DDA stands for Don't Do Anything. DDA maps are designed for passive entertainment, rather than playability. In these maps, the movement of the ninja is controlled not by the player, but by the tileset and objects like bounceblocks, launchpads, doors, and thwumps. An often used but sometimes frowned upon technique is gold delay.
Example of a DDA
The construction of a DDA usually takes a lot of time. In return for the time spent on making them, good DDAs have become quite popular, for example: Tattletale by nevermore, The Improbability Drive by formica and Truman Sleeps by Wizard2 have all been well-received on NUMA. Some DDAs such as Thriller by Sendy exploit a well-known glitch (called cheating death), which makes the ninja invulnerable. DDAs using this glitch must be played in debug mode to work properly, not in Userlevels. Some variants of DDAs are called hold right DDAs or hold left DDAs, and as the name suggests, instead of doing nothing, you have to just continously hold on to the right or left buttons to make it work. Some really special DDAs are "three-way", which means it can function as DDA, hold-left DDA, or hold-right DDA. Obviously, this takes a LOT of effort to create. Incredibly, Maximo's Michelle Five'fer and Clifty's On route 666 work in five and six directions, respectively.
The true challenge of a DDA is to make the ninja just miss the various traps and enemies; creating a hair-raising spectacle.
Corpse DDA
A Corpse DDA, also known as a Death DDA or a DDABYD (Because You're Dead), is a DDA where the ninja dies at the very beginning, and goes through the whole map as a lifeless corpse. A variety of objects are used to propel the ninja throughout the map. However, these maps are fairly uncommon on NUMA, due to the lack of popularity.
Example
- Suicide booth 3001 by deathcloud33
KRADDA
KRADDA stands for "Keep-the-rocket-alive DDA". They are somewhat more difficult to make than normal DDAs since the designer must not only devise a way to keep the ninja alive, but also to keep the rocket alive throughout the course of the map. Creating one of these requires a lot of patience, because the rocket can move around in unexpected places, possibly ruining what you had in mind.
Examples
- iKara by ska
- Tattletale by nevermore
- Rocket- ed by formica
CTRDDA
CTRDDA stands for "Chase The Rocket DDA". These maps are insanely difficult to create, as the ninja must be following the rocket, not the other way around.
Examples
Note: The first Chaser's War was created by Clifty and is not a CTRDDA.
FLCDDA
A sub-domain of a corpse dda, Flying Limb Corpse DDAs are very rare as only 5 have been made. Your ninja dies in the beginning and one of his limbs will be propelled through the map, sometimes ending at the exit.
Examples:
- Exploding Universe by atomizer
- Shish Kabomb by script