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Cell

MAP17 has a wrong combination of keys?

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In the spirit of "E2M1 has a window!", "E2M2 has 2 starting doors!", "E2M3 uses the wrong key?", etc. I've opened this. Playing MAP17 the first time, I was quite shocked to see red and blue keycards, but then picking up a yellow skull key as the final key. In today's mapping, it's not an issue at all (latest releases allow using even all 6 keys), but in DooM II, '94, it was rather an unpleasant experience.

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Well, think about it this way: Earth has been/is still being invaded by the forces of hell at this point in the game. If I remember right, at this point the marine is the only human left on earth(and some of his buddies if you're doing co-op), so it would make sense for the hellspawn to start making things work how they do back "home".

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Cell said:

Playing MAP17 the first time, I was quite shocked to see red and blue keycards, but then picking up a yellow skull key as the final key.

Editing Doom for the first time, I was quite disappointed to find out there's no difference more than cosmetic between the skull and card keys. And that they can only operate doors in vanilla Doom. And that all authentic doors (not "objects") have to be of the slow variety.

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gemini09 said:

Sometimes I consider it exotic when the blue or yellow key is saved for last.


So is there a "correct order" the keys should be found/used in? :P

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darkreaver said:

So is there a "correct order" the keys should be found/used in? :P

Most of the time I encounter the yellow skull door quite close to the exit, especially if the skull pillars are much taller than the door/switch.

Key cards should never be used for switches. I don't recall if there were any keycard switches even in Doom 2.

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printz said:

Key cards should never be used for switches. I don't recall if there were any keycard switches even in Doom 2.


I dont think keys can be used with switches in Doom (2) at all. Only with doors. Amarite?

edit: also, why shouldnt they be?

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You found skull keys in E2M9 I might add. They were all consistently skulls but it was still on the deimos base. Or was it? The map was really small and it was just a cave.

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I fail to see the problem. It even uses the yellow skull key in the more hellish or less tech-like section of the level.

darkreaver said:
edit: also, why shouldnt they be?

Printz likes to make rules out of random bits of data.

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Xeros612 said:

Well, think about it this way: Earth has been/is still being invaded by the forces of hell at this point in the game. If I remember right, at this point the marine is the only human left on earth(and some of his buddies if you're doing co-op), so it would make sense for the hellspawn to start making things work how they do back "home".


At no point in Doom 2 are you the last human on Earth. According to the game all 'civilians' are on space titanics.

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Clonehunter said:

At no point in Doom 2 are you the last human on Earth. According to the game all 'civilians' are on space titanics.

Aren't the space titanics, you know, in space?

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myk said:

Printz likes to make rules out of random bits of data.

Unless I'm wrong, in Doom.wad and Doom2.wad the keycards were never used to operate remotely switched doors (they did operate immediately "switched" doors, like in MAP04 -- you identify them by their turbo speed and "activate this object" message).

Why am I ranting all this? Because I like this hierarchy induced between keycards and skull keys. That encountering skulls (late-game assets) means you may stumble upon a more complex type of lock, whereas cards (mundanely early) will only affect simple doors.

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Remote switches that require keys were only in Ultimate DooM (E4M2, E4M6) and in various levels of Plutonia and Evilution. However, I don't remember whether there were doors/switches needing all six keys to open 'em. It's a mod exception I suppose.

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Cell said:

However, I don't remember whether there were doors/switches needing all six keys to open 'em. It's a mod exception I suppose.

It's a Boom feature. In vanilla, there is no difference other than cosmetic between cards and skulls: locks have a color, that is all, and a red lock can be opened by a red card or a red skull.

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So how come they included locked remote-switch linedef actions and didn't use them until E4? Maybe they thought it would be too confusing to have to find the key for the remote switch, or to see a colored door but not be able to press it?

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Got the issue with distinguishing cards and skulls, as it's featured in Boom, ZDoom and later ports as a Generalized Effect.

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magicsofa said:
So how come they included locked remote-switch linedef actions and didn't use them until E4? Maybe they thought it would be too confusing to have to find the key for the remote switch, or to see a colored door but not be able to press it?

Perhaps, or the level designers weren't familiar enough with the line type to bother using it during development. Incidentally, it appears that only Romero used it for episode 4. Maybe that's a question he could answer.

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Statement I agree with:

myk said:

I fail to see the problem. It even uses the yellow skull key in the more hellish or less tech-like section of the level.

Question Clonehunter is too embarrassed to answer:

Xeros612 said:

Aren't the space titanics, you know, in space?

Something by which I am heartily amused:

Technician said:

The chain of command is blue, red, yellow.

God, this is primary stuff.

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myk said:

Perhaps, or the level designers weren't familiar enough with the line type to bother using it during development. Incidentally, it appears that only Romero used it for episode 4. Maybe that's a question he could answer.

The real reason is that locked remote-doors are a Doom 2 feature originally inexistent in Doom 1. A more sensible question, and off-topic, would be why they didn't use the rusted metal switches in original Doom 1, except for a possibly accidental case of door in E3M6? Everywhere else, they're mere decorations, lit or unlit. Were they originally disabled? Doom v1.2 wads suggest otherwise.

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printz said:
The real reason is that locked remote-doors are a Doom 2 feature originally inexistent in Doom 1.

Not only that, but it appeared first in v1.6, from August 3 1994, which is only two months before the release of DOOM II, and gave the designers little time to implement it on maps that were likely at an advanced state of design. Had the programmers provided it earlier during DOOM II development, perhaps key-dependent switches would have appeared in the commercial game.

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printz said:

A more sensible question, and off-topic, would be why they didn't use the rusted metal switches in original Doom 1, except for a possibly accidental case of door in E3M6? Everywhere else, they're mere decorations, lit or unlit. Were they originally disabled?

I remember a same action with Gargoyle switch in E3M5 and a Satyr in E3M7 (remoted by red skullkey). But still, they're just so unused, despite using 'em from E2M2 to eternity. Doom2 still prefers those non-hellish switches, except for the skull and the eyeball. MAP18 has a whole row of Lion-Satyr-Gargoyle on a wall, but none of them is activable even for a secret.

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Cell said:

I remember a same action with Gargoyle switch in E3M5 and a Satyr in E3M7 (remoted by red skullkey). But still, they're just so unused, despite using 'em from E2M2 to eternity. Doom2 still prefers those non-hellish switches, except for the skull and the eyeball. MAP18 has a whole row of Lion-Satyr-Gargoyle on a wall, but none of them is activable even for a secret.


Yeah, that's one pet peeve of mine - using the lion/satyr/gargoyle as switches AND wall decorations. I constantly check those in levels to see if they're switches. At least the standard skull switches and the other switches can't be misused that way.

That and the ever-popular "Damaging Floor Russian Roulette" that mappers like to play with poop water and blood. Jesus.

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