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40oz

Secret Cliches

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I used to be indifferent about finding secrets but now I'm trying to use secrets to make my maps have almost double the amount of gameplay as they would if you don't search for secrets at all.

I'm trying to avoid some of the common mapping cliches such as:

1. A door that is an intentionally misaligned texture or a slightly differently colored texture
2. A wall with a candle under it
3. A computer panel indicated by a flashing light
4. A waterfall texture you can walk though
5. A hallway with one differently colored torch in it
6. Arrows made out of sectors or health bonuses
7. A lift that you have to be really fast to reach before it goes up.
8. Standing switches with a switchplate on both sides

I found some of the most detailed maps often have the least number of secrets, and the secret areas are often phoned in using the aforementioned cliches. Doomers are smarter than that and by now should be able to find secrets like that without even thinking.

What are some other common secrets that make an appearance in pretty much every wad ever?

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Teleporters that have two available sides to use, with the more obvious side taking you somewhere you need to go, and the less obvious side taking you to a secret area.

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10. You gotta jump in nukage/lava and suck up some damage running into some sort of drainage tunnel or whatever to get some hidden goodies and a way back up. Bonus points if you do something stupid, like the secret's goodies consist in a radsuit and a teleporter back to the rest of the level (utterly devoid of any further damaging sector).
11. A wall that looks just like the rest. No distinctive symbol, no decorative object, no alignment change or anything else noticeable. You're just supposed to be humping the walls like in Wolf3D.
12. A room guarded by one of those "stay open a while then close forever" doors, like in Monster Condo. Bonus points if the player also needs to solve a switch puzzle before being able to reach it.
13. A secret behind a door that is closed when the player moves over a linedef he has to go through to complete the level. He's gotta find the secret before he does so, or else he won't. (Alternatively, cut the level in completely separate areas connected by one-way teleporters, and put all the secrets in the first area.)
14. A secret ledge which you are meant to be only able to reach by being blasted upward by an archvile, twice.
15. A secret behind a one-way door that the player cannot open from his side, but that can be opened from the other side, on which there are monsters which you can also shoot through a window. To reach the secret, you have to refrain from killing them long enough for one to open the door, then rush in before the door closes.


Most of those are very annoying secrets. Use them if you want to be a dick.

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Vordakk: I agree, but that's not very common as far as I'm concerned.

I use the "feel the difference" cliche relatively much. You should spot an unlit gargoyle amongst the lit ones or a satyr face between two lion faces; these are mostly gunfire actions and use Boom's Generalized very frequently to avoid ill and/or undesired effects.

I used to do "sound is the cliche" secrets as well, means you're walking somewhere and suddenly lowering lift or opening door sound can be heard. Be in time, or you'll miss! (Of course not, since one-time secret tags are my worst pet hates.)

Oh, yes, and one I've forgotten. If the chance is given you to play Hadephobia MAP07: Deadly Exploitation, guess what happens if you kill all Mancubi and Arachies.

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I see the methods you listed to be techniques that are used to catch the eye of attentive players, rather than cliches. A bit of creativity should suffice to make them a little more difficult to spot.

At the very least don't start using plain wall humping secrets, they're no fun to look for and any reward is not worth the irritation of pressing "use" on every wall in the level.

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40oz said:

2. A wall with a candle under it

Also frequently done with pools of blood, or even trails of blood leading to a seemingly unremarkable section of wall.

See, I've got a fair few ones, but I'm not sure if they count as frequently used compared to the ones you've listed:

-Shootable switches that are outside the playable area, viewable (or shootable) only from certain windows or angles
-Lights (usually blinking) that are used to light up an otherwise unremarkable section of wall
-Clearly repeating bits of architecture/texturing/decoration/detail where there is a break in the pattern
-As a version of the above, mirrored rooms with one difference in the second
-An obviously phoned-in secret that is only opened when the player has reached the exit room/exit of that area
-Small switches hidden as part of a detailed texture (such as a computer display or bookcase)
-Small switches hidden just around the inside of a bit of corner detail or in a dark alcove off to the side of the path through an area (Speed of Doom liked this and the shootable switches a lot IIRC)
-Having the computer flats be switches that are activated by pressing the side or "front" of the console - bonus points if the lower texture is the top part of a SW1/SW2 texture, meaning it makes the appropriate noise when pressed
-Ledges that are only accessible by sprinting or strafe running from a higher ledge
-Obvious dead ends that can be opened up if the player thinks to press the wall at the end of this "useless" corridor

Detailing does make it harder to put unimaginative secrets into most walls if you don't have some sort of scripting to open up the number of sectors required I find - not a problem for a ZDoom mapper like myself obviously, but one that I rarely think to solve.

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40oz said:

5. A hallway with one differently colored torch in it

The last one made me immediately think of E4M1, a memorable oh crap moment. Why not still use some of these cliches, but just for evil? Non-required deathtraps. Good for punishing greedy players. Make them show more respect to the place by not meddling in every corner. Make sure they are warned beforehand.

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printz said:

Non-required deathtraps. Good for punishing greedy players. Make them show more respect to the place by not meddling in every corner. Make sure they are warned beforehand.


I love this philosophy!

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How about a lift that lowers as you're walking down an otherwise normal hallway in the level, revealing a switch which cannot be reached by the player himself but may be shot to open a secret door?

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a secret tunnel/switch half-way through an elevator ride.
hard to spot 2px wide ledge/stairs hugging a wall leading to a secret platform.
a secret platform under a cliff, invisible from the top. bonus points if there's no chance to glimpse it beforehand.
"the door you came through into the level" can be opened to reveal a berserk pack.

the starting sector is secret to allow 100% on the tally screen in vanilla.

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printz said:

Good for punishing greedy players. .


I didn't realize putting effort into finding optional areas was greedy. If players choose to go secret-hunting they want to be rewarded.

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I always did like the evilness of that E4M1 'secret', though... "Looking for something hidden? Well, here you go. Bitch."

My favorite (not sarcasm) types are the ones where you have to make an obscure jump across an area or walk along the tops of some structures to reach an otherwise in-plain-sight secret -- those are generally more creative and often increases the feeling of 3D. Heck, just having the secret reward in an easily visible location (E1M3 anyone?) can make them loads more interesting regardless of how the entrance to the secret itself is hidden. Try that.

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I was always big on making secrets varied and used many unconventional ones instead of whoring the common ones. And I'm sure anyone can testify as to how hard it is to find the secret map in one of my wads :P (cos I always went for a large number of different secrets, both common and rare)

Teleporters that have two available sides to use, with the more obvious side taking you somewhere you need to go, and the less obvious side taking you to a secret area.


A variant of this, that I look for all the time (and often I'm right :p) is the teleporter with 4 sides where the side round the back is the secret one, or the 1 side with a different texture.

Another one which hasn't been mentioned is the Heretic staple: secrets that open later on in the map and you backtrack to find them.

14. A secret ledge which you are meant to be only able to reach by being blasted upward by an archvile, twice.


Rocket jumping ftw. (and did you know, I once did a secret that required that...but it was in a deathmatch map)

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Tbh most of the secrets mentioned here I don't really have a problem with, although a rad suit and a teleporter back is quite gay. I'm all for gay rights and everything, but I'm not a fan of gay secrets. :P

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40oz said:

1. A door that is an intentionally misaligned texture or a slightly differently colored texture

Variants:
A thin recess in a wall
A section of a wall in between SUPPORT2 or similar textures

I'd also like to know which textures are the most commonly used as secret doors. My guess would be METAL3 (Metal like in Doom2, MAP06 + lightning bolt).

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There's also the "secret behind waterfall" cliche, for example the megasphere secret niche in Doom II MAP11.

I tried to make one like that, but it didn't turn out quite right. The D2 secret uses a normal two-sided linedef with the 2s bit set, and just applies a middle texture to its first side. When I do that, I just get some buggy behavior (HOM or something).

So instead, I cleared the 2s bit, which eliminates the visual bug when viewed from the first sidedef, but when you go inside the niche and turn around, it still shows HOM effect. Also, my editor keeps complaining about "some linedefs are two-sided but don't have the 2s bit set". ;)

Am I missing something? This is what my area looks like:
http://img543.imageshack.us/img543/3658/secretfs.png
The only flag set on that linedef is the S(ecret) bit.

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hex11: If you're making this for vanilla, the problem is that COMPBLUE is a multi-patch texture, so it can't be used as a 2-sided line's midtexture.

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Ah, thanks for pointing that out! Guess I'll just use a normal secret door for this area...

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I like most of the cliche secrets, myself. By that I mean the ones used in DOOM, DOOM 2, FINAL DOOM, Heretic, Hexen, etc. I can understand if you're trying to avoid them as that's your preference, but for me they are comforting because they remind me of being 15 and experiencing DOOM for the first time.

Most of the ones Gez mentioned are piss-awful though.

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I think the worst secrets are those ones that you get to by using a door or switch that only works once, like in E2M1. Arch-vile jumps and rocket jumps are tied for second place on my worst list.

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You can take any piece of art or craft and break it down into its cliches and make it look lame and ridiculous. For example, Doom is a video game where you're a space marine and you shoot demons, with guns, in space. Cliches are not bad in and of themselves, though, and works that we label as "cliche" are simply the ones that don't do a good job of blending their cliches and tropes into a satisfying whole. Every type of secret here, even the annoying ones listed by Gez, could work well in the right level.

That said, if you really do want to come up with a brand-new idea for a secret, I can't help you. There are secret types that haven't been mentioned in this thread yet but I only know about them because they've already been used elsewhere.

1. Secrets where ambient sound is the cue, rather than sound caused by the player activating triggers. There's a level in Phobos, or maybe its sequel, where as you travel down a long, featureless hallway you hear the brummtopp* of a moving floor. Hump the wall where the sound is loudest and you find a secret door.

2. Resprite the Keen. Killing this creature opens a secret.

3. Secrets where the player has to press multiple switches in sequence, but which engage the player with the notion that he's doing something other than pressing switches. In this musty old thing the player has to first "grab a pickaxe," then "break down a wall" to enter one of the secrets.

*This is probably the most obscure word I've ever used in any post.

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There's a really common secret that I see in virtually every map where if you turn round 8 times then look left and right and then press the switch nearest to the exit door thdn run back to the start then press eighteen of the fourteen single-sided lindefs till you see the light turn on then off then on and go up a lift or down it and press ctrl enter then save you get 5 HP

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Marcaek said:

I didn't realize putting effort into finding optional areas was greedy.

Yeah but going for 100% everything does sound vain (aka pointless).

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A fruitless canned secret room that leads to a good secret with minimal wall searching.

Dark death mazes with secret corridors if you search long enough, though it's pretty easy with the automap.

Eventual alternate passages between decorations, namely trees.

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printz said:

The last one made me immediately think of E4M1, a memorable oh crap moment. Why not still use some of these cliches, but just for evil? Non-required deathtraps. Good for punishing greedy players. Make them show more respect to the place by not meddling in every corner. Make sure they are warned beforehand.

That's not funny, that's pure dickness, sorry man...

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I'd like to see more secrets within secrets, a la Wolfenstein 3D.

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Phobus said:

-Shootable switches that are outside the playable area, viewable (or shootable) only from certain windows or angles


Ah that was the next one I was going to post!

printz said:

Why not still use some of these cliches, but just for evil? Non-required deathtraps. Good for punishing greedy players. Make them show more respect to the place by not meddling in every corner. Make sure they are warned beforehand.


I was actually thinking about making such simple secrets be required to find in order to complete the map, but that's even better! kinda like Heretic's iddqd and idkfa cheat codes :)

jute said:

I'd like to see more secrets within secrets, a la Wolfenstein 3D.


I like this too. I think it's lame when a secret reveals a tiny closet with a soulsphere in it. Secrets deserve to be large rooms, maybe entrances into huge unknown territory, with secrets within of course

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Gez said:

15. A secret behind a one-way door that the player cannot open from his side, but that can be opened from the other side, on which there are monsters which you can also shoot through a window. To reach the secret, you have to refrain from killing them long enough for one to open the door, then rush in before the door closes.


Most of those are very annoying secrets. Use them if you want to be a dick.


I did this in one of my maps and thought I was being clever and original :-(

In MAP15 of the Hadephobia beta I think I've used an original secret. At least the method has not been mentioned on these pages and I've never seen it before. I won't give it away but if you find the secret soulsphere on this map you'll know what I mean.

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