What is the big deal about pistol starts in maps?

Sometimes I want to make a series of maps where pistol starting would be cheating.

But since it'd require making maps with no health, no weapons and no ammos, the gameplay would suck.

Grain of Salt said:

This conversation could have been two posts long if everyone had kept sight of the difference between objective truth and their personal preferences. DOOM allows both styles of play. 99% of community maps allow both styles of play. People enjoy both styles of play. Neither one is "better"; neither one is more fun for everyone. I don't see why we need to make an argument out of this.

The thing is, the original post wasn't about which way of tackling wads that offer both possibilities is better. It was about whether wads should bother to offer both, and if so, why this is a good thing. (BTW, I disagree with your "99%" figure. 99% of the times people write "99%", it is a figure plucked straight out of their ass. :p)

As for which style of play wads should aim to be optimized for, that's trickier, because it's very hard to optimize wads for non-pistol starts, as it's difficult to anticipate how different players will handle each situation. Those who like to provoke infighting and use the berserk will obviously conserve more ammo (and possible require more health) than ones would will use all and any ammo that you give them. So you can understand mappers doing most of their testing assuming pistol starts. If each map is pretty well balanced that way, then the non-pistol-start gameplay shouldn't for the most part be too far out either.

Also if you're trying to make each map offer as many gameplay options as possible (pacifist play, Tyson play and NM, while keeping it Maxable from scratch), then that puts an extra strain on the resource management across multiple maps.

Of course, there are also some wads that are more difficult to play without pistol starts, if each map tends to leave you ammo-less and low on health. Remember starting e4m2 in Thy Flesh Consumed?

Grazza said:

Remember starting e4m2 in Thy Flesh Consumed?

Heh, I've just discovered a way to screw yourself up in E4M2 when playing on -fast: release the barons by the yellow key without picking up the plasma rifle or the key. It can happen if you try to extend your hand to pick up a dropped shotgun, but don't intend to go too far :). Then run away (or teleport) back to the starting place. Congratulations! You're left with four angry barons blocking your way to the yellow key, without you having any ammo to take them out. It can only be won by doing the unplanned-by-design blue door skip.

Grazza said:

Of course, there are also some wads that are more difficult to play without pistol starts, if each map tends to leave you ammo-less and low on health. Remember starting e4m2 in Thy Flesh Consumed?

A problem I have is that I make my levels doable from pistol start, and I try to make them quite challenging but then I play them carrying over items from the previous levels and they're just too easy. So the only way I've found to prevent this problem is to make resources scarce so that a pistol start would probably be favourable.

I don't like the idea that some people work hard to complete wads, playing each level from a pistol start, but then other people just coast through carrying over items and then say how easy it was. I think the challenge should be equal in both play modes but this is very hard if not impossible to achieve.

I almost always play WADs from pistol start.

I find that playing straight through destroys the careful balance and design of later maps in the WAD: usually the levels become a whole lot easier than intended, since the author cannot effectively plan for the extreme variation in ammo/health that has been hoarded over previous levels. Sometimes levels become impossible, if you entered with too little health, though this is rare.

Hell Revealed's City in the Clouds is a perfect example of a level that becomes dramatically less fun if you enter with a full arsenal.

Grain of Salt said:

I don't see how anyone could test a map outside the pistol start style unless they were already finished not only with that map but with the entire wad that it fits into.

Many of the more polished map-sets had a lengthy testing phase once all the maps were assembled, and many things were tweaked across the wads as a whole. TeamTNT were notable earlier pioneers of this.

Does anyone actually consider Tyson compatibility when they design maps?

When the maps are built and/or tested by speedrunners (e.g. Hell Revealed, Alien Vendetta, KSutra, Plutonia 2 et al.), then some thought does tend to be given to how the map will behave in the standard demo categories. Of course, it's hard to cater for every single category in every map (and episode), but in many cases some effort has been made.

Some maps in the major megawads have been built with Tyson primarily in mind (or at least the need for a lot of punching/sawing). For instance, HR09 (named "Knockout"), ET14 ("Pistol Only" - even though the name isn't completely true), AV21, and Vanguard.wad map06.

There should be more max demos that cover whole episodes. ... Then again, I think I remember seeing a stx-Vile run of episode 4 in nightmare, so it's obviously not unheard of.

Actually, there are plenty of episode runs, on the compet-n wads and others. In the tables at DSDA they are listed at the bottom of the page - and note that not all compet-n runs are included as yet.

Episode (and full-game) Max runs tend to be lengthy affairs, requiring a lot of map knowledge and practice, so you can't expect vast numbers of them - each one represents a large investment of time and effort. Also, they are very hard to optimize, so most players who attempt them will have to accept that the end result may not live up to the way they may have envisaged it in advance.

Of current players, Revved and vdgg have been notably active in this area.

Foodles said:

I don't like the idea that some people work hard to complete wads, playing each level from a pistol start, but then other people just coast through carrying over items and then say how easy it was. I think the challenge should be equal in both play modes but this is very hard if not impossible to achieve.

One thing you can do is make every level exit a death exit.

Foodles said:

I don't like the idea that some people work hard to complete wads, playing each level from a pistol start, but then other people just coast through carrying over items and then say how easy it was. I think the challenge should be equal in both play modes but this is very hard if not impossible to achieve.

You ought not to worry about that. Anybody can coast their way through any map they want to, by using skill 1, cheats, or dehacked patches (like superweapons), etc. And those are all valid, supported play options in Doom. There isn't a universal "right" way. But you can hint in the TXT file what is the "recommended" way to play that particular map (for example, by just mentioning "these maps are optimized for pistol start", or vice-versa... as in the Wasteland series). So at least then people know what to expect.

Phml said:

Now that you all got those personal insults out of the way, want to take the time to offer a counterpoint to this:



I wouldn't want you guys to look like you resort to namecalling as an attempt to hide that you can't actually offer a valid argument to defend save spam as an experience enhancing game choice.

Edit: no, shoot, I'll play the part myself. You guys are acting too emotional to do this correctly, and nobody wants to see Gez stepping down for a second time from his mighty horse to squawk "elitist! elitist"! right before he runs off somewhere else to berate someone for daring not to know four programming languages, three wikis, two websites and one port source (preferably ZDoom, because all other ports are for stuck-up snobs who insist on imposing their gameplay on everyone else with such acts as playing singleplayer or expressing their opinions on game design when prompted to do so) by heart.

One major reason to use save spam over plain cheat code invincibility is that it maintains the illusion of challenge, as the player still takes damage. Additionally, there is still a penalty to death, although lessened, as you lose the progress you made (and essentially, the time spent) since your last save.

Situational saving can also have its uses to get through tough fights that might be just a little above the player's skill but not overwhelming so. Then there's people who might not care much for repeating the same parts of a map over and over just because a certain specific spot later on gives them trouble.

Much like anything else it's a matter of balance. While save spam is detriment to pacing, it can be better than the alternatives.

On the other hand, if you're not playing to challenge yourself, but just to have fun and experience the levels, saving and loading is preferable to having to restart from the beginning of a level every time you die, especially with no weapons. THAT quickly takes the fun out of playing.

So yeah, save states are an entirely valid part of Doom's gameplay and just because you don't use them, you have no right to tell others off for doing so.

And you're still a scrub.

Grain of Salt said:

This conversation could have been two posts long if everyone had kept sight of the difference between objective truth and their personal preferences.

Wait, you mean that my personal preferences aren't objective truth? I AM SHOCKED AND APPALLED!

I don't think it's that high of a standard to require maps to be friendly to both pistol starts and continuous play. Obviously, a pistol start will tend to be a bit tighter than if you have some extra goodies. But if you are properly balancing your levels, players should not be leaving the level with full ammo and health. Unless, of course, you intended that as a reward. Furthermore, creating a challenge does not have to revolve around tightly controlling the ammunition the player has, or having barely any medikits. There are those levels made with that specific kind of challenge in mind, which is totally cool, but IIRC in the original doom maps there was usually a crapload of ammo everywhere. Maps should be challenge your use of tactics, and of course your control of doomguy. Some maps do that by giving you limited resources, but I think most do not.

As for saves, NOT being able to save would take all the fun out for me. Modern maps can be quite huge, or have ridiculous monster counts, or whatever. I'm not going to spend all fucking day so that I can play through the whole level without dying. Saving before every dangerous encounter does not ruin the challenge - you still have to pass each battle, you just only have to do so once. I don't save in front of every door but if a map is really kicking my ass, I'd rather use saves to help me along than repeat the same stupid fight until I'm not enjoying the wad anymore (some modern fights are so incredibly boring and unimaginative - here, hold down your fire button and unleash that double-barrel for the next 10 minutes while baron after baron files in the room! YAWN). So yeah, to anyone who complains about people using savegames, NOBODY IS PROUD OF YOU

Just play to have fun, Doomers. No saves, save every 5 seconds, no mods, aeons of death, uv max, strolling, chocolate doom, gzdoom. I am fascinated by the number of configurations available to players to get their Doom on.

But uh, yeah, I like It when maps balanced for pistol starts.

The way Doom was meant to be played apparently requires you to begin each map by typing in a change-levels cheat code whose existence isn't mentioned in the instructions. Weird.

esselfortium said:

The way Doom was meant to be played apparently requires you to begin each map by typing in a change-levels cheat code whose existence isn't mentioned in the instructions. Weird.

You can still use the Setup program to warp to arbitrary maps (F10: Warp). Or Doom95 similarly. It's not entirely hidden to the laymen who don't know about cheats or parameters.

Great. newbie mappers will see this thread and make each map in their wads have death exits. thanks guys.

Back in the day, people weren't afraid of knowing a few shell commands to get around in DOS or play Doom maps, or even make maps with DEU and other DOS programs. There was even a README file that listed the parameters, etc.

I know things are very different now, and nobody can even be expected to run a shell command or read a TXT file. But you can't apply today's culture of conditioned helplessness to several decades ago. The glove don't fit.

hex11 said:

But you can't apply today's culture of conditioned helplessness to several decades ago. The glove don't fit.

Excuse me? It couldn't be that computers have increased in complexity to require more than a readme and a 2-inch thick book and that "several decades ago" a computer was pretty much a luxury item?

printz said:

You can still use the Setup program to warp to arbitrary maps (F10: Warp). Or Doom95 similarly. It's not entirely hidden to the laymen who don't know about cheats or parameters.

So now we're not expecting people to type in cheat codes, but to actually exit the game and reload everything from a setup utility every time they start a new map.

Surely this is what id Software intended.

hex11 said:

Back in the day, people weren't afraid of knowing a few shell commands to get around in DOS or play Doom maps, or even make maps with DEU and other DOS programs. There was even a README file that listed the parameters, etc.

I know things are very different now, and nobody can even be expected to run a shell command or read a TXT file. But you can't apply today's culture of conditioned helplessness to several decades ago. The glove don't fit.

1) We (they) used Norton Commander, not merely the DOS prompt. Only ever experience with the command line was when using special utilities like PKUNZIP or ARJ.

2) Nobody reads the readme file of a game, no matter how much the companies want us to.

Therefore technicalities like Doom command-line parameters could be avoided a lot.

3) To the poster above me: Exactly. Cheating is hidden, command-line parameters partially so (part of them revealed in readme.txt, which nobody in their right mind wastes gaming time reading) but the setup.exe program is required. I'm not talking about how the common practice is to switch the level, I'm talking about what could be visible in the interface to the simple nontechnical user back then -- and even the Setup F10 warp option is a stretch, because I don't think the simple user ever tries it because its meaning is unclear to them.

EDIT: I think the essential intention of Id Software is to have the player get overwhelmed by the game and be defeated by monsters, so he starts each map with the standard pistol start :)

Csonicgo said:

Great. newbie mappers will see this thread and make each map in their wads have death exits. thanks guys.

They're not going to read this thread anyway. Nobody reads anything anymore. If it's not youtube derp shit, it doesn't exist.

Csonicgo said:

Great. newbie mappers will see this thread and make each map in their wads have death exits. thanks guys.

Let a new wave of terror wash o'er the land, where no marine shall begin his adventure armed with more than his service pistol, entering into a cycle of death and reincarnation, transcending this plane upon completion of the final map!

printz said:

1) We (they) used Norton Commander, not merely the DOS prompt. Only ever experience with the command line was when using special utilities like PKUNZIP or ARJ.

Yeah, well since you want to share you story here's mine: my aunt who knows jack all about computers used a DOS 5 machine to connect via dialup to the library computer system and check her mail with Pine. She had to know a few shell commands to do that. She wrote them down, and learned the basics about navigating directories. It's not hard, and if she can do it just about everyone else can (and did, as almost every office I went to had DOS prompts on the screen).

And incidentally, it wasn't just the official README distributed with the EXE and WAD that contained the arguments, but also every damn FAQ and walkthhough. Hell, if you wanted to upgrade your Doom version, you had to run read some TXT file and run some commands. That's just the way shit worked...

Csonicgo said:

"several decades ago" a computer was pretty much a luxury item?

It has been at least three full decades.

Sheeet, my Amiga 500 manual even had schematics in it. That was 1991... Now it's like "U 2 stupid 2 read, call microsoft, 'k thanx bye!"

hex11 said:

Sheeet, my Amiga 500...

Can I live in your home?

The way I see it, when making maps its rather difficult to *not* balance for a pistol start, as thats the most easy way to test your map, rather than loading from a save at the end of the previous map or whatever.

If you're mapping for vanilla doom, pistol starts are quite important, as if you're not save/loading, you'll need to be able to get through the map from that start in the event of you dying. With ZDoom you can make every map have a pistol start by default - I've released a .WAD that replaces NIGHTMARE! difficulty with a UV Pistol Starts one - or you can turn off autosaves (I think) to get the original effect.

The more you use saves though, the less pistol starts are necessary. If you really fancied it, you could make a mapset that doesn't work for pistol starts but uses autosaves to get the player from section-to-section, much like a modern game.

For me though, it all boils down to pistol starts being easier to map for :P

printz said:

EDIT: I think the essential intention of Id Software is to have the player get overwhelmed by the game and be defeated by monsters, so he starts each map with the standard pistol start :)

Then why didn't they code it like that? It wouldn't have been hard.

printz said:

2) Nobody reads the readme file of a game, no matter how much the companies want us to.

This is why we can't have nice things. And by nice things I mean play a game without 20000 55/3 tutorial popups telling us how to play the game and do things despite the manual and control options screen being right there.

Some nonsense being touted here. The average Doomer in the mid-1990s was very likely to be familiar with the basic command-line options, such as -file and -warp, or to have used some other way to achieve the same effect via a frontend of some sort.

How else would people then have been able to play pwads? And why would so many of the released single-level pwads have featured maps that weren't eXm1 or map01? They seem to confuse some people nowadays, but less so back then.

Regarding setup.exe, it was something most people used once only. It even isn't strictly necessary to use it at all, since the game will play quite happily without running it, using fairly sensible defaults (such as keyboard+mouse).

As for autosaves allegedly removing the need for pistol-start playability, consider the (rather common) situation where you have already played a multi-level wad (or have seen a recommendation/review of it) and want to play/replay one of the maps towards the end of it. Then warping directly to it is extremely convenient. If the map is unplayable that way, you probably won't bother. This means that wad has reduced replayability, and these maps get played less than they might otherwise have. For example, how many times do you think the later maps of Daedalus been been replayed vs those of, say, Requiem?

Grazza said:

For example, how many times do you think the later maps of Daedalus have been replayed vs those of, say, Requiem?

Yeah, hub wads seriously need a Quake 2-like built-in system to give the players the necessary inventory when warping.