Mandatory map percentage before a secret exit.

[nicolas monti]

First: I know this is just an artistic license and every mapper do what (s)he wants, but recently I made one of those maps with a secret exit and I started to think if this topic was ever put into a thread here.

 

When you do secret exits what is your "ideal" percentage of the map one has to travel before getting there? Do you even have in mind that?

When I do I try to make the player to complete at least 50%, 70-80% is an ideal in my stardards but I remember putting secret exits very close the normal ones also. Putting a secret exit near the beginning would kind of trivialize the map.

 

What do you think of this?

[Doomkid]

I actually think it’s fun to make it so people can skip chunks of the wad if they find secrets. In one of my older wads, you can find an exit switch somewhat early in some of the maps, but if you press the early switch, you have to play a whole extra level. If you choose not to go in the early exit, you can skip the next map altogether.

 

I found this to be a fun way to make forks in the road “actually matter” and make the experience a lot less linear. Two different people could have a totally different experience with the campaign and play as few as 10 or as many as 15 maps by the end.

 

Anyway, I guess this is a long winded way of saying that it wouldn’t bother me if a handful of maps were potentially cut in half by secret exits, it gives the player more of a feeling of choice.

[DooM Bear]

Personally I like the secret exit to be more difficult to get to than the standard exit :-)

 

For instance, if you need 50% of the map to get to the standard exit then there should be another secret 25% that you have to battle through to get to the secret level :-) I might just be a sadist but feel that the secret exit should require more work than the normal one :-) It provides more of a sense of accomplishment that way :-)

 

Just don’t do switch puzzles and what not to open the door! I hate those things :-P

[VanaheimRanger]

I am actually a fan of not having a normal exit at all in those secret exit slots, that way the player is forced to play the secret map as if it were part of the normal progression.  Sadly not many wads follow this approach.

[wheres the punk rock forum]

If I was a mapper I'd have every level contain secret exits. However in each one there'd be an obstacle to overcome, such as having to tightrobe over a pit of monsters, or trying to kill a chaingunner in a room surrounded with barrells, and having to pull it off just right in order to not explode yourself, etc etc etc. The reason for this would be that if you wanna skip a map you can, all you have to do is find the secret exit and prove that you deserve to have a say in what time you leave the map.

[SYS]

There's not a magic number. You can even cheekily put the secret exit switch next to the normal one. 

[Nevander]

1 hour ago, SYS said:

You can even cheekily put the secret exit switch next to the normal one. 

I'm not a fan of this approach because as the player, you don't know which switch is which. So you'd just save before using one, load if its the wrong switch. I don't like having to guess which switch is the secret exit.

[VanaheimRanger]

1 hour ago, Nevander said:

I'm not a fan of this approach because as the player, you don't know which switch is which. So you'd just save before using one, load if its the wrong switch. I don't like having to guess which switch is the secret exit.

The one with a custom texture that says "SECRET".

[pcorf]

Say if I traveled back in time to 1994 and helped with Doom 2 I'd suggest 5 secret levels with secret exits in MAP05 (to 31), 10 (to 32), 15 (to 33 and 34), 20 (to 35) and 25 (to 36). I don't think Doom 2 had enough secret levels.

[StoneMason]

I kinda like it when a secret exit requires a key that is useless for the normal exit, but also allows you to skip a different key that is required for the normal exit, too.

[Doom-X-Machina]

I've always liked the ol' secret exit behind the starting point of the first map trick...

[Maes]

Besides, even defining a "mandatory map percentage" is moot, if you have watched any speedrun. Those guys can pretty much skip to the part of the map that interest them, period, as can anyone who knows where the secret exit is a-priori. So unless your map is a train with locked doors between cars and have you starting at the back, trying to reach the locomotive...

[DJVCardMaster]

1 hour ago, pcorf said:

Say if I traveled back in time to 1994 and helped with Doom 2 I'd suggest 5 secret levels with secret exits in MAP05 (to 31), 10 (to 32), 15 (to 33 and 34), 20 (to 35) and 25 (to 36). I don't think Doom 2 had enough secret levels.

That would have been glorious.

[Final Verdict]

I prefer the secret exit to be near the end, or at least around the midway point so that you get to explore the map a little first. I also like when a secret exit is inside a large (within reason) secret area of the map. Instead of just having a door/portal in a room behind a wall or something.

 

For example, something along the lines of E1M3.

 

[VGA]

I like showing the player that there probably is a secret exit. Now the challenge is to find how to access it.

 

For example, showing him a door that remains locked even after he gets access to the level exit. Or showing an area through a window. Or giving a key for a door he hasn't encountered yet.

[Doom_Dude]

7 hours ago, guitardz said:

I am actually a fan of not having a normal exit at all in those secret exit slots, that way the player is forced to play the secret map as if it were part of the normal progression.  Sadly not many wads follow this approach.

 

I did that back in 2000 when I released my first project and again when we did the NDCP. I really do prefer secret areas over secret maps.

 

I have a love / hate relationship with secret levels. The Doom 2 ones were Wolfenstein maps, so I wasn't keen on those. I liked the ones in Doom and Quake for the most part. In Quake 2 I really got pissed at that secret map that was just a timed ammo grab. Nowadays I like the idea of secret levels more, especially since in UDMF you can put a secret exit in whatever map you want and you can have the player come back to a different start in the normal map.

 

As for the OP question, I think the secret exit should be anywhere in the map. I like the idea of the secret exit having a different sign color or say exit2 or something.... that way the player can finish the map and go back to the switch later if they find it of course.

 

[boris]

8 hours ago, Doomkid said:

I actually think it’s fun to make it so people can skip chunks of the wad if they find secrets. In one of my older wads, you can find an exit switch somewhat early in some of the maps, but if you press the early switch, you have to play a whole extra level. If you choose not to go in the early exit, you can skip the next map altogether.

 

Interesting idea, but how do you telegraph that there's a decision to be made? I assume that at least someone who's playing the map for the first time will have a hard time realizing that they are about to activate a real exit, as opposed to for example just a trap or fake exit troll.

[Doom-X-Machina]

4 hours ago, pcorf said:

Say if I traveled back in time to 1994 and helped with Doom 2 I'd suggest 5 secret levels with secret exits in MAP05 (to 31), 10 (to 32), 15 (to 33 and 34), 20 (to 35) and 25 (to 36). I don't think Doom 2 had enough secret levels.

I recently posted a thread in the WADs section about a sort of "choose your own adventure" scenario with multiple endings accessed by taking different secret exits along the way... example could be:

Map1-10 (with a map 10 ending) but somewhere along the way there's a secret exit to Map11
Map11-20 (with a map 20 ending) but somewhere along the way there's a secret exit to Map21
Map21-30 (with a map 30 ending) etc etc.

So to get the "normal" ending you take no secret paths, to get the second ending you take 1 secret path and to get the super secret ending you take both secret paths...

 

1

2

3  --- SECRET TO 11 --> 11

4                                    12

5                                    13

6                                    14

7                                    15 --- SECRET TO 21 -->  21 ETC.

8                                    16

9                                    17

10 - END                         18

                                      19

                                      20 - END

You may miss maps but each time you play you could take a different path and get a new experience.

And why stop at 30 maps? If you made them small enough, you could do 40, 50, 60+ ??

[Higo Doragon]

secrets like super mario bros warp zones... is like episode select but ingame!

 

[plums]

20 hours ago, Doomkid said:

I actually think it’s fun to make it so people can skip chunks of the wad if they find secrets.

This is a neat idea, but as I player I generally don't want to miss out on content, even if there's a clever way to do it. I'm playing your map because I want to enjoy it, not get through it as fast as possible.

 

For this reason I'm fine with secret exits being right near the end of the map; if I like it, I'm probably going to explore the whole thing anyhow.

[SYS]

On 8/17/2020 at 9:38 PM, Nevander said:

I'm not a fan of this approach because as the player, you don't know which switch is which. So you'd just save before using one, load if its the wrong switch. I don't like having to guess which switch is the secret exit.

How about the secret exit at the end of the level? And regular regular exit as the secret area. So you can reload the game when you take the secret exit. 

[Chip]

Are there WADs that if you get max kills, max secrets, and/or max items, you unlock the secret level? That would be cool.

[Nevander]

16 minutes ago, LiT_gam3r said:

Are there WADs that if you get max kills, max secrets, and/or max items, you unlock the secret level? That would be cool.

I don't know of any, but that's a neat idea for a UDMF map... I may have to borrow that.

[General Rainbow Bacon]

@Nevander: That might be a cool concept for a hub map where if you found a certain percentage of the secrets more secret levels unlock as you go.  So you can replay maps and look for more secrets to unlock them all eventually.  Say if there are 100 secrets in your wad, finding 50 of them unlocks 1 map, 75 unlocks 2 maps, 85 unlocks 3 maps, 95 unlocks 4 maps, and all 100 unlocks all 5 secret maps.  Of course there should be a secret "difficulty curve" have easy, medium, and hard secrets.

[Pegleg]

On 8/18/2020 at 7:49 AM, Doom-X-Machina said:

I recently posted a thread in the WADs section about a sort of "choose your own adventure" scenario with multiple endings accessed by taking different secret exits along the way... example could be:

Map1-10 (with a map 10 ending) but somewhere along the way there's a secret exit to Map11
Map11-20 (with a map 20 ending) but somewhere along the way there's a secret exit to Map21
Map21-30 (with a map 30 ending) etc etc.

So to get the "normal" ending you take no secret paths, to get the second ending you take 1 secret path and to get the super secret ending you take both secret paths...

 

1

2

3  --- SECRET TO 11 --> 11

4                                    12

5                                    13

6                                    14

7                                    15 --- SECRET TO 21 -->  21 ETC.

8                                    16

9                                    17

10 - END                         18

                                      19

                                      20 - END

You may miss maps but each time you play you could take a different path and get a new experience.

And why stop at 30 maps? If you made them small enough, you could do 40, 50, 60+ ??

 

That would be possible with MAPINFO, I think, and it would be an interesting idea to try.

[Doomkid]

On 8/18/2020 at 9:21 PM, boris said:

Interesting idea, but how do you telegraph that there's a decision to be made? I assume that at least someone who's playing the map for the first time will have a hard time realizing that they are about to activate a real exit, as opposed to for example just a trap or fake exit troll.

One was in a line of 3-4 doors that still had enemies in them, and with an opening at the end of the hall that clearly showed there was more of the map to be played. If a player is speeding for the exit, they're much likely to come accross the "secret" exit first in an unassuming place, and (since this wad was for ZDoom) they could not only easily see more areas ahead to explore, but they could check the automap and see that half the enemies are still alive. This applied to 3 of them, the other 2 were "actual secret maps" with hidden exits rather than exits in plain sight halfway through the map.

 

The explorer type of Doomer knows at this point to keep checking out the rest of the map, whereas the speedrunner's gut will tell them to mash the first exit no matter what, which actually results in a longer journey from beginning of the wad to the end. Of course, if someone doesn't care about that kind of thing and just wants to play casually, they won't care that they missed part of the previous map or that they're playing a whole extra optional map - and if they don't care one way or the other, that's totally fine too. If they're worried one is a trap like that famous E2 exit, they'll just have to try it and find out. (None of them were "fake" trap exits in the wad in question, though.)

[Gez]

On mercredi 19 août 2020 at 7:06 PM, LiT_gam3r said:

Are there WADs that if you get max kills, max secrets, and/or max items, you unlock the secret level? That would be cool.

KDIZD has a super-secret level that you reach from the regular exit of the penultimate level if you've found enough secrets throughout the previous maps.

[printz]

I prefer secret exits to be hidden (like secrets) but not too much. You still want people to find and play your secret maps.

 

But also be careful to make it clear which exit is normal and which is secret! It happened to me several times to choose the wrong one.

[jerrysheppy]

On 8/19/2020 at 12:06 PM, LiT_gam3r said:

Are there WADs that if you get max kills, max secrets, and/or max items, you unlock the secret level? That would be cool.

KDiZD had something sort of like that for the super-secret level.

 

edit: Fuck, I didn't see someone had already said this.

[Doom-X-Machina]

On 8/21/2020 at 7:31 AM, Pegleg said:

 

That would be possible with MAPINFO, I think, and it would be an interesting idea to try.

Theoretically, you could have a secret exit on every map that goes to another map path that doubles back and crosses over other maps at any point with a properly scripted MAPINFO... it would definitely be a cool thing to try...