Deathmatch and monsters

Hi there, fellow doomers.

I was thinking on getting into deathmatch again with some friends, and I remembered that you can play with monsters. I haven't see this option in any other game (well, to be honest, I've just played deathmatch in Doom, Unreal Tournament and maybe Halo, I don't remember very well), so I was wondering, how is it to try to frag your opponents with monsters around? Is it fun/not fun/annoying? Is it a good idea to use the -respawn parameter so you don't run out of monsters? Maybe play on Nightmare!?

I would like to hear your opinions. Have a good day.

I've always been curious what it was like back in the 90's to play those old "hide and seek" styled pwads that also had monsters in them.

Deathmatch has evolved a lot since then and usually if your map isn't small or quick and easy to navigate and/or has no super shotgun somewhere in it, many people will say it sucks, and to use monsters in a deathmatch map seems kinda unorthodox since they don't really do anything but to slow the player down and distract him from more important things.

I've contemplated creating deathmatch maps where swarms of archviles were hidden behind opaque midtexture walls so whenever you attempted to play the maps with monsters in them you'd be instantly incinerated with no chance of escape. It's just something to laugh at really and I couldn't think of a practical use for monsters in the deathmatch game mode unless of course you're just messing around with some friends and casting aside the competitive nature of it.

I always liked it, back when I fucked around with LAN games (you would need -respawn on though, rather than use -skill 5). It practically stopped camping and would cut out those dull moments where players just couldn't seem to find each other.

if your map isn't small or quick and easy to navigate and/or has no super shotgun somewhere in it, many people will say it sucks

Hurrah for sterile DM'ing!

I bet monsters in a deathmatch might be distracting, but try it, some people think it's fun. It would certainly add to the action in Doom.

BaronOfStuff said:

It practically stopped camping and would cut out those dull moments where players just couldn't seem to find each other.

I was thinking something similar. I see it as trying to survive a level with 2-3 more "enemies". Faster and smarter than the other ones. Like the Evil Marine in Scythe II. But I understand it may become frustrating, especially in large or confusing maps, or maps with a lack of ammo, maybe because in the time it takes you to make 20-30 frags monsters will respawn at least a dozen times. I think it could be fun in small/easy maps, but anything medium/"not very difficult" is going to be frustrating rather than fun.

Well, fwiw there's a CTF map in CupCTF called Spider Bastion that uses monsters(guess which) with hilarious results. I remember a DM map with several Cyberdemons in the middle as well.

In my opinion, it depends on the design of the deathmatch WAD. It might be a good idea to make some areas demon occupied for the sake of a challenge while tying to frag your opponent(s). An example would be having some corridors with imps or archviles in cages to attack you while you try to get a more powerful weapon, such as the BFG9000 or plasma rifle. I wouldn't recommend having demons spread out to the point where you can't even frag your opponent(s).

Basically what doomguy93 said.

I find monsters in a deathmatch map rather distracting in general, unless they are used in a creative way. You should look at how I use a cyberdemon in my 32in24 map, he's used kinda like a center turret, where he's in the center of the map shooting rockets at the players who would be running around the arena killing each other.

Of course, -respawn makes him stay in the play area if you do kill him.

Maybe I'm missing something since I was introduced to Doom in about '98. Why would one deathmatch with monsters? Ever since my first network game, I thought altdeath should have been the default deathmatch mode.

invictius said:

Maybe I'm missing something since I was introduced to Doom in about '98. Why would one deathmatch with monsters? Ever since my first network game, I thought altdeath should have been the default deathmatch mode.

Well, I made a thread asking for something similar.

The general consensus seems to be: It's fun if there are "few monsters/the level is simple/linear/etc.".

If you ask me, it's a really unique "solution":

BaronOfStuff said In another trhead:
It practically stopped camping and would cut out those dull moments where players just couldn't seem to find each other.

My opinion? It should be lots of fun with -respawn.

Generally speaking it doesn't make any sense to have monsters enabled. I have one exception to this though - library.wad is a level that a friend of mine created when we were at school together. It's a recreation of our school's library, with monsters representing the librarians (and the sounds replaced appropriately). The level is a deathmatch level with the demon librarians providing a source of comic amusement on the side.

It's a pretty rare example (the whole level is basically an in-joke for my circle of friends) but shows that monsters can work in deathmatch sometimes. Side note: the concept of recreating your school in Doom seems slightly disturbing to me now, given Doom's history, but at the time this thing was a purely innocent joke. It predated the Columbine massacre by several years.

I suspect it would be possible to construct deathmatch levels deliberately containing monsters as part of their design, though nobody seems to have thought to do it. For example caged monsters like Cyberdemons or Arachnotrons could function as hazards for particular areas of a level, kind of like a damaging floor. You could potentially have something like a BFG run where you have to avoid fire from monsters in order to get the BFG.

I think almost everyone that played doom in high school or junior high either made a school level or had a friend that did. A friend of mine made one ages ago, replacing the barrels with the ancient Unisys Computers that we had to use, and much fun was had blowing them up.

Anyhow I think monsters can be really useful in a deathmatch wad even though it's not conventionally how DM works, and can serve a lot of different purposes. They have to be placed for DM though; playing a SP level with typical SP monsters doesn't really work.

Warcraft 3 is a great example of a competitive game that uses enemy NPC monsters effectively, and Doom monsters could be used in a similar manner, especially with DHE/DECORATE/etc. mods. What if the only way to grab the BFG was to get it when it dropped from killing a 1200 HP cyberdemon?

Using them as hazards/traps, zone denial, tie/camping-breakers etc. makes sense, if they are accompanied by suitable scripting and/or sprite mods. E.g. nearly invincible monsters with the visual appearance of machinery or security drones, meant to keep players out of a particular area or prevent camping. That's a quite different situation from just throwing in a few zombies and imps in order to annoy the players, and which wouldn't last more than a few seconds anyway. Now, if there was e.g. a nearly-invincible, relentless Baron that could one-shot kill you and forced you to keep moving....that's different ;-)

Now, most of that stuff may be doable more efficiently with scripting, but it would be interesting to see a vanilla-compatible implementation.

Generally speaking, fraggle is right. Monsters are an unwanted distraction in deathmatching, mostly because they get used poorly. But even in the best of cases they're a random element and DM players despise random. In fact, they hate it so much that many have called for replacing the randomized damage output and the SSG's spread pattern with a consistent algorith. DM is srs bsns, yo.

On the other hand, grinding DM the same old way can get boring after a time and monsters can be a fun x-factor that freshens things up when you're not looking for defending your 2700 Doom ELO. I personally don't see much appeal in deathmatching single player maps with very little DM-oriented thought put to them (apart from placing a few spawns and maybe even weapons), so DMing them with monsters on top is a very unsexy idea to me. I remember trying a FFA game on The Living End with monsters on Nightmare... and it was as unfun and frustrating as it sounds. I appreciate good, dedicated maps with a monster gimmick, though. I like how they provide very unusual gaming mechanics that can put modern games to shame.

It's funny this gets discussed right now (maybe it's not that conincidental?) as 32in24-13 is being finished and it has several monster-based maps. Hurricyclone and RottKing both use a cyberdemon as a central rocket turret that punishes inattentive players and random passers-by, heh. joe-ilya threw some fireball spammers and spectres in his map in order to maximize chaos, an obvious theme to his contribution. There's a lone revenant protecting the central megasphere in one of MionicDonut's maps and despite his weakness, guided rockets spammed at Nightmare pace can catch a player or two off-guard.

It's not a totally rare concept though. The DM mapset kandyman has monsters in it and we even ran a tourney on one of them. It was an interesting experiment, because deaths by monsters didn't deduct from player's frag count and so they were used as an emergency healing, or denying your opponent a coup de grace. It should also be noted that judas23_, one of the most famous DM maps and a staple in any league map pool, actually has a monster in it (from a zombieman on easy to a chaingunner on UV/NM). I doubt it sees the light of many matches, but the option to use it is there. A constantly firing, respawning chaingunner you can "push" around (by killing him and having his corpse slide where you want it, of course) transforms the gameplay quite a lot, heh.

There are a few vanilla maps that use monsters and replacement sounds for ambient sound in the map.

Maes said:

...if there was e.g. a nearly-invincible, relentless Baron that could one-shot kill you and forced you to keep moving....that's different ;-)

Now, most of that stuff may be doable more efficiently with scripting, but it would be interesting to see a vanilla-compatible implementation.

I wonder if a dehack of a caco with only a melee attack, noclip set to true, partial invisibilty and a speed+(massive)health bump would work? might be an issue if it was to lose a target whilst in the void perhaps?

Sounds like a Predator mod ;)

Heh, I actually tried to put a ghost imp into one of Nautilus' 32in24-13 maps. You know, crush & resurrect him off-map. Sadly, Boom fixes ghosts. This is why fixing bugs is stupid! :)

Anyways, you wouldn't want to boost speed too much. You have to walk around obstacles, wait for doors and lifts, navigate mazes... ghosts don't. Also that HP boost is not that important, because ghosts can only be hurt with splash damage.

traversd said:

I wonder if a dehack of a caco with only a melee attack, noclip set to true, partial invisibilty and a speed+(massive)health bump would work? might be an issue if it was to lose a target whilst in the void perhaps?

Hmm...that sounds a lot like the "Skel" or "Baron von Blubba" time-up monster in Bubble Bobble: it's invincible, relentless, can go through walls and ceilings, and speeds up the longer you avoid it.



An interesting concept...as for Doom fixing the ghost bug, I think you can "unfix" it with the proper complevel or compabitility setting.

To make it look less cheesy in Doom, I'd make it as follows:

• Dark map
  
• Invincible noclip (or almost) monster. Actually, the ability to noclip and the near-invulnerability of ghosts derives from the monster's height (set to zero or one) and the radius (also set to 1 or zero), so it's possible to have "natural" ghosts that even "ghost bug fixing" won't catch.
  
• It can be made "nearly noclip" if you give it a small but non-zero height and radius (not necessarily appearance), allowing it to creep through e.g. sound conduits.
  
• Make it move really slowly, so that it's not as relentless as Skel, but not safe to camp for long in any one place, either.
  
• To make it really cheesy, give it the appearance of the Ghoul in Ghoul forest and a scary attack sound, but not its speed (that would be way too cheesy) unless you have it in a cramped map and give it just the ability to float and creep through small passages, not complete noclipping.
  

dew said:

A constantly firing, respawning chaingunner you can "push" around (by killing him and having his corpse slide where you want it, of course) transforms the gameplay quite a lot, heh.

This is probably something I should know already, but, in all engines I'm familiar with, respawning monsters teleport back to their initial spawn point. Is there some engine that makes nightmare respawn instead operate like archvile resurrection? (Interesting idea, actually, I might have to steal it...)

Yeh, I figured noclip would be enough, but while you're in dehacked, may as well keep the splash damage honest ;)

Agree on the speed not being too OTT. Perhaps slow the melee attack down so that a player wont just get a whack from nowhere unless they are still/hovering for a number of seconds (ie: 5 seconds of harmless anim before the melee attack causes damage).

In the end players usually find ways to work around these deliberate prods to move along. Best thing is to avoid easily defendable positions where possible.

Would be great to have monsters respawn at the start so they come after you in waves after killing them the first time.

RjY said:

This is probably something I should know already, but, in all engines I'm familiar with, respawning monsters teleport back to their initial spawn point. Is there some engine that makes nightmare respawn instead operate like archvile resurrection? (Interesting idea, actually, I might have to steal it...)

Huh. Well, I've only ever played judas with the chainer on ZDaemon, so it's either the way it works (worked?) there, or I made that shit up for some reason. :) I could swear I saw the chainer "travel" like that though. Only other explanation that comes to my mind is that he jumped off the ledges himself, because it was Boom-compatible and his constant firing pulled him forward enough.