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PopeRigby

Any good tips for secret hunting?

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Walk around pressing the open button on walls

 

Look for walls with slightly different textures or colors

 

Listen for passages that are opening up as you go along. Sometimes passing a certain point or backtracking to a certain point will lower a lift or open a secret wall temporarily.

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I'm playing Plutonia right now, and none of those tricks seem to be helping me. Maybe I'm going too fast, but I'm going slowly at the end, and still not seeing anything.

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Learn how to read the automap and play in a port that has a good one, not that shitty vanilla red on black that doesn't show anything useful. GLBoom+ or GZDoom has a textured automap, which can reveal stuff behind fake walls and other parts of the map you may miss. It's also useful for when the mapper has a habit of deleting large chunks of the map. Secret sectors that are not hidden often show up as a purple outline, so make sure you've got that enabled. Most older wads don't mark usable walls as one-sided, so you can frequently see something's up when there's a double-sided line as part of a solid wall. Dabbling in mapping also helps to understand geometry better and what type of walls are worth spamming use on or where hidden shoot switches can be placed.

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59 minutes ago, Spectre01 said:

not that shitty vanilla red on black that doesn't show anything useful.

Awww but I love the vanilla one! In fact, I hate the GZDoom light brown one. I'm stuck in my nostalgic ways these days.

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1 hour ago, Spectre01 said:

Learn how to read the automap and play in a port that has a good one, not that shitty vanilla red on black that doesn't show anything useful. GLBoom+ or GZDoom has a textured automap, which can reveal stuff behind fake walls and other parts of the map you may miss.

So your advice is essentially to cheat?

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11 minutes ago, Edward850 said:

So your advice is essentially to cheat?

No, that would be typing iddt. I'm simply suggesting making full use of modern port features, including vanilla-accurate ones like GLBoom+, to aid in secret hunting. I don't believe that to be cheating. Unless using a crosshair or advanced HUD also falls into that category, since that was not in vanilla.

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I don't know much about the secrets in Plutonia but i know that if you are playing in software mode (or a port that supports it) a wall (or area) with different lighting and/or textures will sometimes indicate a secret. Also sometimes you have to shoot a wall as well. Or as everyone knows the basic hump everything rule can work too if you are in a bind.

 

I still have issues with how to read the automap so don't fret. I'm not sure if i should use the stock GZDoom one or switch to the vanilla Doom one as i still have trouble finding secrets too. I'm going to study up on it, learning how to competently read the automap i mean haha!

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pretty common > wall textures: most of time a wall with a different texture is always a secret.

 

common > misaligned textures - Sometimes they are obvious but sometimes they dont because their desaligment are just 1 pixel so you have to check wall pretty carefully

 

a bit common > different floor heights or crossing certain floors: sometimes different floor heights like map01 of doom2 or have different texture floor tile are activators for secrets.

 

not so common > things: sometimes blood pools or decoration are like indicators for secrets.

 

sometimes > lights: sometimes light show secret to the wall they make bright other than others. in some case also lights show where you have to step in order to activate the secret, take for example the secret in E2M2 where if you step in the corner with light a lift with a soulsphere in the other side of the room will go down, the same thing with E1M1 where light is the line that activate the lift in the zigzag pool room.

 

a bit rare > computer consoles: in some levels a computer panel (the one you find in floors) are used as swicht for some secret, same thing goes if you find a hall with computer panels in wall with those white lights in walls, the indicator here is either a flicker light in the console panel or if the light in such wall is of other color (like blue light texture instead the white one)

 

rare > fakewalls: this one is pretty rare to see and the only indicator for this one it just shoot walls and see where you dont see bullet puff or your projectile get trough. or monsters coming out from there

 

rare to find > teleporters > they pretty rare to find on this one is crossing certain side of the teleporter will lead you to another place most of time is the backside of the teleporter as players tend to take the front one, most common secrets in teleporters its if you take the side with different colors for example you find a teleporter with the star pentagram but one side its red and the other side is silver.

 

i dont remember much of the plutonia secrets but most of time tend to be one of these mix of secrets, but generally thats what i do when i try to find secrets on any wad.

Edited by Z0k

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Wall hump, look for texture misalignments and things that look off or "baity" on the map.

 

Yes, I'd also suggest GlBoom's or GZDoom's textured automap as well, it helps tremendously with better differentiating things in the level, vanilla is hideous in general and plain useless and just a pain in the ass.

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Make use of the map. I play only with the Vanilla one and it is plenty useful.

 

Pretty much everything has already been mentioned.

 

So I will just add this:

When everything fails, hump madly while chainsawing the wall and hope something happens. Also shoot anything that you can't humpsaw with the Chaingun.

 

The worst of all are the secrets you only have one opportunity to get due to timings or you triggering it without knowing and it closes for good.

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6 hours ago, idbeholdME said:

The worst of all are the secrets you only have one opportunity to get due to timings or you triggering it without knowing and it closes for good. 

God I hate those.

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I think you should be aware though, some maps on the IWADS have unobtainable secrets, where it's impossible to get 100%. Off the top of my head, E4M3, E4M7, map15, map27, and maybe a few from Plutonia/TNT have these flaws, so you should know so as to not be banging your head against every wall if you're the completist type.

And if you are, definitely DON'T play Maximum Doom.

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There is no right answer because map authors don't all follow the same "rules" for denoting secrets, if they're even denoted at all. Sometimes that random wall is a secret with no indication. BTW that type of design is bad IMO.

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On 9/23/2019 at 1:13 PM, Spectre01 said:

Most older wads don't mark usable walls as one-sided, so you can frequently see something's up when there's a double-sided line as part of a solid wall.

Any mapper who marks secret doors as 1-sided on the automap should have their heart ripped from their chest so they can see how cold, shriveled and black it is before they die

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1 minute ago, Doomkid said:

Any mapper who marks secret doors as 1-sided on the automap should have their heart ripped from their chest so they can see how cold, shriveled and black it is before they die

But I'm allergic to that specific thing.

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