rgcde's not dead
Andre Majorel
many good vertices, sectors, sidedefs and linedefs for 2009.
How's everyone doing ?
--
André Majorel <URL:http://www.teaser.fr/~amajorel/>
"No meetings were held, nor secret handshakes created, to allow a Seria-
list Elite to disenfranchise the (tonal) non conformist. None had to be."
-- Wendy Carlos
Len Pitre
>Well, now's a good time for this year's post to RGCDE. Wish you
>many good vertices, sectors, sidedefs and linedefs for 2009.
>How's everyone doing ?
Doing OK. Working as a service guy in a PC shop. How 'bout you?
Len
David Damerell
>Well, now's a good time for this year's post to RGCDE. Wish you
>many good vertices, sectors, sidedefs and linedefs for 2009.
>How's everyone doing ?
Well, I still play Doom. OBLIGE is interesting, if not perhaps yet a
source of levels you might actually want to play.
--
David Damerell <dame...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> flcl?
Today is First Mania, January.
Andre Majorel
In Edmonton ?
> How 'bout you?
Not much to brag about, Doom- or day-job-wise. Lots of boring
DIY in the house. Maybe I'll get to do something exciting in
2009. Wish me luck. :-)
Len Pitre
>>>How's everyone doing ?
>>
>> Doing OK. Working as a service guy in a PC shop.
>
>In Edmonton ?
Yup.
>> How 'bout you?
>
>Not much to brag about, Doom- or day-job-wise. Lots of boring
>DIY in the house. Maybe I'll get to do something exciting in
>2009. Wish me luck. :-)
Good luck.:)
Len
--
Pointless sig file.
http://www.archonrealm.com | http://archonrealm.tripod.com
Replace "Doom!" with "Hotmail" to send e-mail.
End pointless sig file.
RjY
>Well, now's a good time for this year's post to RGCDE. Wish you
>many good vertices, sectors, sidedefs and linedefs for 2009.
>How's everyone doing ?
Pretty good. Lots of stuff to look forward to.
Plutonia 2 just came out, more like a tribute than an actual sequel but
still the motivation I needed to get round to the original :)
A Russian mapper by the name of Eternal continues to produce excellent
maps every couple of months (or in some cases weeks)
Freedoom has gained a new maintainer and gathered some momentum,
making another point release a few days ago.
I believe the following are nearing completion and might be seen this
year: NDCP2, ksutra2, cchest4, something called Whispers of Satan (by
the people who did Death Tormention, 2002ADO etc.) and others.
For my part I hope to help get another PrBoom release out in the near
future.
Andre Majorel
> Plutonia 2 just came out, more like a tribute than an actual sequel but
> still the motivation I needed to get round to the original :)
>
> A Russian mapper by the name of Eternal continues to produce excellent
> maps every couple of months (or in some cases weeks)
>
> Freedoom has gained a new maintainer and gathered some momentum,
> making another point release a few days ago.
>
> I believe the following are nearing completion and might be seen this
> year: NDCP2, ksutra2, cchest4, something called Whispers of Satan (by
> the people who did Death Tormention, 2002ADO etc.) and others.
>
> For my part I hope to help get another PrBoom release out in the near
> future.
So basically, the world of Doom editing is bursting with
activity, only it's all happening somewhere else. <g>
RjY
>So basically, the world of Doom editing is bursting with
>activity, only it's all happening somewhere else. <g>
Yes, unfortunately the world has moved on from usenet to web forums,
which exchange one set of problems for another.
David Damerell
>Well, now's a good time for this year's post to RGCDE. Wish you
>many good vertices, sectors, sidedefs and linedefs for 2009.
>How's everyone doing ?
Well, this is about half RGCDP, but really, we could all be one tiny happy
newsgroup now. Doom is 15, I've been reading the Cacowards, and here's a
meandering complaint about everything, especially the state of the art in
level design. Yes, I realise complaining about stuff that people do for
free is both unreasonable and pointless, because they'll always do what
they personally like, and that's actually fair enough, but I feel like I
might get a few things off my chest anyway and I never was good at being
reasonable. If you don't mind slugging on there's one or two actual
suggestions lurking, and I think a second post with a pure vapourware
idea.
First up's bloody "slaughterfest" / "Hell Revealed" gameplay. No, this
isn't just about me not being particularly good at Doom [1]; I recognise
some people have been playing solidly for those fifteen years and want a
challenge, and that means that someone like me who's been playing off and
on for fifteen years isn't going to be selecting UV on any WAD that also
caters to those people.
What I'm really driving at is that there's three ways to make Doom hard;
one is to hand out less health and ammunition, one is to have more
monsters, and one is to make the circumstances in which you meet the
monsters frustratingly awkward.
Leaving aside the third for the moment (although, really, WAD authors,
invisibeasts in the dark is _so_ 1996 and it wasn't clever then), it
probably reflects my preference for Doom over Doom II that I think of Doom
as being about conserving health and ammo over the level as a whole,
without use of quicksaves - when you die, it's not just because you botched
one encounter, but because you've been worn down over the course of
several encounters.
What we're getting at the moment is the opposite; encounters that are
effectively isolated set-pieces, because each one both can easily kill you
from 200/200 and contains a megasphere and a bucket of ammunition. Looking
through Deus Vult II [2] last night I reached a point, on UV, where I
_did not know_ how many Archviles I was fighting. "C'est magnifique, mais
ce n'est pas Doom". This is Serious Sam. Now I rather like Serious Sam,
but it does what it does quite well already; and, while I'm impressed by
the way the venerable Doom idea is being stretched to play all kinds of
games, it would be nice to play some Doom once in a while.
I think we'd have been a bit better off if the default difficulty for
hardcore players had been UV -fast. That significantly boosts the
unpleasantness value of each individual monster, and means one set of
monster placement does for hardcore and non-hardcore players. Better yet
would be if there was a general understanding that mid-level quicksaving is
not on - the level is tackled as a whole not as a series of setpieces -
and conversely therefore that deathtraps are not the done thing (consider
the way almost every nukage pit in Doom I is escapable).
[Frankly, and I realise this will be contentious, I think we'd be better
off if Doom had not had quicksave-anywhere, perhaps with console-style
savepoints to break up longer levels.]
Let's talk for a moment about "frustratingly awkward". Deus Vult II
includes a level where you ascend a huge cliff face above nukage with
monsters that do lots of knockback popping out of nowhere all the time. I
gather if this is not annoying enough the designer will come round to your
house and administer random electric shocks while you're trying to play
it.
From my point of view Doom's strength over other first-person shooters is
that it's more a game of learning tactics than memorising levels - I also
enjoy roguelikes, which are _all_ learning tactics because the levels are
random (and abhorring quicksaves pops in here, because the usual cycle of
quicksave-ambush-die-load is effectively memorising levels with a
different hat on) - and that it's much more a game of maneuver not least
because of the high proportion of monsters that fling projectiles. From
that point of view a series of point-blank ambushes that can't be
anticipated in terrain that makes it impossible to run around... does not
leave me overcome with joy.
Also, the old "pop up a monster in your face" trick is effective in
inverse proportion to how often it is used. If I've forgotten the last
time it happened, it's a nasty surprise. If it happens every ten feet,
it's just arbitary. A corollary to that is that I like it better when it
makes sense; if a lift comes down with surprise monsters on it, or I'm
ambling up to a door when it blazing-opens and there's three tomatoes
behind it, fair enough. The popular trick these days where monsters pop
into existence from holes in the ground - ex nihilo, from the player's
point of view, without even the decency to make a teleporting sound - is
just cheap.
Second (phew): detail. All the serious level designers these days are
lovingly detailing every corner of every room with a million intricate
frobs. I appreciate the effort - and levels certainly do look ever so
handsome these days - but this does come with downsides.
It's hard to play the game of maneuver that makes Doom great if you're
always tripping over bits of architecture. Little bumps sticking out
from the walls are the prime offender here!
Just as critical, however, is the way that most of the time all these
extra lines appear on the automap, rendering it hopelessly cluttered. I
would love it if every detail line was invisible on the automap; let me
see the rooms-and-corridors that I actually care about.
Thirdly (kinda) are other automap problems. A lot of modern level design
is much more a set of tightly packed rooms with windows between them
than a sparse set of rooms and corridors apparently hacked out of the
living rock. I don't inherently disagree with this trend - although I
suspect it's a poor fit with monsters not just springing out of ambush but
being present all along - but it does lead to the unfortunate effect where
you look around you at the start, half the level's on your automap, and
you don't know where you haven't been.
The popular outdoor level with a bunch of small buildings is even
worse for this. DVII (again) has an outdoor level you've literally got 80%
of on the automap after spinning round once off the start. Now I'm not
suggesting that people shouldn't make level layouts merely because the
automap won't work (although I _am_ going to go out on a limb and say that
that DVII level where movement is mostly constrained by trees is intensely
annoying), but I do think it's worth considering whether a given design
can be more automap-friendly.
Also, I've got two wishlist suggestions for engine implementors. Have an
automap option that colours every sector with its floor texture [3]; have
an automap option that marks sectors the player hasn't visited yet.
Summary (I don't expect people to do this for my sake, I just want to
write down my wishlist so I feel better) of suggestions:
* Make UV -fast an explicitly targetted and playtested difficulty setting
for the hardcore player, and adjust monster numbers to match.
* Make it clear that levels are intended to be tackled without quicksaving,
because the primary challenge is gradual depletion of health and ammo.
Avoid deathtraps and making levels the size of the Moon.
* Give the player room to maneuver, don't endlessly pop up monsters in
their face, have a plausible excuse when monsters _do_ appear in their
face.
* Don't detail walls in a way that makes players get stuck on things.
* Mark most detail invisible-on-automap so the automap is more like a map
and less like the clearance sale at the line factory.
* Ports could include options to mark visited sectors on the automap
and/or show floor textures.
[1] Relative to the player base at the moment, I mean, which contains a
lot of people who've been playing Doom obsessively _for_ fifteen years.
I'm not bad in absolute terms - can do Episodes 1/2/3 on -fast or as
pistol starts, etc; can do Doom II or Episode 4, but don't really care for
them.
[2] You may notice, secretly, this is all about Deus Vult II, which
typifies much of what I'm talking about. I think at the point I was
getting 4 frames per second - not because of graphics, but because there
were a few hundred active monsters in a hallway all trying to get to me -
I started to feel this level design trend is a dead end.
[3] This is not as easy as it sounds because you don't want seeing part of
a widely disjoint sector to do anything stupid.
--
David Damerell <dame...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> flcl?
Today is Saturday, January - a weekend.
David Damerell
>Quoting Andre Majorel <che...@halliburton.com>:
>>Well, now's a good time for this year's post to RGCDE. Wish you
>>many good vertices, sectors, sidedefs and linedefs for 2009.
>>How's everyone doing ?
>suggestions lurking, and I think a second post with a pure vapourware
>idea.
So, what should I do? I like classic Doom; I like the idea that you learn
tactics not maps. I like roguelikes, that get replay value from random
maps.
Hence, I think the answer is to look at level generators. SLIGE and OBLIGE
(not to detract from them, not least because they actually exist other
than as a glint in the programmer's eye) clearly could be improved upon. I
remember playing a very satisfying retro episode that was really a
shameless mashup of Episode 1 design elements - not so much _like_ episode
1 as occasionally going "oh, these are the stairs up to a rising walkway
from the end of E1M4".
Now a nice original level is a joy, but if I just want to play without
knowing where every last health potion is, I wonder how hard a level
generator that stretches and twists bits of the original levels and sticks
them together is...
myk
wrote:
> First up's bloody "slaughterfest" / "Hell Revealed" gameplay. No, this
> isn't just about me not being particularly good at Doom [1]; I recognise
> some people have been playing solidly for those fifteen years and want a
> challenge, and that means that someone like me who's been playing off and
> on for fifteen years isn't going to be selecting UV on any WAD that also
> caters to those people.
>
> What I'm really driving at is that there's three ways to make Doom hard;
> one is to hand out less health and ammunition, one is to have more
> monsters, and one is to make the circumstances in which you meet the
> monsters frustratingly awkward.
>
> Leaving aside the third for the moment (although, really, WAD authors,
> invisibeasts in the dark is _so_ 1996 and it wasn't clever then), it
> probably reflects my preference for Doom over Doom II that I think of Doom
> as being about conserving health and ammo over the level as a whole,
> without use of quicksaves - when you die, it's not just because you botched
> one encounter, but because you've been worn down over the course of
> several encounters.
I can't say I agree much because DOOM and DOOM II have high ammo and
health ratios themselves. I did have to conserve ammo and health when
I initially played the DOOM games, but mainly because back then I
always felt the need to conserve big weapons ammo in case something
nasty happened. Ironically, I often ended the level with surplus
plasma energy and rockets, but tight health. I can't say I'd like to
go back to that, because it was when my movements were bad, and I had
to rely on saves even in DOOM II on UV. Many DOOM levels have
reasonably big numbers of opponents, and it's up to the player's style
on whether he'll face few or many at once. If you kill whatever you
see around the corner, you're bound to meet few at a time, but if you
stroll through you might wake quite a good number as you move along.
DOOM II was even more populated, of course.
I've seen some tight ammo and health levels that really do encourage
you to play more cautiously, but they don't play that much like DOOM.
You'd probably find them as frustrating as slaughter-fest levels,
though, because they can be pretty unforgiving. Every shot from
enemies really hurts, and each of yours really counts.
That said, I'm not such a huge fan of DVII itself (
http://www.doomworld.com/vb/post/718647 ), which is what you're using
mostly as a basis for the critique. But I like the original DV more,
which is also a "slaughter-fest" and shares some qualities. It's more
"standard" though. Play progress is more straightforward, for one.
> What we're getting at the moment is the opposite; encounters that are
> effectively isolated set-pieces, because each one both can easily kill you
> from 200/200 and contains a megasphere and a bucket of ammunition.
Many maps play like standalone levels because going through HR2 from
start to finish without saves (except to take a break, that is) is
hard to imagine. I'd love to see a "movie" recording of it from head
to tail, from scratch, but we don't even have one for Alien Vendetta
yet, which is mostly less populated. Someone managed to run through
Plutonia (probably the big starting point for slaughterfests, before
HR) to the last level however, and that's something. But as for
playing each level, I think it is more of a matter of skill. You did
say above that "someone like me who's been playing off and on for
fifteen years isn't going to be selecting UV on any WAD that also
caters to those people", which to me seems perfectly reasonable. Any
WAD with brutal play which does not have lower skill levels is more or
less flawed, or at least aimed at a select group of people.
> Also, the old "pop up a monster in your face" trick is effective in
> inverse proportion to how often it is used. If I've forgotten the last
> time it happened, it's a nasty surprise. If it happens every ten feet,
> it's just arbitary. A corollary to that is that I like it better when it
> makes sense; if a lift comes down with surprise monsters on it, or I'm
> ambling up to a door when it blazing-opens and there's three tomatoes
> behind it, fair enough. The popular trick these days where monsters pop
> into existence from holes in the ground - ex nihilo, from the player's
> point of view, without even the decency to make a teleporting sound - is
> just cheap.
>
All from the "DOOM isn't about memorizing levels" perspective, which
is the opposite of what's expected for some of these levels. You can't
do anything to those monsters till they show up, and that is why such
traps can make sense while being used repeatedly. The "memorizing"
form of play is all about going back to a level, to play it again even
if you've been there already many times, just to perform better, much
like in an arcade game.
I think two main things help make tough or slaughter-fest levels
popular or critically acclaimed:
* Speedrunning: Here player dexterity, tactics and learning things
about a level all play key roles. while less tough sets are also
welcome (such as Scythe or even classic-style megawads about as tough
as DOOM or DOOM II), you can expect tough or slaughterfest levels
which you described above because they give the player a lot of ground
to optimize the carnage, rather than merely survive. Add generous
ammo, a good amount of health and many opponents often in strategic
locations, and you get this. The levels, being massive, may also have
non-evident trick opportunities to bypass obstacles, allowing a quick
"run to the exit" opportunity for simple (non-kills) speed runs.
Plutonia and Hell Revealed kind of started the tough level set or
slaughterfest style and both Dario Casali and Yonatan Donner were both
into speedrunning and demo recording. Many of the makers of tough WADs
are also, and while some may not be, the influence reaches them too.
* Multiplayer: Since 2000 or so, DOOM online client/server engines
have been popular. Level sets with massive juicy maps offer groups of
people a fun scenarios to blast through. Again, this form of play
encourages people to replay the levels over and over, as they jump
onto servers and go through again and again with other players.
> Thirdly (kinda) are other automap problems. A lot of modern level design
> is much more a set of tightly packed rooms with windows between them
> than a sparse set of rooms and corridors apparently hacked out of the
> living rock. I don't inherently disagree with this trend - although I
> suspect it's a poor fit with monsters not just springing out of ambush but
> being present all along - but it does lead to the unfortunate effect where
> you look around you at the start, half the level's on your automap, and
> you don't know where you haven't been.
Well, you could argue E3M6 or Map16 had this issue. It's more
pronounced nowadays in levels that exceed Doom's internal limits, yes,
but I think it's not as problematic as the too-many lines issue, where
the automap becomes messy and you're forced to zoom in and out a lot.
> * Make UV -fast an explicitly targetted and playtested difficulty setting
> for the hardcore player, and adjust monster numbers to match.
It is, already, in addition, as people who record demos and such also
do fast kills or play in nightmare mode. Fast is deadlier but
sometimes quicker because it enhances infighting, that can be used to
inflict considerable monster casualties. Nightmare allows for tight
runs where otherwise it might be relatively easy to avoid enemies and
their attacks. Rather, it is important for the map author to give an
idea of the general difficulty of the WAD on each difficulty level, or
at least UV. You only have a problem with wads like HR2 if you junp in
blindly on UV expecting DOOM II's usual difficulty. If you know it's
much tougher and expect it to be frustrating, you just use skill 3 or
2.
> * Make it clear that levels are intended to be tackled without quicksaving,
> because the primary challenge is gradual depletion of health and ammo.
> Avoid deathtraps and making levels the size of the Moon.
Part of the point above is that hardcore players don't generally use
saves (some people might tag along using them, but that just means
they're playing on the wrong difficulty level). Arguably any set with
moon sized levels won't be playable all the way through in one go, and
instead mostly each level from scratch. Playing through one episode
(such as levels 1-11) might be possible, as the total may not be much
greater than DOOM II or Plutonia as a whole, but only for the hardcore
guys. Keep multiplayer in mind too, where you can die and come back
(at least on public servers, privately one can choose to play without
deaths).
> * Mark most detail invisible-on-automap so the automap is more like a map
> and less like the clearance sale at the line factory.
Yes, that's what I've been thinking too, and will apply it on a
forthcoming set of levels. Lines marking slight height variations,
details, and other effects should not appear on the automap unless
they have important functions.
> I think at the point I was
> getting 4 frames per second - not because of graphics, but because there
> were a few hundred active monsters in a hallway all trying to get to me -
> I started to feel this level design trend is a dead end.
Massive levels in a set certainly kill one aspect; getting through a
whole set of levels without cheating (using saves to replay sections
and progress, as opposed to for an interruption, included). They may
work well standalone, but rarely in conjunction with many others.
That's one thing I like about true vanilla map sets. At one point
levels can't be any larger or the engine their made for crashes in one
way or another. The old format also gets rid of many of the bad
effects of detailing and higher levels of complexity, still allowing
pretty big maps.
David Damerell
>On 22 Jan, 13:09, David Damerell <damer...@chiark.greenend.org.uk>
>>one is to hand out less health and ammunition, one is to have more
>>monsters, and one is to make the circumstances in which you meet the
>>monsters frustratingly awkward.
>health ratios themselves.
Well, yes, but they - particularly Doom I - were relatively easy - but you
also played them when you had relatively little experience, so health and
ammo conservation was still an issue. I remember sitting down after a
number of unsatisfactory Episode II runs and thinking through how to
actually make every shot count.
>That said, I'm not such a huge fan of DVII itself (
>http://www.doomworld.com/vb/post/718647 ), which is what you're using
>mostly as a basis for the critique.
I'm only using DVII as an example. I haven't really touched on more
specific criticisms (like, say, the issue we also saw in Eternal where you
press a switch and something happens half a mile away, so you spend five
minutes walking round the empty level finding out what it was. DVII's
Unholy Cathedral is a particular pain there).
>>What we're getting at the moment is the opposite; encounters that are
>>effectively isolated set-pieces, because each one both can easily kill you
>>from 200/200 and contains a megasphere and a bucket of ammunition.
>Many maps play like standalone levels because going through HR2 from
>start to finish without saves (except to take a break, that is) is
>hard to imagine.
I'm not talking about standalone _maps_, but standalone encounters,
Serious Sam style. Every time the player gets a megasphere and a bucket of
ammo, their health/ammo conservation so far that level doesn't matter _at
all_. They might as well use in-level saving because each encounter is an
entirely separate challenge.
>>being present all along - but it does lead to the unfortunate effect where
>>you look around you at the start, half the level's on your automap, and
>>you don't know where you haven't been.
>Well, you could argue E3M6 or Map16 had this issue.
E3M6 wasn't as bad - most of the action was in buildings, and their
limited selection of windows meant it was fairly obvious where you'd been.
I do think engines whose automaps a) distinguished sectors from void space
and b) marked visited sectors would overcome this objection.
>>I think at the point I was
>>getting 4 frames per second - not because of graphics, but because there
>>were a few hundred active monsters in a hallway all trying to get to me -
>>I started to feel this level design trend is a dead end.
>Massive levels in a set certainly kill one aspect; getting through a
>whole set of levels without cheating (using saves to replay sections
>and progress, as opposed to for an interruption, included).
Deathtraps, too. If I fall in the goo and have to run around looking for
the stairs, that's enough of a penalty.
--
David Damerell <dame...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> Distortion Field!
Today is Brieday, January.
RjY
>I recognise some people have been playing solidly for those fifteen
>years and want a challenge, and that means that someone like me who's
>been playing off and on for fifteen years isn't going to be selecting
>UV on any WAD that also caters to those people.
Yes, I also went through an agonising process of swallowing my pride and
turning down the skill level :) Now I'm quite used to saying "sod this,
restart on HNTR" and it doesn't bother me any more.
(However it's another thing entirely if you find yourself needing to rely
on the half-damage of ITYTD.)
>What I'm really driving at is that there's three ways to make Doom hard;
>one is to hand out less health and ammunition, one is to have more
>monsters, and one is to make the circumstances in which you meet the
>monsters frustratingly awkward.
You go on to say you prefer the restricted resources style of gameplay,
which I think in the case of health is fair enough, but I find it
intensely irritating to be always running out of ammunition.
People still make survival horror maps, though. For example, "The Horror
Collection" (eden.wad), or (most of) 32innail.wad, or something I played
the other day, Mall of Mayhem (mmayhem.wad) which you might like to try.
>From my point of view Doom's strength over other first-person shooters
>is that it's more a game of learning tactics than memorising levels
>[...] From that point of view a series of point-blank ambushes that
>can't be anticipated in terrain that makes it impossible to run
>around... does not leave me overcome with joy.
Unfortunately tactics aren't enough. You also need the hair-trigger
reflexes of a teenager, something I haven't had for a while, if ever.
I can't even land a single hit on that wretched plasma marine in Scythe2
map16 before it kills me.
Not to mention that it's a rare map that needs more tactics than basic
stuff like knowing how to circlestrafe.
>A lot of modern level design is much more a set of tightly packed rooms
>with windows between them than a sparse set of rooms and corridors
>apparently hacked out of the living rock.
I much prefer this. If I can always see forward into other areas of the
map, and feel free to wander, I feel much more that I am being drawn
into exploring a world of my own free will, than being a rat led around
a maze.
I also feel the more influence each area of a map has on all of the
others, the more immersive it feels. Disjointness is something to be
avoided.
>[...] but it does lead to the unfortunate effect where you look around
>you at the start, half the level's on your automap, and you don't know
>where you haven't been.
I suppose this could be a problem, but I've never found it to be one.
When I'm exploring a map and not fighting, I habitually swap briefly
from the player view to the automap every few seconds, which helps
relate where I am on the map to what I can see.
I guess you've already considered and ruled out using automap markers to
mark visited places. I think their usefulness is limited by their basic
interface, not to mention that it's a bit too easy to accidentally clear
the whole lot :)
>The popular outdoor level with a bunch of small buildings is even worse
>for this.
Yes, while the automap is less useful on such a map, I would be sad if
people stopped making wide open levels as they are often really fun.
>(I _am_ going to go out on a limb and say that that DVII level where
>movement is mostly constrained by trees is intensely annoying)
Yes, agreed, that was one of the worst parts of DV2. The tribute to it
in grid32.wad somehow managed to be worse.
>* Make UV -fast an explicitly targetted and playtested difficulty setting
> for the hardcore player, and adjust monster numbers to match.
Unfortunately there's no way for a mapper to specify any difference
between UV and UV -fast. The WAD format only has easy, medium and hard
skill flags. You should know this, I'm informed you've made at least one
map in the past (WOODHALL.WAD)
>* Make it clear that levels are intended to be tackled without quicksaving,
> because the primary challenge is gradual depletion of health and ammo.
> Avoid deathtraps and making levels the size of the Moon.
I believe most players these days try to play without using savegames.
The speedrunners and demo recorders, at whom the most extreme maps are
aimed, certainly do.
>* Give the player room to maneuver, don't endlessly pop up monsters in
> their face, have a plausible excuse when monsters _do_ appear in their
> face.
I think the occasional instant popup works but I agree they can be
overused. I prefer large squads of teleporters, anyway. Like I said
earlier my reaction times are not particularly impressive.
>* Don't detail walls in a way that makes players get stuck on things.
Agreed (Hellcore 2.0 was really bad for this)
>* Mark most detail invisible-on-automap so the automap is more like a map
> and less like the clearance sale at the line factory.
Agreed, I've tried to do this on the rare occasions I've mapped.
>* Ports could include options to mark visited sectors on the automap
> and/or show floor textures.
Marking visited sectors shouldn't be much harder than visited secret
sectors which Boom-based engines do already. On the other hand doing
flood fills of textures on the automap would need more work.
>I think at the point I was getting 4 frames per second - not because of
>graphics, but because there were a few hundred active monsters in a
>hallway all trying to get to me
Hmm, in my experience it's much more likely that slowdown is caused by
the rendering of DV2's complex architecture - several hundred monsters
shouldn't be much of a problem for any machine made this century. Of
course, having said that, if you had used a cheat code to kill all the
monsters on the level (usually TNTEM in Boom-based engines) and the
slowdown had gone away, then it was the monsters causing it.
One thing I can definitely be sure of is that if you are using PrBoom
and have the MBF option "help_friends" set, this can cause huge amounts
of slowdown on maps with high monster counts, because it makes all the
monsters constantly search around them for others with very small
amounts of health left, so I would advise turning that off.
David Damerell
>David Damerell posted:
>>I recognise some people have been playing solidly for those fifteen
>>years and want a challenge, and that means that someone like me who's
>>been playing off and on for fifteen years isn't going to be selecting
>>UV on any WAD that also caters to those people.
>Yes, I also went through an agonising process of swallowing my pride and
>turning down the skill level :) Now I'm quite used to saying "sod this,
>restart on HNTR" and it doesn't bother me any more.
I don't mind doing that. HR2-style maps still don't work for me, though -
if I get a megasphere and a bucket of ammo and then fight a number of
monsters I can beat in every other room, it won't be as frustrating, but
the map's still effectively divided into a series of independent segments.
>You go on to say you prefer the restricted resources style of gameplay,
>which I think in the case of health is fair enough, but I find it
>intensely irritating to be always running out of ammunition.
I think ammo can be pitched right. Enough ammo to kill everything on the
level. Judicious use of infighting - I don't like it when you actually
find yourself not opening fire because it's an infighting "trick key" (no,
I didn't like Tricks and Traps, can you tell) - but showing a bit of
discipline in target selection, fair enough. If you _can't_ actually kill
everything on the level, it's not clear to me that you're playing Doom,
not that what you're playing might not be fun.
>People still make survival horror maps, though. For example, "The Horror
>Collection" (eden.wad), or (most of) 32innail.wad, or something I played
>the other day, Mall of Mayhem (mmayhem.wad) which you might like to try.
I'm making a note (huge success).
>>From my point of view Doom's strength over other first-person shooters
>>is that it's more a game of learning tactics than memorising levels
>Unfortunately tactics aren't enough. You also need the hair-trigger
>reflexes of a teenager, something I haven't had for a while, if ever.
Again, I think that's something that's become more true. Most Doom
monsters throw fireballs and most of those fireballs travel quite slowly
and are telegraphed in advance by the attack animation. You don't need
twitch reflexes to avoid them.
>I can't even land a single hit on that wretched plasma marine in Scythe2
>map16 before it kills me.
But - and this leads me neatly onto my next point - there's a tendency,
which started in Doom II, to introduce "glass cannon" monsters with higher
firepower/protection ratios. The chaingunner (whose effective firepower is
high because it's hitscan); the Hell Knight (obviously double the ratio of
the Baron); the arachnotron. WAD authors like to exacerbate this. A glass
cannon does demand more twitch reflexes - get your shot off first, you've
won, miss your dodge, the penalty is serious.
>I guess you've already considered and ruled out using automap markers to
>mark visited places. I think their usefulness is limited by their basic
>interface, not to mention that it's a bit too easy to accidentally clear
>the whole lot :)
Quite so.
>Yes, while the automap is less useful on such a map, I would be sad if
>people stopped making wide open levels as they are often really fun.
I think they can get better or worse. As mentioned elsethread, Mount
Erebus is surely the prototype of which such levels are made, but I don't
think I have any difficulty there. It's hard to say, mind, since I imagine
like most of us I could draw the entire map from memory. :-)
>>* Make UV -fast an explicitly targetted and playtested difficulty setting
>> for the hardcore player, and adjust monster numbers to match.
>Unfortunately there's no way for a mapper to specify any difference
>between UV and UV -fast. The WAD format only has easy, medium and hard
>skill flags. You should know this, I'm informed you've made at least one
>map in the past (WOODHALL.WAD)
I do know this - but what I'm saying is that it would be interesting (and
would probably have helped matters) if the sort of players who now are
targetted by (and playtest) maps on UV were instead targetted by (and
playtested) them on UV -fast. That would reduce overall monster numbers
(but not challenge) and provide an additional avenue for us lesser mortals
to reduce the difficulty.
[I did a WOODHAL2.WAD which is... not _quite_ as much "my-first-WAD", not
that either of them had the obvious goofs in like unpegged door tracks,
they just aren't very _good_.]
>>* Make it clear that levels are intended to be tackled without quicksaving,
>> because the primary challenge is gradual depletion of health and ammo.
>> Avoid deathtraps and making levels the size of the Moon.
>I believe most players these days try to play without using savegames.
I think I completely failed to express this one clearly. What I'm trying
to say is - if you've got a level that consists of one apocalyptic
challenge after another, whether or not you quicksave between each
encounter doesn't make a _lot_ of difference, because the state you start
each one in having picked up your megasphere etc is independent of how you
finished the last one. But a gradual-depletion level is totally ruined by
quicksaving.
>>* Mark most detail invisible-on-automap so the automap is more like a map
>> and less like the clearance sale at the line factory.
>
>Agreed, I've tried to do this on the rare occasions I've mapped.
>
>>* Ports could include options to mark visited sectors on the automap
>> and/or show floor textures.
>Marking visited sectors shouldn't be much harder than visited secret
>sectors which Boom-based engines do already.
Except that non-contiguous sectors mess it up - badly, if some bit of the
build process optimises identical sectors into one.
>>I think at the point I was getting 4 frames per second - not because of
>>graphics, but because there were a few hundred active monsters in a
>>hallway all trying to get to me
>Hmm, in my experience it's much more likely that slowdown is caused by
>the rendering of DV2's complex architecture - several hundred monsters
>shouldn't be much of a problem for any machine made this century. Of
>course, having said that, if you had used a cheat code to kill all the
>monsters on the level (usually TNTEM in Boom-based engines) and the
>slowdown had gone away, then it was the monsters causing it.
You would think it was graphics, wouldn't you? But - change the
resolution, switch from GL rendering to software, change all the graphics
options, same result. Kill all the monsters, frame rate normal.
I was playing on a 1.8GHz Athlon with, umm... some Radeon from the last
three years, so I'm not short of computrons.
>One thing I can definitely be sure of is that if you are using PrBoom
>and have the MBF option "help_friends" set, this can cause huge amounts
>of slowdown on maps with high monster counts, because it makes all the
>monsters constantly search around them for others with very small
>amounts of health left, so I would advise turning that off.
This was (g)zDoom, but I wonder if it has some equivalent option?
--
David Damerell <dame...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> flcl?
Today is Chedday, January.
myk
wrote:
> I do know this - but what I'm saying is that it would be interesting (and
> would probably have helped matters) if the sort of players who now are
> targetted by (and playtest) maps on UV were instead targetted by (and
> playtested) them on UV -fast. That would reduce overall monster numbers
> (but not challenge) and provide an additional avenue for us lesser mortals
> to reduce the difficulty.
Tighter ammo and health would make -fast a bitch, so you'd probably
just drive the more skilled players off. It would be more of a hide-
behind-the-corner game rather than sheer action. This is why
"survival" levels aren't as popular as slaughter levels. What's more
fun, exulting heroically in spectacular mayhem, or crawling around
tunnels in fear? The fast mode works fine on top of a standard
difficulty; it just alters what you need to do a bit. You can't get as
close to monsters, will rarely resort to hand-to-hand attacks, but may
find additional infighting opportunities. It's an option.
The first thing we learn when playing the game is to go through each
section, checking the whole map out, and this does encourage slower
cautious play, but a good map offers much more once we're past that
initial stage. That's why I think that predictability (such as a
certain type of trap repeating itself in a level) is not always so
bad, as long as the overall mechanics work as a good challenge.
> I think I completely failed to express this one clearly. What I'm trying
> to say is - if you've got a level that consists of one apocalyptic
> challenge after another, whether or not you quicksave between each
> encounter doesn't make a _lot_ of difference, because the state you start
> each one in having picked up your megasphere etc is independent of how you
> finished the last one. But a gradual-depletion level is totally ruined by
> quicksaving.
Many of these maps are for less cautious play, where encounters will
not seem so isolated once you start to optimize each. You'll be
leaving various items behind, you'll start to find yourself losing
more health by exposing yourself as you hunt the enemies down
aggressively, raked by hell knights, blasted by arch-viles, and nailed
by cyberdemons, and those apparently gratuitous megaspheres will
become essential. Ammo also becomes more reasonable, as you'll be
picking up what you really need, and not (almost) everything on the
map.
This can be done with easier levels too, and is in fact how more
skilled players tackle even the original games nowadays. They'd be too
easy to play as we did back in the '94, so we blaze through them,
splattering the entire demonic population as efficiently as possible
or miraculously squeezing through a horde at full speed, getting the
keys (if necessary) and exiting.
> You would think it was graphics, wouldn't you? But - change the
> resolution, switch from GL rendering to software, change all the graphics
> options, same result. Kill all the monsters, frame rate normal.
>
> I was playing on a 1.8GHz Athlon with, umm... some Radeon from the last
> three years, so I'm not short of computrons.
Correct. Maps with hundreds of monsters in them, such as the one-level
Nuts WAD with 10000 monsters, will slow my computer down a lot, but
removing the monsters all is well. I had to play TimeOfDeath's latest
slaughter map on a lower skill setting not because I thought I'd be
unable to survive in UV, but because it lagged my system.