How good are you at finding secrets?

Just out of interest.




As for myself, I suck at finding secrets. My secret-finding style goes something like this: Occasionally while playing Doom, I remember that I should be keeping an eye out for secrets. Upon remembering, I then spacebar the nearest couple of computer terminals and hope for the best. Then I go back to killing stuff til the next time I remember.

I used to be pretty terrible at finding secrets in anything other than the IWADs. I've gotten much better at it though. I just recently played Icarus for the first time in 4 or 5 years and I was amazed at all the new areas I discovered that I hadn't found before. Most of them were relatively easy though.

Typical secrets are things like walls that have flashing lights beaming on them, switches that could have been mistaken for decorations, a slightly differently textured door etc.

I suppose if you are playing a really linear map you are less inclined to look for secret areas, since the direction you are supposed to be going in is pretty easily laid out for you, and there isn't a lot left to explore. When there are different directions to go in, dead ends, and areas that circle back into previously visited ones, you'll be more likely to check it for secrets.

Well...I'm probably not the best secret hunter but as they say, if you practice something for 5, 10, 15, ..., X years, eventually you learn a thing or two.

Therefore, I mastered the usual "subtle hints" at secrets, notice unusual/teaser architecture, and keep an eye (or rather, an ear) for even subtler hints such as extra/spurious movement/door closing sounds, after seeing how secrets are sometimes hidden as shootable switches/one time doors (those kinda suck)/switches that reveal themselves only when you are half a map away etc).

Of course, you can always hump walls in case something turns out, and for maps without some ultra-clever secret placement (which means most of them) this is just about enough.

As for myself, I suck at finding secrets. My secret-finding style goes something like this: Occasionally while playing Doom, I remember that I should be keeping an eye out for secrets. Upon remembering, I then spacebar the nearest couple of computer terminals and hope for the best. Then I go back to killing stuff til the next time I remember.

Yeah, that sums it up well for me too.

It largely depends on the wad's era. Given any post-'94 pre naughties mapset my brain will automatically navigate toward misaligned textures and flashing lights like flies to shit, and well before my conscience even starts to get a grip of its surroundings. But move on forward to Modern era Doom, and I'm utterly hopeless.

I guess secrets have moved on from the days of humping and trigger smashing walls.

Oh well.

"Adopt, adapt and improve". --Moto of the Round Table

i'm good at finding hidden walls, tiny crevices, puzzles... but i weep like a little girl when i have to find waverider's secrets without an editor.

I've made love to more walls than years you've been alive.

But really, I'm adequate at finding secrets. Sometimes I find them all, other times I don't find any.

I`m fairly good at finding secrets, but I guess thats because I look for them. I LOVE secrets.

Many of the secrets in WoS was pretty hard to find, but very clever and cool sometimes.

Lots of the secrets in Speed of Doom kind of sucked though. Just tine switches hidden around corners and stuff.

My all-time fav secrets are of course the ones in E1. Nostalgia always win.

edit: I love when I get the feeling that "there is more to this area than what it seems...". I just KNOW it, and when I start investigatin and eventuelly find a secret or two (especially new areas) I almost cum in my pants.

E1M3 taught me how to find secrets. You just have to listen for doors opening as you run around, look for vertical texture misalignments and texture differences, suspicious looking switches, oddly placed support textures, etc. Pretty much just try to find things that look out of place.

A little bit off topic but: E1M3 has such memorable secrets, I remember seeing the imp on top of the lift in the outdoor area, next to the secret level exit and thinking "I wonder if I can get up there". It made the level seem much bigger. The lifts and doors moving up and down in the computer room made it seem more alive.

I short, I rather suck at finding these.

st.alfonzo said:
It largely depends on the wad's era. Given any post-'94 pre naughties mapset my brain will automatically navigate
toward misaligned textures and flashing lights like flies to shit,

Well, I find many early WADs notorious for placing secrets not marked in ANY way. That era is hopefully gone.
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The secrets topic fascinates me and one day I am going to write a long article about them, just a quickie right now.

d2reload.wad is a good example of clever secrets IMO. MAP32 is a compilation of most of the ideas used in ANY Doom map (the map has 32 secrets!) Worth studying.


Ideas I find clever:

HR MAP01 credits room (not a secret actually) or MM2 MAP09 soulsphere secret. Perform an action x times (x>2 and x<10). They place x-1 W1 teleport linedefs 1 pixel away from each. You "take" a "teleporter", so you should resign at some point :-P
Activating two lifts at a time. One of them is obvious and visible for the player, the other one is not.
Temporary action secrets. You have little time to react. d2reload MAP13 soulsphere secret is one of the cleverest I encountered in my playing experience.

Ideas I find stupid:

Jens Nielsen style. Press a switch in a section of map. It does SOMETHING in another section(s) of the map which have absolutely no relationship with the first. I expect proximity between an action and an effect.
Shootable switches abundance. Not being a Doom II fan I'd still like to point out that the original Doom had 3 (? - correct me if I'm wrong) shootable switches in the entire game.
Mordeth MAP01 style Abundance of ledge-walking, crate-jumping, etc.
Double switches A switch standing close to a wall or to a cliff, which has another "switch" "in its back". Clever some time ago, but overused. I tend to check every switch if it has another one "in its back", so they are just too easy. Alien Vendetta MAP08 for example.

1. I'll play a map through and keep an eye out for secrets as I go along.
2. I'll use the auto-map for clues, particularly if there are visible goodies in areas that are not clearly accessible.
3. If, at the end of the game I see that I haven't found all the secrets I'll go back and use the computer map cheat to identify where I've missed something.
4. Sometimes even the computer map won't allow me to get all secrets. In that case I'll ask on the forums.

I just designed a pretty cool area/room because of this thread. It uses "tricks" that fits very well for secrets, but its not a secret area.

Hails and credz to this thread!

darkreaver said:

Lots of the secrets in Speed of Doom kind of sucked though. Just tine switches hidden around corners and stuff.

:-) I don't blame you, heh. I'm shit at making secrets. Some of Darkwave's secrets were pretty nifty though.

I'm also not that good discovering secrets either. I only happen to stumble onto secrets with luck.

Sometimes I am a genius at finding secrets, sometimes I suck terribly.

I'm so good at finding secrets, I can't find the normal exit on Heretic E1M6.

Awful.

I start finding secrets by accident when I am absolutely stumped on my actual goal of finding the exit.

I consider myself as being fairly good at finding secrets. I love secrets.

It's always disappointing whenever I load up a map and notice that it has no secrets... LAME! :p

How do you know? ZDoom alt HUD? That is so

Nuxius said:

LAME! :p

PRBoom+ HUD. NOT LAME!!! :p

IDDT

IDDT

I'm rubbish at finding secrets. Unless they have a big sign on them saying "secret here" I'm like to miss it. In fact, even with the sign, I might still miss it. That being said, I like secrets and get a kick out of finding them.

I found these pictures of your mom--oh wait, are we talking Doom secrets here?

I generally find a couple of secrets on my first playthrough of a wad, so I'd say I'm average.

This question requires a relative response, but I don't often watch others play during the exploratory phase. Finding secrets is mostly a matter of patience, so how good I am at finding them generally depends on how urgently I may need to find something I lack.

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Kyka said:

Just out of interest.




As for myself, I suck at finding secrets. My secret-finding style goes something like this: Occasionally while playing Doom, I remember that I should be keeping an eye out for secrets. Upon remembering, I then spacebar the nearest couple of computer terminals and hope for the best. Then I go back to killing stuff til the next time I remember.

I do the same thing! I just walk around and if a certain wall looks suspicious (has a different color tint to it or something), it's gettin spacebar'd. I usually fail though, and it ends up just being time consuming.

Unless it's one of those secrets which is indicated by a change in some lighting on a wall, or a texture on a wall, I'm likely going to miss it - usually for the same reason Kyka does :(

Unless of course I'm low on ammo/health, and there's a secret box of ammo or a megasphere taunting me... then I'm pressing space on every damn wall I can find until I eventually give up and press iddt. :(

Unless of course the secret is insanely well hidden, and upon finding iddt does nothing, I curse the author for being a smart bastard and alt-tab to open up doom builder.

I'm now beginning to wonder if the reason I didn't put secrets in my own wad, was because I wanted to show them who was boss...

I tend to be quite bad at finding secrets - BUT I put a lot of time into making up for this, as I usually treat finding all of the secrets as one of the main objectives in any map I play. I'm not above using the automap cheat or even going to an editor if an obvious secret becomes quite vexing.

look at auto map. if there is outdoors or visible rooms which you cant enter - then you must be able to enter in some way.

any space might be accesseble, even lavapools have something to hide, and yes, textures is a must for finding the secret (doom2 the crusher).

i might find most secrets, unless it is a map decorated with 30 lines creating a wall with length of 128pixels ( standard lenght to have a eye on when editing is often 128 for a simple wall)

if there is anything supsicious somewere and you find a switch, look it up