Looking for way to see monster/ ammo ratio

So I've been looking for a way to see how much ammo vs how many monsters you have on a map. When you get to 50+ monsters on a map it becomes quite hard for me to get a good overview and finding a good balance (without having to test the map over and over).

So I did a search and found wadspy. Since it shows both the number of monsters and total health I thought it was perfect, except it doesn't work on w7...

So anyone got a suggestion what I can do to make that process easier?

Did a Google search out of personal curiosity, and found this. Fudge, link's broken. I wonder what it was... Anyway, I PM'ed him with a link to this thread, so hopefully he'll come by and elucidate us soon (he's still active on the forum).

Normally I might turn this into a moralistic lesson on using search before asking a question, but what you're describing sounds pretty darned interesting, so I'm glad you asked.

Gonna try it out myself tomorrow. [:

Try running it in DOSBox, that's worked for me in the past with old utilities that won't even run on 32bit systems.

http://www.doomworld.com/idgames/index.php?id=9072

Or maybe try building the version in xwadtools.

Thanks for the replies. Yes, like I said, I've tried searching both here and Google but since I'm pretty new I'm not sure what exactly to search for and this was the only thing I could find.

I've tried it in dosbox but it just crashed and I'm not even sure it's a dos application to start with since I think it was made 2003. But I'm not sure.

Also tried that xwadtools, but it gave the same error as wadspy. :(

Sssooo? What's the error, btw?

tempun said:

Sssooo? What's the error, btw?

Wow, that's great dude, thanks. :) Got it working too. Now to interpret the numbers... :p

Well the error was a popup telling me the exe is not compatible with my windows and needs a x86 version.


Edit: So I've been fiddling around with it and it's really an amazing tool. It would be really awesome to see this as a plugin for DB2. ;)

Anyway, I did a check on my map as a test and it returned a health/damage ratio of 0,3 on skill 4. So what do you guys think is a good balance? I know that monster positioning matters, but what do you think an overall ratio should be?

I'd say if your map is kinda suspenseful or straightforward, meaning it's got one big/medium sized monster or small groups of monsters per room, the player would probably be more precise with their shooting. So it's okay if your diffculty rating is kinda low.

If your map has a lot of surprise traps, or swarms of monsters, you can expect the player will probably be shooting all over the place, so you might want the ammo to be a little more generous.

Don't forget to take into account any berserk packs or chainsaws, infinite ammo items and monster infighting isn't accounted for.

This was a fairly interesting question so I made a debug script that will gather a levels stats then out put it to screen. Since it's a LOADACS script it will work on any level as long as the WAD is loaded.

There is inherent difficulties when trying to calculate such a ratio, for instance Doom's damage is done with random generation thus there is no way that can actually be truly calculated. However we can use probability and spread that out between damage ranges by generating a MIN MAX and MEAN ratio. Each ratio is based off adding up all the available ammo in a level and adding up the "Damage Potential" for each group (MIN MAX and MEAN). This assumes a perfect shot and minimum level of damage taken, thus here is part of the reason it is impossible to actually find an accurate ratio. Another problem is splash damage from rockets and BFG damage. But despite the drawback of inaccuracy you can still get a good feel for balance by comparing results with other levels.

The following is a small chart analyzing the first 10 levels of DOOM2.WAD analysis is based on the minimum damage potential to monster health total. The minimum is a good representation of balance since missed shots, grazing shots and splash damage should equalize to give a good idea of how balance is.

Level

1. 2.52:1
2. 3.12:1
3. 1.8:1
4. 1.73:1
5. 2.10:1
6. 1.0:1
7. 2.3:1
8. 0.4:1
9. 1.04:1
10. 1.28:1

Notice maps 6 and 8 ? Map 6 has the Spider mastermind that is supposed to be crushed rather than wasting ammo, Map 8 has the Cyber vs Barons this is what accounts for such a low ratio on these maps.

In conclusion I think the only real way to make sure a map is balanced to play test it, we can make tools to analyze whats going on but from creating this script I've realized there is no tool that could ever find balance 100 percent accurately.

Give it a try if you want, the source script is included in the wad and I welcome anyone to modify this script as they need and re-post your changes.

It is also possible to play through a map since the script updates every 2 seconds but there is a few problems with this, the damage amount of the monsters doesn't take into account monsters that have been injured only when they die will it have an effect on the update.
Killing Zombie, (Chainers, Shotgun, Zombiemen, SSNazi) will show ammo lost until you pick it up. Maybe there is a way around these problems?

Download: http://www.mediafire.com/?6h33j3yrmkx89de

Nice work Pottus. :)

Yes I realize that that are too many factors for a tool to get an exact measurement. But the reason I asked for this tool is to get some sort of overview of the map while I'm making it and to get a sense of the overall balance. And since it's my maps I will know where there are situations where the ammo consumption will change from the norm. Then I can just do the calculation in my head, just having the raw numbers on the screen is nice.

I was also hoping to get some sort of discussion on how much ammo you need for a level without making it frustrating but still tough.