Coop preferences

I'm thinking about how to best convert some single player maps for use in 4 player coop, and since I don't play coop much at all I wonder what the preferences are for settings, most notably DMFLAGS. If I go through with this, the maps will end up for Skulltag for engine reasons, so any of it's DMFLAGS would do.

In the past I preferred to have ammo and weapons respawn, but some possibilities like starting with a shotgun, and not having respawnable ammo might promote better actual cooperative play instead of just everybody running off and blowing shit up. Any 2 cents?

From my own experience, I really like cooperative with items that do not respawn. However, this is really only suitable for small games (2-4 players max). When you get lots of players in there, especially more than many levels can handle, ammo becomes scarce and pretty soon everyone is punching everything. The problem is even more stressed when you have idiots running around hoarding everything they can.

So, it depends on the target audience and the type of map you're wanting to make. You can account for larger player numbers without sacrificing gameplay balance too much by having little "checkpoint" areas that players pass through, with loads of ammunition or health, enough to allow players to restock. Then by scattering standard ammounts of ammo throughout the rest of the level should keep players going until they reach the next "checkpoint". The key to this working is not allowing players to return to these checkpoints once they have left them (unless of course they die or something and have to pass through it again).

Since you mentioned Skulltag, I'll go ahead and throw this out there. Using a bit of scripting, you can check the level for remaining ammunition or health pickups, and spawn a couple in select locations if there are too few. You can also adjust ammo or health or monster amounts by checking the current number of players. There are lots of ACS functions you can use to balance things dynamically, but of course, you're probably already aware of this. :)

Of course you could just design for respawning items, and let players camp the soulsphere so they can get an easy 100 health. :p

It's tough designing effective maps for cooperative with high numbers of players. It's probably why I've never touched the game mode with a map editor before.

Respawning weapons, and respawning/infinite ammo.

EDIT: I'm unfamiliar with exl's maps. I typically play Invasion on Skulltag and co-op wads like it.

Coopersville said:

respawning/infinite ammo.

What the hell. No.

Like EarthQuake, I'm also a fan of items that dont respawn, so most of what he's mentioned I can agree with only too well.

One of the pervading issues I have with co-operative maps sometimes, however, still assuming non-respawning items, is that there's often a little too much incentive for fellow players to rush ahead and get to the goodies before yourself or anyone else does. It eats into both the co-operative nature of play as well as the enjoyment factor. Little things like this, then:

"checkpoint" areas that players pass through, with loads of ammunition or health, enough to allow players to restock

are great ways to counteract this treason among players!

...By the way, what maps were you looking to convert? Are they maps you've already done, or is there some metaphorical rabbit that you've yet to pull out of the hat..?

strcoopb?! :D

Personally, I prefer infinite ammo for coop. Everybody gets the same ammo/guns, nobody gets left out. I like when everybody tries to get the same number of kills, and saves the bfg for emergencies or in large areas where players won't push each other around.

I agree with earthquake, no respawning items, ofc doing survival with 1 life. This way theres the most tension and brings about a lot comradry. It all depends on the players ofc if they share and keep it nice. Infinite ammo makes coop very boring, just spam that trigger and rush through maps without any challenge = zzzzzz.

EarthQuake said:

You can account for larger player numbers without sacrificing gameplay balance too much by having little "checkpoint" areas that players pass through, with loads of ammunition or health, enough to allow players to restock.

I'm planning on using checkpoints, at least at the end of levels where all players present in the server have to gather before the level can be exit. There'll have to be some of those checkpoints at a few other "points of no return" too, as these are present in the original SP maps anyway. Player spawns would be moved forward to these checkpoints once they have been crossed, so combining them with ammo supplies (just before the point perhaps) might be a good idea. Balancing ammo through scripting might be a tad too complex. I can't think of a simple effective way of doing so without actor-script dependencies and TID magic.

The idea is to also promote actual cooperative play some more, so such checkpoints would help a lot. Another idea was to display each player's health on everybody's HUD (think Left 4 Dead). Knowing what condition your teammates are in is pretty important in deciding what pickups to take and which not. Infinite ammo is more something for slaughterfest maps, where there's just too many monsters to efficiently supply ammo for large amounts of player (8+). I'm aiming for a 4 player maximum, and would like to experiment with how to make the game actually cooperative without resorting to coopbuild-like gimmicks, as interesting as they are.

Having only one life per map might be interesting to explore too, but without anything to do while you're dead that just gets boring fast. It's still Doom after all. I don't see any DMFLAGS or immediately obvious options to accomplish this without scripting either.

st.alfonzo
...By the way, what maps were you looking to convert? Are they maps you've already done, or is there some metaphorical rabbit that you've yet to pull out of the hat..?

Demons of Problematique 1 and 2 as separate episodes (but traverseable as one game in coop), with a 3rd new episode added if all goes well.

UnholyMessias said:

Infinite ammo makes coop very boring, just spam that trigger and rush through maps without any challenge = zzzzzz.

What maps are you playing that are so unchallenging?

Oh, here's an interesting idea that should be relatively simple to implement with minimal ACS:

Place items and monsters so they their amounts vary between skill levels (use the skill flags). Instead of this being used for difficulty alone, say you use it for adjusting the level to accommodate more players, with easy allowing for 2-4 players, medium allowing for 4-8, and hard allowing for 8 or more. Then take one simple script, place it on the exit "switch", and have the script do the following:

1. Check amount of players.
2. Set the skill level according to the results of #1.
3. Exit the map.

As it's pretty simple, it does not take into account players joining or leaving the server, but it does adjust the amounts of available items and monsters throughout the duration of the wad, assuming there is a relatively consistent number of players.

Infinite ammo is a must for Nightmare mode. I know the throught of not having to watch your ammo deplete sounds lame and spamming plasma like crazy seems like a quick way to steal the fun away from other players, but you really do need all the firepower you can get.

I don't design for Cooperative mode, but do make an effort to make my SP maps at least Coop-friendly. Some pointers:

Biggest issue are chokepoints. Think of a bridge collapsing behind the player, effectively blocking off previous content but also preventing him from getting back in case he now dies and has to respawn. Or chokepoints that allow only one player to proceed. Etc. If players choose survival mode than this is not always needed, but at least now you have choice on which rules to play by.

Any object that needs a key, will only have to be activated once. So a door that opens with a key, stays open afterwards so a respawned player does not need to get the key again, nor do your fellow players.

In case of big maps, allow for a respawned player to get quickly back into the fray. Eg. open up shortcuts after a player has progressed up to a certain point. Nothing worse than having to travel back for 10m through already-cleared content while your buddies are having all the fun.

Avoid teleports, since players can inadvertently kill eachother that way.

All this can be solved by good designs. But a SP map will never be really 'right' for Coop, since Coop also needs more room for different amount of players to maneuver, a way to distribute ammo / weapons among players, challenges that you need to overcome together without accidently killing eachother, tuning monsters to the actual amount of players present, etc. You can solve this partly by placing extra monsters and multiplayer-only 'starting kits' (weapon / ammo) at the beginning of each map or even at chokepoints, but this is mostly a band-aid.

If you really want the 'perfect' Coop map, you'll need to design it with Coop in mind. And even then there are different ways to play Coop (think survival vs respawn allowed, or yes/no respawning items) that makes this not straightforward. Plus there are issues such as friendly fire.

Frankly I wonder if that's even worth the trouble. I don't think there is a sizable Doom Cooperative community around. The best Coop Doom games you'll likely play will be with friends, on a LAN. A Coop-friendly SP map like the one described above will do just fine then. In a server environment you can forget about having fun since there will always be dicktards targetting their own team, gobbling up all the items, springing all traps etc etc. Simply because their fun will be ruining yours.

I prefer classic (vanilla behavior) cooperative with few but truly friendly players. I'll play on public servers occasionally as well, but it's not as fun or important (the advantage is that it's easier to get going for some mindless fun).

Good advice and points, Mordeth, I agree with most of what you say and also try to intelligently include coop support in maps that are otherwise single player friendly. The two modes can clash, but practical compromises can be made to make them work better together.

Mordeth said:
Avoid teleports, since players can inadvertently kill eachother that way.

At least give ways to make them evident, or not abuse them too much. After all, players can also kill each other with weapon shots, especially instant hit scan effects, but that's not necessarily a reason to remove such weapons ;)

If you really want the 'perfect' Coop map, you'll need to design it with Coop in mind.

Due to my appreciation for both play modes, I'm aiming to do this as much as possible... we'll see. Lots of testing in both play types is the key, I think.