The Most Annoying Thing about Shadow Warrior

[Ronald Railgun]

And Duke too. Hands down, the absolute worst thing about these games is not the enemy, or the levels. It's having 98 health, and being forced to pick up a medikit because it's blocking your way, or because you ran over it during a firefight. Or a pack of shotgun shells, or anything else.

If they ever did redo this game, there would need to be an option to not pick anything up at all unless you requested it, and/or an option to be asked whether you wanted to pick something up before you did.

[dan2091]

That may slow down the pace of the game, but I agree that that kind of thing has worked well in many other games, so it would in any modern Duke, SW game.

Also, in both games, if you have a portable medipack in your inventory, you can always refill those 2 health points, so you won't have to waste the medikit in case you need it.

I never had a problem with weapons' ammunition on this game, btw, but that's just me.

[Hendricks266]

Originally Posted by dan2091

Also, in both games, if you have a portable medipack in your inventory, you can always refill those 2 health points, so you won't have to waste the medikit in case you need it.

This.

[Ronald Railgun]

That's true that the medikit can help with the problem as far as hit points go. But I'm always finding myself avoiding using certain weapons, just so I can roam around with having to worry about stepping on their reloads, which are often hard to spot, even with the 3d ammo option turned on.

It would also be nice if you could do a partial heal with the medikit. Say, if you had 76 hit points left, and had the ability to use the medikit to heal 4 points, not all 26, leaving you at 80, where you could run over the next medical kit you see. Often I'll find myself using the medikit the way you describe (to avoid wasting points on the red medical kits), only to find that I'm now unable to use them at all, even partially.

---------- Post added at 01:16 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:26 PM ----------

Or, how about this very simple fix? An option (that you can easily toggle on and off) whereby you could only pick up ammo for the weapon you're currently holding. So, if you're holding the Riot Gun, you won't pick up Uzi ammo unless you first switch over to the Uzi. You might still pick up unwanted Riot Gun ammo, but at least it would be easier to avoid just by switching weapons.

[Rigelatin]

A tiny health recovery system would been good for those who avoid medikits. If the player loses 1-2 hp out of 100, it would regenerate. How often do you use those training objects in SW that heals you when punching them? they are similar to those water fountains and washbasin in Duke3D.

[dan2091]

Originally Posted by Rigelatin

How often do you use those training objects in SW that heals you when punching them? they are similar to those water fountains and washbasin in Duke3D.

Oh, yes. Those punchable training objects are great. They heal you little by little (point by point) and if you has your heal boosted beyond 101 points, you can gain up to 200 heal points!

And in Duke3D, like Rigelatin also said, you got many water sourcers (fountains, broken toilets) that heal you point by point.

If there's something I would have liked to see added, was the use of cola dispensers so you could heal with those as well.

[Rigelatin]

Originally Posted by dan2091

If there's something I would have liked to see added, was the use of cola dispensers so you could heal with those as well.

I wonder why they didn't add any cola to Duke3D since it was the main health item in Duke1 and 2.

[Rellik66]

IIRC, the healing items were originally supposed to be a a single cola and six-pack, but they changed it possibly because of copyright concerns.

In fact, if you look through NAMES.H the game resources you will see this:

#define COLA 51
#define SIXPAK 52

[Hendricks266]

I think cola cans were in LameDuke.

[filipetolhuizen]

There was a bug in Duke 1.3d that allowed you to pick one pipebomb from a box if you had 49.

[Darkman 4]

Originally Posted by Hendricks266

I think cola cans were in LameDuke.

They are.

[Flying Techbot]

And Duke too. Hands down, the absolute worst thing about these games is not the enemy, or the levels. It's having 98 health, and being forced to pick up a medikit because it's blocking your way, or because you ran over it during a firefight. Or a pack of shotgun shells, or anything else.

If they ever did redo this game, there would need to be an option to not pick anything up at all unless you requested it, and/or an option to be asked whether you wanted to pick something up before you did.

Most FPSs do this, and the only games where you can't do that are SYSTEM SHOCK 1 and 2, THIEF, and DEUS EX. This was a simple method for game designers to keep the action going and to pick up the items with no problem. If this were a First-Person RPG with a mouse system which allowed you to pick up items, then the health kits would not be picked up automatically. I do think it's unfair to single out both DUKE and SW for doing what WOLFENSTEIN 3D and DOOM have done for a long time (and QUAKE and HALF-LIFE). Perhaps you could mod the game where a question would appear once you walk over to the kit: "Do you want to pick this up?," and you could press ENTER to acknowledge your choice, or do nothing and health will remain on the ground.

As I said before, your expectations for this game are a bit too high for something which was made solely for a conventional keyboard computer without any other complicated additions reserved mainly for high-power computers.

[MrFlibble]

Originally Posted by Flying Techbot

Perhaps you could mod the game where a question would appear once you walk over to the kit: "Do you want to pick this up?," and you could press ENTER to acknowledge your choice, or do nothing and health will remain on the ground.

After all, Heretic, Hexen and Strife averted this problem by making medkits/healing flasks inventory items to be used at the player's own leisure, although this could potentially affect game balance.

Another solution would be to add extra code to check the player's current health status, and only pick up healing items or ammo if the amount of health or ammo restored would not exceed maximum capacity.

[Commando Nukem]

I think this is kind of whiny to be honest. It was about strategy.

"Well, i'm only down 15 HP, do I really want to pick up the +30 health vial?"

And, again, the games like Strife and Hexen/Heretic sorta had some RPG elements in there, so the inventory thing worked there.


Personally? I miss health kits. Serious Sam 3 was such a blast for it's use of kits.

[MrBlackCat]

I didn't mind the inventory in Heretic and HeXen... those are my favorite DooM engine games probably.

I was playing Final DooM (PS1, MasterLevels) and was thinking about this thread... in the first level there is a staircase to the left with the blue one point health potion thingy's... I got my butt kicked before I fixed the controls, and I didn't want to pick those up until I was at 100% as they would be wasted, in my opinion. Just went another route, but that isn't always possible. When it isn't, I call it "how it is" and just deal with it.

MrBlackCat

[MrFlibble]

Originally Posted by MrBlackCat

I was playing Final DooM (PS1, MasterLevels) and was thinking about this thread... in the first level there is a staircase to the left with the blue one point health potion thingy's... I got my butt kicked before I fixed the controls, and I didn't want to pick those up until I was at 100% as they would be wasted, in my opinion. Just went another route, but that isn't always possible. When it isn't, I call it "how it is" and just deal with it.

Heh, I'd usually try to save the health/armour bonuses for until the level is cleared (unless there are areas that aren't going to be accessible after you pass through them the first time). It's especially fun with armour bonuses in version 1.2 and below* where you can stack your armour above 200 points

* I also think that the (somewhat) rare shareware v1.25 also does this too though.

On another note, the 1 point bonus armour and health pickups seem like such a nostalgic leftover from the time when you still had collectible items with the only purpose of increasing your score (I remember that some of the Wolfenstein 3-D ports actually uses the treasure pickups for health, as there is no player score in that version.) Come to think of it, the advent of the FPS genre really ushered a new era in gaming, with its own set of concepts and the view on how a game should be played.

[MrBlackCat]

I wasn't so good at arcade games of the day (coin-op) but I do remember telling a guy that was treating my like a jerk (because his scores were higher) "So? You got some numbers... at least I had fun." My score was never a motivation, only time/enjoyment per quarter.

I thought about this also when playing Wolfenstein in the late 90's... how many games didn't have scores anymore, other than "par times". I like trying to find all the treasure, without a doubt, but the numbers have no value to me beyond that.

MrBlackCat

[MrFlibble]

Well, I also don't take score and such stuff all too seriously but it helps to set some individual playing objectives if one wants to do so. E.g. I think that trying to get as many bonuses as you can in ROTT can be pretty fun, especially since it involves playing in an unusual and/or silly way I also find it a good thing because there's always the opposition of objective-oriented playing and interaction-oriented playing, if it can be put that way. Namely, when you focus on the playing aspects that are directly related to progressing through and ultimately winning the game, other possibilities tend to fade out (for example, as I mentioned that it had never occurred to me that a FPS could be played without the combat element, just exploration). At the same time, the more complex a game becomes, the more possibilities there are that could not be all fitted into the progression/winning scheme. Score awards and bonuses in this respect are a good way to provide positive feedback to the player for doing things not directly related to completing game objectives.

I've never paid serious attention to par times though, I know it can be interesting to see if you can beat a record but rushing through levels had never been my favourite playing style.

At some point though, I tried getting maximum scores while playing Command & Conquer: Renegade, which required completing each level in time. The time limit wasn't set explicitly, you could only figure it out by trial and error, but that wasn't the problem. The problem was that on some levels, the limit seemed completely unrealistic (probably by oversight). This was also coupled with the requirement that the player not reload a saved game even once to get perfect score, and play on maximum difficulty level. A particularly annoying level involved escaping a prison facility, pushing through a canyon infested with enemy troops, then moving into an underground complex, destroying several control terminals inside, proceeding even further, and finally beating a boss. You also had to visit an optional area along the way to stack on some powerful weapons if you wanted to get better chances. I think the game didn't give you maximum score if the level weren't finished in 25 minutes or so.

But then again, my experiments with Renegade were back in the day when I had quite a lot of free time on my hands

[Edit] Oh, and to get a bit more on topic with this, Renegade has vanishing powerups. That's right, the powerups dropped by enemies vanish into thin air after some time, leading to all kinds of inconvenient situations like the player having to run out of cover into enemy fire just to try to pick up the health, armour or ammo pack that they really need(tm). Not to mention all the annoyance you get if you run to a powerup and it vanishes right under your nose.