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40oz

Unconventional use of stairbuilding/donut sectors

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Are there any maps that use stairbuilding (i.e. linedef type 8) or the donut sector (linedef type 9) in ways far more unusual than you would see in the IWADs?

With the donut sector, your usual approaches are similar to that of the chainsaw room in E1M2, or the chaingun in E2M2. With stairbuilding you usually see something along the lines of the exit to E1M8, or the little stairs into the secret door in MAP09.

I've never really tried experimenting with them to create something new, but I've recently made a newfound love for building stairs in lieu of simply making pre-made stairs in my maps. I suspect a linedef type like this could be used to build an entire structure out of sectors, or to transform an otherwise empty warehouse type room into an arena.

I've also read that the donut sector can be used to create 'super secrets' that count as double and permit the player to achieve >100% secrets. As far as I know, I haven't seen or heard of it having another alternate use, but the fixed properties of these linedef types make them seem a little tricky to learn how to abuse.

Are there any maps that use these triggers in unusual ways, or can you theorize possible uses for them to experiment with? Could the use of control sectors or self-referencing sectors produce some magical other-worldly effects in Doom?

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40oz said:

I suspect a linedef type like this could be used to build an entire structure out of sectors


Yep, this is used notably in one map in Perdition's Gate. Look at this gif. The design does incorporate stairs, but if you put them in a dummy area of the level you could use that approach just to build some geometry.

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Gez said:

Yep, this is used notably in one map in Perdition's Gate. Look at this gif. The design does incorporate stairs, but if you put them in a dummy area of the level you could use that approach just to build some geometry.


I believe I used it in MAP31 of Countdown to Extinction. It's rather nifty

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You can definitely do some cool stuff with stairbuilders and dummy sectors, by having most of the staircase be outside the map and then merging a high stair with an accessible sector, so that it appears to raise by itself.

In my experience it's been mainly useful in cases of sector tag conflicts, like if I needed just one part of a multi-section raising platform to be usable as a lift, since any stairs after the first step can use whichever tags you want without affecting the stairbuilder's functionality.

The donut special has some awkward limitations that I can never remember the full extent of, but I know there's a map in No End In Sight that gets some cool use out of it.

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40oz said:

I've also read that the donut sector can be used to create 'super secrets' that count as double and permit the player to achieve >100% secrets. As far as I know, I haven't seen or heard of it having another alternate use, but the fixed properties of these linedef types make them seem a little tricky to learn how to abuse.

It's nothing special about the donut builder. Any action that can transfer damaging sector types also transfers the secret type as well, causing the map to end up with more (or fewer) secret sectors than it started with. In the specific case of the donut builder, if the outside sector is secret, the donut sector will become secret as well. But since the kills/items/secrets percentages are calculated from the number of those things present at the start of the map, this allows for >100% secrets if both secrets are found.

I have abused this, both to make secrets disappear permanently if the wrong route is taken (I'm a bastard), and to make a damaging river of nukage become secret after the nukage is drained (the model sector is inaccessible, so it only counts as one secret, and adds up to 100% if all other secrets are found). Neither case works correctly in ZDoom, where secret sector types specifically cannot be transferred, because the ability to do so is considered a bug for some reason.

esselfortium said:

In my experience it's been mainly useful in cases of sector tag conflicts, like if I needed just one part of a multi-section raising platform to be usable as a lift, since any stairs after the first step can use whichever tags you want without affecting the stairbuilder's functionality.

It can affect the functionality. If the stairs are activated while the lift is active (even if it didn't go anywhere because all the relevant sectors are still at the same height), the lift and all sectors after it will fail to rise. Even if the triggers are located far away from each other, it could still happen in a multiplayer game.

I actually ran into this problem in two of my maps. In one case, the player can get to the top of the stairs by other means, so the broken stairs don't affect anything other than what route needs to be taken, and I didn't bother fixing it. In the other, the broken stairs completely blocked access to a needed key, making the map unwinnable. I fixed it by making another set of triggers using dummy sectors to repair the stairs if that happened.

I find stairs are often more trouble than they're worth, and most of the stairs in my maps are actually done with dummy sectors.

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Stairs done with dummy sectors are convenient, because each step can move exactly as far as you want, but you need to set up dummy geometry in such a way that sounds emanating from the sectors have appropriate origin points. Sometimes it's hard to do.

Oh, and a shameless self-plug. The donut effect in this map may not seem as much, but I've spent a lot of time setting it up due to some complications and seemingly random bugs.

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roomblow uses the rising stairs action for monster crushers and double rising stairs (like in eternall map25). There's also other rising/lowering stairs using other actions. You can also do instant lowering stairs with the rising stairs action by making all the stairs floor heights higher than their post-rising destination height. I also like moving the stairs after they've been raised, like essel mentioned.

I've never actually used the donut action before.

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TimeOfDeath said:

I've never actually used the donut action before.


*prepares self*

Donut sectors are fun to mess around with, I'm currently seeing how many different uses for donuts I can put in a map.

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I've never harnessed the power of the Doom donut either. Once I return to good ol' vanilla mapping, I'll see what interesting things I can do with it.

Spoiler

And now I want a donut.

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Come on, noone mentioned that wad with about 10 maps that explored new architecture techniques and other cool effects and illusions? Can't remember the name, someone must know it.

It has maps where there are sections, the player activates a linedef between 2 candles and an awesome structure/statue pops into existence. Stuff like that.

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VGA said:

Come on, noone mentioned that wad with about 10 maps that explored new architecture techniques and other cool effects and illusions? Can't remember the name, someone must know it.

It has maps where there are sections, the player activates a linedef between 2 candles and an awesome structure/statue pops into existence. Stuff like that.


Sounds like that set of maps GGGmork compiled together some time ago. Probably not what we're looking for here considering it was for Boom.

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