This is just a simple discussion that came up when I was setting up the MAPOINFO lump and setting "next" to the "ZDCMP2" lump as well. What about a nice way to enhance the replay value? For example if you play through the second time, there are some more traps, the key/switch placements are different and stuff like that? So you are common to the map but it is different?

This could be easily done with a global variable I guess, --- but it's just an idea for now

We can keep this in mind, although I believe it would be best to only try something like this once the project is fully complete. Interesting idea, still.

Make it secretnext. In the map, a secret exit could be marked as "new game+".

Heck, you could script it to increase the difficulty. We could have hidden difficulty settings that make monsters tougher and tougher. Maybe even some monsters filtered for very high values only.

You could shuffle the locked doors, keys or both for each play-through. Hell, you could even mindfuck players by subtly changing room layouts, locations of UAC crates etc.

Would require pre-planning though or would become messy.

Seems a bit ambitious, all of this. Just make it have some good secrets and try to make areas non-linear. That would suffice, I'd imagine.

I'm with Phobus on this one, let's not get over-ambitious!

I do recall a Doom 3 map pack that did this. I can't recall the name, exactly (In Hell?), but it randomized a few things on map start that some scripts checked for, if I recall correctly.

However, I lost interest long before I got to that, because throwing six pinkies in a small area at you on the first map when you only have four shells... kind of makes people lose interest.

Plenty of secrets.

Non-linear level progression.

Memorable areas.

Unique rewards for the player.

That's all there is to it. Boom mapping has taught me this.

one idea is to make keys spawn in diffrent areas on diffrent difficulties. like on easy the blue key would be at the end of a corridor in front of a red door, medium, blue key is behind the red door so u must hunt to find the red key, hard, Put the blue key in a completely diffrent spot on the map. (Just an idea)

Another good replay value that i see(which might not be right in this scence) is random monster spawners and weapon spawners. so a weak monster or hard has a chance of showing up or a diffrent one, so you kneed to change your tactics according to this, instead of basing your tactics off the normal map, which is fun scince it is always a surprize. an alley fight would be entirely diffrent if you faced ground forces at one time and another at the same difficulty with air monsters.

maybe starting player spawns in diffrent areas will be fun, like player 1 and 3 are at one spot and player 2 and 4 are on the other side of the map or behind a wall, so there is 2 paths, each has the same keys and weapons, but diffrently laid out. so in the end of the map you re-unite with teamates, but you take diffrent paths. (another idea) .last quick one, i did this once and it was somewhat cool, give the player a choice of either taking a blue or red key, but only one, and each key leads them down diffrent paths towards the exit, with diffrent monsters and/or diffrent pickupable guns.

I support this. Making monsters scale based on a difficulty modifier is something I've actually made previously. You would need to tweak the decorate a wee bit, but you could easily pull this off.

One of the other things I was thinking about for re-playability was to have perhaps a passive score system of some kind? It would be a simple kind of thing that would stick around for as long as the user is in a session.

Also, mixing spawns up is something that would be feasible, but would be a LOT of work. I wouldn't really suggest it unless you really wanted to do something crazy.