Secrets.

[Balgorg]

Never been a fan of secrets myself, but I know others love them.
I think it was Halflife that converted me, as it seemed to focus much more upon 'realism'.
The secrets in halflife were ammo or suit batteries concealed in some way, inside a breakable box etc.
The issue I have with secrets in Quake is I don't see much point in them.
You don't build a map dependent on secret ammo hidden away, or power ups that make carefully designed combat sequences a splat fest. Or do you?
I always feel a bit dissapointed by the reward of just more ammo, or armour/health, and the totting up of secrets doesn't bring me much joy. Secret powerups rarely seem to bring much into the game.
I realise though, that it's just my opinion, and missing out secrets in my maps might be a bit of a dissapointment.
I am interested to know what it is about secrets that people like, and what makes a good secret.
Should I add them to my maps, or leave them out.
I changed secrets to 'loot' in Peril for the first few maps, putting in collectable items that serve no purpose, other than ticking them off as found. I got bored of making them in the end, but I know some have looked for them in the maps.

 

[ENEMY!!!]

I think secrets work best when they reward exploration. I liked the way the first Doom often did it - you'd have a large outdoor area or a tantalising soulsphere that you couldn't get to by normal means, and you had to find secrets in order to access them. Sometimes you'd be able to find extra armour or ammo or weapons in one secret but you'd need to find two or three interconnected secrets to unlock access to an outdoor area that was seemingly inaccessible.
I don't think the original Quake campaign did secrets as well, tending to focus more on finding extra items rather than on exploring otherwise inaccessible areas. But it's certainly possible to expand on those Doom ideas in Quake, and it's possible that the Quake episodes not taking full advantage may be related to the way the base game was a bit rushed and patched together. Having played quite a bit of Peril recently, I've been thinking that one good way to do secrets in such large maps with a more "open world" emphasis is to have just a subset of them available as part of the main progression,, and to use secrets to provide access to other, less essential, areas of the map and to provide shortcuts.
Indeed, Peril's prison level contains an excellent example of such a secret - that extra otherwise inaccessible area and the extra ship journey, that's exactly the sort of thing that inspires me to go secret hunting. But I haven't found many other examples so far.

 

[Balgorg]

I think secrets work best when they reward exploration. I liked the way the first Doom often did it - you'd have a large outdoor area or a tantalising soulsphere that you couldn't get to by normal means, and you had to find secrets in order to access them. Sometimes you'd be able to find extra armour or ammo or weapons in one secret but you'd need to find two or three interconnected secrets to unlock access to an outdoor area that was seemingly inaccessible.
I don't think the original Quake campaign did secrets as well, tending to focus more on finding extra items rather than on exploring otherwise inaccessible areas. But it's certainly possible to expand on those Doom ideas in Quake, and it's possible that the Quake episodes not taking full advantage may be related to the way the base game was a bit rushed and patched together. Having played quite a bit of Peril recently, I've been thinking that one good way to do secrets in such large maps with a more "open world" emphasis is to have just a subset of them available as part of the main progression,, and to use secrets to provide access to other, less essential, areas of the map and to provide shortcuts.
Indeed, Peril's prison level contains an excellent example of such a secret - that extra otherwise inaccessible area and the extra ship journey, that's exactly the sort of thing that inspires me to go secret hunting. But I haven't found many other examples so far.

I like the idea of using secrets for opening up extra areas, in that sense the extra area can be populated with enemies, making the extra ammo etc a needed pickup.
I was experimenting with a few hidden shortcuts, but realise it can cut out some key setpeices, or lead so having to try and make certain events work back to front. It took far too much time to do that, which is why I guess I ended up doing less of it.
Often you find that the shortcut takes you closer to the end of the map, but inevitably you end up going back anyway and having a search around for unkilled enemies and items.

 

[Gambit]

It's taken me over 30 years of gaming to fully understand that what I love most about first-person games is exploring. I love being immersed in another world. Combat, boss fights, role playing and levelling up are OK for a while, but those aren't the main reason why I play fps games. I just love being in amazing, beautfiul, scary compelling spaces and exploring every corner of them. Combat is the hook that most of these games are built on, but for me personally it's just something I have to endure to do the exploring. I play Quake levels for as long as I can in the intended way, but if the combat gets too frantic, I just use god mode and I don't feel bad about it -- life's too short.

Secrets are a big part of exploring, whether part of a recorded system (Doom, Quake et al) or just as fun things to find: "Oh look, there's a tower over there, I wonder if there's anything in it?" or "I can see something on that ledge behind that window, obscured by that rubble cave in -- there must be a way to get there." And then figuring out how to do that is immense fun for me -- you feel like you followed little obscure clues left by an inhabitant of the world and unlocked something amazing. If there's a reward for doing so -- more armour, ammo, etc that makes the game a bit easier, that's a great incentive to go secret hunting, but honestly, if I just found a way into an apparently inaccessible room that ended up empty, I wouldn't feel cheated. The fun part was working out how to get there.

So I guess I'm completely the opposite kind of player to Balgorg, and probably most Quake players. I'm OK with that. We all get different things out of playing games, and no one experience is the "right" way to experience a game.

 

[alexUnder Ros]

You may find it useful. Helps when you lost the mood, but still need to finish a map...
SECRETS TYPES:

1. Touchable button
2. Fake walls/windows
3. Breakable walls/windows /// MODS ONLY
4. Mis-aligned texture (giant wall-size button with health or illusionary)
5. Shootable button
6. Hole with shootable button reachable only with a grenade /// NEED GRENADES
7. Killing monsters with counter opens secret door /// NEED AXE OR GRENADES IF ZOMBIES
8. Drop down niche-alcove (jump down from the edge)
9. Protruding from the wall inconspicuous bricks that allow you to climb somewhere up
10. Cornices (go out of the window, walk on cornice to some other window/alcove)
11. Underwater inconspicuous tunnels
12. Lava swimming with Pentagram /// NEED PENTAGRAM (or lava shield in mods)
13. Some goodie in 100% dark corner
14. Below an elevator
15. Jumping on the ceiling of an elevator and riding to secret floor
16. Secret area in between floors available while riding an elevator
17. Other side of portal
18. Swimmable waterfall (you should swim somewhere up)
19. Optional key doors/// MODS ONLY since you need a key other than gold/silver
20. Timed running secrets
21. Tricky jump (you as an author will be hated for such a secret)
22. Secrets within other secrets

 

[alexUnder Ros]

I always feel a bit dissapointed by the reward of just more ammo, or armour/health, and the totting up of secrets doesn't bring me much joy. Secret powerups rarely seem to bring much into the game.

Usually red armor is used for secrets, while for usual pickups only blue/yellow. That way it does add happiness
But main goodies for secrets are quads, pentagrams and megahealth. Usually they're available only through secrets

 

[Balgorg]

It's taken me over 30 years of gaming to fully understand that what I love most about first-person games is exploring. I love being immersed in another world. Combat, boss fights, role playing and levelling up are OK for a while, but those aren't the main reason why I play fps games. I just love being in amazing, beautfiul, scary compelling spaces and exploring every corner of them. Combat is the hook that most of these games are built on, but for me personally it's just something I have to endure to do the exploring. I play Quake levels for as long as I can in the intended way, but if the combat gets too frantic, I just use god mode and I don't feel bad about it -- life's too short.

Secrets are a big part of exploring, whether part of a recorded system (Doom, Quake et al) or just as fun things to find: "Oh look, there's a tower over there, I wonder if there's anything in it?" or "I can see something on that ledge behind that window, obscured by that rubble cave in -- there must be a way to get there." And then figuring out how to do that is immense fun for me -- you feel like you followed little obscure clues left by an inhabitant of the world and unlocked something amazing. If there's a reward for doing so -- more armour, ammo, etc that makes the game a bit easier, that's a great incentive to go secret hunting, but honestly, if I just found a way into an apparently inaccessible room that ended up empty, I wouldn't feel cheated. The fun part was working out how to get there.

So I guess I'm completely the opposite kind of player to Balgorg, and probably most Quake players. I'm OK with that. We all get different things out of playing games, and no one experience is the "right" way to experience a game.

Looks like I am going to be building in some more rewards.

 

[Gila]

The issue I have with secrets in Quake is I don't see much point in them.

id Software, like many PC game developers of the 1990s were influenced by arcade and console games, which had all kinds of secrets. There is a famous story how Tom Hall and John Romero had to persuade John Carmack to even implement the "push walls" in Wolfenstein 3D to have such secret areas in that game in the first place. Besides health and ammo pickups, the secrets in Wolfenstein 3D had various treasure items that increased the player's score, which does promote the exploration in case you aim to maximize or beat somebody else's high score.

By the time of Doom and Quake and end of the decade, first person shooters were moving away from these arcade game like elements. Doom already didn't have player lives or score counters at all. So besides the obvious standard ammo and/or health, the secrets were containing a power up, an early weapon, access to a secret level, maybe an easter egg or two. A few examples in Quake: SSG is normally available in E1M2, but it can be acquired from one of E1M1's secret areas. RL is normally available in E1M5, but player can get it slightly earlier in E1M8, which is a secret level itself. Or find a Dopefish.

Secret areas can add layers to the ways one can play the game. Say one decides to "pistol start" Doom/Doom 2 levels - knowing where the secrets are would help a lot. Or one might not to use secrets at all, even though you know where all or most of them are. Secrets are also used by speedrunners, especially in Quake, where these Quad Damages and Pentagrams of Protection allow them to execute absolutely insane boosts and other tricks. And 100% categories make speedrunners to come up with a different routes or ways to complete a level, because all of the secret areas must be triggered. Secrets add replayability as well, for those modern players that like to maximize the "achievements" or "trophies", but I guess that's today's equivalent of arcade era high score.

I think if a secret should be anything, it should be optional, but that's obvious. I don't think any good level is designed around secret areas being mandatory for progression or to survive the combat encounters. What I am personally not a fan of lately though is hiding a whole level as a secret, especially if it's a good one that could've been in the normal running order. Making a heavy gimmick based levels as a secret one is fine though. However, most of the community made episodes do have a secret levels in them, but it's like a tradition, which I completely understand.

Also, not too complicated. And not in the way that they should be easy to find or anything like that. A good example would be a few maps in Arcane Dimensions that have certain extra optional tasks to find "items" like some bone piles, monster corpses or those heavenly shards, and some of these "items" are in secret areas. But it's clearly communicated to a player, or at least very strongly implied that if all of these "items" are found, something else can be accessed or will happen in the level. This however might create "fear of missing out" and cause frustration when you can't find that last "item".

Perhaps it's also a matter of balance, simplicity and effectiveness.

 

[Balgorg]

id Software, like many PC game developers of the 1990s were influenced by arcade and console games, which had all kinds of secrets. There is a famous story how Tom Hall and John Romero had to persuade John Carmack to even implement the "push walls" in Wolfenstein 3D to have such secret areas in that game in the first place. Besides health and ammo pickups, the secrets in Wolfenstein 3D had various treasure items that increased the player's score, which does promote the exploration in case you aim to maximize or beat somebody else's high score.

By the time of Doom and Quake and end of the decade, first person shooters were moving away from these arcade game like elements. Doom already didn't have player lives or score counters at all. So besides the obvious standard ammo and/or health, the secrets were containing a power up, an early weapon, access to a secret level, maybe an easter egg or two. A few examples in Quake: SSG is normally available in E1M2, but it can be acquired from one of E1M1's secret areas. RL is normally available in E1M5, but player can get it slightly earlier in E1M8, which is a secret level itself. Or find a Dopefish.

Secret areas can add layers to the ways one can play the game. Say one decides to "pistol start" Doom/Doom 2 levels - knowing where the secrets are would help a lot. Or one might not to use secrets at all, even though you know where all or most of them are. Secrets are also used by speedrunners, especially in Quake, where these Quad Damages and Pentagrams of Protection allow them to execute absolutely insane boosts and other tricks. And 100% categories make speedrunners to come up with a different routes or ways to complete a level, because all of the secret areas must be triggered. Secrets add replayability as well, for those modern players that like to maximize the "achievements" or "trophies", but I guess that's today's equivalent of arcade era high score.

I think if a secret should be anything, it should be optional, but that's obvious. I don't think any good level is designed around secret areas being mandatory for progression or to survive the combat encounters. What I am personally not a fan of lately though is hiding a whole level as a secret, especially if it's a good one that could've been in the normal running order. Making a heavy gimmick based levels as a secret one is fine though. However, most of the community made episodes do have a secret levels in them, but it's like a tradition, which I completely understand.

Also, not too complicated. And not in the way that they should be easy to find or anything like that. A good example would be a few maps in Arcane Dimensions that have certain extra optional tasks to find "items" like some bone piles, monster corpses or those heavenly shards, and some of these "items" are in secret areas. But it's clearly communicated to a player, or at least very strongly implied that if all of these "items" are found, something else can be accessed or will happen in the level. This however might create "fear of missing out" and cause frustration when you can't find that last "item".

Perhaps it's also a matter of balance, simplicity and effectiveness.

A well thought out response. I am being won over.