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Thread of Vanilla Mapping Tricks

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There is one trick that I've thought of myself. Create a texture that is dithered. Basically it is two colors on the texture that are arranged like a checkerboard at the pixel level. In this trick, the colors are cyan (which is rendered invisible by the engine) and the other color is any color you like (red, blue, yellow, brown, etc) just as long as it's one compatable with the game's color pallete. You apply this on the map as a midtexture linedef, and give it a scrolling effect. The result is that each pixel will switch from cyan to X color several times a second, tricking your eyes into seeing a transparency effect.

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Mechanos said:

There is one trick that I've thought of myself. Create a texture that is dithered. Basically it is two colors on the texture that are arranged like a checkerboard at the pixel level. In this trick, the colors are cyan (which is rendered invisible by the engine) and the other color is any color you like (red, blue, yellow, brown, etc) just as long as it's one compatable with the game's color pallete. You apply this on the map as a midtexture linedef, and give it a scrolling effect. The result is that each pixel will switch from cyan to X color several times a second, tricking your eyes into seeing a transparency effect.

1) Cyan isn't transparent. Cyan doesn't even exist as a color in Doom's palette. Cyan is transparent in XWE and a couple of other wad editors, but not in Doom itself. Transparent pixels aren't described at all. Gez and I are going to go around explaining this as many times as it takes before people stop saying cyan is transparent so often.

2) Been there, done that :P
Doesn't need the scrolling to work, though, and it's only effective at all if it's used in a very limited context like this, where the color range of the foreground and background are within the same color group. Any more and the illusion is completely broken, and it just looks like a jumble of checkerboarded dots.

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That looks really good. I've been dying to see what awsome effects that you've accomplished. The idea for me is the texture on the mdtxtre scrolls. Therefore, each individual pixel will blink from invisible to color several times a second. BTW, how the heck did you create those reflections in the slime?

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I`m guessing its not reflections, but rather that you can see through the flat, thus being able to see the walls underneath it.

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darkreaver said:

I`m guessing its not reflections, but rather that you can see through the flat, thus being able to see the walls underneath it.

Something like that. The walls "underneath" it are midtextures aligned down to bleed into the floor, similarly to the old Boom "glass floor" trick as seen in parts of Phobos: Anomaly Reborn and other wads. The difference is that here, in lieu of applying a Translucent Line special to the midtextures, they're recolored green and given a checkerboard transparency/opacity pattern.

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Now I see how it's done. Also, do you have any idea why or how the scrolling textures seem to scroll much faster in Plutonia than in DOOM 1,2, and TNT?

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Multiple scrolling linedefs that are all referencing the same sidedef. Most modern map editors don't have the ability to do this, though, because it's almost always unnecessary and is easy to accidentally break a map with.

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-Time bomb:
Add a line that the player can't avoid, that activates a crusher outside the map with a voodoo doll and barrels. If you want to make it cooler, add crushers on similar sectors that contain barrels under the crusher and others in the appropriate position so they teleport when the others are crushed.

-Monsters don't attack player:
I don't know how can this be done, check boxing.wad to see what I'm talking about.

-Floating objects:
Add a sector with a floor height superior to the main floor. Mark all its linedefs and edit their sector references so all of them (in both sides) look to the sector you want to be invisible. Left the lower textures untextured. These sectors can be used as lifts to create the illusion that the objects over them are floating to the sky.

If you want to have a little change in the sky in the middle of an episode, you can add a solid ceiling texture with a new flat texture. This works great with black, but skyblue (while a little cartoony) can do the trick too if you add enough light level.

-Slopes:
Add a texture that looks like the front side of a slope. Put two of them near and fill the space between them with a solid floor/ceiling texture, but also a wall texture with the same shape of the slope and color of the floor/ceiling. Add a line that blocks the player so it can't ruin the trick.


Dehacked oddities:
Give a monster negative speed to make a coward monster :P
Give a projectile negative damage, it will heal monsters and players, players will have its vision screwed until they receive certain amount damage.

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Vegeta said:

-Monsters don't attack player:
I don't know how can this be done, check boxing.wad to see what I'm talking about.


Heh. It works even in zdoom, but I have no idea why. The only thing that I noticed was that all of the monsters are deaf. I even summoned some friendly chaingunners and they wouldn't attack anything. I added one vertice in Doom Builder and moved it a few map units, that broke the effect completely.

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Vegeta said:

-Monsters don't attack player:
I don't know how can this be done, check boxing.wad to see what I'm talking about.


I haven't even looked at the map yet but I can guarantee that this trick was done by fudging with the map's REJECT lump. Reject Map Builder (RMB) used to be packaged with a good explanation and some example wads. I don't know if you can still get it anywhere.


In other news:



download

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Multiswitch door: May only work if all barrons of hell, mancubus, and arachnotrons are killed in the map. Place commander keens under different crushers, and set a door to lower with the 666 tag. Set each crusher to activate seperately when you press a switch. When the last crusher is pressed and the last commander keen dies, the door will lower.

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Creaphis said:

Oh hey, I remember this! Well, I remember the screenshot; I could never find a download link to it. I always wondered how that was done. Gotta take a look at it :)

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First map I released "hellbent.wad" has a floor that rises leaving an impression of stairs, instead of the stairs just rising. I thought it was a pretty cool effect, although it was not intentional. Dunno if I've ever seen it in another wad.

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Is there any way to model something like a roller coaster? Not necessarily an intricate one that loops, just something that goes up & down and around the level, with a bunch of pissed-off imps riding inside...

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Heh, such an old topic, but I still love it.

Here's a trick I used in Reverie:

-More than three keys on one map: you can use keycards for opening doors while skullkeys (upon obtaining them) open doors/instantly drop sectors marked by the colored skull texture (or vice versa). Much like how grabbing a key always triggers a linedef action that causes monsters to start teleporting in, so it could be used to open doors/lower platforms marked by that specific key.

I also have to say since I discovered the self-referencing sector tricks I've been a happy vanilla mapper.

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Is it possible to do a transparent door in vanilla with Doom Builder? I tried following the tutorial on Doomworld's transparent door guide, but it didn't seem to work. Maybe I just did it wrong, but I know there's some things that Doom Builder can't quite manage that older editors could.

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Megamur said:

Is it possible to do a transparent door in vanilla with Doom Builder?


There are few ways, here's the one I use the most:

1: Make the sector which you want the door to be. You can avoid a HOM by making the door a triangle shape, so it only touches each wall at one point.

2:Lower the door 1 unit above the ground and raise the ground one unit. Leave the sides untextured.

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Xtroose said:

Some great tricks are thoroughly described in Doomworld's Editing Tutorials.

EDIT: Did not see this one mentioned yet.

Fake Slopes:

Create some 1 map unit high stairs and make their lower textures untextured.

[+] Visually enhances your map
[-] Significantly influences gameplay - floor is very bouncy on the way down

[DOWNLOAD]


I really like this one I should try that one out sometime.

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I came up with a more efficient instant-death trap: Don't make the player teleport into the Voodoo doll, place barrels around the doll and activate crushers above them when necessary. The only downside is that in Zdoom-compatible source ports it says "<Player name> killed himself.".

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Joe667 said:

I came up with a more efficient instant-death trap: Don't make the player teleport into the Voodoo doll, place barrels around the doll and activate crushers above them when necessary. The only downside is that in Zdoom-compatible source ports it says "<Player name> killed himself.".


If you want to be even more fiddly, have a voodoo doll and a barrel that pushes the doll when crushed, making it telefrag another voodoo doll: it instantly kills the player with the message "(Player) was killed with the power of voodoo". MAP15 of Epic 2 is a good example.

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Body surprise: Add 3 connected dummy sectors.
Place a monster in the middle dummy sector, a barrel in the other (make sure you put enough to get the monster dead/gibbed) and a teleporting linedef on the other dummy sector make it teleport somewhere in a visible place for the player, place a walk-through linedef that will crush the barrels, and ta-da: Bodies out of nowhere!

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There was a sick trick in crea_one.wad where 8 zombie monsters teleported in like a tight octagon shape, and an archvile teleported in immediately after directly in the center of the octagon telefragging all of them and sending them each across the room in opposite directions making the archvile look like it appeared out of an explosion of gibs. The archvile then proceeded to resurrect all of the monsters. This only worked because it was MAP30 though.

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