Instant death pits

[illuknisaa]

I'm making this map where I the player be able to jump down to pits (the player cant see the bottom even when looking down) which have pretty severe consequences but I think "death" is little too cheesy.

I wonder is there somekind of alternative I could use?

[scifista42]

Put a damaging floor into the pit (for example 10% damage per second) and put a teleporter down there that will take the player out.

If you map for ZDoom, you can write ACS script that will activate when the player hits ground (or falls below a fake floor (which can be invisible)), take a small amount of health from him and teleport him out.

[Whymes5]

illuknisaa said:

I'm making this map where I the player be able to jump down to pits (the player cant see the bottom even when looking down) which have pretty severe consequences but I think "death" is little too cheesy.

I wonder is there somekind of alternative I could use?

I have many of these in the later levels of a wad I'm working on. Same thing - Very deep pits, can't see the bottom even when you look down. Maybe puta thing on the bottom of the floor of type "Actor hits floor" and teleport. So then, to prevent trolling it teleports people who fall with no consequences, but only in coop mode. And then another thing which only appears in singleplayer of the same type. This time let it execute a script which takes a small amount of health but also teleports you back. That's my suggestion.

I assume its a ZDoom map since you are talking about instant death pits which is pretty widespread ZDoom feature. But you didn't mention it.

But if you ask me, honestly I'd just teleport them back in all cases. It's already somewhat of a penalty to fall down, I mean most people would still avoid the pits. If theyre so deep it takes a few moments to fall and then you lose your bearrings when you are teleported back. Depends on what type of gameplay you're going for.

[SavageCorona]

The teleport + steal health idea is quite a good one. Games like Darksiders 2 do it and it's just like "shit I fell but at least I didn't die or anything"

[Fuzzball]

Take off a good portion of health? As a "warning".
Nothing wrong with insta-death pits IMO if the player has a good idea and pre-warning that falling means death.

For example it seems to be a good trope in older vidya games that a dark black pit = death...take Crash Bandicoot for example!

[scifista42]

But I hated those. Particularly when repeatedly dying (losing lives) in the same places, and particularly if death meant having to repeat a large chunk of the map.

[SavageCorona]

I think it's a little different here since Doom has no lives and you can save wherever you want. I personally don't and I just start from the beginning if I die, but that doesn't stop anyone else from save scumming.

[scifista42]

I often savescum too. But maps that involve hazards too hard to deal with them without save/load usage, as if it was an intended part of the gameplay to use it... Not my favorites. Some people even prefer to play with no saves ever. It's fair not to ruin their day. In addition, saving/loading makes me feel like cheating (because it is cheating), and I'd be more comfortable (and stay motivated) with a punishment like health loss, instead of having to reload (again and again).

[Whymes5]

Pretty sure the topic is just boiling down to what you're aiming to do. Clearly, if you want to cater to the most people, less hazards is better. I doubt anyone would play your map that doesn't mind dying, and say "Hmm, I wish those pits killed me." On the other hand, those who do mind dying will probably say "Hmm, I wish that pit didn't kill me".

[Fuzzball]

You know...if you're using a Zdoom based port- you could set up different things with scripting based on difficulty...

[Nevander]

scifista42 said:

In addition, saving/loading makes me feel like cheating (because it is cheating)

Umm... what? How exactly is it cheating if it's a built-in function in the game? Was it cheating in the original games? Is it cheating in open world games when your game crashes and you lose all your progress? There's more than one kind of cheat and saving/loading is not one of them. It would make more sense to say instant death pits and the like are cheating YOU.

[Havoc Crow]

I don't think saving/loading is cheating, but I think it's way more satisfying to complete a map in one go without saves. Personally I hate environmental instant-death traps (crushers, pits etc.) - it feels so cheap to be randomly killed by a sector floor instead of gloriously falling in battle.

[scifista42]

My logic is that saving/loading is technically cheating if you use it to help yourself to make the game easier, which you always do when you reload a game after some kind of failure (not just dying), you basically save yourself from the intended punishment. That said, this is theory. I'm convinced that it's true, but in practice I take it as fun trivia and food for thought, and happily (ab)use the feature anyway.

[illuknisaa]

I dunno about teleporters. So far I've wanted to keep things "realistic" so just having a random teleporter at the botton feels wrong. My map also has this abandoned mine/cave thing going on so having bunch of high tech stuff seems pretty odd too.

Same thing with stealing health.

The main (and probably only) reason why I have these pits is because it looks cool.

EDIT: I just got an idea.
If the player happens to fall to a pit he get teleported to new area/map which represents the area that is underneath the original level. The player then has to navigate his way back to top side. The player could them emerge from the same spot he fell off or a area that he hasn't explored in the original map.

I could also make this "undermap" a maze of sorts with demons inside. This way the player gets to fight and if he loses health it doesn't feel like it was "stolen".

[Arctangent]

illuknisaa said:

The main (and probably only) reason why I have these pits is because it looks cool.

Put grates or some other semi-transparent 3D floor over them, then. That way the pits can serve their purpose as detail without interfering with the gameplay.

[illuknisaa]

Arctangent said:

Put grates or some other semi-transparent 3D floor over them, then. That way the pits can serve their purpose as detail without interfering with the gameplay.

A grate? Over this?:

[gaspe]

A railing or simply making the border lines of the pits impassable seems a better solution after looking at the pic. So the player wont fall.

[Whymes5]

illuknisaa said:

A grate? Over this?:

http://s27.postimg.org/m9p90k1r7/Screenshot_Doom_20150609_024202.png

By the way, maybe it's just me but that pit looks a little odd. Maybe it's because the texture doesn't tile very well vertically, or the color is a bit off, or maybe it's even just how you took the screenshot. So I don't know.

[Memfis]

gaspe said:

A railing or simply making the border lines of the pits impassable seems a better solution after looking at the pic. So the player wont fall.

That would be lame and uncool. The player should be afraid of falling, he should be intimidated by teh pits.

[Whymes5]

Memfis said:

That would be lame and uncool. The player should be afraid of falling, he should be intimidated by teh pits.

You must play a lot of LA worlds.

[illuknisaa]

Whymes5 said:

By the way, maybe it's just me but that pit looks a little odd. Maybe it's because the texture doesn't tile very well vertically, or the color is a bit off, or maybe it's even just how you took the screenshot. So I don't know.

I'm not really sure what you mean but the texture is basically a rock texture with lots horizontal lines. Maybe the biggest problem with the texture is that it has a very hard transition with top and bottom. Texture is from a avp2 texture pack (AVP20355)

Map also has global fog setting.

Also pic has a view to "sky" box.

[gaspe]

Memfis said:

That would be lame and uncool. The player should be afraid of falling, he should be intimidated by teh pits.

Well, probably yes. On second thoughts if the pit is very big or wide, having all impassable lines doesnt seems so good.
Also, this thread made me think that death pits with spikes would be cool. And It would be tricky to do in vanilla/boom.

[Arctangent]

Looking at it, if you don't want to do railing or make the fall Legend of Zelda-style and go for the instant death, I'd recommend expanding the path if monsters are intended to be anywhere near that area ( even if they "leak" into the area from another ). From what I can tell from the screenshot, the amount of space you have to dodge seems very minimal - and killing the player because they overdodged the wrong way seems a bit too drastic.

[Phml]

If the player happens to fall to a pit he get teleported to new area/map which represents the area that is underneath the original level. The player then has to navigate his way back to top side. The player could them emerge from the same spot he fell off or a area that he hasn't explored in the original map.

I could also make this "undermap" a maze of sorts with demons inside. This way the player gets to fight and if he loses health it doesn't feel like it was "stolen".

Sounds great to me.

[pcorf]

In my upcoming Zdoom episode Doomed Space Wars. There are many areas with huge vertical drops. I set the sector effect type to 115 Instant Death. If the player falls down he is killed when he hits the bottom, or when he hits spikes which are present in one map. You can also set Falling Damage in MAPINFO. In Vanilla, you can have a voodoo doll and there is a teleport line. The teleport destination is placed on the voodoo doll and you will be telefragged and killed instantly.

[illuknisaa]

So I was mapping this "undermap" idea but I trouble coming up with push gameplay that forces the player go up.

Do you guys have any ideas? I'm looking for a mine/cave themed ideas.
I already have elevators.

[gaspe]

illuknisaa said:

So I was mapping this "undermap" idea but I trouble coming up with push gameplay that forces the player go up.

Do you guys have any ideas? I'm looking for a mine/cave themed ideas.
I already have elevators.

Some natural/rock steps or climbing road. Also If you make the steps large enough you can put some imps or other monsters on them.

[illuknisaa]

But what prevents the player just going back?

[scifista42]

Ideal solution: Put a teleporter. (easy to do, foolproof, comprehensible)

Less ideal solution: Let the player step into a bottom of a deep pit, which will magically thrust him upwards. (not so easy to do, exploitable, possibly confusing)