opinions wanted: coop play

i'm a fan of coop play in Doom wads, ever sinse me and dittohead spent whole nights last summer busting demons in alien vendetta, so i always add coop to my wads. now i've started a level and i want it to be coop focused (of course single play will be available too), but i'm concerned people just won't be interested enough to bother playing it with their friends.

so, my question, what kind of things would make you want to play this soon to be level in coop with up to 7 other people? ultimately, what should you expect from a coop experience and what would you like to have in the perfect coop wad?

If at all possible, I expect there is a high demand for skulltag coop levels... hinthint.

For coop the main thing is to make sure players have weapons available at the start if they die : usually chaingun, shotgun and supershotgun.
Another point is to add axtra ammo / health / armor, around 20-30% more should do it.
Extra monsters can be fun provided the extra ammo/health is provided. Like an additionnal cyber/archvile/spiderdemon... just avoid cases like plutonia map22 in coop where you got 2 cybies, 6 hidden archviles in one room and no weapons/health.
Last point is to make sure players cannot get stuck like : a player enters a room that gets locked, the only switch to exit is in the room but the player dies before he could activate it => everybody isstuck.

ok i'll keep that in mind.
weapon stay and item respawn are gonna be musts for this project.

Well this sounds rather cool. The gameplay is the most formitable task at hand as you have found out. IMO here are a few things i personally would like to see you implement..

1. Make the "team" aspect more of a "tactical" format..what i mean by that is like this...You have a group of people lets say...4. The weapons and ammo should make the players decided on what role each person on the team will play...for example...lets say there are shotguns,super shotgun,a chaingun,and a rocket launcher on the map. The team shoud decide on who gets what weapons...yeas all teammates should have a bare minimum of shells and a shot gun, but your main "Assulters" should have the Super Shotgun , then a machine gunner, and finally the heavy weapons guy...aka rocket man:). This would make the "team" aspect much more heightened.

With that in mind, when the maps are being made, the concept should be an emphsis on "tatical" insertions...more or less places in the map should be used as "choke points" and "bottle necks" so that a fire team can eliminate the enemy at somewhat of an ease of battle but still make the players make snap tactical decisions like real life special forces.

2. Health is really the hit and miss on a coop map. too mcuh makes it too easy and too little pisses everyone off. make small caches through out the map. and those could be around the bottlenecks and "defencive" positions of the enemies you place, making it a "real victory" to clear a part of the map, mainly because there is a small ammo/health cache in that sector.

That is just a SMALL taste of ideas i do have for such a mapping project ( i am implementing them as well) but there are far too many thigns to discuss in a little post like this :P I hopw it helps.

With your talent and skill, this will be a breeze for you and with the trial and error, you'll nail it i know it.:)

I can Add to this in a few ways. First off, what you can do, is have a non-linear level where the players can split up, or have just a lot of side rooms and stuff. Another Idea is to have a timed switch, and a door, and then a key and a switch on the other side. So the only way to progress is Through Teamwork. The latter Idea is probably not so good. Oh well, hope this gives you some help :P

All about the cooptest and coopbuild (By Toke) wads on ZDaemon, if you want to get a general Idea of how a good Coop game works, try those out, especially coopbuildk2k (Map 19 is especially good so long as unlimited ammo is on)

Some scripted marines here and there could be a good substitute for single player.

Vegeta said:

Some scripted marines here and there could be a good substitute for single player.

DooM delta force would be cool

OMG. Just look at Doom Connector and see all the people clamoring to play new coop wads. I clamor like the rest of them.

Heh, mayby a co-op mod where all the players start in different areas and have to eventually meet up to fight the end vattle together.

interesting idea, i hadn't considered that. i might think about how to use that

One thing I always like in Co-op is a large large, perhaps big big, area with guys, but the catch is you have to kill them. With a gun.

Though it's nice to have some sort of gun near the spawn areas so a player isn't left with a pistol and fist for a big level and spends 10 minutes salvaging guns only to get fragged once they get into the action area.

DOOM Anomaly said:

but the catch is you have to kill them. With a gun.

Nice idea. lol

i just realized that with Doom Connector shutting down, this wad is going to be almost pointless...

No it isn't!

People will still be able to downlaod it and then be able to play it at LANs and stuff.

well, they could use skulltag too i suppose.

still, the major conduite ppl would have used to play this game is gonna go bye bye soon...disheartenning...

Well, I'm obviously interested in playing it.

Co/op is great... and grossly underrated. It adds a completely new dimension to gaming. Every game that has Co/op support gets extra points from me automatically.

well i'll still make it. ppl can play it on skulltag and zdaemon or something.

Just dont make it port specific ? Allow people to use the port they like...(except vanilla EXEs of course :)

The Powersphere Quest for Quake 2 is a good example of how to create do a high-quality co-op episode. It has enough space for marines to manuever about which is essential given all the strafing that is required to survive the numerous baddies. Plenty of ammo and health are to be found throughout the episode.

After a few tries I managed to complete the pack by myself and had plenty of supplies in surplus towards the end. The episode begins by dropping you off with only your default blaster against a Tank! Situations like these put team work to good use without being needlessly ridiculous and are manageable even when solo.

ftp://ftp.sunet.se/pub/games/PC/idgames2/quake2/levels/p-r/psph20.zip

http://www.3ddownloads.com/gamedesign/3dmr/q2/psph20.zip

I don't care for 'puzzles' too much in co-op missions. I'd rather blast away at a horde of enemies with a friend. As long as there is enough ammo around and space to strafe in a well-designed area then I'm happy.

well i like ZDoom. plus its already using ZDoom features. not just a little either, i mean i got decorate monsters and animated textures and doubleskys, the whole zdoom works. wait, skulltag dosn't do decorate does it? hm, crap. well...whatever, it will be a damn good singleplayer level too, and if a bunch of guys feel like getting zdoom rigged for online play on their own, thats cool too.

hmm... Ive made a co-op level for legacy, but Most people wont like it. (at least Ii dont think...) and according to the reveiw, its a bad idea to put credits at the start of your map...

[link]ftp://ftp.sunet.se/pub/pc/games/idgames/levels/doom2/s-u/tdkrt.zip[\link]

MasterOfPuppets said:

well i like ZDoom. plus its already using ZDoom features.

you can say good bye to quite a bit of players then... especially the best ones. I agree that solo maps might need fancy effects and stuff, or it might get boring. Coop is much different as the main attraction is the coop itself (your buddies and teamwork). I find myself not regarding design too much when playing a good coop wad... so I guess making it single port only reduces considerably your pool of players.

Macro11_1 said:

hmm... Ive made a co-op level for legacy, but Most people wont like it. (at least Ii dont think...) and according to the reveiw, its a bad idea to put credits at the start of your map...

it sure is completely stupid... unless it's done like Hell Revealed, with a secret room right at the start. But players were not force to go through it.

VinceDSS said:

I find myself not regarding design too much when playing a good coop wad

exact opposite here. i remember me and dittohead stoping dead in our tracks a few times to admire something while we were playing.

but i get what your saying. i think events force me to make this into a standard single player level with support for coop :(

Good co-op?

Pretty much what makes a good single-player map, makes a good co-op map, or is it?

Hard to say, it depends on what kind of play you are catering to: a given group of player may have taste for slash-and-burn 4-player chaos [AV25, AV26], or cautious rationing of resources [AV06, Vrack3 (yes, it is co-opable)]. It seems in this case the styles of play are on opposite ends of the spectrum. I personally enjoy both slash-and-burn and Chord.wad-styled rationing.

A good balance of the two styles can be found in AV29 and AV31, both of which employed large firefights while keeping a good tab on the health/ammo balance.

I generally avoid maps with port-specific features [exluding Boom], since they generally get in the way of compatibility, and overall serve very little to enhance co-op play.

If there was one sure thing I'd recommend for a good co-op experience, it would be to make sure that:

- The map must be beatable on UV in 2-player co-op, no exception.

A lot of Alien Vendetta was good for co-op play, I think. Especially the larger levels where the players actually can take relatively separate routes through the map. But skill 3 is about hard enough.