Traps Adding A New Gameplay Mechanic?

[Ombrenuit]

I realize this is essentially stealing the idea from games such as Dungeons and Dragons and the like, but I'm curious of what you all would think of this type of game play mechanic adding a little more to the formula.

 

In games such as this, the rogue takes on a role that involves disarming traps for his party. He has the ability to detect traps which become marked on the map, either on a stretch of floor that when walked upon springs blades, or flame, or ice, and the like or the same deal except on an object. Yes, there have been traps in the thief universe in terms of puzzles, but I think this could present a much simpler type of trap.

 

For a trap indicator there are many options for a good rogue. Perhaps the floor around the one that is trapped sounds slightly different, warning the perceptive player that he may be in danger. Perhaps it would be textured differently or have a glint to it of some sort? Trapped items may do the same.

 

However, this "trap" wouldn't do anything more then to deal damage of some sort to the player, restricting the wary player's movements across a floor if they try to avoid the trap, and keeping the player on his toes about grabbing all the gold in sight if he sees that it has a shine differently then others. Grabbing the gold would spring the trap if left armed. In the case of a chest, perhaps the player might be alerted that the chest is trapped simply because the lockpicking sounds (clickety clackety) just sound hollow, different, distant. They might know that after they lockpick the chest, they may want to open it from the side as to not spring the trap on their person, but upon thin air, safe from harm.

 

Disarming the trap could perhaps take a more unrealistic route and just require you to use your lock picks to "magically" find where the lock on the track is on the floor or the object and disarm it. Another route for disarming could be throwing an object that would spring it a safe distant away from ye. This may have been discussed before and if so, I apologize, but it could add some flavor to some missions if used correctly (sparingly enough not to make the player overly cautious, but a few well avoided traps would reward the player for his cleverness). Thoughts?

[Gildoran]

D3 scripting is VERY customizable... IMHO, this is the sort of thing that could easily be done on a map-by-map basis without much (or any?) support from TDM. Well, maybe something like a func_pressure_plate might be helpful. But things like locks which trigger/disarm traps should be doable assuming the lock code is well designed to interact with scripts.

[Domarius]

The ideas are good. But there is nothing stopping anyone from doing this sort of thing in their maps with the features already in Doom 3.

 

The "Magically find the trap with the lockpicks" thing could be complex, and made simpler by us, but I doubt we should take this on, since it will still be possible without work on our part.

[Ombrenuit]

The ideas are good. But there is nothing stopping anyone from doing this sort of thing in their maps with the features already in Doom 3.

 

The "Magically find the trap with the lockpicks" thing could be complex, and made simpler by us, but I doubt we should take this on, since it will still be possible without work on our part.

 

I actually never took into accountability the fact that the ideas could be implemented by the user, I guess that shows my dependency . One thing about these is the fact that they can only really be effectively used in a campaign. The reason being is that it has to be something that the player encounters and is made aware of early on in the mission cycle, and once they reach some of the later levels, they will be on their toes about traps. It's part of the reward theory of game design, but if implemented in only one random level, the player can't really stumble on it and effectivly learn from the experience for use later because that knowledge would only have benefited him if he had seen it in a mission prior. Although my favorite out of the traps is the trapped chest and I believe would be the best to implement in my own missions because of its simplicity; notification by the different sound it emits when picking it.

 

If these traps, however, were standardized for example, in the dark mod campaign itself, this is a double edged sword. These traps would probably find their way into every mission imaginable, overused, and overdone enough to drive the player mad.

Edited November 9, 2005 by Ombrenuit

[sparhawk]

There are no standardized traps in the toolset, because it is a, well, toolset. What TDM supports though, is multiple notifications on frobactions. This means you can link different objects (they don't have to be of the same type), which will be triggered whenever one of the links is frobbed. With this you should be able to make all kind of special effects. You can make a collapsing wall, roof, etc, you can set of explosions, lock or unlock other doors, ring an alaram bell, or whatever else you may come up with. Additionaly the frob system always calls a script function whenever something is frobbed. Normally this scriptfunction will be the default mechanism for a given object like opening/closing on doors and chests, but you can always override it with your own function and implement different stuff.

Currently we have no experience with the system, so it may be that it will still need some tweaks when FM authors start their own ideas, but it should be generic enough to allow a great deal of freedom to authors without the need of changing TDM core behaviour in the SDK.

[Domarius]

Ombrenuit, very good point about having a standard - but given the flexibility of Doom3, we are probably best going the route of letting an author set up their standard in their own mission, with a ilttle tutorial sequence, or quite possibly a real standard being invented outside of the mod for people to implement as an addon, or set of rules to follow.