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[Gryregaest]

Hello! I just found out about DoomRL recently, and I'm loving it.

I'm not sure to what extent this would really work, given the randomized nature of a roguelike, but something that seemed omnipresent in the original Doom games were the "item traps". By which I mean, having useful items which acted as triggers for danger upon picking them up, typically in the form of an ambush.

Something like this is already sort of present in the form of the switches, since they can be good or bad. But there's something very doomy about the items-as-bait trap, even when they're really obviously traps. Walking into a dimly lit room with much needed equipment on a platform in the middle, and knowing there was at least a 50/50 shot of this being a set-up was part of the experience.

I'm sure it can't be as elaborate as in the original Doom games, given the randomized nature, but I think it would be a nice touch.

[LuckyDee]

Actually, this is already more or less used, but only in a couple of special (non-randomized) levels. I think that on the higher difficulties you'll find yourself ambushed often enough not to want to complicate this any further by having to worry about which items are safe to pick up, too :S

It's a fun idea, though, and maybe someone with actual knowledge of how to implement this stuff manages to do something with it...

[ZicherCZ]

Just my two cents:

I can imagine an exotic or unique randomly generated item (not those with fixed generation) being "trapped" in a sense that a summoning lever effect will happen upon pickup. Danger level could be toned done a bit compared to the levers - with those, you expect that this may happen. Chance of this happening, let's say, 5%? Given the rate at which I tend to find these items, this would be about one trapped item per three non-Ao100 games.

For more fun, if an armor would be trapped this way and something else picks it up, the trap will spring as well. I know infighting is not present at the moment, but hilarity certainly ensues when some poor former human picks up that ballistic vest to be immediately surrounded by two viles and a revenant :).

Edit: On a side note: While summoning levers are already dangerous, they can become more dangerous if the summonned enemies wouldn't spawn only next to the Doomguy (forcing the enemies to use their melee atacks, which are generally weaker), but in some close radius as well. LOS only, perhaps, to avoid being _too_ dangerous.

[thelaptop]

Hm.  I think we can try to add this to the current set of generators as a part of the scenery.  We need to see how modular the system is in building rooms in the playing field and play around with it.

Maybe sort of like the vaults, except the spawning is triggered (probabilistically) from the picking up of an item within the vault instead of being pre-spawned.

I would probably go as far as to say that the spawned "ambush" enemies will award the same amount of XP as the spawning method via levers, i.e. no XP at all.  This would make picking up stuff in suspiciously small rooms all the more risk-filled.

We'll worry about balance later.  I'll see if shark20061 is willing to give it a go.  If not, I will try to add it in myself and we'll observe the effects when the 0.9.9.8 beta comes about, which will be quite a while from now.

[Klear]

I'd like to chip in with a reminder of another frequent feature of Doom maps which IMO could be implemented into level generation - items (with a greater chance to be more valuable) on a small island in a pool of lava/acid. It would promote the use of foot protection, it is doomy, and combined with the suggestion in this thread, could be downright evil =)

[Sambojin]

I like both of these ideas. The "room with an island" idea would just be another type of room creation/generation (not that much different to lava/acid filled rooms right now). Getting the island to centre properly might be a bit annoying, but not particularly. It actually doesn't really matter if the island is centred anyway, just that there is an island somewhere in the lava/acid room with an item on it. It might be a handy "feature" if it's not centred, just to make skipping across acid corridors a bit easier after you've rocketed out the back wall (and probably destroyed said item).

For the item/enemy-summoner-vault, if it's a bit too clunky to code spawns off of items, you could just make it a new lever type. Either one that's soley for vaults or just as another random lever type. Pull lever, enemies and an item gets spawned in the surrounding squares. It's a bit cludgy, but it would be a lot easier to code if the original idea is too annoying. Better yet, do both. A new random lever and item-trap vaults. Possibly on an island surrounded with lava.

[shark20061]

Spoiler: Technical Talk (click to show/hide)

Could the effect be hooked to OnFirstPickup?  Can I change the hooks of individual items?  If so, this would be a cinch to do.

[Equality]

IMO trapped items are only exotics/uniques. And 5% too low chance. If trapped=summoning on pickup.

But seems funny.
On every exotic/unigue first pickup, have a

10% chance lava/acid pool around
10% chance summon enemies
10% chance explosion
10% chance phase effect

and all can be combined together. How nice: you pickup a chainsaw, floor around converts to lava, some monsters appear on lava, you teleport away and all of summoned monsters die in lava+explosion :D

[raekuul]

Make them exclusive to each other instead of able to compound, and I'll get behind that idea.