Grave Encounters 2 Monster

[Evelyn Normington]

Ive been mapping for a while but from all the maps I've made, many of the encounters just felt maybe boring or something is wrong? I can't really describe it. Some encounters I make end up just monsters infighting the moment it starts or everything just feels cramped, some also again feel boring. This is also the same with items, I either give too much or too little. If anyone knows any tips, please share them.

If an encounter feels boring, it's likely that you're not providing enough of a threat. Perhaps there is too much room to move around for the amount of monsters. Perhaps the encounter can be run away from and dealt with at a bottleneck. Perhaps the mixture of monsters infights itself to death instead of being a threat to the player.

There are different kinds of pressure to put on the player. There was an article about this, but I can't seem to find it. I remember though, that it talked something about Time Pressure as one type of pressure. For instance, Pain Elementals add time pressure to an encounter, because the longer they live, the more Lost Souls they produce. Arch-Viles are another time pressure, as the longer they live, the more enemies they resurrect. When a player is under time pressure, they are forced to engage, instead of running around in circles letting monsters in-fight. When a player is forced to engage, they are more interested in the fight because not paying attention means they take more damage.

Each enemy can create a completely different set of challenges. For example, in E1M1, the shotgunners pose little threat, as the player has plenty of room to maneuver. In E1M4, however, the player is put in direct, close contact with shotgunners, making them a bigger threat.

Likewise, in E2M8, the cyberdemon is encountered in a somewhat large arena, allowing the player to duck and dodge to good effect. In other maps you might engage the cyberdemon might in close quarters, resulting in splash damage as well as difficulty in side-stepping the rockets.

2. Give the player a means to engage in a fight that might otherwise be too intense. This might be via weaponry, powerups, and health that allow the player to survive an onslaught until the herd can be thinned.

4. Allow the player to avoid a fight temporarily, until s/he is properly equipped. For example, several maps in The Ultimate DooM require the player to dart past opposition to acquire, say, a shotgun and then return to properly dispatch the nasty hordes.

Adjust the resources so that you have enough to feel comfortable or mindful of, then add a little more when finished for other players. This would also depend on how you like to play Doom if you like having to scavenge and find ammo or just like having the big boxes up front. You can adjust the resources to encourage the use of some weapons over others so that there isn't mindless SSG spamming and that gives some challenge in resource management as well besides health.

Chainguns/Arachnotrons: Good at being turrets to apply pressure and denying area/encouraging the player to find cover. The Arachnotron is projectile based though so you can also use it to just keep the player moving.

Baron of Hell: Meatshield that's good at soaking up damage and demands attention in tighter areas as an encroaching threat. You'll likely want other enemies to fight alongside this one and/or a good weapon.

I prefer practical effects over CGI, I love body horror, and I love love love a sweet 90-minute run time. This one is incredibly specific, but I like horror movies that exploit the architecture of a building to disorient, create a sense of claustrophobia, and open portals between worlds via occult magicks. This is where my comparison to Grave Encounters comes in, a movie also set in a hospital warped by a depraved, black magic-dabbling doctor. And I like the idea which ties into my fondness for Event Horizon about opening a portal into, not just another dimension, but into a hostile hellword that was never meant to be seen by human eyes.

The Void came about because of the intersection of a few strange, disparate sources: Guillermo del Toro, David Ayer\u2019s Suicide Squad, and a crowdfunding campaign. Directors Jeremy Gillespie and Steven Kostanski \u2014 founders of the Canadian production company Astron-6, which specializes in low-budget, horror-comedies inspired by 80s films \u2014 were the assistant art director and special makeup effects artists, respectively, on the 2016 DC superhero film. Much of the crew from Suicide Squad ended up coming over to help with the creature effects on The Void. Gillespie, at another point, was working on a film at Pinewood Studios one floor below del Toro, who was working on his since-shelved adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft\u2019s At the Mountains of Madness. While sneaking around trying to catch a glimpse at the Oscar-winning director\u2019s project, Gillespie found the inspiration to do his own Lovecraftian riff.

Of course, the ultimate reason things were able to come together for Gillespie and Kostanski was because of their Indiegogo campaign, which managed to rack up $82,510 for their intended usage of practical effects \u2014 158% of the original goal. And, well, that money shows. The Void is a retro, stomach-churning, body horror homage to directors like Carpenter, Cronenberg, and Fulci, with a side of Event Horizon and a sprinkling of Grave Encounters (the latter is really just my own correlation), and it uses an unprecedented amount of practical FX for a modern film. Disheartened by the overabundance CGI and disavowal of most practical creature effects for horror movie monsters in recent years, the directing duo set out to make a film that went back to their favored FX roots, while creating a bizarre mythology that raised more questions than it answered.

While on duty, Deputy Sheriff Daniel Carter (Aaron Poole) finds an injured man crawling in the middle of the road. Carter is unenthusiastic about having to deliver the man to the local hospital where his estranged wife works, the two of them having separated shortly after the accidental death of their child at birth. But Carter quickly realizes that he has no other choice that night than to visit Marsh County Memorial Hospital. The graveyard shift crew \u2014 comprised of Dr. Richard Powell (Kenneth Welsh), bored, inexperienced intern Kim (Ellen Wong), nurse Beverly (Stephanie Belding), and Carter\u2019s ex-wife, nurse Allison (Kathleen Munroe) \u2014 assists the man, James (Evan Stern), a junkie who shrieks and writhes wildly and attempts to resist treatment. Meanwhile, very pregnant teenager Maggie (Grace Munro) idles nervously in the waiting room with her grandfather, Ben (James Millington).

State Trooper Mitchell (Art Hindle) arrives at the hospital to collect James, revealing James\u2019 alleged connection to a bloody farmhouse scene Mitchell was called to earlier that same night \u2014 a scene witnessed at the very opening of the film, in which two men set a woman on fire while James managed to escape. But it\u2019s not long after Mitchell\u2019s arrival that shit starts to hit the fan. Beverly kills a patient and flays her own face, Carter shoots her dead then begins experiencing strange visions, and suddenly the hospital is surrounded by figures in hooded cloaks bearing a black triangle symbol and butcher knives.

The next thing you know, Beverly\u2019s corpse has transformed into a nightmare tentacle monster that essentially uses her dead body as a ghoulish mask. The men from the opening farmhouse scene, Simon (Mik Byskov) and Vincent (Daniel Fathers), enter the hospital lobby brandishing firearms and hold the crew and Carter at gunpoint. They demand to see James so that they can finish the job we saw them start. James proceeds to take Maggie hostage in retaliation and stabs Powell to death. Then the Beverly-monster drags Mitchell away. Then Powell\u2019s body disappears.

Spoiler, I guess, if you haven\u2019t seen the film (although I believe this reveal even comes before the halfway mark) but we quickly learn that people are being infected (possessed?) in some way by Powell. The humble doctor has managed to cheat death through an indeterminate association with an unknown school of the occult that involves sex, drugs, a degree of black magic, and perverting peoples\u2019 bodies into gargantuan tentacled demons from another dimension. The thrust of this unholy involvement has to do with the death of Powell\u2019s teenage daughter some time ago, a trauma which has compelled him to find ways to not just extend life, but to bring his daughter back. Of course, his obsession with corrupting the flesh comes with a great price, and he has deluded himself into believing that such acts against God are a way of eclipsing both the body and death itself.

The result of Gillespie and Kostanski\u2019s little experiment is mostly successful, but I\u2019m pretty easy to please. The Void ends up scratching a lot of my own, personal itches. I like horror movies written and directed by people who understand the effectiveness in leaving things up for interpretation, who don\u2019t hit you over the head and ruin the horror of their own film with blunt-force subtext (although, that stuff is in here, albeit to a mostly negligible scope).

Furthermore, one of the best sequences in the film cross-cuts between Carter, Vincent, Simon, and James coming face-to-face with disfigured, reanimated corpses, while unqualified Kim is tasked with delivering Maggie\u2019s baby. Tension is exacerbated by Kim\u2019s panicked realization that she might have to perform a cesarean section on her own, which matches \u2014 and occasionally surpasses \u2014 the house-of-horrors zombie parade in the hospital\u2019s otherworldly sub-basement.

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