Iced wrote:
jwaffe wrote:
I'm not sure what you mean by "holes in the walls" -- do you mean the areas I opened up or the places you shoot into to get the BFG?
There's a BFG?
I mean, that actually surprised me, because I played that map for a solid 10 minutes and did not realize there was even a BFG in the map, let alone the holes in the walls were to get to it. Sometimes obscurity crosses the line and it's tough to distinguish where that line is.
Actually the BFGs were much easier to get at one time in the mod's releases...
It's extremely satisfying to wipe out a whole group with a well fired BFG ball but it should be hard to get because that group who just got killed probably never saw it coming, which I try to avoid, I like to give players a fair chance to use their minds and be able to dodge, instant random invisible death isn't part of that, even though I enjoy the BFG and find it an interesting weapon in most cases.
Also there is an unstated reason for why I made them hard and slow to get. For example, in MAP06 it is very hard to get the BFG with a lot of players, which is exactly what I hoped for, because I want it to become almost impossible to get with large teams because it can be extremely effective on that map especially. With smaller teams the BFG is much more enjoyable and possible to defend yourself against. With teamweps it's very possible to track the direction the bfg shot came from and find the best way to dodge it, but it becomes more difficult with more players, hopefully proportionally with how getting the BFG becomes harder with more players.
I delibrately hid the BFG in difficult to get secret areas, so that only somebody who has played the maps extensively and somebody who is fast can get the BFG, so that it is not only a challenge to find the first time but every time after that. I recognize that not everybody will find it, but I don't see that as a problem; it's such a powerful weapon you should need to work for it.
Honestly, the thought of Doom 2 maps being converted to be CTF compatible isn't too bad, I'd be a fan. But at this point, you have to distinguish what makes Doom 2 maps different from any other competitive map. Two of those BIG differences are weapon placement and map linearity. No one wants to play CTF on a map that's completely linear, with a beginning and an end. Heck, it's almost impossible. So I see what you did with trying to make it open and include multiple paths, but you deviated a little too far from the layout. That's fine though, A map is a map, and it's not REQUIRED that it sticks to convention. But by throwing the weapon placement of Doom 2 into the mix, you get this conglomeration of an extremely odd layout, and extremely odd weapon placement, and to be honest, sometimes being too quirky isn't a good thing. I mean, if I didn't know it was supposed to be based off of the original maps, I would think it's just a poorly made map.
Actually I know a few people who like to play on linear CTF maps, but that's a tangent. Keeping the original Doom 2 weapon locations was not a priority, if there was a gun in a place I needed one I kept it.
I agree that the overall effect is quite different from anything I've seen, personally the main effect is that the gameplay is more focused on accuracy than high speed SSG ambushes, and most of the speed shifts to dodging and maneuvering. I believe that this is an important part of the gameplay that this map pack offers. It's possibly something more lag proof and less based on reaction time than the super shotguns. I say possibly on "lag-proof" because I haven't played extensively on laggy servers, but that was part of my intention.
I can't deny that super shotguns can be very fun at times, however I think they are best used for sneak attacks. At one time in my mapping I didn't believe this and I put them everywhere, but over time I started to notice the same shoot-like fights, over and over again, and I got bored as a mapper and a player, so I started to remove them and I noticed that the gameplay in the maps changed significantly. I still use SSGs, but I enjoy having every map play differently. This will necessarily cause some people to be frustrated that the tactic they trained for doesn't work, or can't be used, but I consdier having a set of maps, each one with its unique gameplay mechaninc worth the initial adjustment without a doubt in my mind.
To explain more about shifting the gameplay about reaction time, I noticed something rather interesting... in some CTF/duel maps that focus on SSGs, I notice that I almost need to train for them, i.e., play with SSGs for a while to reduce my reaction time to a minimum. At one time, I didn't mind this and thought it as a necessary part of Doom and something new people just had to learn, but as my time became short I didn't have time to play as much as I used to, and I looked for other kinds of fights that don't require you to focus on shooting a few milliseconds faster than your opponent and more on a factor you can control and understand over time.
I know the maps have a learning curve, but the learning curve of these maps is a few days... and you can pick them up again at any time, whereas the difference between winning and losing in most SSG battles takes practice and continued work if you want to be able to defend yourself at any time.
Also, consider the effect of latency on the SSG, I remember joining my old servers as an admin, with 0 ping, and actually being rather ashamed that I could kill people so effectively with the SSG, before they could even react, or when it seemed like it was a confrontation they should have won, but it was always hard to tell if it was a frag due to luck or skill. I've watched my own shots in some other servers, and occasionally the puffs don't show up until an entire second later, and my ping wasn't really even bad on that occurance. I could say that it requires prediction, but the time isn't always constant.
I can't feel comfortable making people obsess over a millisecond difference in firing times, there's more important, and more reliable aspects of the game to focus on.
When it comes down to it, the gameplay is more important than the idea,
Definitely, making Doom 2 CTF into a CTF megawad was just a silly idea of mine, after a while I started to enjoy the challenge and the result. The gameplay was, is, and always will be my main consideration with any game I make.
especially if it's being hosted for public competitive play. You don't have the time to go to each player and say "this is why I made this part look like it does," or "you need to do THIS to get the BFG,"
I can try by replying to posts in this topic, but I realize that not everybody will post.
I don't see any reason why these maps couldn't be used for competition. I guess IDL2012 has a lot of maps that play similarly, and that could have become the standard for competition, decided by somebody at some point, but I wasn't at that meeting, and I can't really comment on what a "competition" map means to a group that I'm not a part of. If they'd like to come forward I'll address their complaints as well.
...so when making a map for the public, you need to take into consideration how someone would play through it if this was their first time touching the wad.
I know. If there was a way to make the sort of maps I wanted while still making them easy to understand I would do it without hesitation. Perhaps I'll find a way to do that eventually.
Still, the fact that you rendered 32 maps (albeit somewhat ridiculously) is pretty impressive.
I haven't done all 32, I'm only on 12, and 13 is a nightmare to turn into a CTF map, I don't have many ideas for it right now.
I hope you take into consideration the opinions voice in this thread and either create new maps or adjust existing ones accordingly.
I'll see what I can do to make some like MAP09 harder to get lost in, that one is mostly confusing because you need to go up to the middle area to get out, where it's much more natural to go all the way up. MAP05 is too vulnerable to rocket attacks, MAP06 needs another way up to the crusher, and MAP10's rather crazy cooridors are easy to lose flag carriers in.
EDIT
Well, I'm going to say what I think about Doom2CTF:
Some of the maps were good, some of them were bad.
But the trend was definatly like this: Simpler the map, the better the reception, the less complaining, and the more playing.
I wasn't there but from what I heard it was mostly the same five or six people complaining and they rarely played; as I said it takes time to learn these maps, I'm not surprised if the people that quit after five seconds didn't find anything good about them.
When the maps started to get too many hallways, pathways etc it became too hard to follow and I got lost trying to run back and forth in between the bases too often to be competitive.
I doubt you would have had problems finding your way after a few games; it's not like this is a labyrinth where everything looks the same
Actually I think this is a good time to post how you could navigate these maps even if you never played them before, I think with a little thought they're not that hard to find your way in. You just need to pay attention to the colors to find your way.
I'll talk about every fork in the road, and how you could navigate through it.
I think MAP01 is rather self-explanatory, but if you want me to do that one too, I can.
I'll start with MAP08
[Note that these screenshots are thumbnails, click on them to enlarge them, which I recommend to better see what I'm referencing]
Starting the red flag room, I see steps leading upward, there is also another blood staircase near the back but I'll take the big gray one.
The square steps go up to the flag and not much else, so I can rule that out.
The steps took me up to this room. A very red room. It's hard to see with the thumbnail but there is a fence brightly lit up on the path to the left, which means it can't really help you advance away from the red base.
Since there's a door with bars in front of it to the direct front of the player that's not a valid path so the only two alternatives left are diagonally left or right.
Taking the left path brings me to this. shooting the switch lowers the lift, which is a feature from the original MAP08. I guess you would need to try that but I don't think it's that uncommon to try shooting glowing switches in Doom.
That brings me to the middle, I see blue lights, so I must be approaching the blue side
I'll take the right fork,
Which brings me to this
There are two options on how to proceed, one that's directly forward, in an area that looks like a blue version of a place that I've been before, and another leading upward
If I decide to take the upward path, I fall down and land in a direction facing perpendicularly to a path of travel.
Turning left and right I see a choice between this
and this
I'm trying to get to blue base so I know the one with the red lights can't really help me.
My next possible fork is here
That big white area with the flashing lights looks familiar.... that must be blue base
I like the O' of Destruction one, but you've got to make a way to get to the center that doesn't require jumping. There was three times where I was going to cap and got cockblocked by a teammate about to jump or even midjump that made it fail. They would have been easy caps except it was a gamble whether or not I would even make it to the flag spot. Same with trying to grab the flag.
There's a staircase somewhere on the O that you can use to get to the flag without jumping, it takes you high up so it's less likely you'll be blocked by anybody (you'll be higher than standard jumpers), though it's still a straferun. Perhaps the platform is too small on that one.
Some of the maps were just TOO large to be fun. When I have to run like 20 seconds just to get to the enemy flag I don't even feel like trying to get there to try and steal the flag.
If you have a particular map you'd like me to address I'd be happy to, some general advice is to watch the coloration of the map, I use brown/red/warm colored textures for red base and gray / green / cool colors for blue base. There are a few exceptions to that, but I tried to make up with it with other coloration changes.
Also, hidden weapons are NEVER a good idea. It always ends up with a few players who know the map getting them and other players who haven't found them running around feeling like they're at a disadvantage because they don't even know where it is.
The BFG in particular isn't easy to get even if you know where it is, so it's not much of a disadvantage, also you'll probably kill the person trying to get it if they don't succeed in getting the weapon, so in some ways these weapon hunters are easy targets.
It was really a choice of removing the BFG completely or making it very hard to get; considering the usually small amount of cell ammo (especially in ports that don't have the built in "weapons give 2.5x the amount of weapon.ammogive in pvp" effect) the BFG definitely doesn't mean you get an easy pass through the rest of the game, it's got a time and place just like any of the other guns.
The BFG areas are puzzles, but they are meant to be secrets. I enjoy finding secrets in maps, and I think it adds to the life of the map to have some rather strange side challenges available for those who choose to look carefully for areas that seem out of the ordinary.
I'm not even going to comment (like this) about the hidden switch that opens a switch that opens a switch that opens a lift that you have to plasmabump to the BFG the exact moment it goes up so you have enough momentum ಠ_ಠ
That's a particularly difficult one, but consider that the crusher has the most open areas (e.g., the flag room) where BFG tracers could mean devastation of an entire group trying to get the flag.
