Cruelest Thing You've Ever Done to the Player?

[NEANDERTHAL]

All you mappers, what's the toughest setup you've ever unleashed on the player?

TERRYWADS DON'T COUNT.

[Combinebobnt]

uh i don't have a massive singleplayer mapping portfolio but i killed some people with a demon trap because they all ran backwards instead of forwards (cowards)

[Archi]

Didn't playtest.

[nxGangrel]

"released" a mapset I made when I was 12-13.

[TMD]

Fort Asshole 1 & 2

[Doomkid]

A map I made many years ago, tightrope section like map24 but with shotgunners and imps firing from both sides. Pretty unfair with no way to dodge the hitscanners, doubly so when the lava below dealt 20 damage! I generally avoid purely unfair crap like that these days.

[Chezza]

Made it mandatory to use brutal doom to run my wad.

[pcorf]

Twilight Zone MAP23 Spaceswitch

[Memfis]

If you played the first WOOO, you know.

[Bauul]

In the first version of Foursite there were a bunch of things that I toned down considerably for the final release. For example, I had one huge cavern that had you crisscrossing beams to traverse. Of course the first version had Revenants in. It took watching a beta tester playing it to realise how mean that was.

Other things: pitch black mazes with Specters in. Tiny jumping platform puzzles with Mancubi firing at you. Inescapable pits galore. Etc. Etc.

The one I did entirely by accident though was having blood pouring out of a circular hole in the roof. I made it nonsolid, because I instinctively felt it should be (I never even considered it would be solid) but I saw so many players presuming it was essentially a column and trying to hide behind it.

[Cynical]

64 Revenants, 64 Pain Elementals, 20 Afrits.

[esselfortium]

For pure cruelty, probably SpaceDM5's springloaded trap platforms that pop up and smack you in the face when you try to jump towards them.

[MaeveOfSwords]

A sequence of small rooms, each appears self contained, but as you enter an new one opens up, each contains progressively better pick ups but each also has a darker more threatening theme, each is a certain trap, but the trap doesn't spring, until the final room which contains a BFG. The player would assume once they pick it up a trap will be sprung. But no, as they enter the platform the BFG is on rises out of reach and then the player is teleported to an arena.

[Deadwing]

I guess it was hiding an archvillen in an outdoor area lol
My maps aren't hard at all.

[baja blast rd.]

The end of this little popcorn map of mine. Very brutal boss battle. Demo is by Ancalagon.

[joepallai]

either Plutonia2's starting room of Map 23 "Aztecorum", the teleport to rocket launcher trap in map 3 of Endgame, or the Crusher trap in Entryway 1.2

[RichardDS90]

A Smash TV style map complete with enemies coming from all directions, it was hilariously difficult.

[antares031]

I put a player start in the middle of small arena with a hundred cyberdemons once. With no pillars to cover and no godspheres to use.

I think it worked just fine.

[Impie]

If you mean Doom specifically, probably those damn slimes in Surreal Killer. Each one replicates into as many as twelve before finally dying off, and they replace Hell Knights, so you're constantly running into them.

As far as game design in general, probably this bullshit. One-hit-kill if you don't have any armor. Unless those spiders one-hit-kill you anyway with their lasers, armor or not. (Incidentally, this is one of the games from which I adapted maps for Strange Aeons.)

[joe-ilya]

The fake exit trap in Oh My Gwad wad where it traps you in a room with no cover and a wallful of cybers and barons, you have to crush them with a pad you have to unlock with a switch on the other side.
It's cruel, but if you don't panic then it's fine, the FDAs proved me right.

[HavoX]

Giving Archie the +NOINFIGHTING flag. If monsters aren't going to fight back at him, then he shouldn't be fighting back either.

......
......

YES, I'M SUCH A CRUEL BASTARD INDEED.

[scifista42]

^ The problem with NOINFIGHTING flag is that, if the monster is hit by another monster before seeing the player, it will go after that other monster and pay no attention to the player until that other monster dies (and what if the other monster has way too much health, or becomes unreachable), so it actually requires careful placement to make sure that the monster will target the player first.

[rehelekretep]

rdwpa said:

The end of this little popcorn map of mine. Very brutal boss battle. Demo is by Ancalagon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ug0llJQo9NU

beautiful :D