Level design tropes you dislike

[Not Jabba]

On 12/3/2017 at 4:27 PM, rdwpa said:

- The ubiquity of 32-wide switches. A lot of modern arcadey mapsets favor these, but they are detrimental to fast-paced action, because they can be annoying to press while running past at full speed or while jostling around in a room cluttered with monsters or projectiles trying to release the next wave of monsters, i.e. gameplay that is actually "fast-paced".

 

Out of curiosity, how wide would speedrunners prefer for switches to be? Aren't most switch textures 32-wide?

Edited December 6, 2017 by Not Jabba

[SOSU]

2 minutes ago, Not Jabba said:

Out of curiosity, how wide would speedmappers prefer for switches to be? Aren't most switch textures 32-wide?

I think he means either having 64px wide shooteable switches or none at all.

[Da Werecat]

You can have a 64-wide linedef with a switch texture, or you can shove a switch into a small 32x32 crevice. Hard to press while moving in the latter case.

[Diamhea]

Teleport traps where  you cant manuever or get out of it without bfg...

[Diabolución]

Levels which require speedrun techniques or some form of deep knowledge of the Doom engine to reach certain platforms required to progress and complete the level.

[94's the best style]

1 hour ago, Litrivin said:

Levels which require speedrun techniques or some form of deep knowledge of the Doom engine to reach certain platforms required to progress and complete the level.

Does Straferunning count as one?

[geo]

The fact that there has to be an exit to each level.

[Diabolución]

35 minutes ago, 94's the best style said:

Does Straferunning count as one?

 

Yes, it does. For secrets it’s fine with me though. A good example of something which requires deep knowledge of the engine is that infamous lift of d2twid.wad, MAP09.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFsi5HQw3_4&t=270

 

You have to cross that lift while it’s still rising in order not to trigger the linedef which will lower it.

[Pirx]

On 3.12.2017 at 11:35 PM, galileo31dos01 said:

What's the big deal with a cyberdemon in the first room? 

 

Well it's kind of an elephant...

[Uni]

* When items are placed in front of switches or in a way I can't avoid them thus making me waste their full potential or reserve them for later use.

* When switches or doors are fitted with a key-colored textures yet do not require keys to operate.

 

[baja blast rd.]

On 12/5/2017 at 6:15 PM, Not Jabba said:

Out of curiosity, how wide would speedrunners prefer for switches to be? Aren't most switch textures 32-wide?

At least 64. 32 can be fine in a lot of spots, but in general it's at best 'tolerable', and often just annoying. 

 

5 hours ago, Uni said:

* When items are placed in front of switches or in a way I can't avoid them thus making me waste their full potential or reserve them for later use.

* When switches or doors are fitted with a key-colored textures yet do not require keys to operate.

 

Mine is related but different: I hate having to shimmy around or air hump an item to hit a switch or cross a walkover trigger without picking that item up. A binary of an item being either flat-out impossible to skip or easy to skip is what I prefer. In runs, it's always possible to plan/route around unskippables, so whatever, but having to inch around them is an undesirable type of challenge. 

 

[Killer5]

My opinion on switch width is a bit different I guess..

 

I could care less what size the switches are. I'd just practice the switch press. For example the switches in the secret cyb telefrag fight in sl30 has tiny switches.. I just played it a few times till I could hit the switches without issue.

 

But I'm weird.

[Nine Inch Heels]

1 minute ago, Killer5 said:

I just played it a few times till I could hit the switches without issue.

 

But I'm weird.

Then what does it say about me when I could press both of those small "half switches" in dimensions31 in such short time? :p

Anyway, I don't think switch size is that important if there's a way to set oneself up for pressing it in a proper fashion, at the same time I'm not sure how I feel about the smaller ones in general. Like, when it's a somewhat difficult map I guess smaller switches kinda "blend in", at the same time small switches in "traditional maps" kinda feel out of place for me at times. But all that becomes a different thing when those switches are meant to part of a secret, at which point you kinda have to hide them somehow.

[Killer5]

@Nine Inch Heels

Nothing intended.. all of my opinions on this forum are generally drastically different when compared to pretty much all other opinions. So I just say I'm weird (but I still don't think I'm wrong :P).

[Pegleg]

On 12/5/2017 at 6:22 PM, Da Werecat said:

You can have a 64-wide linedef with a switch texture, or you can shove a switch into a small 32x32 crevice. Hard to press while moving in the latter case.

Personally, from a design standpoint, I like the switch in a crevice (8 or 16 units deep), particularly when it's on one wall of a tall room. Depending on the room, though, I would probably use a 64 or 48 unit wide crevice, though.

 

I suppose you could just make a little alcove off to the side of the room, too, which would, I guess, make it easier to press while running. That being said, I generally don't design maps around being more amenable for speedrunning.

 

Not that there's anything wrong with speedrunning, I just don't design around that particular playing style.

[Job]

- Forced death exits (forced pistol starts on next map). 

 

- IoS in non-boss level slots. 

[Harvey]

Impassable terrain that I know I'd be able traverse if I were doomguy makes a level less immersive and enjoyable (like a ledge that's barely high enough not to be able to walk on, bars or windows that look wide enough to squeeze through but aren't, etc...) 

[SuperCupcakeTactics]

A set of stairs going down that when I run off, Doomguy hits his head on the next ceiling off the stairdrop. Posted this before and not sure if it's a trope or not

[riderr3]

Plain linear levels with minimal interconnected areas/windows. I better be play maze levels rather than this.

[Diabolución]

Pain elementals escorted by many cacodemons, so that these pain elementals cheerfully will release lots of really annoying lost souls while these cacodemons absorb damage for them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Varis Alpha]

On 2017-11-29 at 11:35 AM, Memfis said:

secret areas that punish you for finding them

definitely my biggest pet peeve with certain mods (Speed of Doom map02 comes to mind for one); what's the point of putting a soulsphere in a secret as a reward, only to spawn a fuck you group of revenants, mancubi, arch-viles etc. to immediately drain all the health you just acquired?

 

illogical or obtuse progression in levels is something i run into a lot. maybe i'm just shit at navigating, but i find myself, more often than not, doing something like springing a trap of monsters that were obviously guarding something like a key card, but it's not made clear they were guarding that (why spring the monsters before i grab the item that i need?)

 

or, more commonly, flipping a switch with next to no indication as to what it was supposed to do, making you run around in circles until you finally find out it opened that door over there, or lowered this platform in the middle of fuck knows where.

 

and lastly, trigger lines activating lifts or doors that has no indication that they even did anything at all. Eternal Doom has this, the Herian series has this in spades, and Armadosia is littered with the fucking things too. if it weren't for ZDoom being able to handily show trigger lines in the automap, it would've been extremely obnoxious to figure out where they are, what they do, and how to reach them.

Edited December 15, 2017 by Viscra Maelstrom

[unkind]

ammo starvation, i do not find running out of ammo fun in any situation

[TurrboAnklet]

I think like 75% of my deaths overall have been from surprise chaingunners.

[Jayextee]

Threads like this are where I get my mapping inspiration.
 

2 hours ago, unkind said:

ammo starvation, i do not find running out of ammo fun in any situation

 

Except I already did this a couple times. :P

[Cacodemon9000]

Most annoying things for me are:

Unavoidable puckups. Megaspheres/armors placed right before the switch which is required to proceed, as example.

Crushers activated right before your face when you running forward, so there is high change to get crushed by them on first run.

Archviles behind multiple lines/circles of barons or knights.

Guaranteed damage from enemies.

Switches/keys/doors required to proceed hidden so hard so you need examine map in editor to understand what you need to do next (Eternal Doom maps 30, 31 for example).

[VGamingJunkie]

On 12/8/2017 at 10:11 AM, Pirx said:

 

Well it's kind of an elephant...

Like most rules, this isn't absolute. For instance, Cyberdreams violates this rule in pretty much all of its levels.

[DANZA]

IMO, the same texture set/texture progression in vanilla mapsets (tech,concrete,hell), especially when a lot of effort has been put in the architecture front, but the textures are the same as Doom 2.
BTSX is a good example of the contrary, while d64 for doom 2, would have been great with d64 textures shrinked to d2 size and pallete (It's a wonderful mapset nevertheless).

Edited December 15, 2017 by DANZA

[Da Werecat]

Textures in Doom 64 are next to useless without colored lighting.

[DANZA]

1 hour ago, Da Werecat said:

Textures in Doom 64 are next to useless without colored lighting.

That may be the case, it was more of a comment on d2 textures usage than on the proyect.

[yakfak]

this is just me speaking but mmm I've noticed that gzdoomy maps with 3d platforms and portals make it almost impossible for me to navigate properly - I'm so used to how Doom behaves that, when it starts acting like Duke 3D instead, my mind refuses to accept it as reality and I become distrustful of paths of progression the mapper intended to be intuitive

 

that's not to say "stop doing cool modern stuff" cos you should do what yer muse says, but it's certainly part of the explanation why I steer clear of it!!