Pitfalls

[40oz]

In the Doom IWADs, usually the point with the lowest altitude is a pitfall with damaging liquid, perhaps a few spectres, and the player just runs to a nearby lift or teleport to escape. In my experience, falling in a map's pit doesn't deal a lot of damage or makes the drop a very serious situation. In fact sometimes the monsters are more dangerous at the normal level than they are below, and if the floor isn't damaging, sometimes staying on the lower level can be an advantage. I like the idea of platforming and scaling ledges, but usually the biggest consequence of falling is the amount of time it takes to get back to where you were. The amount of damage dealt even with spectres or damaging floors or both is just not that reprimanding for falling.

I dont really want to kill the player, but I'm having trouble coming up with a fair way to make a platform jumping situation in which mistakes are not very easily forgiven. Has anyone played a map where falling caused considerably more problems than staying above ground? Could anyone help me brainstorm ways to make pits more treacherous?

[pablogener]

you could make it so that if the player trips over the side, and begins to fall down, they trigger an action to put the whole area to a brightness level of 80, and have a nightvision goggles laying around somewhere in the pit, and so on... you get the idea.
another thing is start crushers when player enters the pit by falling down into it.

edit:language 'inaccuracies'.

[Linguica]

You could put chaingunners / archviles / whatever in alcoves at the bottom of the pit in such a way that they're not visible from the top?

[BrainMuncher]

You could have the platforms move when you jump off them so you only have a limited number of attempts before the way is closed. If you combine your triggers right with dummy sectors you can have them only move after the third or fourth (or whatever) attempt.
Not great for critical paths but would work for "side areas", secrets, and alternate paths.

[scifista42]

The teleporter out of the pit could lead to the map's start or other previously visited area that is very distant from the platforming area. In case of large platforming sequences, teleporting the player to the very beginning of the sequence might be punishing enough.

[kuchitsu]

Lol, how about: the more times you fall the smaller the platforms become, so jumping becomes harder and harder with each mistake.

[baja blast rd.]

Make the damaging floor strength + teleportation location such that the player will lose quite a bit of health getting back up? Something like that.

[40oz]

Linguica said:

You could put chaingunners / archviles / whatever in alcoves at the bottom of the pit in such a way that they're not visible from the top?

I like this idea. But ideally I dont really want the player falling at all, and I'm not sure I want the knowledge of monsters down there to attract him to fall just to get 100% kills.

Maybe some of the way through the map I could open up a door behind the alcoves so the monsters step into a teleporter and get used elsewhere...?

[Li'l devil]

Just make falling into the pit instant death, that's what I call punishment.

..or atleast make the floor in the pit of 20% damage variety..

Also, if you're mapping for ZDoom you can just put a few invisible monsters there along with the 20% damage floors. Yeah, how about fighting invisible mancubi while constantly losing chunks of health!

[baja blast rd.]

ChekaAgent said:

Also, if you're mapping for ZDoom you can just put a few invisible monsters there along with the 20% damage floors. Yeah, how about fighting invisible mancubi while constantly losing chunks of health!

"Annoy the player into refusing to play any of your maps ever again" definitely isn't the best strategy.

[traversd]

I suppose to make sure there is no incentive to fall, and make it disadvantageous but not outright start the level over for all player types, maybe have a trigger on the exit path(s) that closes off access to items or adds lost souls into the mix when the player returns to the normal path. (I think?) that would still allow valid UV Max attempts.

Or similar to the classic way of walkways that fall and turn into damaging floor if you don't keep up - maybe change the structure of the remaining level areas to have more damaging floors or less cover?

Both options may not show the player the cause/effect if the penatlies are implemented too far from the mistake though.

[VGA]

rdwpa said:

Make the damaging floor strength + teleportation location such that the player will lose quite a bit of health getting back up? Something like that.

Yeah, if the player has to lower a platform to get out of the damage sectors then he *will* lose health and he *will* lose time.

[Nirvana]

You could make it that the platforming route leads to a path that is much easier than the low ground one, meaning that if a player falls from the platforming area, they have to take a more difficult path to get to the same area than if they had made the jumps. This would also add a bit of interesting level design and a more non-linear style to the level if there were multiple routes to get to the exit. I know you said that you wanted to discourage people going for 100% runs deliberately falling down and I suppose some people may find the more challenging route more fun than the platforming area, but perhaps you could make it more punishing than challenging.

[NinjaLiquidator]

Instant death trap, if you want to be arsehole. All linedefs that lead to pit will activate crusher, that will crush barrels near the voodoo doll. In the pit you can make some bright 1px horizontal red midtextures, to look like laser grid and at least warn player :D