Pet peeves in level design

[scifista42]

@tomatoKetchup: When Memfis said "It is clumsy gameplay on your part", he didn't mean "It's your opinion", he meant "You play badly." :)

[VGamingJunkie]

Of course, if you're the kind of person who wants to make a level that's just nail bitingly hard, then having a rough start could be your way of telling the player to brace themselves for an intense beating. Obviously, this level of hard isn't for everyone and is pretty subjective. Some revel in that kind of hardship, others would get frustrated and quit. Then again, even IWTBTG didn't have you dying literally after starting, it waited for you to move. Maybe a good hard level would have you start in a tight space and, the second you move, the floor lowers instantly and you're surrounded by demons or something? =S

[joe-ilya]

Never_Again said:

A recipe for making a map that will work in Zdoom only.

Use them correctly. :P

[scifista42]

What exactly do you find bad about multiple switches in one area, assuming that they work properly and each of them has an understandable purpose?

[dew]

40oz said:

Nobody in their right mind would save a game in a position like that so its just disrespectful to force a player into a situation like that without him having any control over it. Even Dead Simple does it fairly by giving you a switch to press before the map starts.

What were Gusta and Method even thinking in 2003? For fucks sake, ignoring issues of such an important port as Doomsday, which didn't even exist back then.

[Woolie Wool]

40oz said:

Wolfenstein is comparatively easier than Doom 2. Most of my reason for posting stems from my early experiences with doom, where I was loading megawad maps in doomsday on a slow laptop when I was playing doom pwads for the first time. Many maps often started off with really choppy frame rate, with massive slowdowns until it warmed up to the map. Wads like kama sutra were pretty close to unplayable because the start of many of the middle and late maps were like "welcome to my map oh btw these chaingun guys, cyberdemons, and revenants are already killing you"

Nobody in their right mind would save a game in a position like that so its just disrespectful to force a player into a situation like that without him having any control over it. Even Dead Simple does it fairly by giving you a switch to press before the map starts.

In your map, those schutzstaffel guys usually go down in like 5 or 6 pistol shots, so I wouldn't consider that too unfair. And I've never seen a slow loading wolfy map on any machine. Even Doom 1 is light with instakill monsters, so just about any start is more forgivable than ones with doom 2 monsters besides a cyberdemon in your face or being locked in a closet with a hell baron.

Just keep in mind that my mod adds the Kommandos (the huge guys with the heavy machine guns and black armor) who have 200 health (that's around 12-16 pistol shots!) and have the same attack as chaingun bosses from the original Wolfenstein, so they can and will gank your ass in a split second. BTW if you think Wolfenstein is boring and I think you've said so several times, Coffee Break Episode 1 might just surprise you at what I can make this old engine do. :)

But I definitely agree on ridiculous starts, especially if they're long rather than a quick burst. I like to play megawads in chunks, so it's very much unappreciated when I see the level exit, go through it, think "now I can save my game and pick it up tomorrow" and then there are like 5 or 6 revenants who attack immediately at the start of the next level.

[Memfis]

dew said:

What were Gusta and Method even thinking in 2003? For fucks sake, ignoring issues of such an important port as Doomsday, which didn't even exist back then.

I think it did? Unles Doomwiki lies again...
btw seems like they like Doomsday, all screenshots on their site are taken with it.

[kermode]

40oz said:

Wolfenstein is comparatively easier than Doom 2. Most of my reason for posting stems from my early experiences with doom, where I was loading megawad maps in doomsday on a slow laptop when I was playing doom pwads for the first time. Many maps often started off with really choppy frame rate, with massive slowdowns until it warmed up to the map. Wads like kama sutra were pretty close to unplayable because the start of many of the middle and late maps were like "welcome to my map oh btw these chaingun guys, cyberdemons, and revenants are already killing you"

Nobody in their right mind would save a game in a position like that so its just disrespectful to force a player into a situation like that without him having any control over it. Even Dead Simple does it fairly by giving you a switch to press before the map starts.

if the player is handed a SSG, rocket launcher or BFG at the start I say anything goes. in the original id levels you usually had to actually work to get those things. I thought the beginning of KS25 was hilarious, with the two cyberdemonds & two barons right in front of you at the start but as soon as you make a move you teleport somewhere else. I think I remember reading in the description of HR24 that there are so many things on the map that it's impossible to save anytime on that level. they sure don't make them like they used to... :D

[joe-ilya]

scifista42 said:

What exactly do you find bad about multiple switches in one area, assuming that they work properly and each of them has an understandable purpose?

If they are repeatable it's fine, but if it's just "push three switches one time each" It has no purpose.

[scifista42]

What if one would raise a bridge somewhere and the other one would unlock a door elsewhere?

[Antroid]

Just resumed playing a megawad that I had started a while back but stopped due to a map that I hated. After playing just one map of it, I am reminded of one of my worst pet peeves of doom level design. It's freaking puzzle ambushes. They are pretty much tactical puzzles which you can survive either with superhuman reflexes, spatial awareness and tactical desicion-making, or by sheer lucky chance. Or by knowing the ambush beforehand. Those are fine if you save all the time, as you get to retry them and solve them, but the wad had generally pretty mundane gameplay which more than allowed me to afford playing without saves. After a second bullshit ambush I just said fuck it and used "resurrect" because truly, if a map pulls those it doesn't deserve to be beaten fairly.

So ambushes that you have little chance of surviving your first time. Sometimes it's due to the extremely cluttered layout where you get stuck on everything as you try to think on your feet, sometimes it's because a place doesn't really seem suited for such an ambush and you don't plan ahead, for example, where to hide if an archvile suddenly appears - like if it's a big empty room and there's a very specific way to hide from an archvile that you definitely can't predict or figure out before you know where the archvile will be (and surely you don't always know where you would hide from one as you play, whichever direction it spawns in - it's impossible for a human being I think), sometimes it's just unfair in how quick you get destroyed unless you move exactly how you need to in order to not get boxed in. When your level has average gameplay that is maybe dull, maybe not, but pretty fair, you don't do these fucking trial and error ambushes. The worst part is that I'm following a level-by-level review of that wad as I play (reading a level after I've beaten it) and not once has the reviewer complained about bullshit ambushes. I refuse to believe that every doom player is superhuman.

Another small pet peeve is excessive darkness. In this particular megawad everything is dark, but some areas are excessively dark, and it almost seems like the author has a very bright monitor and made it so that he could barely see anything, figuring it was okay. But I have a monitor that barely displays the darker tones, so for me it might as well have been pitch black.

Edit: and another that this megawad also loves doing! Drops that you can't see down with enemies roaming right underneath, which block your movement as you even try to fall down, and then murder your ass as you fall in some opening between several of them and the wall, while you still can't really attack them. So by the time you fall and can move, half your health is gone and more often than not you're trapped by the monsters.

Edit2: and yet another! When there's some inconsequential decorational fence that you should be able to step over, but because it's done with a midtex the author makes it impassible, even though it's probably lower than 24 pixels. I realize it isn't that frequent of a problem in wads but it made me ragequit just now and I'm contemplating dropping this megawad altogether since the last level and a half managed to do so much shit wrong.

Edit3: you know, fuck it. I'll just put Hellbound maps 13 and 14 as examples of how not to make gameplay. Screw this wad.