Disable Automap

[Arctangent]

How can one gauge the "success" of a free mod for a 20+ year old game?

Well, have you ever heard of Caverns of Darkness?

[Chl]

The only time you can't save is when you're dead in a singleplayer game with respawning mode disabled.

Wait you can disable respawn in singleplayer, as in nothing happen when you press use? That would probably solve this issue.

[wildweasel]

That is actually the default state of a single-player game; in that case, pressing Use does not respawn you, but loads the last save. There's no way to disable that, to my knowledge.

[edward850]

Indeed. That will equally absolutely never vanish ever. I was talking about respawning mode. Remember we just had the long discussion about tampering with the user interface. I wouldn't then mention something that tampers with the user interface.

[NeuralStunner]

It's possible to cut to an intermission when the PC dies, but it still doesn't prevent someone from reloading a save. (It could also become obnoxious easily, so care is needed. The "don't annoy your players or else they won't be your players for long" principle.*)


* And sometimes this principle has to be followed engine-side. When you realize that there are mods out there designed to unbind all the player's keys, you realize why we're so touchy on the subject!

[Matt]

One was also added in the Turok re-release. Nobody complained about their immersion there either. (Mostly they just bitched about the price.)

It's important to remember that we add automaps typically because some people cannot properly correlate spatial awareness in a virtual 3D space, and can only navigate properly via a map of some kind. While it's all fine and good to say that you can navigate Eternity perfectly fine and solved its switch hunts with your eyes closed, some people have a hard enough time navigating E1M7 as it is and would be hopelessly lost without the automap. And it's not a generational problem, I've seen this with people consistently through the late 90's.

It's a user option through and through, not just some gameplay feature or weird Doom lore. To some people it's actually a necessity.

This.

I find I can't really remember my way around places easily without the kinesthetic memory of having actually physically walked or driven around there. Trying to memorize some of the bigger FPS maps so I can navigate without stupidity would require repetition I simply don't have time for.

At worst the automap can be considered a cheat, and we certainly don't want to let modders disable those either!
(though I suppose it's possible to use ACS to MDK a player if they're invulnerable, etc., but I think at this point it should just be a matter of the modding community shaming people who do such things rather than bloating up the software with exceptions)

[PooshhMao]

How about this - make the automap a power-up, that's given to the player by default, like the handgun.

[Ravick]

At worst the automap can be considered a cheat, and we certainly don't want to let modders disable those either!

This convinced me better than the rest of the discussion...

____

Anyway, despite the "nomap.wad" example does not work as intented in all situations, doesn't it help the problem of modders that would preffer to debar or minimize the use of automap for the final user/player?

[ibm5155]

Just make some personal build, remove automap. Tadah (Or, create an acs function for detecting when the player is using the automap (I know the function heh) and show a black hudmessage when the player is doing automap )

I see an use for that, I have an endless like run mod for gzdoom, and the game will looks bad if someone decides to see the automap to see the magic going out (Ye, the lines are alread invisible on automap))

edit:

The way you are talking it almost seems to me that you think saving should be removed?

The exact opposite. Saved games must never be removed under any and all circumstances. The only time you can't save is when you're dead in a singleplayer game with respawning mode disabled. So if you don't want the player to save, kill them.
Incidentally this means that multiplayer actually has 0 restrictions on saving whenever you damn want.

That's one of the things that I wanted to disable on my mod, savegames, but since I must follow the rules of a rigid engine system, I should not make a 100% from the game that I'm ripping
All hail zdoom and his software hender

[Reactor]

I was also thinking about displaying a big black rectangle with a writing on it, using something like the "graphicmessage", when the player presses TAB to view the map. I see some credibility for such a feature, since at some occassions or special level designs (e.g. asteroid levels), a map is totally pointless, and it'd just break the illusion of endless, open space.

[VGA]

Kinda odd to see people being so hardline about what's basically a creative, subjective game design choice! I agree that for nearly all mods and levels, you want to have the classic automap, but there are some experiences that may be more challenging and/or interesting without it - if you've played the Thief games you'll remember they sometimes give you an incomplete or vague hand-drawn map to make exploration more tricky - and in those cases the designer should be able to specify that they'd prefer the automap be unavailable without cheating - obviously the menu options that say "ignore this silly designer preference, it's my game and I can enjoy it how I want" are important to have, both for players and during map development.

It's a bit like the flashlight in (non-BFG) Doom 3 - they intentionally wanted you to have to choose between having more situational awareness and having a weapon out. You have every right to disagree with that decision, and cheat or mod your way around it, and the game/engine should always make that possible! But it's fundamentally a creative decision. Honestly I suspect most people making conventional Doom-like experiences (~95% or more of Doom's user and dev base, let's say) want the automap exactly as-is but that doesn't make the people who want to try weirder stuff "wrong".

If the folks making the engine feel strongly about it that's probably that then :]

Heh yeah, ZDoom allows for projects very different from Doom. Maybe the author wants to show an approximate/incomplete map (in the way of a static image). No rotation, no player marker, no gradually uncovering the map .... just a computer "printout" or a handdrawn map.

[Rachael]

Just make some personal build, remove automap. Tadah

Was already suggested - and Graf pointed out that people who have already done so have had problems. Skulltag is probably a notable exception but that's more of an example of a port where features were actually added and not removed. (It also very much grew to be a port of its own in time)

(Or, create an acs function for detecting when the player is using the automap (I know the function heh) and show a black hudmessage when the player is doing automap )

MaxED already did that. And as has already been pointed out, it doesn't always work.

Heh yeah, ZDoom allows for projects very different from Doom. Maybe the author wants to show an approximate/incomplete map (in the way of a static image). No rotation, no player marker, no gradually uncovering the map .... just a computer "printout" or a handdrawn map.

ZDoom is not the best engine for every game type, and this might be one of those unique cases where it just doesn't fit - and not just for the automap reasons.

But as ibm5155 and others have already pointed out, there's nothing stopping you from making a fork if it's really that important and you absolutely must use ZDoom. A fork is out of control of the original port authors - however, a fork also tends to be trusted a whole lot less by the user community at large (since you have to implicitly trust a mod author not to load his fork with malware and such). There's also legality controls on creating such forks, as well - mostly due to copyright - which itself may hinder some of the countermeasures you try to put in place to restrict the user.

As Edward also pointed out - no programmer directly involved with ZDoom will help you with this endeavor. Many who aren't directly involved with it will not, either, at least not without putting in some overrides of their own to debug your mod in case something goes wrong. And you can be sure - most will document them, too, and make them available to others.

[ibm5155]

That could be a gloome feature, since there're some stuff that're on gloome but not on zdoom (At least from what I heard).
Indeed, Zdoom is not the perfect engine for every type of games, like, I wanted to remove the save game option and there's no easy way to do this, I wanted that the savegame start name had the name of the mod, and I got a No (for feature request),...
If you're making a new game, I don't think you need to care at all with zdoom, make a fork, add what you want to change/remove and it's ready to go, your user base may not even be doomers, so people from outside will not care if you're using an outdated zdoom or not, they will just want to run the .exe file and play.
The only problem is with people that doesn't know how to program, they're gonna be limited to what zdoom/gzdoom/gloome/zandronum has to offer.

[Rachael]

The only problem is with people that doesn't know how to program, they're gonna be limited to what zdoom/gzdoom/gloome/zandronum has to offer.

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/librar ... 85%29.aspx

Gotta start somewhere.

I don't really see it as a "problem." I don't know what people's obsessions with disabling saves and/or automaps are. (Or cheats, for that matter) But if it really must be done, they can fork their ports of choice and do it themselves. Just don't be surprised when the port authors upstream whatever you try to do to break your mod in the original ports, so that people can play with the original ports with full save and automap support. As Graf pointed out, that's happened once too.

People should just take the hint: Disabling saves and/or automap does not make a good mod. Period. End of sentence. No discussion. It will frustrate the user, and your mod will likely end up in their recycle bin very quickly.

And plus, if you're willing to go through all that effort, your mod will surely suffer for it, because you were more concerned about controlling the player than you were about detailing your mod or trying to make it the best experience possible for those who would try to play it the way it was intended. And why would I point you to the tools to help you do it yourself? Because if you're that adamant and stubborn about it then the only way you are going to learn why it doesn't work is by doing it yourself and seeing what happens.

[GooberMan]

ITT: Lots of bold font and feet stamping about features that break anyone trying to make a rogue-like experience.

I don't get the opposition? If you truly think disabling saves and auto map makes for a bad mod... Can't you just mod the mod to put it back in? Or is this really just a question of laziness hidden behind loud screaming of opinions?

All this gnashing of teeth actually achieves is that no one can make mods where death is a legitimate mechanic (no Souls-esque games for you) or where limiting information is paramount (auto map in an Antichamber-like experience? Hah!).