What is your preference when it comes to respawning the player upon death?

I've been working on various campaign / single-player snapmaps, and I've been finding myself questioning what is the best way to handle player respawns upon death.

Currently both my maps are set so that when the player dies, he/she respawns back to the beginning, enemies go back to their originals locations, as do droppables like keycards, health/ammo pickups, etc. Essentially the entire map resets.
I kind of like this as you don't have to sit on a loading screen and replay the map if you die. Everything is reset in seconds, and it gives it a feeling closer to what classic Doom is. (granted, without the saving) However, there are limitations to this. One of them being, maps can't be too long, as that might discourage the player to keep playing.

I've seen other maps that use a 3-life and checkpoint system. This is fun too, as there is more freedom in the length of your map. Even though you die in the middle of an encounter and come back with full life and ammo to finish it, the 3-life system eventually makes you start over from the beginning. The downside is, with those 3 lives gone, it's back to reloading the map.

What do you guys prefer when you are playing a campaign style map?

I Prefer maps with checkpoints, I dislike restarting the map all over and having to re-collect weapons and having to fight enemies from the beginning, As for lives i don't really care as long as checkpoints are fair .

i double DMGUYDZ64.
i like checkpoints.
i think its good for the feeling of progress.
i think its good when you can "die trough" a map.
so limited lifes are not my thing.
if a map is well done, i will return and try to pull it off with one life.

sgt;)

Personally, while I don't mind checkpoints and a lives system, I do prefer a one-life system to go with the map. It just gives me more of an incentive to go through the map without dying, and it definitely keeps me on my toes. Plus, you just feel like you've truly gone through hell and back once you've beaten said level.

Except for En Fuego. Just fuck that map.

Interesting feedback, and I do appreciate you guys sharing your thoughts on this.I'm wondering if I could set it up so there's a terminal in the first room of each map that toggles checkpoints on/off. That way players can choose their own preference.

Honestly there should be an option to restart the level to the original state of what it was (As in, all weapons and enemies reset).

Tuaam said:

Honestly there should be an option to restart the level to the original state of what it was (As in, all weapons and enemies reset).

You can make a logic sequence so that it does just that, which is what I did with both my maps. It just takes time and testing to make sure everything resets correctly.

I've worked on a prototype prior to Free Update 4, I haven't checked if it still works. Also, out of my gaming PC so bear with me here, have to recall this from memory.

Anyway, what I did is I had the player incapacitate itself on reaching certain health percentage (20 or 50%, depending on default health) and have an integer count up (shown on screen). Once the integer finishes counting, player goes back up, and 1 life is deducted.

So:
Vitals > On Health Percentage Reached > Incapacitate > Player Proxy,
Player Proxy > On Incapacitated > Start Repeater > Repeater > Integer,
Integer > On Changed > Test > Integer Compare (100) > On Equal > Revive > Player Proxy.

The problem with the system is: sometimes it won't trigger since the player dies immediately (unless you set it to a large enough health or have small enough enemy damage). Also, tried recreating this for my recent map, but I wasn't able to implement it. If you can make it work properly though, it's kind of immersive.

EDIT: When incapacitated (alone), enemies ignore you but they mostly stay put.

Man of Doom said:

Except for En Fuego. Just fuck that map.

Lol i thought i'm the only one who hates it, Dunno how did it get featured once, But yeah tbh I dislike Maps with enemies waves and lives .

Well, it took me a while to figure out, but I actually managed to do both versions in one map (1 life and 3 life check points)

1 life is the default but the player can now choose the checkpoint system via computer monitor in the first room of the map.