Boom: Multiple action switch

It's been almost a decade since I've messed with Doom, and trying to get back into the swing of things. Already reached a roadblock ;-o

In boomedit.wad there is a switch that triggers two actions for one sector, but I'm unable to unravel how this is accomplished. The trigger it is using is #14106 (S1 Lft LnF - HnF D1T), which unless I'm reading it wrong, is just a single action. I've not seen anything in boomref.txt that explains how to achieve this functionality, merely that it supports it.

There is a new line flag value in BOOM called PASSTHRU and it has the binary bit value 512 (the 9th bit in the word). If an editor doesn't have PASSTHRU available, but it does let you input arbitrary values for the linedef flags, you can just add 512 to whatever value is already in that field.

Since most people use Doom Builder, I'm going to assume that's not a problem though. If you're editing under a BOOM configuration, the flag should be available.

What it does is allow a use action to go through that line and also press one behind it (Doom usually stops this process at the closest line to the player). It doesn't allow you to put two actions on a single line, only to trigger two or more lines at once so that they behave as if they're one switch.

Ahhhh, Quasar I love you. Zooming in more reveals that second linedef 1 unit behind the switch, with the second trigger. Awesome! Thanks for the quick and detailed reply :-D

Welcome back, share what you're making when you've got something.

Hmm, after further testing, they (Flynn's boomedit.wad and my switches) don't always want to trigger. Like if I am standing at an angle to the passthru-switch, the one behind it won't activate.

Cool when it works, but unacceptable implementation I think. Any workarounds that people use? Or do designers just hope the player doesn't press the switch at "that special angle"?

The geometry I'm using is just like Flynn's (64 unit long passthru-linedef switch, with a second 64 unit long non-passthru-linedef 1 unit behind it):
http://webpages.charter.net/bgspencer/design/switch001.jpg

You could have the switch unleash a player voodoo doll on a conveyor and have it activate more than one walk-over effect.

What a lot of mappers do for multi-trigger switches in Boom is to make use of what's referred to as "voodoo dolls". A voodoo doll is just an extra player 1 start placed somewhere in the map. Only the player 1 start with the highest thing number will be controlled by the player, and the others are effectively dummies: they can cross trigger lines if pushed, they can take damage (which affects the real player), etc.

To create voodoo doll "scripts" in order to trigger multiple actions from a single switch, make a sector somewhere in the void outside of your map, something like 64 units wide. Stick a player 1 start at the top of it and use line special 252 to make it scroll downwards (it'll scroll the tagged sector in the direction of the line, at a speed dependent on the line's length).

Put a small obstacle in front of the voodoo doll, such as a closed door or a raised floor or whatever, and set your in-game switch to open this door (preferably as quickly as possible; if you're familiar with instant-raising/lowering floors, I sometimes use them if I need a voodoo script to start very quickly). As long as the door is small enough that the voodoo doll is also still standing on the scrolling floor around it, it'll continue being pushed forwards now that the obstacle (the door) is gone and it'll cross however many linedef walk-triggers you put in its path.

You'll most likely notice if you try the map now that you're controlling the voodoo doll instead of the "real" player start, as your voodoo doll was created after you placed your actual player start. This is easy enough to fix. If you're using Doom Builder 2, you can usually just delete your "real" player start, save, put a new one in its place, and save again to get it the highest thing number. If not, you could just drag your two player 1 starts into each others' places for the same effect with a bit more effort.

Hopefully that made sense. It's a bit weird at first but once you've done it a couple times it's really easy to make pseudo-scripted event sequences.

edit: myk :P

Ah, very creative ;-)

That workaround solves all the limitations I was encountering.