Help on making damaging floors challenging

[CrocketRocket]

Currently making a map 2 of my wad and right now I'm not sure on if I made the floors fair for the player too easy to crossover or just a plain annoyance. I just need a little help on how could I make it more engaging 

^What people will be walking over.

Spoiler

If the map is too dark I'll turn the brightness up

 

[Fuzzball]

I mean if its just muddy water...it doesn't seem like it should be damaging to be honest~ Just because it's brown and muddy- personally I feel a different kind of flat should be used if you really do want to give that feeling of "Oh this is bad floor- don't touch!"

[baja blast rd.]

Those shots suggest soft area denial that might complement low- to mid-density combat, rather than a difficult movement test in itself.

 

In the first shot, I'll assume the health bonuses mark the player's next destination from left of the camera position. Since the player is funneled towards that narrow strip,  you can place some sort of projectile firer(s) parallel to the movement vector of the stairs, and allow the player to pull off a tight, reactive dodge or two. That could be imps or a HK if you want something lighter, some more furious projectile hell if your tastes lean more intense. The existing manc can also work well as part of this assuming the player can't snipe it beforehand -- as its spread fire will 'lead' the player's movement. 

 

Once the player is 'up' on that platform, you could throw out a skirmish that threatens to pressure the player back down into the slime or somewhere else but gives them an incentive them to stay. A PE or archie, both with backup, look logical. Alternatively a quick fight using that tree as cover

 

In the second shot, you can do any number of things with that terrain and those trees. That is an interesting playspace. 

 

The amount of damage your floors do also matters. 5% might not deter a player from taking periodic dips, assuming regular amounts of health, so it implies designing around those dips being expected. 20% might be irritating regardless. 10% is common with 'escapable' damaging surfaces.

 

By the way, those shots look very appealing. And the light level is perfect.

[Dark Pulse]

Assuming you're mapping in Vanilla format, you're pretty limited on your types of damage - 5, 10, or 20.

• 5% - good for things you want to be an irritant, not particularly deadly, but encouraging users to not stick in there for too long. Great for where the safe area is at a distance.
• 10% - definitely irritating, generally for stuff where you want to force the player a relatively short way, or onto a certain feature (an island or whatever).
• 20% - the "You fucked up if you fell in here" stuff. It's meant to kill you and kill you hard. The idea is to find immediate safety and shelter if it exists - or sizzle trying.

Lastly, keep in mind if you have the player armor, these damage amounts will be halved (green) or thirded (blue), rounded up(?). Of course, this will chew up their armor in equal or greater proportion, depending on the type of protection they have. Also, damage is halved across the board if they're playing on I'm Too Young To Die.

 

Lastly, be sure you're not using Sector Type 11 for your damaging floor. It will end the map once health is lower than 11%.

[baja blast rd.]

48 minutes ago, Dark Pulse said:

Lastly, keep in mind if you have the player armor, these damage amounts will be halved (green) or thirded (blue), rounded up(?)

 

This is wrong.

 

With green armor: 5% floor saps 4% health and 1% armor; 10%, 7% and 3%; 20%, 14% and 6%. 
With blue armor: 5%, 3% and 2%; the others, half of each. 

[GarrettChan]

I really want to test the map when you finish it, just by looking at the shots, which is appealing as rdwpa said.

 

The topic alone is kind of difficult to discuss just by static images. I guess you need some testers to play your map in order to get feedbacks.

[Dark Pulse]

8 minutes ago, rdwpa said:

This is wrong.

 

With green armor: 5% floor saps 4% health and 1% armor; 10%, 7% and 3%; 20%, 14% and 6%. 
With blue armor: 5%, 3% and 2%; the others, half of each. 

Derp, mixed up the colors when typing that. Or more accurately, thought in terms of what it did to the armor, not the Health.

[HAK3180]

11 minutes ago, rdwpa said:

With blue armor: 5%, 3% and 2%; the others, half of each.

 

This is a hilariously so efficient it's confusing way of saying this.

[Nine Inch Heels]

5 hours ago, CrocketRocket said:

I'm not sure on if I made the floors fair for the player too easy to crossover or just a plain annoyance. I just need a little help on how could I make it more engaging 

Don't concern yourself with nonsense such as what people think is "fair". Ask 100 forum members and you'll get 100 different answers.

 

Depending on how difficult you want the area to be, you need to think quite clearly what the main thread is supposed to be coming from.

 

If you want to make players rush through the sections, you could get away with 20% hurt floor to make people run. You can make these runs interesting by releasing a few "blockers" in people's ways, such as demons, lost souls, and maybe even some revenants. However, this approach will throw the "I wanna play at my own pace faction" under the bus, because they don't have much of a choice anymore, and thusly will condemn your map as "unfair", because they couldn't have it their way. Due to how "granular" hurtfloors are in their damage delivery, you may need to provide some additional recovery items for players.

 

If you made it a 5% hurtfloor, you'd need vastly more and sustained additional pressure from enemies to make the hurt floor count for something. Even though I like slaughtermaps, I'm not a huge fan of this alternative, because people will naturally try to snipe or "peek and pew" the additional monsters to get past the section safely. That means the pace of that area can potentially slow down to a crawl, unless you push people forward with additional monsters from behind them (in which case why rely on the hurt floor to do that work in the first place?)

 

A 10% hurtfloor seems decent for most "normal" maps in this case, because it's still threatening enough to make people wanna reach safer grounds quickly, while it still is punishing enough to ruin the days of the pathological campers. For 10% hurtfloor I'd suggest using revenants, trons, mancs, or even arch viles to pressure players into tanking a few instances of damage here and there.

 

An interesting hurtfloor gimmick I like to employ is "sinking rocks". Give players stepping stones that will disappear into the mud slowly. Paired with 20% hurtfloor you can still have something that is "fair", and sends a pretty clear message. Any raised sector that gets lowered into the mud with a "changes texture" property will turn a once safe rock into deadly ooze when it hits the ground level. Might be worth having a look at.

Edited September 5, 2019 by Nine Inch Heels

[CrocketRocket]

1 hour ago, GarrettChan said:

I really want to test the map when you finish it, just by looking at the shots, which is appealing as rdwpa said.

 

The topic alone is kind of difficult to discuss just by static images. I guess you need some testers to play your map in order to get feedbacks.

Yea I'm trying to get it done once I managed to make sometime for it

[Murdoch]

Gameplay should flow nicely. Having a super powerful damage floor during part of the main level's flow would definitely be a dick move. Severe damage floors should be only for those people who have fallen off a ledge or made some other error, and should be marked with a suitably aggressive texture like lava. The brown water in your shots, I would not expect that to do any damage and probably would be mildly annoyed if it did.

[Nine Inch Heels]

1 hour ago, Murdoch said:

Gameplay should flow nicely. Having a super powerful damage floor during part of the main level's flow would definitely be a dick move. Severe damage floors should be only for those people who have fallen off a ledge or made some other error, and should be marked with a suitably aggressive texture like lava. The brown water in your shots, I would not expect that to do any damage and probably would be mildly annoyed if it did.

 

You know what would be a good idea? Discussing the options the OP has to make a hurfloor in their maps interesting, that's what.

 

You know what's a shit idea? Telling somebody what you think their map should or shouldn't be doing, especially if it completely misses the point of what the OP is looking to discuss in the first place.

[Murdoch]

3 hours ago, Nine Inch Heels said:

Stuff

 

I gave my opinion based on his shots. I did not give any orders whatsoever. Calm down.

[boris]

When I got feedback on my JOM4 map, which requires the player to dash over small areas with a 5% damaging floor, I was quite surprised how disliked that was. Personally I like it, because it limits the player's movement and gives a sense of urgency to not loiter about too much. The problem is that if you have the player dip their to in a damaging floor multiple times it's hard to gauge how much damage they'll actually take, thanks to how Doom applies the damage (every 32 tics of global game time, and not based on how long the player is on the damaging floor).

 

16 hours ago, rdwpa said:

Alternatively a quick fight using that tree as cover

 

That's a good idea, but keep in mind that using obstacles as cover doesn't work in vanilla and Boom (maybe dependend on comp setting?), since projectiles simply fly through them, since they are only 16 units high. You can't shoot them in ZDoom and the likes because their height had to be increased to support removal of infinitely tall actors.

[baja blast rd.]

To clarify, I was referring to the 'tree' made of sectors.

[GarrettChan]

On 9/4/2019 at 8:22 PM, CrocketRocket said:

Yea I'm trying to get it done once I managed to make sometime for it

Sure, take your time. I'm looking forward to the completed maps :D

[Fonze]

On 9/5/2019 at 1:18 PM, boris said:

When I got feedback on my JOM4 map, which requires the player to dash over small areas with a 5% damaging floor, I was quite surprised how disliked that was. Personally I like it, because it limits the player's movement and gives a sense of urgency to not loiter about too much. The problem is that if you have the player dip their to in a damaging floor multiple times it's hard to gauge how much damage they'll actually take, thanks to how Doom applies the damage (every 32 tics of global game time, and not based on how long the player is on the damaging floor).

 

Also consider audience composition.

[Gez]

I'd like to suggest using lava for your damaging floors so that 1. it's more intuitive that it hurts and 2. it provides a greater visual contrast between damaging areas and safe areas. The brown water doesn't look that different from the brown rocks when you're moving fast and are focused on the monsters.

[CrocketRocket]

Update:

So I think I got myself in a pickle with both the damaging floors, enemy placements, and trees. 

 

I won't delete it and start from scratch since it took quite awhile to come up with. But all i can tell you is that i think i have defiantly put myself in a deep pickle.

 

It's still isn't completed as well. Hopefully I'll come up with and figure away past it

[baja blast rd.]

15 hours ago, Gez said:

I'd like to suggest using lava for your damaging floors so that 1. it's more intuitive that it hurts and 2. it provides a greater visual contrast between damaging areas and safe areas. The brown water doesn't look that different from the brown rocks when you're moving fast and are focused on the monsters.

 

Legibility is a good quality to aim for, but I don't think I have ever experienced that issue with damaging floor. Slime has a sufficiently different visual footprint from brown ground -- that it is animated in-game helps a lot. Not to mention, a change to lava is a big theme and mood shift the OP might not be going for. (Personally, I think brown slime happens to be arresting in this particular set of shots in a way that lava would not be.)  

Edited September 10, 2019 by rdwpa