Is looking for secrets via map cheating?

dobu gabu maru said:

Question: if you're finding a map to be too easy, will you purposely avoid health pick-ups, armor, ammo, and/or weapons?

I have a tendency to throw myself into dangerous situations on easy maps in an attempt to work the map into my skill caliber. I'll avoid health items but I've never avoided ammunition.

Memfis said:

I'm surprised this thread is so one-sided. Imo it feels bad and unsatisfying to capitalize on mistakes of others.

Is it cheating to use the chainsaw to safely get rid of a monster that cannot move or defend itself because it's stuck in a wall? That's a mistake of the map creator too.

Is it cheating to use infighting when the author didn't know that the barons would turn against the spider mastermind?

Is it cheating to laugh at a pain elemental that shoots blank because there are already a lot of lost souls elsewhere and the author wasn't aware of the lost soul limit?

Nope.

Okay the last one can be a cheat if the map isn't intended for vanilla limits; but fuck pain elementals anyway, they're awful.

jazzmaster9 said:

The console versions of Wolf3D had an automap.

Jaguar Doom (or SNES?) had untextured walls. Does that mean Doom is nottrooly thridee???????

No.

tl;dr -- who plays console versions? Pffft.

About the subject, using a built-in function for one of its intended purposes is perfectly OK. If the mapper doesn't know a damn thing about the Secret flag, that's not my fault.

bzzrak said:

Jaguar Doom (or SNES?) had untextured walls. Does that mean Doom is nottrooly thridee???????

No.

tl;dr -- who plays console versions? Pffft.

I really like the Jaguar and 3D0 version. They feel like a completely different experience.
Yeah people like playing the console version, shocking right?... not really.

Instead of talking about cheating (which makes zero sense in a single player game) it would be much more interesting to discuss something like "do you like doing it/do you get satisfaction from finding secrets this way or do you feel like you got an award you didn't deserve/do you think it's boring because it makes things too easy/etc".

I find it unsatisfying when it's clearly unintentional on the map author's part, the problem then being that it's not always clear that it is unintentional.

Like... say the mapper puts red trim on a door, puts a red key elsewhere in the level, but doesn't actually make the door require a red key, it can be opened at any point (maybe it was set as a non-keyed door for early playtesting purposes before the section holding the red key was built) and a player ignores the trim colour, tries the door, and finds that it opens. That to me is clearly unintentional and taking advantage of that error can change the flow of the level and rob it of much of its challenge, so in that situation I'd feel like my enjoyment would be improved by treating the door like it was red-locked and fetching the key even if not strictly/mechanically required.

It's harder to say whether or not any given secret door linedef not being flagged as secret (and thus appearing on the automap) is intentional or unintentional, though; it may be that the lack of the secret flag is intentional and is the only available "tell" revealing the secret, no texture variations or misalignments, or lighting effects, or sector arrows to point out its presence. Particularly on a larger map where the player typically accesses the automap zoomed out for navigation purposes, it may be that a small (64 wide or so) secret door isn't noticeable.

It's also harder to mentally backtrack from the presence of a secret if/when you realise "Oops, the author didn't expect it to be that obvious!" than it is to decide "Okay, I'm going to play as though this door is red-locked even though it's not."

It's only cheating if you typed in IDDT. :P

Cyanosis said:

Actual mazes that serve no purpose other than to confuse and disorient you over and over though?

Yikes, didn't think this through...

As I said in another thread, mazes were the worst part of Wolf3D. This though, is just pure evil.

bzzrak said:

Jaguar Doom (or SNES?) had untextured walls. Does that mean Doom is nottrooly thridee???????

FYI, both the Jaguar and SNES versions of Doom had textured walls. What you're thinking of is floors/ceilings, which the SNES version didn't have textured versions of minus the skybox. :)

Secrets are weird because they're even harder to measure the difficulty of finding them than traps and monsters are. There's a lot of shitty impossible to find secrets where the Automap or computer area map is the only source of a logical hint so in that respect I have to agree with memfis in that "cheating" because of using a tool the game came with is not the best label. Especially in a non-competitive environment.

Its cheating in the same way that opening your presents before Christmas is cheating.

Soldier993 said:

What are your thoughts on this?

I do feel kinda 'ugh' when I accidentally stumble across a secret while viewing a map.

Not cheating at all.

40oz said:

Secrets are weird because they're even harder to measure the difficulty of finding them than traps and monsters are. There's a lot of shitty impossible to find secrets where the Automap or computer area map is the only source of a logical hint so in that respect I have to agree with memfis in that "cheating" because of using a tool the game came with is not the best label. Especially in a non-competitive environment.

Its cheating in the same way that opening your presents before Christmas is cheating.

hence why I heaped it into a bin called unsportsmanlike conduct what with memfis's chess analogy

One look at automap makes a hard man humble, I guess

It's about fun: I start a map without any aid. Then, if I get lost, a quick look at the map keeps the gameplay fun. Then, if I cannot figure out a secret, I'll look at the map, and try for a few more minutes. When it stops being fun, I'll IDDT, NOCLIP, whatever, to avoid becoming bored.

So, again, for me, it's about maintaining the fun factor. I give the mapper the benefit of the doubt, and believe that there is a way to proceed. But, when it starts to become boring, I'll use whatever is available to me, to move forward. Totally cheating is usually boring, but being stuck is also boring. Have fun, I say.

Memfis said:

Dunno what to call it but I don't like it. Especially when the mapper doesn't know about the "secret" flag and so all secret doors are immediately noticeable on the automap. I can't feel good about finding a secret that way. This is one of the reasons why I very rarely look at the automap.

I leave them visible on the auto map intentionally.. I mean, shouldn't all secrets have a hint? For me that hint often is the miscolored line on the automap. Once upon a time this was actually pretty regular mapping practice, though when overdone in a single wad it of course gets stale, but at it's core I don't see anything wrong with hiding secrets that way.

I often use the 'secret' flag to make non-secret wall changes look more seamless in the automap.

What about overlay automap (the one where it's transparent so you can use it while moving around) is it considered cheating?