Community's stance on rocket jump prevention?

[Deathmatcher]

So, there is the nojump flag in MAPINFO, which is a cool thing if you want to prevent people from bypassing the 25+ pixel obstacles in your mod. However, today I was toying around with freelook and I actually found out (not really rocket science but I wasn't aware of this until now) that you can well do some rocket jumps if you have freelook active - even with the nojump flag set.

This led me to the question: What's the modding community's stance on rocket jump prevention? Not all projects have jumping in mind. Certainly, I wouldn't want to add the nofreelook flag to mapinfo every time I do a classic map, as many people out there are used to using freelook and would be pissed of by that. Do you guys keep this potential exploit mechanism in mind when starting a new project? Did anyone ever come across this as a problem or do you guys just ignore it (as a decent doomer wouldn't exploit in such a way)?

Just wondering, if, when doing a megawad for example, I should go back and make all maps support jump before releasing, since it could always be exploited through freelook rocket jumps anyway (even with nojump flag set).

[Enjay]

IMO, If someone wants to leap around a map using rocket jumping, especially if jumping had been forced off via MAPINFO (or even just mentioned as not intended in the text) it's their choice but it's also their look out of they end up somewhere they are not supposed to be and thereby break the game. They are quite blatantly using an exploit to get around the intended game restrictions. If they want to do that, then that's fine but I certainly wouldn't bother taking it into consideration when making a map.

[Project Shadowcat]

Especially if they're losing lots of hit-points pulling it off. It's extremely hazardous to the player in Doom, if not outright lethal if you have no armor.

[wildweasel]

I wouldn't bother preventing rocket jumping. Just the fact that they waste valuable health, armor, and rockets doing so is enough of a penalty.

[TerminusEst13]

If someone is intentionally trying to get around the existing jump restrictions, then trying to find ways to work around it is just going to be a waste of time since people will try and work around that anyway.

Though, personally, I was never fond of the rockets' backblast to begin with.

[Project Shadowcat]

Doom absolutely punishes you for using such a powerful weapon like a rocket launcher in close combat. I just cannot understand why the strength of the rocket launcher has been nerfed with every new FPS -- it's supposed to cause a near-instant kill under normal circumstances.

I guess they just don't make rocket launchers like they used to.

[NeuralStunner]

Trying to disable jumping, for me, is like trying to disable cheating. It's pointless. In fact it peeves me off enough that I have AllowJump in my AutoExec.

So, I have no problems with rocket jumping either.

[Matt]

Preventing common sourceport-dependent uses of the third dimension is a potential deal-breaker for me, something far worse than a meaningless DSPISTOL replacement but not quite as bad as a long unskippable intro cutscene. It just screams "I am a controlling Doom Nazi who can't stand the thought that other people might enjoy my work in anything but the specifically intended manner".

I can't even reliably rocketjump in TF2 Quake, let alone in Doom, though, so it's pretty much a theoretical point for me.

[Gez]

If it's really important that an obstacle be impassable, I set its line to impassable.

Also, rocket jump is just the tip of the iceberg. Have you thought about arch-vile jumping? You can always summon an arch-vile.

Or you can summon small objects on which you can step to build yourself a stairway made out of things.

Or, you can just, you know, idclip.

[Deathmatcher]

As for the arch viles, you have control over where to place them when designing your map. If people start typing console commands or cheat codes, they know they are cheating, while the rocket jumps are a direct result of interacting within the game.

But some people have raised an interesting point here: Starting the game with allowjump. So you guys say that even the nojump flag is too restrictive? It's all fair to make lines impassable but sometimes you may want the player to do a small puzzle or take a detour in order to reach a point in the map. If he can just jump over it, he might skip entire sections of the map, so not publishing those kind of maps with the nojump flag would be rather risky in these cases. Actually, I think quite a lot of projects make use of that flag. For example, Demons of Problematique - wich is even a GZDoom project.

[Phml]

I think it can make sense to use the nojump flag. In the end, you have to decide if you want to build your wad as a quality experience or as a random association of textures, monsters and weapons. Seeing as going the first route will include that second option anyway, might as well build with the intended experience in mind and let people who loath different rulesets enough to disregard balance do their own thing, enabling jump by themselves. To put it another way, it's better to have someone who wouldn't have liked/cared about the wad having to jump through hoops to get what they want than to have a player that would have enjoyed the wad ruin their experience due to an unfortunate sequencebreaking jump.

I agree rocketjumping is problematic in ZDoom. The argument that rocketjumping is cheating or an exploit doesn't hold much water to me. Basic game design implies anything you can do within the normal rules of the game environment is fair game. That said, disabling freelook just to get rid of rjumps is like throwing out the baby with the bath water. Realistically, I believe you have to either live with it and stick with nojump alone, or change the rocket physics in some way to prevent that (if that is even possible).

[Project Shadowcat]

But some people have raised an interesting point here: Starting the game with allowjump. So you guys say that even the nojump flag is too restrictive? It's all fair to make lines impassable but sometimes you may want the player to do a small puzzle or take a detour in order to reach a point in the map. If he can just jump over it, he might skip entire sections of the map, so not publishing those kind of maps with the nojump flag would be rather risky in these cases. Actually, I think quite a lot of projects make use of that flag. For example, Demons of Problematique - wich is even a GZDoom project.

Then just make the obstacle 64 high or more instead of 25+. That'll stop jumpers at the very least, and reliable rocket jumping would even be difficult.

[printz]

Just the fact that they waste valuable health, armor, and rockets doing so is enough of a penalty.

Megaspheres and Invulnerability Artifacts are things which exist.

I think rocket jumping is ZDoom is related to how any explosions can propel SHOOTABLE actors vertically in ZDoom but not in Doom. Can this vertical propulsion effect be disabled? It could be more damaging to certain limit-removing wad's plans than just the player himself rocket-jumping. Isn't the increased archvile jump already caused by this vertical propulsion?

[Gez]

I'm pretty sure the arch-vile jump thing has been addressed already.

[NeuralStunner]

Preventing common sourceport-dependent uses of the third dimension is a potential deal-breaker for me [...] It just screams "I am a controlling Doom Nazi who can't stand the thought that other people might enjoy my work in anything but the specifically intended manner".

This why I compared it to anti-cheating.

Granted I don't care for impassable-lined windows much either. If you already can't jump or drop through them in vanilla mode, I don't see why mappers bother. Railings are another issue as I realise vanilla had no implementation for partially-blocking midtextures.

I can't even reliably rocketjump in TF2 Quake, let alone in Doom, though, so it's pretty much a theoretical point for me.

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