What's with the maps that pop up monsters in your face

[bLUEbYTE]

I've seen this happen a lot in Base Ganymede, and some final or secret maps in 3 hours d'agonie 3...

You walk into an area that is empty and suddenly a squad of monsters appear right in front of you, at times at an arm's length. They just pop up, not even with a teleport effect.
It makes no sense, and is a huge turn off for me.

Is there any design or gameplay reason for this crap?

[Stabbey]

It's usually just a cheap shot by authors to exploit human reaction times. Ha-ha, you're taking damage because a trap you had no way to see dumped monsters point-blank in your face, aren't I a smart and clever mapper?

 

I did use something like that myself in "More Tricks and Traps than you Require" to...

open up a series of monster closets which had a single monster, in order to train the player to reflexively shoot, so that they'd get end up shooting immediately when instead it was a bunch of barrels instead of a monster.

[SuyaSSS]

Those are called pop-up monsters and they are usually used as an element of surprise to alert the players. They are made by lowering the floor with a monster with missing textures and then using a trigger to raise the floor quickly which causes the monster to pop up suddenly.

[Yousuf Anik]

57 minutes ago, bLUEbYTE said:

I've seen this happen a lot in Base Ganymede, and some final or secret maps in 3 hours d'agonie 3...

Not just these, this trick is very much common in many maps out there.

[Nefelibeta]

It's useful when you want to have monsters in an area and you don't to make a billion sound-blocking lines/walls just so that they don't wake up early and start wandering. There's a reason why people put them.

Edited May 1, 2023 by Nefelibeta

[RHhe82]

I agree that the "in your face" pop-up ambushed start to feel cheap quite fast. Sometimes one sees clever use of it, though. For instance: in Valiant MAP01 you start the map from a cliffside entrance, and you can see down to a place where you are going to end up later on in the map. It looks empty, but there are enemies hidden in the floor, and before you reach that place, they are secretly raised up so it feels like the place has been populated during your absence.

[Catpho]

It's kinda like monster closets for wide open spaces. Ambush is one thing, but these closets are also meant to ensure certain monsters are activated in specific places at specific times. I'd agree that it looks inelegant, but I see it as skirting engine limitations rather than cheap gotchas.

[s4f3s3x]

It's cool if you make a swamp or a graveyard and use the trick to simulate them emerging though

[rita remton]

2 hours ago, Catpho said:

I'd agree that it looks inelegant, but I see it as skirting engine limitations rather than cheap gotchas.

 

i concur with catpho. in a [gzdoom doom 2 udmf] map, a mapper could use [line action 78: teleport in sector] to instantly teleport monsters to a target location without the monsters being activated. but there are no such line actions in vanilla/boom map formats. so mappers had to use creative methods such as [popup monsters].

Edited May 1, 2023 by rita remton

[DNSKILL5]

I think the effect itself is fine but better executed when the player doesn’t see it happen. Like for rooms the player will have to backtrack to later, or to surprise attack from certain vantage points the player can’t see exactly what happened but now there’s a monster there. When it’s just up in front I think it can work though especially if they’re on liquid floors or in a very dark room, but it does look strange for them to come out of a solid floor where it is very obvious. 

[Maribo]

There's something particularly satisfying about the loud THUNK of a pop-up floor (sometimes also accompanied by an immediate symphony of monster wake-up sounds), much in the same way as an SSG blast into a pinky death cry, or the crackle of the BFG into a gaggle of collapsing skeletons. Sometimes it's a bit poetic when you stumble upon an open area, get a proper good look at it while it's stripped of any observable danger, and then immediately have it re-framed from a relatively safe space into an arena.

 

Regarding their "cheapness": You can do the same thing with teleporters and monster closets if you don't mind doing a bunch of tedious sector triangles + teleport destination and monster closet copy pastes. The only inherent issue with them is that if they're not setup to account for it, you can skip the activation linedef and end up in a HOM pit by accident.

[baja blast rd.]

Certain people associate cheapness with 'insta'-pops specifically, but insta-pops are the safest way to use popups. Slow-rising popups used in the same configurations would often have you being meleed by enemies that are still below the ground, because they'd still be rising as you're running forward into them, which can be impossible to react to and which is awful. In both cases the map should try to judge the speed the player is running and the distance of the rising enemies, but insta-pops give a lot more cushion to avoid being annoying.

 

I don't find these cheap at all if you're thinking tbh. "Here's an open space, the map has used a popup trap before, gee what can happen?" Do people when they play really forget what happened two minutes ago? lol

 

Also there's another type of review that calls these "traps" "predictable" but that is super weird to me because they are obviously not trying to be "traps" or "unpredictable." It's just a deployment device, like staggered incidental combat. And like Maribo said, there's a certain aesthetic, poetic appeal to it -- especially when it recurs like in <3 Speed of Doom <3. 

[Salmon]

Some people like the experience of pop-up traps.  Mappers enjoying putting pop-up traps in their maps and players liking it when they encounter a pop-up are two entirely different things, but I tend to like both in a lot of situations.

 

One of the nice things about Doom mapping is that everyone knows the rules.  We know how the monsters can act, we know what the weapons do, we know the limits of how map geometry can move and behave.  While many people will talk about the myriad things you can do within a Doom map, the truth is most people will load up a wad expecting certain unspoken rules to be observed.  A mapper can toy with these expectations to create interesting gameplay.

 

Really, when you encounter a pop-up trap, there's two main reactions:  1) Hey!  You did something unfair and I don't like it and 2) Hey!  You did something unfair and... Oh, I actually liked that.  Defeating a pop-up trap on a first attempt gives the player a particular sort of satisfaction that can't be gained from a clearly telegraphed arena or a slow-build encounter.  The mapper played dirty but the player still won.  Or, you know, they lost and deleted the wad forever.  I guess I mostly don't agree with the idea that pop-up traps aren't cheap.  They are, or often can be, cheap.  I just happen to like that most of the time.

 

When I make a map, I'm aiming for a certain smoothness overall.  But I don't want it to be too smooth.  Sometimes there needs to be a little texture and well, sometimes, there needs to be a few jagged nails.  Pop-up traps can be a really interesting way to layer in that sort of abrasiveness.

 

I think this is part of the reason (and this is armchair analysis on my part!) that you can see a lot of those quick, intense floor drop traps in skillsaw wads, sort of like you see in a lot of Alm stuff.  The gameplay in skillsaw wads often feels pretty inviting... until it doesn't and your expectations of a particular rule set are replaced with panic.  Some people complain about this but I see it as an inextricable part of skillsaw maps.  To me, skillsaw wouldn't be skillsaw without "skillsaw traps."

 

Anyway, I'm just saying Doom is great because people tend to come into it with certain knowledge and exceptions and some people like to see those things subverted because they think it's fun.  TLDR some of us are hopeless deviants.

[Sneezy McGlassFace]

It's just another tool in mappers' toolbox, depends how it's used.

If you think about it, it's just teleport without the green fog effect and sound. And it has many upsides compared to regular teleporters and monster closets. Let's say you need to put 20 monsters in an area, with a single teleporter, that's gonna take a while, depending on monster speed, and the construction of the closet/teleport lines. Teleporting 20 monsters at once is pretty annoying to accomplish. Second option would be a hole in a wall that swings open, revealing all the 20 monsters at once. But that leaves the empty closet, as the monsters move from it. Which has an affect on the shape and size of the playing field for the particular encounter. An instant raising floor goes ka-chunk and the playing field is set. Precisely as desired, and with relatively few drawbacks, compared to the other methods. If the trigger lines are thoughtfully placed, there is little that can go wrong.

You can have monsters just hanging around a level, and the player goes through, gunning them down, and exits. But if you want more tightly designed set-up, you need to think a lot about the options to achieve it. Sometimes you want monsters slowly fill an area, sometimes you want it happen as fast as possible. And trying to choreograph an encounter, thinking of all the ways players will try to bypass it, and bulletproof it, that's a very interesting part of level design. And the more moving parts the encounter has, the more difficult that can be. It can be wonderfully satisfying when done well, both for players and mappers.

8 hours ago, bLUEbYTE said:

Is there any design or gameplay reason for this crap?

Yeah, I can't justify you a 100% of all the uses but there are some very good reasons for using pop-ups. I'm sure there are plenty bad examples of this, but that's the same with anything. If I had a dollar for every sloppy teleporter closet...

[skillsaw]

7 hours ago, RHhe82 said:

I agree that the "in your face" pop-up ambushed start to feel cheap quite fast. Sometimes one sees clever use of it, though. For instance: in Valiant MAP01 you start the map from a cliffside entrance, and you can see down to a place where you are going to end up later on in the map. It looks empty, but there are enemies hidden in the floor, and before you reach that place, they are secretly raised up so it feels like the place has been populated during your absence.

 

Yes, I like to use instant floor pop-ups like this on elevated platforms, and generally try to raise them while the player is out of line of sight. I probably use this trick on more maps than I don't -- I prefer how it makes an area look naturally populated, as opposed to things teleporting in or having pop-ups occur in the players active line of sight.

Edited May 1, 2023 by skillsaw

[Andrea Rovenski]

I feel personally attacked by this thread. :(

[Clippy]

I'm happy to say I've never done this 

 

I experienced in this map and it super pissed me off but I also had three teeth ripped out of my head. Def set me on rant 

 

 

 

 

Good times stay in school don't pop monsters up at ppl

Edited May 1, 2023 by Clippy

[Capellan]

6 hours ago, CAM-7EA said:

I think the effect itself is fine but better executed when the player doesn’t see it happen.

 

I would go further and say "should only be executed when the player doesn’t see it happen".

 

They can be effective vanilla method for controlling monster movement and release (I used them for this in SPECTRUM), but "suddenly monsters right in your face after they pop out of a solid floor" is nonsense.

[Lucius Wooding]

I think it shouldn't be done anywhere the player can walk. Not only is it cheap and maybe the worst way to ambush a player, I've personally fell into inescapable holes in a number of WADs as a result of shitty execution of this technique. I'm all for mean ambushes, but I prefer to give the player at least some chance to react. 

 

Why can't mappers use this technique to present the player with pop up ammo or megaspheres? It's always gotta be a negative experience.

[baja blast rd.]

8 minutes ago, Lucius Wooding said:

I think it shouldn't be done anywhere the player can walk. Not only is it cheap and maybe the worst way to ambush a player, I've personally fell into inescapable holes in a number of WADs as a result of shitty execution of this technique. I'm all for mean ambushes, but I prefer to give the player at least some chance to react. 

 

Why can't mappers use this technique to present the player with pop up ammo or megaspheres? It's always gotta be a negative experience.

 

I am confused by the implication that "fighting monsters" is a "negative experience," but inverted traps are cool. One of mine: 

 

 

[dasho]

2 minutes ago, baja blast rd. said:

 

I am confused by the implication that "fighting monsters" is a "negative experience"

 

 

Getting shot or clawed at is generally negative compared to being healed.

[baja blast rd.]

To me, taking damage is neutral. If I were wired to see such a mundane event that happens thousands of times as a negative in the slightest, I'd probably not play the game (with monsters, or without IDDQD). But this disconnect probably explains why a lot of people seem to get angry during casual play (meaning: while not even speedrunning or trying to do a saveless run) in ways that I don't understand. Or why some people describe harder maps as 'for masochists' (I play them and feel I have a pretty low tolerance for annoyance). But again, I'm not a "gamer," so...

[dasho]

21 minutes ago, baja blast rd. said:

To me, taking damage is neutral. If I were wired to see such a mundane event that happens thousands of times as a negative in the slightest, I'd probably not play the game (with monsters, or without IDDQD). But this disconnect probably explains why a lot of people seem to get angry during casual play (meaning: while not even speedrunning or trying to do a saveless run) in ways that I don't understand. Or why some people describe harder maps as 'for masochists' (I play them and feel I have a pretty low tolerance for annoyance). But again, I'm not a "gamer," so...

 

You're really overthinking it. Lucius was basically saying "wouldn't it be a nice surprise once in a while if a beneficial item appeared instead of a monster?"

[Shepardus]

Contrary to the opinion that you should only use it where the player can't see it, I recommend using it right in the player's face, with custom actors that detonate into a shower of confetti and party horn noises upon seeing the player.

[baja blast rd.]

13 minutes ago, dasho said:

You're really overthinking it.

 

??? My response to Lucius's post was pretty brief, not even a full sentence, in passing to sharing my trap video, so idk how that can possibly be "overthinking it" lol.

 

That reply was to your characterization of taking damage as a "negative experience" which is weird to me but whatever. Also, if you don't want people to reply to your posts that they feel are wrong, don't make them. You don't get to say something and play the "overthinking" card because you got a paragraph in response lol

[dasho]

20 minutes ago, baja blast rd. said:

That reply was to your characterization of taking damage as a "negative experience" which is weird to me but whatever. Also, if you don't want people to reply to your posts that they feel are wrong, don't make them. You don't get to say something and play the "overthinking" card because you got a paragraph in response lol

 

If you want to bandy semantics, then ok, you are really overthinking my characterization of taking damange as a "negative experience" in response to your response to Lucius. It was obvious that "negative" in this context meant an outcome to be avoided, not some kind of weird emotional trauma.

Edited May 1, 2023 by dasho

[DNSKILL5]

Come on.. Clearly damage is a negative experience for doomguy. If it wasn’t he’d be grinning from pain the same way he grins when he picks up a new gun instead of :O and eh-hnnnnging as blood covers more and more of his face. 

[baja blast rd.]

3 minutes ago, dasho said:

If you want to bandy semantics, then ok, you are really overthinking my characterization of taking damange as a "negative experience" in response to your response to Lucius. It was obvious that "negative" in this context meant an outcome to be avoided, not some kind of weird emotional trauma.

That would not be obvious, since this thread (and threads like it, like the frequent "slaughter is bad" threads) are founded around people getting upset for imo odd reasons, and the most literal interpretation of "negative experience" is something that makes someone upset/deflated/etc. Sounds like the opposite of obvious.

[dasho]

1 minute ago, baja blast rd. said:

That would not be obvious, since this thread (and threads like it, like the frequent "slaughter is bad" threads) are founded around people getting upset for imo odd reasons, and the most literal interpretation of "negative experience" is something that makes someone upset/deflated/etc. Sounds like the opposite of obvious.

 

So because you didn't understand what I meant, it's license to call my interpretation "weird"? Accept that I clearly didn't mean a "negative experience", in fact I never used that phrase, and move on.

[LoatharMDPhD]

1 hour ago, dasho said:

 

Getting shot or clawed at is generally negative compared to being healed.

unless its an archville jump into a secret room with a super shotty...