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Spectre01

How and when to use repeatable doors?

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I've been playing a few wads recently with plenty of doors, most of which are of the DR repeatable variety. From what I understand, this is frowned upon these days with D1 single use doors usually being the standard (Unless you're one of those "No doors!" extremists). I too like doors that stay open since they make it more convenient for both the player and monsters to navigate through the map. They also prevent nonsense like spamming use on a door to quickly open and close it while provoking infighting on the other side with little to no danger to the player. So when is it acceptable or preferable to use repeatable doors?

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I'm certainly not an expert on the topic, but one example that comes to mind of when I loved the use of a repeatable door was in MAP08 of the Doom 2 campaign (Tricks and Traps). The door to the Baron / Cyberdemon room. I just remember the first time experiencing that map, spawning in surrounded by doors, curiously opening each one to see what awaited me. I open that door, and it was like, "Oh... hello disturbing horde of Barons. I'll just casually close this door back up and try somewhere else, thank you very much".

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I don't think that there is really a good way to use a DR door. They are only time consuming and are the cause of 99% of rockets sucides. 

Back in the early 2000's, I think, every map had at least 10 DR and it was really annoying. I think that the only reason to use a repeatable door nowadays is when you have to lock a player in a room but, at the same time, you want the player to be able to open the door again from the original side (so you make a DR with only a side that can actually open that door), but it is still a forced thing, you can simply use other lines or scripts to close the door only one time and that's all.

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6 hours ago, Spectre01 said:

(Unless you're one of those "No doors!" extremists)

Extremist? To me it seems like a continuation of the same logic. You want a door to stay always open after you use it once, someone else might ask why you even need a door in the first place. All depends on the design and the environment you want to achieve.

 

6 hours ago, Spectre01 said:

They also prevent nonsense like spamming use on a door to quickly open and close it while provoking infighting on the other side with little to no danger to the player.

Nonsense? It's a legitimate game mechanic.

 

6 hours ago, Spectre01 said:

So when is it acceptable or preferable to use repeatable doors?

Acceptable? Always. Preferable? Well, maybe in a maze, if you don't want an open door to serve as a cue to previously visited areas. And in deathmatch, where you might specifically to use the door as an obstacle.

 

1 hour ago, Simomarchi said:

They are only time consuming

I can see why it would annoy someone doing a speedrun, but for casual play / first time through? Not a big deal.

 

1 hour ago, Simomarchi said:

are the cause of 99% of rockets sucides.

Really? I thought it was Lost Souls. Learn to play the game, sheesh. :)

 

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13 minutes ago, dr_st said:

Nonsense? It's a legitimate game mechanic.

plus many. this is not a "cheat", neither it is an "exploit". there are plenty ways to prevent it if map author feels like it, and not all of them requires making door oneshot.

 

7 hours ago, Spectre01 said:

hey make it more convenient for both the player and monsters to navigate through the map.

monsters can open doors.

 

actually, when you're entering a room running to some pickup, and suddenly monster closets opens, and the door is closing behind your back, so you have to wait for it to open before running away... this is what you have to pay for being careless.

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Depends. The pattern 'open door -> shoot stuff -> open door -> etc.' tends to be pretty dull, so you'd want to avoid them with chokepoints and high monster density, but they don't pose much of a problem with lighter monster density. Monsters opening doors can be amusing.

 

Also if you are creative, you can think of many clever unconventional ways to use them deliberately.

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DR doors can block sound without the need to add sound blocking lines. Many old wads from famous authors even not used sound blocking lines. They just cleverly use doors for this at whole map.

 

I also want to mention the lifts. Lately, in my maps, I mostly refused to use lifts in favor of stairs. Maybe exception is big heights.

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1 hour ago, riderr3 said:

I also want to mention the lifts. Lately, in my maps, I mostly refused to use lifts in favor of stairs. Maybe exception is big heights.

That's the spirit! Make the Doomguy burn those calories.

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I like lifts when you approach them from above. I tend to make the player drop into dangerous situations a lot in some of my maps, and lifts make it harder to just back out after you dropped, while still providing the option.

 

in any case, this is the first I'm ever hearing of this supposed hatred of DR doors, but I get rdwpa's point. But is this really a good reason to just say "using line special 1 is the devil?" I like using a few doors on my maps, not one for each room, just to add some separation to my maps. if I'm trying to segment off a big battle or something, I'll frequently use a drop or something instead.

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Making hundreds of wolf3d maps taught me that doors can open a lot of potential. They can give the player control over sound propagation, and they're a piece of architecture that can be altered by monsters! There's a lot you can do with that. And while Doom provides easier ways to implement stuff such as monster closets, I still found my wolf3d door experience useful in Doom modding, on several different occasions. I made my DMP2018 map in a more realistic style that would make teleport ambushes and inexplicably opening walls feel less appropriate, so I used doors to orchestrate ambushes. The result felt really good and natural! Especially on the second floor of the building, which I made into a non-linear structure filled with doors that enemies could open. A lot of different scenarios emerged from that, and it wouldn't have been possible on a static map with no doors and just a few sound blocking lines here and there.

 

By the way, did you know you can let monsters open locked doors in vanilla?  Cause I figured it out! And it's not just the old speedrunning trick, this is a door that can be opened by any monster from any side, and cannot by opened by the player from either side without the key. Seems to be working in every port, too.

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