Sector height and size limits?

So I am about to embark on mapping a new level that relies on me knowing these perimeters. I'm looking to make it PrBoom comp 9 compatible.

More specifically, I'm incorporating the largest continuous sector possible that can be viewed at once by the player.

Also, what is the max allowable signed(+) height of a sector?

32768 units vertically, the Doom world is a 32768 unit square, nothing can be larger than that. You can make a room that is 2048 units wide, but 32768 units tall and that will sort of work, but not a 32768 unit wide room, the blockmap would be messed up totally.

Best to break it up into smaller parts.

32767, actually. Signed integers range from -2^n to (2^n)-1. So, -32768 to 32767.

That's 65535 units total, but, distances cannot be represented that are greater than 32767 units absolute value either, so, use of areas that are more than this will cause the renderer to break down.

Also note that if vanilla or BOOM compatibility are important, areas of approximately 2500 units or greater height can cause overflow segmentation violations in the renderer when the player is very close to 2S lines, due to the massive scale involved in calculating texture coordinates under these conditions.

The only software ports I know of that are impervious to that limitation are Eternity and ZDoom. Most GL ports aren't vulnerable, but some may have their own limitations on maximum polygon size or distance to the far clipping plane (hell if I know about that :P )

In addition, horizontal distances greater than 8192 units may cause architecture to disappear across portions of the screen, due to precision limitations of the tantoangle table. Eternity, ZDoom, PrBoom-Plus, and most if not all GL ports are also impervious to this limit.

I was disappointed to find out that ZDoom still uses the fixed point format (which I just dislike... why not use float? processor slowdown?) and can't have levels larger than 32767x32767x32767.

Ok, so here is what I was able to achieve under PrBoom. It was just a simple square level set to 32000(l)x8000(w)x32000(h) with an enclosing sky sector and a square construct at the opposite end of the player with its floor raised to the ceiling. The sector is partitioned multiple times just to be on the safe side.

Runs stable, but it just looks horrendous in PrBoom's software render. Here is a pic of a test that runs a bit further than 32000. Needless to say HOM errors start to crop up...



After playing Eternal's Voodoo Guns, I think I can represent tall structures better with a GL port. Vanilla/Boom limitations are just to small and limit removing in software is just to ugly...

This is what I'm talking about!

Yup, that is BIGDOOR tex.