Need help in MAP04 (The Focus)

Help, I'm stuck. I'm playing freedoom 0.5 (with prboom 2.4.7). I haven't found any help on this so maybe it is dumb that I can't find my way out... But stuck I am. Killed every moving thing but can't get the red key, as I have no clue how to open up the caging bars around it. Nor around the switch at the other end of the cavern where the red key is.

I admit, I had to use an editor to work this one out.

There is an identical area to the area where the key is. Go to the rear of this other area and use your pistol on the column inside. If I have explained this well you should work out the rest.

It worked. Thousands thanx!

Seems kind of complicated and hard for something so early on, should we change it? maybe at least give a little more hint? I had trouble on this one too...

I guess, if anything, more (some?) hint is in order.

Hey, I could fix it if you want, or re map the whole damn thing. >_>

But how do you suggest that I place a hint?

you don't even have to stick in a hint, you could just switch it to be opened by touch, but I guess that might not be as fun...
You COULD put a texture on the wall that looks like Crosshairs, or a bullseye, or a target of some sort...

well ive played a few wads that had shootable switches that were easy to tell that they had to be shot. sometimes youd have to press a switch that opens up a tiny door that makes a switch visible and is in an obviously unaccessable area such as being really high up on a wall and stairs on the other side of the room, or being on an island with a deep gap or river in between. The shootable switch was also the most obviously noticed object, with no overdone detail. Ive also played a few maps where you were locked in a cage in a small room with a lone switch on the wall. Took no more than a few seconds to realize that was a shoot switch.

I'm not entirely sure how you could incorporate that into the map, but the bars around it gave the impression that theres another switch that opens the gate. the switch looked like it could easily had been reached. maybe you should put some more distance between the switch and what the player can reach. If you think about it, almost every switch you see is not that far away, and looks easy to reach. If you make it so it looks like theres no way you can get to a switch, you can get the impression that it has to be shot. Map18 The Courtyard's starting room was a pain in the ass because of this.

Thanks, didn't know what to do...

I think this is the second and maybe third person asking on this forum, about how to get to that switch. I think the bars are too much like the ones that rise up, and people run around trying to find the switch to make the those bars go up. If you want players to shoot it, put it somewhere they can see they cannot get to otherwise. Just stick it up on the wall with no other way to get to it (probably has to be at gun height because of the non-aiming ports), behind some bars,
can close that entire end of the corridor off with the bars too, to give them more of a hint, and don't make the bars look like they are going to rise (like putting the bars on a short wall that cannot be climbed over either). Then throw in a moat of burning lava.

Then they only have the possibility of teleporting in to there and those
switches that make whole walls retract, to confuse them.

I have preferred to treat Doom as a simulation, where reality is simulated with a bit of Hell thrown in. When the tricks and switch placements resemble something from a game with a hedgehog, that playability advantage is lost, and we end up having to explain things or have players fail, and it really hurts the simulation immersion too.

How does this game resemble Sonic the Hedgehog?