As seen in the Sneak Peaks thread:



What

Level Master is a mod for Doom and Doom2 where one player chosen at random becomes the dreaded "Level Master". The Level Master's goal is the quickly hide the Exit Rune away from the players who remain still. When the exit is placed, the players are made active and the Level Master gains his full monster summoning powers. The goal of the Level Master is to protect his Exit Rune by summoning monsters anywhere in the map. The other players must fight they way through the hordes of monsters (including the already spawned ones) to find the exit rune before they are killed by the endless amount of monsters the Level Master can throw at them.

Techie

At the start of a regular survival game (no lives and large maps recommended) a Level Master is chosen. Other players freeze while he gets 30 seconds to run off and put the Exit Rune down (obtains all keys at this point). If he runs out of time the Exit Rune spawns wherever he's currently standing. Once the exit is spawned the Level Master starts regenerating power to summon monsters, and the players are allowed to move. The Level Master can only summon monsters when he has enough power to spawn them. He regains power every second (-1 tic per extra player) and loses the cost of the power when he spawns a monster, so the longer you wait the stronger monsters you can spawn. The Level Master cannot spawn monsters if he doesn't have enough power, if there's not enough room OR if players are in visual range of the Level Master. Players cannot see, harm or spectate the level master to see what he's up to. Their goal is to find the Exit Rune placed by the Level Master. When it is found the Level Master dies and the next level starts up and a new level master is picked. If the players die and the Level Master wins the map is simply reset with a new Level Master, so there's really no competitive play here and it's purely for shits n giggles.

When

beta 2 here http://files.drdteam.org/index.php/file ... ster-2.zip

Ideas and stuff welcome

I'm guessing it wont do too well if the map is gigantic, such as some survival maps that contain armies upon armies of monsters, or if the levelmaster decides to throw his exitrune into a pit of doom, lava, instakill stuff, etc. :P

But on medium levels with some neat hiding spots, it would be interesting.

Using it in the kind of maps that work well with the Hide and Seek wad would probably be a decent idea, as the exit could be made difficult to reach but not inaccessible. This sounds like it could be a fun game mode, with a lot of strategy involved for the Level Master (do you spam imps or save up for a cyberdemon? Do you block out the exit with hordes of monsters or mislead your opponents? Etc), as well as being an intense and dynamic co-op experience for the unlucky sods who end up against a decent LM.

I know a way to fix the problem with people exiting, add the "kill any player which exits the level" dmflag

Indeed, I will try to force that flag if I can. If not then it's just a case of nagging the host to put it on.

A little suggestion: make the regeneration of the level master's power depend on the strongest weapon the players have. Lets say a server has 2 people in it, one has a plasmagun, the other one being the level master, then multiple people join but they only start with a pistol, greatly speeding up the power gain of the level master, but all the newbies are almost useless until they find a better weapon. BTW, is the weapon placement going to be based on the map or will there be some special way for it like, the monsters dropping it? (besides the zombies) Also the players might run out of ammo.

another suggestion would be to black out the players' vision while the level master hides the rune; seeing which door he goes through can be a big hint. Its enough hinting already that most people will concentrate spawning their monsters in the direction of the rune; Misleading the players is possible, but it might leave the rune "undefended", should any players try to go another path.

@topic title: Is "villian" a typo of villain or is it some word i haven't heard yet?

Sorry yes that was a typo. The levels should already be beatable with more than one player so it's up to the level master to increase player stress and topple them. I don't know if it'll be balanced at first but hey that's what testing is for.

Do those irritating server only messages you added with gvhv2

Already there

Ok Mikk and I tested this and we were overwhelmed by bugs. Kinda getting that impings feeling here but I'll try my best to sort it out, I think I know what I'm doing wrong