a level with low HP, do I want to be extra cautious to save my previous weapons and ammo, or do I just wing it and hope for the best?

Those tradeoffs would be gone with your proposed tweak. That being said I think such a change would make sense in the context of ZDoom level autosaves, where you could find yourself respawning at low HP forever.

Minor healing up to 25% wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing, but any higher than that (okay, 50% at a stretch if playing on ITYTD like a dickfingered baby) would remove an element of difficulty/strategy that can come with a consecutive playthrough, where playing like shit or rushing through obstacles often has repercussions later on.

While Quake does indeed do something like this, in that game's case it's probably for the best. Some maps force you to take falling damage almost immediately, which is a dogshit design choice but at least you get some sort of compensation beforehand... unless you're good at the game, in which case you're just losing health/armour for no good fucking reason and some scrub level designer at id should have been fucking fired.

I agree that refilling very low health up to 25% (or 50%) would be nice and alright (for the case of unfair next map's start with 1% health), but not more. As other people mentioned, continuous players are already advantaged enough, so it's all okay to keep a strategical element of health/ammo preservation. I would not refill bullet ammo. Let it on the player, to manage his health and ammo between levels, absolutely fairly. Also, refilling ammo in a continuous playthrough is kind of illogical.

BaronOfStuff said:

While Quake does indeed do something like this, in that game's case it's probably for the best. Some maps force you to take falling damage almost immediately, which is a dogshit design choice but at least you get some sort of compensation beforehand... unless you're good at the game, in which case you're just losing health/armour for no good fucking reason and some scrub level designer at id should have been fucking fired.

Why do you find it so much bad? You admitted that the player gets health compensation, so in fact no unfait situation can happen. Then, why does a minor mandatory damage mind? Should a player who is "good at the game" be proud and picky about not taking any damage no matter what?

It's just shoddy design to enforce damage like that. It's lazy, fake difficulty.

If you like that, then put a berserk and a bullet box at every exit room. Instant features!

Back in the day, I read a guide for Wolfenstein that was written by the id crew (I would think, primarily, Romero and Tom Hall), and somewhere in the back they shared some good level design tips for Wolf maps which easily apply to Doom as well; the two that stuck with me were "always place an SS or machine gun near the beginning of the level" (in Doom, the equivalent is obviously Shotgunner/shotgun) and "always place health near the starting room, so a continuing player will be able to heal up."

I've sometimes thought about making a levelset where pistol starting would be cheating; but there's two major problems. The first is that gameplay would necessarily be lousy, since it'd mean no health and no ammo in levels, meaning combat would mostly have to be avoided, and Doom isn't really geared for sneaky infiltration gameplay. The second, of course, is that I don't make maps.

The whole problem of life after death, and what dying means, is Doom's greatest failure, in my opinion. It's good to think about these things.

What specific things gave you this idea? It's my experience that carryover makes the game easier (and therefore simpler and less interesting) 100% of the time, such that I never play except from pistol starts. In fact, I would find it handy if sourceports had an "always pistol start" option, just to save me a few keystrokes.

But this could vary from one mapset to another. And, I would love to see more maps and mods that have a clear (and perhaps more varied) approach to this matter.

Baron, I understand your rage at this arbitrary violation of your virtual person. But what if . . . what if having your health automatically damaged at the beginning of a level is just . . . fine?

I think the game would be more interesting if the player could lose things or have them taken away sometimes.