Havok

On 9/28/2023 at 1:09 PM, Stupid Bunny said:

Was really tempting to put “barrels of fun” in the title but there’s enough threads discussing that map already

 

No what I’m interested in is the best, most interesting, cleverest uses for barrels in maps. There’s thread after thread about strategic uses of every monster, about good architecture and layout and item placement and secret design; but I wasn’t able to find much if anything about the big exploding cans apart from a lot of technical discussion of their use with voodoo dolls and other under-the-hood trickery.

 

To reiterate, I’m mostly interested in “visible” barrels; I’ve used them lots of times for offscreen tricks killing monsters and voodoo dolls and Romeros and making exploding noises for atmosphere and whatnot. 

What are those tricks you did with barrels killing monsters offscreen and voodoo dolls, etc?

Before I actually make a WAD I roughly write down the major things that I want to happen in the map such as the enemy encounters and puzzles, etc. But each thing can be quite long so it makes it hard to read the document at a glance and find everything. Is there a storyboard program or other program you can suggest? I'm thinking maybe I can write a short summary for each thing and then when I click on that it will open the full story for that particular thing in another tab or something.

Yes Ultimate Doom Builder and UDMF format. I don't want monster closets, I just want the enemies to spawn in on my way back through a corridor. I want this "use scripts to just spawn monsters in at pre-placed Map Spots". Does it have to be done with scripts? How do I do it with or without scripts in Ultimate Doom Builder? I'd prefer that the spawned in monsters (not infinitely spawning in by the way, they just spawn in once) already are counted in the monster count when you start the level. Can that be done?

Is there a way to determine the true monster count when you start a level as I know there's ports that can show that but you're saying scripted monsters won't be included in that count at the start of the level?

As the title.

9 minutes ago, Fonze said:

Preface: all art is subjective, these are just my opinionated thoughts and not anything close to objective.

 

There several ways to do it, but the biggest thing to keep in mind is to think outside of the box and to not repeat the same thing too much. Lock-ins can be good, but also can get grating after a while.

 

That said, you can use height, timers, doors, or switches as a means to hard lock players in, as people have mentioned. Timers are prolly the worst of the bunch, because players can and likely will beat the timer, and then be forced to wait to leave... (see opening fight of THT19... smh lol). You can also use a particular enemy or crowd of enemies to meat-block the exit or the switch to leave as more of a soft lock-in, or a small platforming puzzle. Sometimes the softer locks can be more malleable to players' playstyles too. I like platforming puzzles to leave arenas because they're not impossible to do without clearing the enemies, but the average player is definitely prodded to clear most enemies out for safety and maybe inf height reasons 

Thanks, good suggestions. What does this mean "inf height reasons"?

6 minutes ago, Gifty said:

My absolute favorite method is to place teleports on the edges of a trap or arena, so that monsters who are left wandering for too long will eventually be transplanted somewhere else. 

How does that prevent the player from leaving a fight?

Very good suggestions so far from everyone. Thanks

Let's say you want to force the player to fight a group of enemies instead of letting the player run past them then if it was indoors you could just raise a barrier of some sort. What barriers could you use or what other methods could be used for an indoors or outdoors fight to prevent the player leaving the fight?

1 minute ago, danidf96 said:

Really depends, for example Antaresian Reliquary map 31 has the highest amount of monsters in any doom map ever that's actually playable, yet i still find the map really enjoyable due to it being balanced and well designed

How many enemies are in it?

I'm not referring to fights that are boring as soon as you start them, I'm referring to well made fights that once you figure out how to survive the encounter, it becomes boring after a while as it's a grind due to having maybe over a thousand enemies or so. Give me a ballpark figure.

As the title. I'm not referring to fights that are boring as soon as you start them, I'm referring to well made fights that once you figure out how to survive the encounter, it becomes boring after a while as it's a grind. Give me a ballpark figure.

2 minutes ago, bofu said:

The implementation of skill levels also matters to me. I’m very forgiving if something is “try by dying” on UV but is more forgiving in HNTR.

 

(It actually really bugs me when people complain something is too hard but then you find out they only played on UV and don’t bother trying to dial down the skill level once they hit a wall, but that’s a rant that’s been done to death here numerous times.)

 

But honestly, as long as it’s not just random cheap deaths because you walked across an instakill floor with no warnings or a crusher comes out of nowhere, I’m fine with this trope in general. I have a low frustration tolerance that makes me unable to enjoy a lot of try by dying things like soulslikes, but Doom has lots of ways to mitigate that, like saving.

What is "soulslikes?"

1 hour ago, Sneezy McGlassFace said:

The one absolutely genius example is what Nirvana made in Fractured Worlds MAP03.

Here's vile's uvmax run on youtube with a timestamp to the particular fight.

Note: The teal water is damaging. The teal cybers only have 1000hp. And blood doesn't hurt.

This fight is all about balancing when you're allowed to push against the enemies, and clear space for yourself, and when you have to fall back.

These waterfalls right here are slowly raising and falling to indicate when the floor changes from damaging to safe and back. There is a safe space behind but that's where all the enemies pour in from, so you can't be there. And the little islands are so small you can't dodge projectiles while trying to stay on them. So the only thing you can really do is what is intended - dance on the blood floor, clearing as many enemies as you can, carving a path to safety, and be ready when it switches to teal to make your move. You can't just stand there and take the damage, you can't hide somewhere and cheese it, you have to engage with it as a puzzle, and play at a high level to survive.

Now, I'm not saying everything needs to meet this standard, this is creme de la creme, chef kiss. I'm saying that Nirvana has a very clear understanding of all the moving parts in doom to even come up with something like this, and lots of experience to convey the information so clearly, balance the fight so it's hard enough you can't brute force it but just simple enough you can win when you know what you're doing. No doubt it was tested countless times with many people, and iterated over and over to make it as good as it is.

 

A good puzzle doesn't need to be this elaborate mechanism, it can be a handful of monsters in a room but the understanding of doom's mechanics, what each monster's and weapon's strengths and weaknesses are, how monsters behave in crowds... MAP05 of Sunlust and the other early ones for random examples of that. Tight design with a goal in mind can be a great little puzzle. You die at first but you're expected to poke the situation, see it from multiple angles and make choices to survive. The early levels may not be ball-busters and have some leeway but are just as delicately and deliberately designed.

 

edit: I should add, I'm by no means an authority. These are just my opinions, feel free to disregard

I do like the die-by-trying encounters as they're fun and challenging. It's just weird that it seems to be a general rule that you should avoid making die-by-trying fights even though it seems to be a rule that has exceptions a lot of the time so much so that maybe it shouldn't be a rule?

40 minutes ago, Sneezy McGlassFace said:

• Know your audience.
• Make the maps you'd like to play. 

If you make a hard map, i think it's fair to assume you have beaten and balanced it properly. Like NiGHTS said, counting number of attempts doesn't seem like a very sensible metric. The best balance is to your own skill level, imo. 

In sunlust or fractured worlds you often find puzzles introduced with imps in the first stage, and then the difficulty increases when you're shown the rules. 

This is a bit of a red flag, honestly. There are so many ways you can make non slaughter situation difficult by managing the player's resources or the geometry and strategic thing placement, hurtfloors, visibility, obstructions.. how do you want to make puzzles if you don't have a thorough understanding of the game mechanics? 

Do you have a link to those puzzles you're talking about please so I can learn?

20 minutes ago, TuomasGaming said:

Depends on the level of unfairness, ig...

 

If the encounters don't require TAS-level skills to pull off, or just plain luck, then it's fine, even if I'm not a personal fan of such levels.

 

Also, the amount of enemies and the selection of enemies also matters. Putting like 20 Cyberdemons in a room is challenging in all the wrong ways.

 

Also, make sure the difficulty of the encounters get increasingly harder, don't make the first room literal Hell.

I don't mind Cyberdemons when there's a point to them but people just putting lots of them in map just for sake of it is annoying.

3 minutes ago, NiGHTS108 said:

I feel like that with making hard maps in general, and especially hard slaughter maps, there’s a degree to which slowly figuring out the challenge of a specific fight is necessary without veering into rewind spam RNG nonsense. I’d find it hard to really argue it’s unfair necessarily, as the strategy element is almost a fundamental part of hard maps. It’s also worth noting that it’s hard to exactly measure difficulty in “attempts” so to speak, as naturally getting better at the game also means you’re spending less time on trying to figure out a fight, simply because you have a better perception of how the monsters work.

Well I've seen Decino who is highly skilled at the game retry the same fights for over 1 hour before he figured out how to beat it. It doesn't matter how good you are if a fight is so hard due to the number of enemies, different type of enemies and being unlucky due to the high damage roll.

I'm referring to WADS where the whole level(s) or just several enemy encounters on Ultra Violence are so hard that you have zero chance of surviving the first few times of trying it and you have to reload your save to try it several times or many, many times before you can figure out how to survive the encounter. Assuming the player is a Doom veteran of average skill who knows how best to kill each enemy and all the glitches such as Arch-Vile jumps, etc. So the difficulty could be 8-10 out of 10.

You could argue they're not really fair or they hurt the flow of the map but I think they're fun as they're essentially combat puzzles as you need to figure out a strategy to survive the enemy encounter. I don't know if there's any way to figure out the strategy until you try and get killed?

I'd like to know what people think so I know how best to have the difficulty of my own WAD. I'm thinking that for a slaughter map I'd want about 25% of the rooms/areas to be beatable the first time or after a few tries and the rest to take several tries but I think anything after 20-30 tries or so (difficulty of 9-10 out of 10) is too much and just becomes annoying. I'm not sure how to make the difficulty of the rooms in a normal non-slaughter map?

Also, is "Die by trying" the right name for what I'm referring to?

You can't buy the versions with the floppy disks as they sold out.

Did anybody save an archive of the product pages of Sigil and Sigil II most expensive versions that were on the Romero games website in Archive.org or Archive.is? If so can you give me a link please?

I think the cart looks ugly in blue. Should have made the standard edition an all red cart and the Limited Edition cart white like the PAL cart colour with red realistic looking blood spatter not the crap looking blood pattern that they have at the moment. Or made it a red cart with green blood spatter. I also don't like how the limited edition has a metal label with a black Doom logo when the coloured Doom logo looks better. And I don't know why they can't put "Super Nintendo" on the box, I know they might have to pay a licensing fee but so be it. 

It's a set piece for a level I'm making where the only possible way to get past some enemy guards guarding a door is to press a switch to lower a door which kills the enemies standing below it. I'm not bothered how this is achieved. Any suggestions?

10 minutes ago, Gez said:

Any port restriction? You could write a custom killing door thinker in ZScript for GZDoom, so that's that.

Should work with GZ Doom. Not necessary but a bonus would be that it works in all other ports as well.

I suppose writing a custom door thinker can't be that hard as all I'm doing is telling Doom to allow the the door to kill enemies since the default game already codes the door to not kill enemies.

Good to know, thanks.

Is there any mod that will allow a door to kill an enemy who has the default amount of health without making the door a crusher?

As title. Does it instantly kill the enemy or does it gradually kill it like a crusher?

Also can a door closing on a weapon or ammo cause those items to disappear so you can't collect them?

Thanks. I'm making a WAD spreadsheet. I'd probably get banned here if I were to make thousands of posts here asking for each WAD creator's email address but the rest of your info is good.

What do you mean by check different sources?