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40oz

Item Placement

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How do you prefer to give items of health and ammo to the player? Do you give a couple shotgun shells and a clip every room to keep his supply low like suspended in dusk? Do you dump a backpack and pile of shell boxes right at the start and trust the player to ration out his inventory himself like nostril caverns?

Where do you consider the best places in a room to put ammo? Usually its a big no no to put large, or any items directly in front of a switch or narrow hallway. Do you place the items symmetrically in every corner of a room? Do you lump them up in random locations? Do you only leave them in 'logical' locations? E.g. On a shelf, in a closet, near piles of crates, next to a fallen marine, etc.

What pattern of item placement do you feel makes the game the most fun?

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At the moment I like placing few but often and place them out of the way of the action in almost every room. This way there is ammo for every encounter but the player has to keep his eyes up and maybe do a bit of pseudo scavanging as a pay off for running through or away from sections. If I'm setting up a heavily choreographed setpiece I'll put the ammo out in a arcadey sort of way but otherwise it will go in little corners or alcoves as though they've been brushed into the corners by OCD hell spawn :-)

Larger items I tend to use in secrets. I sometimes like to put small, easy to find secrets with just a medikit and shell box in to give player a small sense of achievement without changing the balance much.

Health an armour bonuses I litter everywhere. I like flooding the level with them, using them like breadcrumbs to direct the player or Sandy Petersen style item vomit! I think of them a bit like Mario coins.

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All of the above. Apart from "important" items like weapons, powerups, and keys, I don't really put much thought into it, to be honest. I normally just figure out how much health and ammo is needed for a particular encounter, then plonk the items down wherever it feels right. I think this contributes to the "classic" feel of my maps.

That said, for items placed in groups (health and armour bonuses, and sometimes small ammo), I often set the difficulty flags so that there are fewer items in the group on harder skill levels. It's not really enough to alter difficulty significantly, it just adds variety more than anything. I also set difficulty flags on ammo (and sometimes even weapons) if there are a lot of former humans in the map. You know you've screwed up when your map is actually harder on HNTR than UV because most of the ammo comes from UV-only shotgun guys...

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Item pickups should go to places that are easy to find, easy to access and easy to avoid at the same time. Bonus points if the part of the room with pickups has an additional gameplay purpose, preferably more than just a camping place. Maps intended to have tight balance should primarily contain small pickups, maps intended for intense combat should primarily contain big pickups. There can be whole sections with minimum pickups (or none at all) if it enforces a special kind of challenge, but it's generally a good idea to place items somewhat proportionately around the whole map. Also, they should be placed to be actually possibly helpful for the player in the given area. "Possibly" is the keyword - they shouldn't be required or forced, neither directly, nor by implication.

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40oz said:

Do you dump a backpack and pile of shell boxes right at the start and trust the player to ration out his inventory himself like nostril caverns?

Nostril Caverns uses infinite ammo.

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My strategy with the maps I've made has generally been this:
- First lay in items in the "goodies should be here" areas (secrets, other logical places for a stash like shelves, tables, altars, etc)
- Playtest, look at when I'm running low on supplies, and put more in that general area; then if any place seems to have too much, trim it down a little.
- Repeat above stage until the whole map is completable, then put in some extras for lower skill levels (especially health).

Of course, I don't always do all this in a rigid order (for instance, throwing in extra stuff for different skill levels gets done any time I think it would be a good idea.)

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Foxpup said:

for items placed in groups (health and armour bonuses, and sometimes small ammo), I often set the difficulty flags so that there are fewer items in the group on harder skill levels. It's not really enough to alter difficulty significantly, it just adds variety more than anything. I also set difficulty flags on ammo (and sometimes even weapons) if there are a lot of former humans in the map. You know you've screwed up when your map is actually harder on HNTR than UV because most of the ammo comes from UV-only shotgun guys...

If I ever alter ammo on various difficulties, I do so by removing ammo on lower difficulties. The purpose is to combat ridiculous ammo surplus that happens when there are less enemies on said difficulty. Sure, there should be more than enough ammo on low difficulties, to actually make the skill level easier, but also not way too much of it, to keep it reasonably balanced. When removing enemies on lower difficulties, I already take into consideration the potential ammo they would drop.

I try to balance health to be OK (or slightly tight) on UV, and I typically keep health items the same on lower difficulties.

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scifista42 said:

If I ever alter ammo on various difficulties, I do so by removing ammo on lower difficulties. The purpose is to combat ridiculous ammo surplus that happens when there are less enemies on said difficulty.

I've always thought of the ammo surplus to be a key part of what makes the easier skill levels easy, as it means player can be less discriminatory with the heavy weapons. Some discretion is still required, just not nearly as much, so I wouldn't say it's unbalanced. But to each his own.

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Never_Again said:

Nostril Caverns uses infinite ammo.


Oops, i was thinking of The Mucus Flow when I said that, from community chest

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Sometimes I use items as lures, to invite the player forward or give them a reason to fight a monster. Sometimes to direct the player's attention to certain routes or switches or secrets.

Sometimes I'll give the player a lot of one particular ammo and let them play resource management for the rest of the map. Occasionally, I'll create little resource caches for the player to remember and back track to.

Often I'll add more items if I get low on something during play testing, and this especially applies to one way sections that the player may have entered with limited supplies to begin with.

Occasionally I'll hide items in nooks and crannies to give explorers a small reward, and generally I'll avoid placing items in thoroughfares.

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In multiplayer modes, I think it makes sense to stack armor and health bonuses in stacks of 5. You need to give the player incentive to walk over this item, and you don't want to waste their time picking up 5 individual bonuses at a time when they could spend that time looking for a better weapon.

I think it looks cute to place small ammo containers mixed and matched together, like someone just dumped a bunch of shit out of a backpack and didn't have time to sort it or align it to a 32x32 grid.

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Memfis said:

image

Both are incorrect, armor should be optional and not lie at the center of the room.

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^But what if it's a start room of MAP01, or it's otherwise guaranteed that the player has no armor yet? :) Or the entire corridor can be only one of possible paths to go. And even if it's not the case, the armor in the CORRECT picture is avoidable.

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On the map I'm currently working on (the first I'll actually finish), so far I've had what I consider to be a placement strategy which is both equitable and challenging.

You get barely enough to fight your way ahead, but you might find a little more tucked in corners where it might be too hectic for you to notice the first time. If you go out of your way a bit, you'll find a little extra of everything. Maybe enough for a not-so-great player like myself to get by. But ultimately the level has probably way more than enough--it's just that you have to find some wacky hiding spots and then you might run into a challenge first before you get the really cool stuff. So you might find a hidden entrance to a secret area, turn the corner and find an Arachnotron; you can run away and not fight him, but just behind him is a treasure trove.

As insurance in case what you're able to find isn't enough, there are melee weapons available to help conserve ammo, and there's a Berserk Pack.

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Memfis said:

armor pic

Hehe, I actually like doing things like that in my maps... If the player mindlessly runs forward, they miss the added bonus they would have gotten if they stop and think for a second :)

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Now, when I was younger and more of an ass about editing Doom...well, my placement had more to do with my sense of humor. So picture this scenario:

You've just come down some stairs and found an opening into a pretty dark courtyard. You cross the threshold, and are surprised to find that there was a Berserk Pack sitting there in the dark. Upon picking it up, you are automatically switched from whatever weapon you've been using to the Fist. A split-second later, you hear a Cyberdemon.

I pulled that one on a friend, and I also set up a teleporter with a barrel sitting on the other side, so you'd end up telefragging yourself. It wasn't supposed to happen every time, of course, but...ahh, memories.

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Memfis said:

*le armor*


I've noticed that even the IWADs would have crap like that. E1M1 has armor bonuses before a green armor. Then in E1M5 you see armor bonuses with a blue armor... you're not even benefited by the bonuses lol

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At the time the Iwad maps were done, armor bonuses exceeded 200%. It was like this even up to v1.2

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glenzinho said:

At the time the Iwad maps were done, armor bonuses exceeded 200%. It was like this even up to v1.2

And when they were originally placed, those bonuses were likely just useless treasure items anyway. They didn't really change their placement much when they converted them to health/armor bonuses.

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Similar to the rocket brick road blackfish linked to, I often use items as a lure, to make the player go where i want him to go. But also as a reward for doing something I wanted them to do, like check in an obscure hallway or find a secret or something.

I've been seriously considering (read: over thinking) the effectiveness of well placed health and ammo items in a map. To give an example, I recently played a level where I entered a large rectangular room and there was a 4 shotgun shells item in each of the four corners of the room. It seemed strange to me because both realistically, there's no reason for shotgun shells to be arranged symmetrically like that, and for gameplay, it made me needlessly circle the room for ammo. If the intention is to give the player 16 shotgun shells, then why not just put them in one spot in the center or in one corner of the room?

For the purposes of fun, its kind of a drag to put tiny items in every dead end of your map. This forces the player to explore every otherwise useless corner of your map for little reward. Items should be used as a lure to a position where the player will easily see what he needs to do next, or to be shown something unreachable that he will want to get. You should always consider, when placing items on your map, that the item is more or less a location your player will indefinitely walk to, should they see and need the item, which gives you more control over the players experience, by making something that you want your player to see within visual range of the item, or to a safe spot from enemy fire, or perhaps activating a linedef trigger that will impact the players experience later on. In the example I mentioned earlier, was it really necessary for me to walk around in that circle? In what way would that make the map more fun?

To me it seems like its not enough to just put items in your map in random locations just so the player has access to them and wont run out of ammo or health, but to be aware at the way they keep the player almost on rails, and how you can use that knowledge to create a more complete experience for your player in your map

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Usually I place stuff into little alcoves, next to pillars, supports, corners. Try to avoid placing them where player might accidently take them when not needed. There's probably always some weapon near the start. Non secret weapons are easy to find. Secret weapons & other items shouldn't be needed in the level, but should be something worth finding.

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One classic mistake I've noticed is picking up ALL items during testing. So you think that the player will notice every pickup in every corner of every room? That seems like a dangerous assumption. You've placed these items so of course you have no problem finding most of them but are you sure it will be the same for other players? Hmm.

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I like foreshadowing an area with what I think to be the most effective weapon being available right before it. I try to account for co-op play with multiple instances of the lower weapons and/or backpacks.

These days I try not to do the small increments of shells and ammo and use the boxes instead against a wall or pillar. If I want a small amount of ammo, then either a sgt or former human gets placed in the map.

Also I like having a bezerk pack at the end of the map to guarantee 100% health going into the next map when playing continuously.

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joepallai said:

Also I like having a bezerk pack at the end of the map to guarantee 100% health going into the next map when playing continuously.

Eww, that's the laziest support of continuous playing ever. Not even attempting to do any balancing, just resetting the HP back to 100... Lame imo, the balance should be a little more complicated than that I think.

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joepallai said:

I like foreshadowing an area with what I think to be the most effective weapon being available right before it.

If you overdo this, it would feel not only predictable, but uncomfortably forced. You tell the player which weapon to use, you indirectly force him a strategy he should use (at least via an implication), and that shouldn't happen often, preferably never at all, IMO.

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Jimi said:

Usually I place stuff into little alcoves, next to pillars, supports, corners. Try to avoid placing them where player might accidently take them when not needed. There's probably always some weapon near the start. Non secret weapons are easy to find. Secret weapons & other items shouldn't be needed in the level, but should be something worth finding.


This. And I spread the items to not to be stuffed in the same place, if I can.
And sometimes I put items near windows or places where the player can look or notice certain visuals, I do this specially in the secrets.

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