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Traps - Discuss
what's the best type of pure trap in the general opinion - i mean ones that don't necessarily include monster ambushes but 'real' mechanical traps. Some of the ones in the original game could be pretty lethal one hit kills, but they're the type that everyone hates. I used to make very complex systems of triggers and crushers and spikes and so on, but have found recently myself making crappy lava pits instead which ultimately detract from the gameplay.

What's the best trap you've seen in Q1, or any other game for that matter? For me it's the corridor in the original game (ep4 elder god shrine) that slides across revealing a lava pit - you can either sprint forward and die or retreat and then cross as the pit closes again. Its a basic concept but forces the player to think and react to the environment more intelligently.

other examples of great traps - ?
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Prince Of Persia. 
I also remember being impressed by the traps in the original PoP. Namely the fact that you could walk slowly through the spikes to avoid being damaged by them. Obviously this would be kind of hard to do with trigger_hurt etc. etc.

It would seem to me that the next obvious 'generation' of traps will be ones that the player actually designs and constructs themselves from scratch.

I found Ravenholm incredibly contrived -- I know the presence of the traps was explained, but it still felt to me like more of a physics showcase than anything else, and that really ruined the immersion for me. 
 
Ravenholm incredibly contrived

well, for me it was a distraction from the fiction of the game becuase it felt like some Tim Burton movie set, while the rest of the game was realistic-ish industrial sites. 
Than. 
I like your generationisation there ;). 
Than? Daz! 
I get you two confused, sorry! 
0.02 $ 
The difficulty of traps should be proportional to the diffulty in the rest of the map. I have played countless levels(not only in Quake) that were very unbalanced in that respect(easy map and unsurvivable traps=annoying as hell).

One thing I like about the id levels are the (almost) always present spike shooters and crushers etc., they often give a map an organic and morbid(?) feel, hard to describe,a defining point of Quake�s unique mood for me. 
A Good Trap... 
.. is a trap where you die... At least the first time you play the map, after the first try, you must be able to survive by self-improvement... 
 
i remenber a map that had many W E T Y and u need to discovery the name to pass or fall in lava but i dont remenber the name of .bsp :\ but i remenber was very cool and i�m sure is in quaddicted filebase... 
Man 
yeah those W E T Y's are awesome 
 
Lunaran for not been english man

s�o letras!

understand?

guess not

p.s-> fuck u...

p.s2->are all raven guys assholes? 
Yeah Lunaran Really Ripped Into You There Trinca 
Jesus Christ. 
 
i think he and scampie should maried... :| 
Trinca 
Just calm down :) We don't really take things too seriously here or in #terrafusion. No one hates you, we're all friends here :) 
 
Blitz i�m everybody friend!!! but Scampie and Lunaran is not first time they act like jurks and i�m not idiot! and i dont have they age... i like to play but i dont like stupid people!

and those two already had many bad stuff...

my English might be bad but at least in much better then your Portuguese and Spanish for sure! 
Well, I Hate You All Without Exception 
y yo conosco un poco de castellano, pero no tanto y ahora hace un alto posicion.

la titulo de este mensaje es una broma.

heheheh 
Ijed... And "flamers" ... 
Calla-te conio...

I agree with Blitz, it is not the place for a flaming session, even if you really hate somebody... Just ignore those you consider as morrons..

So let's continue to discuss about trap ingame...

As example, and IMHO, the ultimate trap is the last teleporter in Doom2, or was it Ultimate Flesh consumed pack ? I don't remember exactly... o_O ... Anyway, at the end, the player is teleported in a small area full of monsters... and there's no way to survive, except cheating... I tried many times with BFG9000, etc... but it was impossible to survive without iddqd...
I guess there are many ways to make good trap.. 
Sorry, 
but what is a WETY? I don't get it. 
Funny You Should Mention That 
it was when you finished the game on . . . easy? i've made a map for my current project that's called 'the bitch ending' the same thing, basicly. its only when they beat it on easy and they don't miss out on any levels apart from an ending map (no monsters, incompletable) so i can't see it irritating anyone.

one thing i'm exploring is having leaping creatures, typically fiends, jumping in from windows and from out of holes in the ground (lots of trigger_monsterjumps) and this seems to be a pretty cool trap since they rarely react quick enough to kill you instantly even when the trigger throws them straight in your face, it takes a second or two before they'll even take a swing.

also, i said at the end of my previous post that i was joking in the title :) (which is why i put anti-flame as the icon!)

and showing off that i've got some pidgen spanish

ahora si yo callate 
But . . . 
what's conio?
-and WETY? 
Ijed 
He entendido... no te preoccupas... no tenia intencio de te molerstar...

Oh, and for completion, a conio is quite equivalent to an "asshole"... while i know it is not the corerect translation... Oh, please note I was joking, and that I understood ijed was joking as well..... :P ..

And concerning WETY... errr... is it this stuff you are refering to ?? http://www.freshnsoft.com/products-wety.html

doh ! 
Trap Themed Level 
Anyone who has played through Wheel of Time will remember a multi-map journey through the bowels of the white tower. What made this fun was the variety of traps and the need to solve puzzles, be observent and move slowly and use ter angreals (small one-time use specific spell thingys) to progress. There were no live enemies - your environment was the enemy. I think it was an excellent, fun and atmospheric implementation of traps in-game. The traps ranged in lethality from some damage to insta-kill. The explanation for the traps is that they were needed to protect treasure (or something valuable) in the cellars and that only those in charge of the tower knew how to navigate safely through. 
Trapeze Artists 
JPL - Do you mean the ending of Episode 1 in the original Doom? It has a hurt sector that ignores God mode (in fact, disabling it). However before you die it triggers the epilogue text.

I am fine with traps being lethal as long as there is a cue to them (an audible click, lights turning on, or just that strip of ground being a bit bloody). Another way to demonstrate is to have monsters trip them before the player (a zombie wandering onto a pressure plate).

My reason for support of the more lethal traps is simply that it appeals to my sense of victory/loss, rather than my conservatism. Lethal traps, if they get me, I have been "beaten" by the map. The designer is the victor. Whereas traps that just do moderate damage more of annoy me because I like to have full health and when I have armor, get a bit obsessive with it not being damaged in any way. Nice clean armor, just got it, dont hurt it!
With lethal traps, I am in danger, with more minor ones, I am being prodded by the new guy in class.

As for specific traps I enjoy... I enjoy the ambush of the fake exit in Doom, I think it is Halls of the Damned, e2m6 - it takes that image of hope for every gamer and transforms it into dread, complete with a cue which though it warns the player, plunges them into brief confusion before the knee-jerk "shoot the moving thing!" moment returns.

I enjoyed the variety of crushers in Doom/2 you can lure enemies into as well as long as you successfully avoid them...

Rise of the Triad has so many traps it is difficult to mention just one... Flame jets, the spinning blades, pitfalls, boulders, moving walls, the game is a dictionary of traps and secrets.

The Build engine games seemed to put more emphasis on naturalistic traps rather than ones layed out for the player... buildings collapsing and navigating through large machinery was the standard work order here - aside from the laser trip bombs in Duke3d. I shudder to think of how much more evil Blood could have been if they employed a similar method with proximity detonators used against the player. Blood does however have the ubiquitious paranoia of gargoyle statues, most of them are fine... but sometimes they change.

Quake puts the traps usually right before you... in e2m3, e4m2, e4m3 you can see the instruments of pain readily at hand, waiting. It simply tells the player to "Wait, dont assume, tread lightly in this world" - and if they dont, they generally lose 30 to 60 health suddenly - but you can use such against monsters as well. However the most theatrical of the traps are seen in the demo loop - the crushers in e1m3 which this thread has thoroughly covered, but also the bloody spiked wall in the Door to Chthon. You step in and it is obvious pain awaits you - the hallway is smeared with blood, and then the wall moves. Of course id being id, there is a secret behind it.

The missionpacks offer even more in the ways of traps... everyone remembers feeling a bit like Indiana Jones in Scourge of Armagon, not just for the rolling boulder, but also moments like the floor tiles which drop off into lava later in the game. Dissolution of Eternity offers plenty of straightforward traps... the whoosh of swinging guillotines cutting through air and ogre alike... the buzz of the groundsaws... and the electrodes randomly spewing lightning. Nevermind all the falling rock in r2m2.

We need more traps, just as long as the player isnt 100% ambushed with them. 
Well 
speaking of traps.. Hm i always loved traps and environment interaction in games/maps. But i think that there's a lack of traps in most of quake maps (both custom and id). Most of mappers don't think they are nessesary imho. As for me, i always place at least one trap in my maps (usualy more). maybe someone remembers my monsterfree map.
http://pulsar.quaddicted.com/maps/monfree.zip

posting from mobile, my fingers are dying 
Portal 
Talking of the evolution of traps in FPS games, I assume you've all seen the Portal trailer on Steam...?

There's a hole in the sky
Through which things can fly


maybe someone remembers my monsterfree map

Yes indeed. 
Heh 
i'm actually more excited about portal that HL EP2... :P 
Trinca 
I like you just fine, and if I've ever been a jerk to you it's no more than I'm typically a jerk to anyone. You just never specified what WETY meant. 
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