On doors that "eat" weapons

[Memfis]

Let's say you're supposed to get your first weapon from a shotgunner/chaingunner but he dies in the worst possible place and a door crushes his weapon. Who is bad - the player or the map?

[RichardDS90]

In my opinion, the player, just a matter of knowing a good place of killing an enemy that drops items.

[plums]

I blame the player. Also if it's your first weapon, just start over, nbd right?

edit: I guess you could design a map specifically so that the door tends to crash the weapon, in which case it's the map, but then if it's intentional it's not the same thing anyhow?

[scifista42]

How could that be considered a fault of a map? If that happens, it just means that the player was unlucky and/or the player made a mistake. Mapper can't be responsible for such things. The player is, I say, and should take consequences. They wouldn't be that bad in most cases anyway, but even if they were - it's he playing the game.

EDIT: I can see the counter-arguments though. For example a comparation to inescapable pits. Still I think losing a weapon is a much milder punishment than dying in a pit. So even if there really wasn't any more opportunity to gain the intended weapon, I wouldn't blame the mapper.

[Avoozl]

Wait, doors can crush weapons in Doom?

The only game I ever remember anything close to that in was Quake 2 where a door will destroy any ammo dropped under it by a killed enemy.

[Touchdown]

That's an irrational situation. Will you only place ONE enemy of that type for the rest of the game or something? You'll usually encounter multiple shotgunners/chaingunners.

As weird as the setup is, I'd blame the map designer. If you want the player to get a shotgun at a certain point, just place it on the ground, problem solved. There's NO reason to do otherwise. The player shouldn't get screwed over because he's 'unlucky'. And again, I can't imagine placing just one shotgunner and then never having more of them for a significant amount of time so it's something that would never happen anyway.

[purist]

I didn't know about this until earlier this year so I don't think it's so common as to be an issue. I seem to remember MAP23 of Hadephobia had a tougher start if the chai gunner at the start is crushed under the door. I left the 'bug' in though as I thought it was my own fault.

[Phml]

I blame the mapper, no questions.

It's stupid design in the first place to require enemy kills for critical weapon drops, as enemies will have some level of unpredictability, barring intense metagaming. You can manage this with smart mapping, but at this point you're putting effort to solve a problem you created yourself. That's just silly.

Just put a damn shotgun next to the shotgunner if the player is intended to grab a shotgun at this point. You don't put every rocket launcher and every plasma gun in every map you make on randomized conveyor belts.

Sure, in practice it doesn't matter all that much. Just like in real life you can drive without your seatbelt for decades and be just fine. Doesn't make either of these choices any less stupid. It makes sense to pick the foolproof solution if the cost is negligible.

[40oz]

Memfis said:

Let's say you're supposed to get your first weapon from a shotgunner/chaingunner but he dies in the worst possible place and a door crushes his weapon. Who is bad - the player or the map?

The map. If this is the case in your map, make a secret where the said weapon is available. As a mapper, you're entitled to make the secret as annoying or difficult to find as you want, but you don't know who's playing coop in your map and even if a door doesn't smush it, only one player gets that gun (until he dies, then it's gone forever.)

If the concern is ammo, then the player. Some motha fuckas gotta learn how to punch out an imp some day, might as well be today.

[Memfis]

I realize that this question is a bit ridiculous, which is why I selected "WTF" as the thread picture. :) Personally, I'm leaning towards the "bad map" side because I can't imagine any player keeping this stuff in mind when fightings monsters, it's just too uncommon to remember. I have no problem with using the pistol to get a weapon from shotgunner/chaingunner though (I don't understand Phml's metagaming talk, the whole game is one big roulette anyway, as a speedrunner I know this so well) so I think I'll just put a few more chainers in my map.

Good point about coop btw, should always put multiplayer-only sg/cg in such maps.

[vdgg]

Touchdown said:

That's an irrational situation. Will you only place ONE enemy of that type for the rest of the game or something? You'll usually encounter multiple shotgunners/chaingunners.

See Eternal MAP30 :)

I say the player. He can take advantage of almost everything, grab a shotgun/chaingun of a dead monster "out of reach" (a chaingunner on a crate in One Bloody Night MAP04 if dead in a correct spot), so he may get punished as well from time to time.

Great thread for fun reading.

[Phml]

(I don't understand Phml's metagaming talk, the whole game is one big roulette anyway, as a speedrunner I know this so well)

Honestly? I edited that in to prevent... people who like to pick fights with my posting from coming in and going "blargh blargh everything in Doom is deterministic, you fucking suck if you can't tell how a shotgunner will move and react accordingly, it's easy if you analyze the demos in a hex editor and plan your route and do two steps to the left while exactly turning right at a 43° angle".

There's zero relation between those three words and the gist of my argument though...

[Jayextee]

I think it's a bad call to make it possible for dropped weapons to be 'eaten' this way if it's required to pick them up. Map/designer flaw, not player flaw.

Although I don't agree with Phml that it's bad design to necessitate wrestling them from the hands of enemies. It's a legitimate form of challenge.

I was very conscientious whilst mapping for Nex Credo, that enemies with weapons that would aid pistol-starters were not near doors that could vapourise needed armaments though. It's possible on MAP04, but there's a shotgun in a room attached to the start area, so it's moot. Flawed though Nex Credo may be, I at least did this little thing right. ;)

[Pirx]

i'd prefer if the mapper puts a "starting" shotgun somewhere that can be picked up, rather than being taken from a an enemy.

that's pretty much irrelevant in single player, you just start over. but it can be frustrating in coop when you're full of ammo, die and have to start over with no shotgun available because you killed all sergeants already.

this being said, a player should know that doors can crush dropped items, so it's his mistake if he shoots a sergeant right in a door frame or doesn't rush to pick up his gun before the door closes.

[40oz]

emphasis on the secret area thing. The shotgun or chaingun doesn't need to be spoonfed to the player in case this particular event happens. You can still make the player look for one.

[vdgg]

It's weird that if I place a regular shotgun in an open door sector and make a "W1 door close stay" linedef, the shotgun doesn't turn into blood. I'm so used to seeing the opposite.

[40oz]

it would be fun to prevent the player from getting access to these weapons when you don't want the player to have them.

i.e. put a chaingunner guy on a short ledge, let the player kill him, when the player attempts to bump the wall to get it, thick door W1 closes fast and crushes it :)

[dew]

I'm well aware of this effect, so I swipe dropped weapons I need (first pickups or ammo refills) accordingly. It's not rocket science, so players should accomodate. It's actually fun when I forget occasionally and then I have to watch that precious chaingun crushed. Adds a touch of the unexpected to the game I know intimately otherwise.

I'd say it's bad map design if it's a must-have pickup with just ammo & different weapon drops provided from then onwards, but in the general case it's the player's fault. Man up and find another one (or reload or whatever). What exactly should the mapper do anyways, use open-stay doors? Keep in mind, the exact same problem can be related to crushed monsters and let me tell you, I piss my pants every time I see a baron corpse crushed. Ghost monsters are a scarier issue than crushed weapons, but if you feel that strongly about the latter, maybe petition ZDoom devs to "fix the bug", heh.

[dg93]

I personally think that if a weapon gets crushed in Doom, there should be sprites to show that the weapon is actually 'crushed' instead of disappearing. I don't know why ID software never came up with that concept.

[Antroid]

If the situation is so specific that you can easily blow your only chance at getting a particuar weapon by smashing it, then I can see the bad map design standpoint. But how often does that happen? Almost all of the time you can walk five meters and kill another shotgunner/chaingunner. In which case blaming the map seems really ridiculous: most maps have enemies and doors, and getting a weapon from an enemy instead of a preplaced thing isn't bad. Although I will freely admit that I play almost no coop and can't view the issue from that angle. But in normal singleplayer I probably prefer having to hunt for the weapon drop instead of having it handed to me in one of the rooms near the map start. Makes it feel less like whatever place you're in was specifically constructed to offer a fair challenge to the marine and more like a hostile environment that Doom is supposed to be.

[Demon of the Well]

Hmm, unusual question. In most of the reasonable circumstances where I could see this actually happening, I'd be inclined to blame the player rather than the map(per), although 'blame' is perhaps too strong a word--like dew says, it's one of those things that just happens sometimes, and for my part I think it's often interesting to deal with an unusual situation like that, and I'd argue this is often true even from FDA perspective or whathaveyou.

Supposing a situation in which this kind of thing is disproportionately likely to occur--say, the only way to get a shotgun on a big map is to kill a sergeant you're ostensibly supposed to pistol in the first 60 seconds or so, but the part of the map he's found in is full of crushers or fiddly little sequences of fast doors or the like--yeah, I could see a reasonable argument for it being poor/thoughtless design in that case. Of course, I can also see some eccentric mapper reading this and then actively trying to create a situation where you're likely to lose your shotgun in such a way.....if it were actually an intended part of the design, I might well be more sympathetic to it once again, for novelty value if nothing else. I've played a lot of WADs and seen a lot of things, but never anything quite like that.

[Antroid]

Demon of the Well said:

...
Supposing a situation in which this kind of thing is disproportionately likely to occur--say, the only way to get a shotgun on a big map is to kill a sergeant you're ostensibly supposed to pistol in the first 60 seconds or so, but the part of the map he's found in is full of crushers or fiddly little sequences of fast doors or the like
...

That kind of a situation probably can't not be deliberate in which case it isn't strictly bad design, it's just a somewhat metagamey, very unorthodox challenge. Although the map would have to be suited for that kind of thing and not just be a normal map like any other but with that bullshit thrown in...

Am I understanding correctly by the way that pre-placed weapons can't be eaten by doors? It would be hilarious to have a BFG that is deliberately set up to get "eaten" by a door when you approach it...

[CorSair]

Losing your guns by crushing door is always players fault. And because I am pack rat, I always try and snatch all the stuff before it goes away.

[schwerpunk]

If the (let's say) shotgun in question is a bonus (for instance, the Sarges at the beginning of E1M1 on UV), then I don't think it's anyone's 'fault,' just bad luck. Often I'll put Commandos or Sarges earlier on in the higher difficulties of my map, along with their weapon on a formal gun platform somewhere else, later on in the level, for all difficulties. Sometimes these guys will even be in a secret area, so you can beat the level without that weapon anyway.

What I'm saying is, if the level can be beat without picking up that crushable weapon, then tough cookies, Flynn. If, on the other hand, it's a necessary weapon to completing the level, then it's annoying map design (the 2% of the time it comes up).

Antroid said:

Am I understanding correctly by the way that pre-placed weapons can't be eaten by doors? It would be hilarious to have a BFG that is deliberately set up to get "eaten" by a door when you approach it...

My memory is awful, but I believe there's a Plasma Gun next to the Arachnotron in 'The Crusher,' along with some other goodies, and it's entirely possible for them to get crushed before you can get to them. Knowing this, I usually dart right for them, so help me with the brainiac.

EDIT: Disregard the above. According to the ZDoom forums, even in the vanilla, the crusher in The Crusher will not crush the Plasma Gun. Non enemy-dropped items are, apparently, uncrushable. I guess I just always thought it would get crushed, and never took the chance of testing it out.

[Demon of the Well]

Antroid said:

Am I understanding correctly by the way that pre-placed weapons can't be eaten by doors? It would be hilarious to have a BFG that is deliberately set up to get "eaten" by a door when you approach it...

Yeah, pre-placed items can't be destroyed by crushers/doors (e.g. the yellow card in E2M4, or the plasma rifle under the titular crusher in DooM II's map 06), at least not where classic engine behavior is concerned. Reckon you could still come up with a scenario where the BFG gets stuck under a lowering ceiling that won't ever rise again, or the like.

[Gez]

Make the entire sector the monster is a door, with the effect that it tries to close continually. Give a window so the player may kill the monster from very far away. Surround the monster with barrels so that it may kill itself by attempting to shoot the player.

Do that for every zombie in the map, and put no other sources of weapons or ammo.

Add a thousand imps.

[40oz]

I'm responding to this question from level designer to level designer. I've played Memfis' maps before (not all of them, but a few) and in my experience with them, they're often pretty stingy with ammo and don't give away valuable weapons early. I'm making the assumption that he's in the middle of making a map (or contemplating the idea of a map) where this situation has a chance to happen, and given his mapping background, I'd say it's a pretty dick move.

I understand shotguns and chainguns can get eated, and in many wads I've played, you already have a shotgun or a chaingun at the time that happens so it doesn't matter. And I suppose there is some merit of skill involved with snatching the guns quickly before the door gobbles it up (sometimes I tactically restrain myself from killing a monster before it reaches the doorway so the door bumps off his head to save some shotgun shells)

But in the case of Memfis' efficient speedrunning playstyle and the style of design in his maps where resources are low, a vital shotgun guy standing just before a doorway where his shotgun, (the only shotgun before a big imp/pinky/cacodemon infested arena) can be crushed is a dick move, and I think it's shitty for the level designer to depend on the player snatching that shotgun before the door devours it.

[Memfis]

Ye, I already made that map and during the tests sometimes I would lose the chaingun, resulting in some funny situations. :p So I added some more chaingunners nearby and now it isn't a problem. Thx for all responses, fun thread indeed. :)

[joe-ilya]

I blame the mapper, put a block "monsters" effect on the door so it won't crush.

The doors should have a domo face with it's mouth pointing down or up. Pffff...

[Tristan]

joe-ilya said:

I blame the mapper, put a block "monsters" effect on the door so it won't crush.

And if we want monsters to be able to chase the player through doors?