Come up with the most clever troll design decisions

11 hours ago, Pechudin said:

I like the "pressing use on door opens up everything BUT the door".

Rush Map09 does this, you open the first door but it just opens up monster closets with mancubi and arachnos on the sides and a cyberdemon and hellknights in the starting area, and also reveals a blue switch you need to actually open the door. It made me scream when i first did it lol.

I'll add a secret with a bfg sprit replacing pool of blood or something like that

Pressing F5 insta-kills you. 

Maximum Doom is a haven for trollism in maps, as it was released in '95 and was created primarily by a horde of douchey teens who've just discovered they can create their own Doom levels.  

Off the top of my head, I can remember shit like - 

• pressing a button that does nothing but drop the ceiling down on top of you;
• Keys in secrets;
• Keys in secrets within secrets;
• Making the most maze-y sections of the map invisible on the automap;
• a red key door with a yellow frame, no red key (but there's a yellow key and no door), inside is the only weapon you don't get in the level;
• Starting a level in a small square room, press the button and it drops down into a bigger room and you're surrounded by chaingunners;
• Teleporters where the destination is the exact same teleporter pad;
• The ol' "item in an inescapable lava pit" trap;
• The "infinite staircase" (small hallway with stairs and teleporters at either end, you're trapped in there forever if you take the wrong one elsewhere in the level);
• the one where there's a picture of a cyberdemon on a wall to psyche you out, then when you walk up to it, you get teleported in front of a real one;
• Basically all of DARKGAT2.wad

So yeah, go and like, play it

place lower tier weapons behind higher tier weapons to forcefully swap them to the lower tier weapon.

4 hours ago, riktoi said:

place lower tier weapons behind higher tier weapons to forcefully swap them to the lower tier weapon.

I had this old idea of a trap where a conveyor belt outside the map gives the player every weapon in succession, so they're forced swapping weapons for about 20 seconds or something like that.

Mod where whatever weapon you are using is the weapon the zombiemen (former humans) use.

Shotgunners dont use shotguns, they have the same rules only shoot 3 times when firing.  Chaingunners rapid fire.

If you ever switch to the pistol the zombie weapons are randomized until you switch to another weapon.

1 hour ago, Grain of Salt said:

I had this old idea of a trap where a conveyor belt outside the map gives the player every weapon in succession, so they're forced swapping weapons for about 20 seconds or something like that

Sanguine Cybermancy does that but with berserks instead of weapons which heals you and forces an autoswitch at the same time, heh. No wonder that it got rejected from prcp2 (love that map).

7 hours ago, Maximum Matt said:

The ol' "item in an inescapable lava pit" trap;

This reminds me of how in one Nex Credo map (MAP05, if memory serves?) I put an armour in a slime pit that absolutely needed to be SR40'd over; because it lowered and became inescapable otherwise.

It was also close to a missable secret which, although I don't think is trollish myself, does seem to upset some people.

Monster closets? That's a pretty good one.
/j

On 12/18/2023 at 6:53 PM, Stabbey said:

 

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• A "jumping puzzle" across thin platforms to reach a switch. ...Except it's a shoot-switch you could hit from the start the whole time

 

That's comical... and also a great way to tell the player to "wake up" so to speak. Overly cryptic levels are annoying, but I also don't like being railroaded or having everything plainly telegraphed all the time. Scenarios like this one encourage you to actually think critically about the environment rather than just follow the quest marker.

A secret that on MAP07 that can only be accessed by raising up a lift tagged by 666/667 a BUNCH of times.

But there is only one Manc/Arachnotron on the map and you need to guide the Vile all the way across the map to repeatedly revive it so you can kill it.

EDIT: BRB gotta tweak a map of mine. That's actally a good idea (not mine tho, I think Valorant had it)

Indistinguishable copies of same monster types with messy and weird infighting groups/no retaliation setups.

Huge, elaborate map with no exit. That's it, that's the troll

46 minutes ago, xdarkmasterx said:

Huge, elaborate map with no exit. That's it, that's the troll

Oh, yes, that reminds me. Run darn you RUN by BPRD is an interminable obstacle course, through which you are remorselessly chased by thousands of rockets, and when you get to the end, the exit is out of order. This is a shame, as I am sure someone would have become obsessed enough to record a highly entertaining demo of it, were it not the case.

.

from a speedrunning perspective, add a 32 unit gap passage (something looking like an =) in a wall that allows a player to skip a major section of a map, but a linedef in the middle of the gap instant raises a floor at each end of the passage that blocks it so the player cant escape for a random amount of time before the floor lowers and unblocks the passage. The random time is created from a randomizer at the map start (either magnolia lost soul setup or one of deat's magical randomizers) being triggered out of bounds that has at least 8 different outcomes, and each outcome sets a different time it takes for the floor to lower via controlling the height that the blocking floors raise to.

On top of this, you can further adjust the random outcomes. One outcome could straight up just make the glide obsolete and make the map take longer than it would to complete with a normal route. Another outcome could do the same, but also give the player an early BFG or a megasphere or something so now the player is slower than the normal route but could make up for it with the BFG/health. Another outcome could be faster than the normal route but drain your health via voodoo on damaging floor. Another outcome could trigger another randomizer that spawns in a random amount of cyberdemons throughout the map, or it spawns in enough monsters that the map becomes a slaughtermap. Another outcome could change the destination of a teleporter later in the map that then takes you to an empty room with walls textured with the trollface (or trolldespair alternatively). Another outcome could simply give you invis lol. You can mix and match a bunch of things too so there is no limit to what you can do.

This is a great troll option because the randomization ruins the speedrun, and turns a simple glide into a bunch of garbage.

On 12/20/2023 at 4:30 PM, El Inferno said:

On 12/20/2023 at 3:03 PM, Grain of Salt said:

I had this old idea of a trap where a conveyor belt outside the map gives the player every weapon in succession, so they're forced swapping weapons for about 20 seconds or something like that.

 

Sanguine Cybermancy does that but with berserks instead of weapons which heals you and forces an autoswitch at the same time, heh. No wonder that it got rejected from prcp2 (love that map).

Deus Vult II's MAP21 (The Unholy Cathedral) has a similar fight.

I made a map taking place on a train and for a while I had BFG behind some yellow bars and a yellow key visible on the roof of a wagon. You had to backtrack to get the key and just before you reached it it got thrown off the train by wind. I ended up scrapping the idea in the end, but it looked pretty good.

*Spawn in a room with DRUNNIN

*90 buttons

*Only one does something

*That one releases a room with cyberdemons and 180 buttons

*The cyberdemons respawn

*Repeats 5 times and then you can leave

this is for heretic but I love to give the player the phoenix rod right when I make them fight a bunch of ghosts

the phoenix rod projectile passes through ghosts

// episode = 6,0,"Oops... All Revenants!"

9 hours ago, TheHambourgeois said:

this is for heretic but I love to give the player the phoenix rod right when I make them fight a bunch of ghosts

 

 

the phoenix rod projectile passes through ghosts

That can actually be a valid fight design tbh. The splash damage can be used to kill ghost enemies just as how in Doom, one would use RL's splash damage to kill ghost enemies and has been done in stuff like Icarus.

My map You Do Voodoo has a really obvious crusher with items on it but when you step on it, the entire room around it turns into a crusher except for the crusher itself, which is safe. Then when you return to that room after collecting the red key, it now acts as an ordinary crusher when you step on it and the room around it is the safe part.

Also if you spend 30 rockets to buy the BFG, it inexplicably changes into the chainsaw before it unlocks and you have to do a few extra things to unlock it for real.

44 minutes ago, ReaperAA said:

 

That can actually be a valid fight design tbh. The splash damage can be used to kill ghost enemies just as how in Doom, one would use RL's splash damage to kill ghost enemies and has been done in stuff like Icarus.

Oh for sure, mix in some non ghost enemies and its a way to do target selection as well (especially I like to put undead warriors behind a wall of golem ghosts, cause their axes also pass through)

24 minutes ago, TheHambourgeois said:

Oh for sure, mix in some non ghost enemies and its a way to do target selection as well (especially I like to put undead warriors behind a wall of golem ghosts, cause their axes also pass through)

Yes, UWs and ghost golems go so well together! It's a shame heretic didn't go harder into the physical vs magical/ghost vs non-ghost mechanics. Enemies like the weredragon could totally be replaced with something that adds more depth to the game. My personal pick is golems that throw eggs to turn the player into a chicken, but even just another enemy with a physical attack that is different to the UW would be huge.

Use a wrongly unpegged texture on a floor raised far above the surrounding ceiling to hide the movement and troll the player with a delayed opening wall trap... such as here. Or better yet, add a normal opening wall ambush on one side and a hidden delayed ambush on another.

A switch that teleports the player to a room with a crusher. Now it may seem goofy, but get this, make nearly every switch in the otherwise serious map do it. And have it play "you are an idiot!!!" while you're in there.