Community's stance on rocket jump prevention?

[Gez]

Railings are another issue as I realise vanilla had no implementation for partially-blocking midtextures.

Except for vanilla Strife!

It's worth learning the quirks of Quake engine physics. They're awesome.

Havok features the most awesome physics. Awesome in the classical sense of "making you cower and shield your eyes in sheer terror for the welfare of your maybe-not-so immortal soul".

[Matt]

@Stunner: Your window comment makes me think we're approaching this from different views - I don't care in the slightest about the oldschool validity, just what looks possible taking the game world at face value. I just hate to see a map that, say, has the nojump flag and then blocks you off with little obstacles no higher than a desk... if it looks like it could be climbed over or through, the map should allow for that contingency.

tl;dr we need more mods that allow mantling.

[NeuralStunner]

@Stunner: Your window comment makes me think we're approaching this from different views

Not at all. I was simply pointing out the weirdness of flagging off lines that a Player shouldn't possibly be able to pass through anyway, like the window to outdoors in Map01.

I don't care in the slightest about the oldschool validity, just what looks possible taking the game world at face value. I just hate to see a map that, say, has the nojump flag and then blocks you off with little obstacles no higher than a desk... if it looks like it could be climbed over or through, the map should allow for that contingency.

I agree entirely. Mappers can consider jumping and whatnot in their map design if they like. But I still consider it a lame move to force the "intended" gameplay to that degree.

One can skip most of Map03 thanks to jumping. But my desired level of enjoyment involves clearing the whole thing and getting 100% Kills/Items/Secrets.

[Xaser]

I actually view the nojump/nocrouch features as accident-prevention measures rather than cheat-prevention. I've been known to jump around during normal combat and accidentally vault over a wall I wasn't supposed to, forcing a load or noclip-out (especially when playing with Parkour, although that one's my own damn fault for encouraging that sort of breaking in the first place ).

The issue of whether jumping/crouching is allowed in a wad has always been a rather nebulous subject anyway, forcing users to read the textfile in most cases to know whether or not doing so is considered cheating. It's even trickier with older mods -- Zen Dynamics in particular was designed with jumping in mind but not crouching, and the text never says anything about the latter since it didn't exist at the time. To me, it's a worthwhile option to have just for the sake of making things clear. If you're going to force always-jump anyway, then that's your thing.

[NeuralStunner]

I'd still like it if the flags were removed from the Hacx 2.0 mapInfo, and the maps tweaked a bit to take them into consideration.

[Xaser]

Hacx 2.0 is not going to support jumping. It's not worth trying to jump-proof every single piece of every map and extensively change areas just to support a feature the game was originally designed for. This goes beyond the realm of usual map revamping since it would involve completely redesigning (or at least applying ugly retrofits to) several already-done maps -- MAP12 comes to mind in particular, and I doubt there are very many that you wouldn't be able to skip something in anyway... the main building windows in MAP01 would allow you to bypass the keycard, the Monstruct trap in MAP02 would no longer have to be triggered... the list goes on.

tl;dr: use the override.

[ReX]

In many instances, rocket-jumping may only serve to provide a short-cut, and in those cases it may not be a serious problem for the game designer. However, if rocket-jumping allows the player to break the intended progression of the game then there may be some impetus to design the game to prevent this from happening.

If you're creating a map for a source port that allows jumping, and you don't want the player to rocket jump to some areas, you can use railings (or some other means of blocking) to prevent access. If it's not feasible to use such blocking, then perhaps you can introduce a harsh penalty for rocket jumping (i.e., more than the damage the player takes from using this technique) to discourage it.

The bigger problem is likely to be seen in maps that are not intended for source ports that support jumping, but which are played by players that use ports that allow jumping. Short of creating blocking lines or windows with low floor-ceiling height differentials there's little you can do to prevent rocket-jumping, or indeed jumping itself. In these instances, sadly, mappers may choose to modify their maps to prevent jumping.

For my part, I try to set up my map constructs to prevent such "cheating", but I don't go overboard with my efforts.

[Amuscaria]

My stance would be if someone can break your intended gameplay with something that's normally done in doom, then something should be fixed about the map, rather than try to force compliance with some sort of option. Given that a lot of speed runs use rocket-jumping, it should be something the mapper build their map in advance for.

[Deathmatcher]

My stance would be if someone can break your intended gameplay with something that's normally done in doom, then something should be fixed about the map, rather than try to force compliance with some sort of option. Given that a lot of speed runs use rocket-jumping, it should be something the mapper build their map in advance for.

Speed Running often is all about bypassing the intended level progression (look at QdQ). While it might be a viable option to keep rocket jumping in mind when starting to design a new map, it can cause major problems when trying to adress the issue for existing maps. I personally am sitting on a bunch of unreleased maps (hence this thread) - and while I might be able to draw regular jumps into the equation, preventing rocket jump exploits might not be feasable without revamping major parts of the map and the way it is played.

I guess I would rather stick with the opinion that rocket jumping is more exploitive than regular game behavior. Its all fair to try and fix some minor jumping glitches here and there. In the cases where preventing it would involve rebuilding half of the level, however, I would not go through that pain neccessarily.

[randi]

How many Quake maps were built to try and keep you from rocket jumping?

I think you're blowing this way out of proportion, especially considering how much more damage the Doom rocket launcher does to you than the Quake one does. It's not like most people are actually going to go rocket jumping all over the place in your maps. They'd likely be dead sooner than later if they tried that.

[printz]

rather than try to force compliance with some sort of option.

What's so bad about forcing compliance? Some challenges may be really designed to be played with certain limitations, and if you try to bypass them by using console commands, command-line parameters or a modified WAD, you're cheating, which is OK by everyone, but means that you're not playing the map by its intended rules, which, if designed by a good author, may enrich the gameplay.

I'm responding for example to NeuralStunner's complaint about jump disabling. Doom had been having no jump for around half a decade, and megawads were designed which took advantage of this. I'd expect one not to feel incomfortable if arbitrary wad X disables jumping. You're welcome to still reenable jumping, but you may be missing the point of that design and avoiding some of the challenge, if you do that.

It's a good idea to prevent unplanned rocket jumping as much as possible, especially in maps with lots of Sandy Petersen artifact usage (E3M6 comes to mind). Savvy people will use it, and a magnificent second to last level can become trivial and flawed because of it. Using GZDoom will make it 90% easier on the player because of the 90 degree freelook.

Actually, it's pretty sad when a map can be speedrun by taking unplanned short cuts. I'd rather see the player zap between monsters and survive, than solve a large map in 10 seconds by exploiting an untested flaw.

[Gez]

rather than try to force compliance with some sort of option.

What's so bad about forcing compliance? Some challenges may be really designed to be played with certain limitations, and if you try to bypass them by using console commands, command-line parameters or a modified WAD, you're cheating, which is OK by everyone, but means that you're not playing the map by its intended rules, which, if designed by a good author, may enrich the gameplay.

Ask the compet-n/DSDA folks if they feel their gameplay has been "enpoored" by using glides and slides and other weird tricks instead of using the map's intended rules.

[printz]

I'm a watcher, not a runner.

[FDARI]

As a player I tend to use the settings provided by the mapper/wad. I expect that to give me a "guaranteed" experience. When I find that jumping and crouching is disabled in a map, I assume that it is so because the game in question was designed to work well with that.

But when I play it later, I'll probably have something like Hideous Destructor on top, and I'm certainly not going to stay pinned to the floor at full height in the face of an enhanced arachnotron for the sake of purity. However, as I will then be aware that the game did not permit jumping I'll usually not resort to jumps to progress in the map, I'll just employ it occasionally for strategic purposes.

Then there is the idea of exploring, seeing everywhere, trying everything... Whether you do that by noclipping or enabling jump or anything else, what of it?

I extrapolate a recommendation from the game's settings, and I stick to it unless it is dissatisfying.

Of course; non-traversible low ledges are silly. They bring attention to the fact that "you" lack the slightest hint of a basic and utterly common human function. Non-traversible obstacles should at the very least present plausible obstructions.

There are games where I'd accept that too. At least one. But it has non-standard/novelty/puzzle gameplay. It's that cyberdemon-killing-puzzle wad I don't remember the name of. With jumping enabled I accidentally "solved" a puzzle. I didn't disable jump; I just tried again, and remembered to keep my finger off that button.

[Ethril]

i rarely, if ever, use jumping/crouching to skip areas of the map (unless it's bypassing a long detour through an area i've already cleared)
i mostly jump to minimize the effects of damagefloors and crouch to dodge projectiles or hide from hitscans/archviles below a short ledge or sometimes to make an indy escape through a crusher/closing door (also crouching makes crowds of lost souls even more laughably easy to deal with)

aaaand i'm terrible at rocketjumping so that's not a big deal to me.

i don't like having things force-disabled on me. i typically play by the rules, but sometimes i die to something stupid (like being sniped by a chaingunner from ten billion map units away) and would rather take a "mulligan" with the resurrect cheat (and sometimes i even "take health" back to near-death for the sake of fairness) than have to reload and slog through something i've already done over some random BS