How to reveal secret without player entering any specific sector?

Create an invisible hole below the switch, give it the secret property and make it so that the sector silently rises immediately after the switch is pressed. This works because to activate a secret you have to step on it, not just enter it. I attached a simple example.

secretsw.zip

Not possible. Feel free to be creative in placement of the secret sector, though.

Not near my own pc, but in EE and very likely Boom there are generalized linedef actions that can transfer a sector's properties / flags to an adjacent one. I've used this to transfer the 'secret' flag of a dummy sector to a normal in-game one (in this case, a small strip just behind the player's position) as the player triggers the secret. To account for different ports possibly calculating the tally screen differently, I also remove the dummy sector's secret flag afterwards.

2 minutes ago, Mordeth said:

transfer the 'secret' flag of a dummy sector to a normal in-game one

From my experience, this only works in some ports - I mean, even if two ports are both Boom compatible, their behavior in this regard may differ.

That's one of the few things SnapMap can do better than traditional Doom editing.

1 hour ago, scifista42 said:

From my experience, this only works in some ports - I mean, even if two ports are both Boom compatible, their behavior in this regard may differ.

The transfer secret flag doesn't work properly in GZDoom for me. Not sure about other ports, because I rarely use any ports aside of PrBoom+ or GZDoom (which I also use rarely to begin with). Can you say in which other ports this didn't work properly for you, because that would be useful to know?

Not much really. A long time ago, someone posted a wad that supposedly could transfer secret sector effects and that was tested in PrBoom-plus, I tested it in Zandronum and noticed it didn't work, and that may have been all I did (or if I did try other ports, I've long forgotten the results in each one). If you want proper knowledge, just make a test wad and test it in multiple ports on your own.

Here's an other version of the Memfis' idea.

sw.zip

Nice one! Thanks guys!

I know you are on Boom but I want to mention just for the sake of information. In UDMF you can place a "secret" thing and then use Thing_Activate on it whenever you want to give the secret. Really handy since it requires you to actually take the item or do the action to trigger it instead of walking on some sector which can be cheesed.

I know it was mentioned.

Another way, possibly is to use a voodoo doll.

Place him on a conveyor/horizontal moving floor and have him enter the secret sector area.

When the player activates the conveyor, the voodoo player moves into the secret trigger ~ which intern displays the secret area message.

Theoretically this should work, although I'v never tried it, but when I think of it it should, if not the voodoo might stop at the end of the conveyor, if so a thrust line trigger to help him.

Hah, yeah it would be much easier to script it in instead.. :)

Execute once, script line trigger, display message, play sound..

Ack! but this is Boom only!

1 hour ago, Mr.Rocket said:

I know it was mentioned.

Another way, possibly is to use a voodoo doll.

Place him on a conveyor/horizontal moving floor and have him enter the secret sector area.

When the player activates the conveyor, the voodoo player moves into the secret trigger ~ which intern displays the secret area message.

Theoretically this should work, although I'v never tried it, but when I think of it it should, if not the voodoo might stop at the end of the conveyor, if so a thrust line trigger to help him.

 

Hah, yeah it would be much easier to script it in instead.. :)

Execute once, script line trigger, display message, play sound..

Ack! but this is Boom only!

 

If this idea works then it could also work in Heretic, from what I recall the floor scrolling is visually buggy but that sector type should move a player or voodoo doll over a sector height difference. The 'wind' type of moving sector in Heretic only seems to move projectiles/actors without actually scrolling the flat texture and brings the player only right to the edge but it requires input to cross into a sector that requires a drop of greater than 24 or 32 mu's.. apparently... I've never playtested this theory or looked at the code

Do what Memfis said. Here it is with more words. When you walk up to the switch, you are not standing on the floor of the secret because it is a hole that is too small to fit in, but when you hit the switch, two things happen (using a voodoo doll to trigger both): the ceiling opens up as you already described, and the secret sector's floor raises up so that it is no longer a hole, so you are now touching it, and you get credit for finding a secret.

On 4-10-2017 at 9:17 PM, Mordeth said:

Not near my own pc, but in EE and very likely Boom there are generalized linedef actions that can transfer a sector's properties / flags to an adjacent one. I've used this to transfer the 'secret' flag of a dummy sector to a normal in-game one (in this case, a small strip just behind the player's position) as the player triggers the secret. To account for different ports possibly calculating the tally screen differently, I also remove the dummy sector's secret flag afterwards.

And here's an example level. Tested with PrBoom (2.5.0) and latest EE.  The red floor sector is tagged secret; the blue floor sector is normal but turns red & secret after hitting the switch.  Just tested with GZDoom g2.3pre-292-g747b612 (lol) and ZDoom 2.8.1 and the secret tag is not transferred there.