Test environment for player movement

[peter_spy]

One of basic rules of level design is that a map has to be fun to navigate. And yet even the most seasoned authors seem to struggle with that, to the point that some players are led to believe that player movement in TDM is clunky, which couldn't be further from the truth.

So I thought it would be good to have a reference test map to check player abilities and blockout your geometry accordingly. This is by no means final, but hopefully it will give you some idea about when the player movement shines, and what should be avoided. For the sake of simplicity I tested the most common measurements and indicated when things start to be trial and error. Feel free to extend the map with your own ideas, more granular measurements, etc.

mantle_ref.pk4

Edited January 26, 2021 by peter_spy
Image added.

[jonri]

This is really nice!  If you're looking for additional ideas to expand the reference here are 2 more fairly universal areas:

• A series of decreasing tunnel sizes down to the limit, to help with sizing of sewers or ducts.
• The same thing, but for holes in the floor that you can fall through.  I remember once having to noclip through a passage under an altar in some FM because it was too tight to get into easily.

An interesting takeaway from this reference is that you can create a one-way gate for players by using a drop anywhere between 144 and 176 units in height.  However, the player must fall off such a drop instead of jumping if they don't want to take damage (144 + 48 > 176).

[peter_spy]

I thought about vents, but from my experience it's typically 64x64, which is the example used at the second turn, or 48x48 (rather claustrophobic).

The falling height is tricky, yeah. I imagine you'd have to limit jumping options somehow, in order not to punish players for accidental jumping and falling down. Might work quite well with some hind of manholes. With wall height of 144, players still could climb back, if they're stubborn enough. I think 160 units is where it's safe to assume players won't be able to go back.