Working on a prison map. Any ideas?

[Quagsire]

Not using any custom textures or anything like that either. It'll be using only stock resources on the GZDoom engine.

[Pure Hellspawn]

i'd like to see a map based on the reality of prison, maybe one with a prison riot.

have death row cells, solitary and general population. gen pop might be bars, solitary could be solid doors, death row would be both.

guards are non-hostile UNLESS you are caught or heard fighting a hostile inmate, with any kind of contraband, or seen attempting an escape.

[Quagsire]

Pure Hellspawn said:

i'd like to see a map based on the reality of prison, maybe one with a prison riot.

have death row cells, solitary and general population. gen pop might be bars, solitary could be solid doors, death row would be both.

guards are non-hostile UNLESS you are caught or heard fighting a hostile inmate, with any kind of contraband, or seen attempting an escape.

I could do that probably. Would take some work and would require me to finish the architecture of the map first.

[Sick Bow]

Hell, a map where you play as a prisoner during a demonic invasion would be cool. Start in a cell, maybe a short set piece. Puzzles and switches would be easy to do and still make sense. Cell blocks, courtyards, showers, death row, etc. I'd check out or play the game Condemned, that game has mixed reviews but had unarguably cool locations and set pieces.

[Quagsire]

Sick Bow said:

Hell, a map where you play as a prisoner during a demonic invasion would be cool. Start in a cell, maybe a short set piece. Puzzles and switches would be easy to do and still make sense. Cell blocks, courtyards, showers, death row, etc. I'd check out or play the game Condemned, that game has mixed reviews but had unarguably cool locations and set pieces.

I was thinking more of a map where the prison is run by demons. It'd be neat to see zombiemen using pinkies as police dogs.

[joe-ilya]

Sgt Ender said:

I was thinking more of a map where the prison is run by demons. It'd be neat to see zombiemen using pinkies as police dogs.

Basically MAP31.

[Voros]

Ever played Hacx's level 4: Alcatraz?

[baja blast rd.]

Try something that isn't a grid of boxy rooms. That's what most people will expect, and it's kind of boring. Use curves, or odd angles, or something interesting like that.

[Memfis]

OH HOW ABOUT YOU START INCIDE A CELL AND YOU HAVE TO SHOOT A SWITCH TO OPEN THE DOOR?!

[Quagsire]

Memfis said:

OH HOW ABOUT YOU START INCIDE A CELL AND YOU HAVE TO SHOOT A SWITCH TO OPEN THE DOOR?!

I was thinking something else.

[Voros]

Memfis said:

OH HOW ABOUT YOU START INCIDE A CELL AND YOU HAVE TO SHOOT A SWITCH TO OPEN THE DOOR?!

Doesn't Doomed In Space start out like that?

[Doomkid]

Voros said:

Doesn't Doomed In Space start out like that?

hehe, I ripped it from Fragport which in turn ripped it from a gazillion other ancient wads.

It would be awesome to start the player out unarmed since you're using GZDoom. Maybe start in the cell and find a secret passage that gets you out, then you have to punch a gun toting enemy. This has been done before but not nearly as often, it's really satisfying having to find your first gun.

[Quagsire]

Doomkid said:

hehe, I ripped it from Fragport which in turn ripped it from a gazillion other ancient wads.

It would be awesome to start the player out unarmed since you're using GZDoom. Maybe start in the cell and find a secret passage that gets you out, then you have to punch a gun toting enemy. This has been done before but not nearly as often, it's really satisfying having to find your first gun.

I definitely plan on that. Starting in a prison with a gun on hand already isn't really "prison like".

[Darch]

You could start in a cell with only a spoon and have to dig a tunnel behind a poster on the wall for three years.

[TheOrganGrinder]

If you want to draw inspiration from real-world prisons, and to avoid the "grid of boxy rooms" problem mentioned by rdpwa earlier, consider a layout that calls to mind radial prison design (for example, Eastern State Penitentiary) or something like the proposed Panopticon. In both cases the defining feature of the layout is a central control room with lines of sight over the cells or cell blocks - the radial layout in particular translates quite neatly to classic hubspoke level design (and can be spiced up in much the same way as any other hubspoke layout).

A prison will probably have a chapel somewhere on its grounds if you're looking for an opportunity to build a cathedral-like space or make use of castle/Hell textures. Similarly, prison labour is a thing and can justify the presence of a factory, refinery, or other industrial sub-area in your layout. Or maybe the UAC's teleportation experiments have advanced to live human testing and they're soliciting volunteers from a local prison population with offers of a reduced sentence?

[40oz]

Mske it so that playing the map feels like a real prison sentence

[dew]

Darch said:

You could start in a cell with only a spoon and have to dig a tunnel behind a poster on the wall for three years.

But then you accidentally end up in the next cell with a wise old baron who teaches you the ways of hellish nobility and when he dies, you escape in his body bag.

[printz]

Jails and sewers are overdone and overly thought ideas. Especially when they use the Doom 2 textures which look like the Wolfenstein walls.

[Ichor]

You could start by breaking into the prison instead of out, which might give you some more options. Maybe the prison is half destroyed, or long abandoned, or you're trying to stop people from using demons to experiment on prisoners, or you could just be stopping by to pick up some soap.

[Voros]

40oz said:

Mske it so that playing the map feels like a real prison sentence

So a gigantic maze of cells, so big the map that not even DB2/GZDB can help you? Sounds fun.

But I always like like gimmicky maps.

[Suitepee]

Perhaps instead of starting inside the prison, you start outside and have to work your way in gradually during a "prison riot" or whatever. Maybe even get 'captured' at one point and have to start over from melee only, Tyson-style for a bit.

[Voros]

Why are you asking us for ideas? You've already got one: a prison. Now just go with what your guts say while making the map.

Surprise us!

[Jayextee]

Get creative with the prison guards. In a map of Nex Credo, Silence, I had six cyberdemons act as guards, with nothing but a shotgun in the map to disperse of some imps. Of course, one single shot anywhere woke all six of the bastards up - hence the name. Silence.

The twist? I made it UV-max possible by sticking hidden teleporters everywhere to telefrag the beasts. And a hidden BFG with just enough ammo to tackle the only non-fraggable cybie at the end.

Point is though, guards. Ain't a prison without being resentful of the screws, after all.

[Sick Bow]

If you're feeling ballsy, the Water Prison from SH4 would be a cool challenge.

http://silenthill.wikia.com/wiki/Water_Prison

[scifista42]

Ideas supposed to prevent annoying gameplay: Don't put numerous individual pickups into numerous individual cells to be grindfully entered and picked one by one. Feel free to make (almost) all cells inaccessible and place decorative-only things inside them while making them visible through bars. Don't make the map as confusing for navigation as a maze, and let the map's actual gameplay take as little time inside small cells and tight corridors as possible.

[VGA]

Put a tiny soap thingy somewhere in a corner of a bath. And if the player moves there you trigger a Chaingunner trap.

[Angry Saint]

You could make so that if you alert a guard, archviles starts spawning everywhere, so to have a stealth gameplay?

[joe-ilya]

Start without a gun, punch a gunner (zombieman on HNTR, shotgunner on HMP, chaingunner on UV) through the bars and snatch his weapon and key to get out.

[nrofl]

One idea is that there's a boss room that is extremely hard to beat, but you could make a secret jailbreak button to release all inmates in the prison to help fight the boss. Another one is that you can find pieces of scrap metal to make a weapon like a rocket launcher or a prison shank.

 

[Quagsire]

Nice necrobump