No health pickups CP

[Astro X]

I think it would be very interesting to see a community project or something like that, in which the maps had no health pickups whatsoever.

 

Maybe you are forced to start with 1% percent health, so you'd have to go through it all without getting hit;

 

Or just start with your standard 100%, without the possibility of recovering, except for when you pistol-start the next level;

 

Or even, maybe you're given a megasphere at the start and that's it;

 

Maybe an invul occasionally if the fight is too extreme, but then you'd have that amount of time to apply a strategy in which you don't get hit after it runs out.

[Maribo]

Cool idea. Personally, I'd love to see some more takes on reality maps, but it's very... different to design for. You can't exactly use a lot of hitscan, for instance.

 

There have been a handful of wads deliberately exploring the concept of reality maps, so here are two that come to mind as immediate food for thought:
Pepper
Hundreds & Thousands

 

And one wad that unintentionally explored "minimal health refills", because the author forgot to put health in the maps (love you Spendo <3):
1 Bad Wad

[xScavengerWolfx]

So it sounds like something in the realm of "run the gauntlet" Style maps. Force to start at 1% health and then work your way up without dying.....Hmmmm sounds interesting.

[Sneezy McGlassFace]

Is this a brainstorm or announcement?

It's totally doable. Limit hitscan to minimum (or ban outright) and you can still get a playthrough done, even a somewhat busy map. E4M1 is hard with minimal health because of the shotgunners spam at the start. If it was just projectile dudes, it'd be much easier, and taking minimal hits would be totally achievable even for moderately skilled player, I think. Hell, you can have a sample starter map that has the player start with 1% on UV and 100% on all other skills. And mappers just copy/paste the mechanism into their maps. That's possible both in boom and vanilla/limit removing. On HNTR you can give the player 1 green armour or smt to make it a bit more forgiving. (maybe not, I think it may mess up the voodoo magic)

Because I bet for a CP with this premise, you'd get 32 mappers signed up before the sun rises tomorrow.

 

edit: btw here's a quick and dirty mockup of the 1% health thing in cl2 just a proof-of-concept/inspiration

https://drive.google.com/file/d/18LTdJsCALdpYhhh3Dbp02UXPqSVfmL1q

edit2: nevermind, that doesn't work right

Edited February 25, 2023 by Sneezy McGlassFace

[kwc]

Seems like a cool idea and a good opportunity for mappers to work with restraint in their encounter designs (or conversely completely lean into the difficulty factor). 

 

edit:

You could theme the CP - or individual maps - around the concept as well,
"Water Water Everywhere..."

"Run Dry"
"Prohibition"

 

Edited February 25, 2023 by kwc

[Stabbey]

I think you'd want to either ban hitscan or severely curtail it, such as a limit of 20 units of hitscan. Each Zombieman counts as 1 units (Max 20), each Shotgunner counts as 2 units (Max 10), Each Chaingunner and Archvile counts as 5 units (Max 4) and each Spider Mastermind counts as 20 (Max 1). Or something like that You could mix and match in-between, but you couldn't exceed 20 units in total.

[baja blast rd.]

  On 2/25/2023 at 10:26 PM, Stabbey said:

I think you'd want to either ban hitscan or severely curtail it, such as a limit of 20 units of hitscan. Each Zombieman counts as 1 units (Max 20), each Shotgunner counts as 2 units (Max 10), Each Chaingunner and Archvile counts as 5 units (Max 4) and each Spider Mastermind counts as 20 (Max 1). Or something like that You could mix and match in-between, but you couldn't exceed 20 units in total.

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This would be an extremely harmful restriction because in no-health and reality maps, as they exist, there's a lot of room for ingenuity in using them in measured ways anyway. E.g. individual chaingunners can be nerfed via placement/usage (restricting their los to specific areas, or having them trickle in rather than a big mob, etc.). There's a neat setup in Pepper that uses heaps of back-facing chaingunners and enforces a stretch of pacifism (and avoiding waking them up w/ accidental infighting), and then they get crushed. 

 

If a map submission uses hitscanners badly you give feedback about that. A hard restriction would only make sense if the project runner does not trust mappers / playtesting / their own management ability -- but 'no health community project' is not the project for a lack that trust. 

 

Also archviles become somewhat weaker monsters relatively speaking in reality / no-health maps than in regular maps, so adding those to the restriction pile would be misunderstanding them.

[Astro X]

  On 2/25/2023 at 10:16 PM, Sneezy McGlassFace said:

Is this a brainstorm or announcement?

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Yea, a brainstorm. I brought the idea to you guys to see what could come out of it. Seems like it's a very promising concept so far lol

 

  On 2/25/2023 at 10:07 PM, Maribo said:

You can't exactly use a lot of hitscan, for instance.

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Exactly. Hitscanners would be very rare or used for infighting or something.

 

I think we could implement different rules for each difficulty, so that every player of any skill level could tackle the wad.

 

 

Edit: I agree with rd, I don't see a problem with archviles.

 

Should I then create a thread with the project announcement? I'm writing down the rules on my notepad in the meantime.

Edited February 25, 2023 by Astro X

[Shepardus]

Some potential inspiration: There's an E4 replacement, whose name escapes me at the moment (edit: it's Doom Beneath), where every map has exactly nine health bonuses, like in the original E4M1. There's also TimeOfDeath's "No Health" series, and an unrelated "No Health" series within RAMP and RAMP 2022.

Edited February 25, 2023 by Shepardus

[Astro X]

  On 2/25/2023 at 11:24 PM, Shepardus said:

Some potential inspiration: There's an E4 replacement, whose name escapes me at the moment (edit: it's Doom Beneath)

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Yea, I even recorded full gameplay of it. The others I don't know about. I'm sure all these years people have come up with similar ideas.

 

Actually I've seen once that NoHealth map, but I thought it were only one map. I wanted a full megawad, or as many maps as possible, keeping the quality and the theme ofc.

[Clippy]

 

 

[Pegleg]

  On 2/25/2023 at 9:50 PM, Astro X said:

Or even, maybe you're given a megasphere at the start and that's it

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Back in the 90's, I remember reading something (I don't remember where) about map design and challenge, and a person was musing about the idea of providing a soulsphere at the beginning of the map but no more health throughout the rest of the map. You're idea is not a new one, but that doesn't mean it's a bad one, and it would potentially make an interesting project.

 

I used it as the basis for the map I made for 1 Hour Speedmapping 2018, so it's not an unreasonable thing to implement.

[DoctorKlump]

 

 Interesting idea. It would certainly make the gameplay much more challenging and require players to be incredibly strategic in their approach in order to avoid taking damage. However, it could also potentially be frustrating for some players and make the game feel too punishing. It would definitely be a unique experience though, and I can see how some players would enjoy the added difficulty.