*** The "ask a miscellaneous editing question" thread ***

11 hours ago, Spectre01 said:

I've never seen this happen before: I'm making a large map and enemies are falling into invisible holes in the floor and ending up at the lowest floor height of the map. It's a limit-removing map for Ultimate Doom and this is happening in GLBoom+ on one specific tower structure. What could be causing this?

I agree with NIH, it sounds like a NodeBuilder issue.  Are you currently using ZenNode?  It has issues when you start to reach really large maps.  I personally had success with DeepBSP (it's bundled with GZDoomBuilder).  It's not as efficient at building the nodes as ZenNode, and is often seen as a bit of an archaic node builder, but in my experience it's pretty reliable for very large Limit-Removing and Boom-format maps.

1. I successfully managed to get an invisible railing for my staircase working using self-referencing sectors (thanks to page 4 of this very thread, in fact), but there's a minor problem. Cacodemons who pass over the railing and get killed out in the open above the 3072+ unit drop often seem instead to die floating in the sky, as if they landed on the invisible railing, even though they're clearly well past the edge of the invisible sector. And sometimes distant cacodemons projectiles, flying through the air can vanish briefly before reappearing. I could make "monsters can't cross" lines, but if there's a better way to fix it, I'd prefer that.

EDIT: If I IDCLIP onto the ground, walking around sometimes ends up with me high in the sky for no reason. That's strange because right now, the ground is all one big sector.

2. I've got a reject error in my level, what's the best nodebuilder to help fix it? The problem is that I can see the central arena in my level from the outside stairs. Those areas are connected, but a floor raised to the same level as the ceiling should be preventing vision. (That floor lowers to the ground once the player enters the arena, thus showing the outside and making the arena look more open. In addition, A cyberdemon can see me in the starting elevator, even though several closed doors and void spaces should prevent that even if the outside stairs were visible from the arena.

3. I added a few "Action 348 - W1 Autosave" lines to my map, but those are a GZDoom feature, will it cause problems with other ports, or will the unknown action just be ignored?

9 hours ago, meapineapple said:

Is there a Boom-compatible way to change what music lump is used for what maps and screens? This seems like something that would be a no-brainer feature of DeHackEd, but I see only an Eternity extension and I'm not sure what other ports might respect the same fields, if any.

 

One nice thing would be to change music lump names to something nice and easy like "D_MAP01" instead of "D_RUNNIN", but I would also like to set the cast roll music to something other than the MAP32 music if possible.

Yes actually it's possible and you can see an example of it in Plutonia 2.

3 hours ago, Bauul said:

I agree with NIH, it sounds like a NodeBuilder issue.  Are you currently using ZenNode?

I am indeed using ZenNode, which never gave me trouble before in the few huge maps I've made. Thanks for the DeepBSP suggestion, that seemed to have fixed enemies falling through the map! Is there any disadvantage in using DeepBSP? I admit, I know little about NodeBuilders and used ZenNode because it was recommended as "the best".

11 hours ago, Gez said:

Yes actually it's possible and you can see an example of it in Plutonia 2.

...This does not seem to be the case? Plutonia 2 has a MAPINFO lump and I think this would be the case in a ZDoom port, but I tested in PrBoom and the music seems to be the same.

Which I guess I can just take to mean it won't be done?

edit: Wait, I don't see how this would be any different with ZDoom. I don't have time to test it right now, but are you sure this is the right WAD?

Oops, when I edited the MAPINFO lump to change the music for my Map11 replacement, I didn't specify a text screen to include, and so it isn't showing the default text screen between map 11 and 12, and I actually didn't want that screen removed. Is there a way to put the default text screen back in, or is the best way just to write a custom text screen to use and put it in instead.

Also, while I'm here, I'll repeat that I've got a strange glitch with my WIP map. I made self-referencing sectors to create an invisible railing, but something is glitched and the game seems to think that the sectors are in the wrong places. So I get things like a Cacodemon corpse floating mid-air, or fireballs erupting in mid-air for no reason. There are no sectors around there. Any idea what's going on? Could it possibly be that I made a typo and one of the linedefs for one of the self-referencing sectors is pointing to the wrong sector?

If your target port isn't vanilla, you shouldn't be using self-referencing sectors at all.

In Boom, you'll want to make small sectors around the railing, raise them to cover the railing, give them a tag, then create a control sector outside the map that matches the height of the sector you want, and assign the special 242 (Create fake ceiling and floor) to that tag.

In ZDoom, you should be able to assign the linedef the "walkable 3D texture" flag directly.

Otherwise, double-check your self-referencing sectors and triple check your nodes. For non-vanilla, I recommend ZDBSP, for vanilla, check out ZokumBSP.

So self-referencing sectors are glitchy in modern ports, that's the reason?

I checked all the lines and verified that they were all tagged properly, and I used ZokumBSP which fixed a reject error, and seemed to reduce - but not entirely fix - the floating sectors. Time for me to go back to and old version and learn how to use the fake floor/ceiling thing to make an invisible railing for my set of 64 self-raising stairs. (The railing doesn't need to be self-raising.) It'll be a pain to make all those sectors again, but I guess I don't really have any better options.

Thanks for the help.

17 hours ago, Spectre01 said:

Is there any disadvantage in using DeepBSP? 

For limit-removing maps, not that I've come across. It's an old node builder that lacks precision and efficiency compared to something like ZokumBSP, but it can comfortably handle extended nodes (i.e. very big maps) that Zokum can't, and it's fully supported by basically every modern source port (except Chocolate, but if you need DeepBSP then Chocolate won't run the map anyway!).

If you're interested in what counts as a "very big map" and thus requiring extended nodes, I wrote a brief guide on it a couple of years back when I ran into the same thing myself: https://www.doomworld.com/forum/topic/91052-geometry-limits-of-vanilla-doom-map-format/

While I'm preparing to rebuild my invisible railing, there's another problem which has been bothering me for a while.

In-game, I can see the entire inner area on the automap (the inner area is the green part) from the outer ring, the grey part, even though vision should be blocked by a floor raised completely to the ceiling (the red ring). And yes, the sliver of green ring between the outer grey ring and the red ring is its own sector.  Even setting "show as one sided on map" flags didn't stop the game from revealing the inner arena.

Running the map through ZokumBSP didn't fix it. It's starting to look like I'll need to take drastic measures. Is there some kind of specialized reject editor I could use to manually prevent the outer ring and inner arena sectors from being visible to each other for both players and monsters?

17 minutes ago, Stabbey said:

Is there some kind of specialized reject editor I could use to manually prevent the outer ring and inner arena sectors from being visible to each other for both players and monsters?

Point of clarification, reject has nothing to do with this in the slightest.

If you're still having problems despite changing node builder, perhaps you need to upload the map so others can investigate it physically.

4 hours ago, Stabbey said:

So self-referencing sectors are glitchy in modern ports, that's the reason?

 

I checked all the lines and verified that they were all tagged properly, and I used ZokumBSP which fixed a reject error, and seemed to reduce - but not entirely fix - the floating sectors. Time for me to go back to and old version and learn how to use the fake floor/ceiling thing to make an invisible railing for my set of 64 self-raising stairs. (The railing doesn't need to be self-raising.) It'll be a pain to make all those sectors again, but I guess I don't really have any better options.

 

Thanks for the help.

Is your self-referencing sector properly surrounded by an enclosing sector?

28 minutes ago, Worst said:

 

Is your self-referencing sector properly surrounded by an enclosing sector?

 

...Argh, that might have been what I messed up this time.

I did have one of those on my first attempt at the railing, but I reverted to an older version because I made a mistake ( I failed to renumber the sector reference of the back sidedef of the inner sector). I didn't know what I did wrong at the time, so I just reverted to an older version. On the recent attempt, I first used -nomonsters to see that it was looking right, and didn't discover the glitch with the monsters until the entire thing was built.

1 hour ago, Edward850 said:

Point of clarification, reject has nothing to do with this in the slightest.

 

If you're still having problems despite changing node builder, perhaps you need to upload the map so others can investigate it physically.

Oh, I guess I'm mixing up terminology, then. Yeah, any other eyes on the level would be a good help, because I'm not that experienced with editing.

I started the level using Doom Builder, then switched to GZ Doom Builder, and I ran it through ZokumBSP. That fixed a reject error with a cyberdemon, but I think that came back again after I changed some architecture.

There are no scripts on the level. It's very simple in comparison to probably most of the levels built by people here.

Here's the map.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=11uMufWop5pNq5d3AFr0TV89Qt0hvQhza

It's MAP11 for Doom 2. It's playable from a pistol start on UV. The map is essentially complete, other planned changes would be to add other buildings out in the yard largely for decoration, and maybe put in a Line Horizon effect along the outer edge. I'm open to any feedback on the map, but anything other than actual problems seems outside of the scope of this thread.

17 hours ago, meapineapple said:

...This does not seem to be the case? Plutonia 2 has a MAPINFO lump and I think this would be the case in a ZDoom port, but I tested in PrBoom and the music seems to be the same.

 

Which I guess I can just take to mean it won't be done?

 

edit: Wait, I don't see how this would be any different with ZDoom. I don't have time to test it right now, but are you sure this is the right WAD?

Did you open pl2.wad in a wad editor such as SLADE 3? Did you notice that the music lumps are given names such as D_JP_PYR or D_JR_BLO instead of D_RUNNIN or D_STALKS? Did you wonder why the music is the same in PrBoom as in ZDoom despite not using the hardcoded lump names? Did you look at the DEHACKED lump to see this at the end?

Text 6 6
runninjp_pyr

Text 6 6
stalksjr_blo

Text 6 6
countdsr_gat

Text 6 6
betweerunnin

Text 4 6
doomjp_dea

Text 5 6
shawnjr_roc

Text 6 6
ddtblujr_gam

Text 6 6
in_citjp_bat

Text 4 6
deadjp_ast

Text 6 6
stlks2jp_bec

Text 6 6
theda2eb_und

Text 6 6
ddtbl2jr_sam

Text 6 6
runni2sr_sta

Text 5 6
dead2eb_com

Text 6 6
stlks3sr_nig

Text 6 6
romerojp_sil

Text 6 6
shawn2jp_dwe

Text 6 6
messagjr_end

Text 6 6
count2pc_mar

Text 6 6
ddtbl3in_cit

Text 5 6
ampieromer2

Text 6 6
theda3eb_aga

Text 6 6
adrianjp_san

Text 6 6
messg2jp_plu

Text 6 6
romer2pc_out

Text 5 6
tenserp_gut

Text 6 6
shawn3jr_hun

Text 6 6
openinjp_cat

Text 4 6
evilrp_sin

Text 6 6
ultimajp_nob

Text 6 6
read_mjp_was

Text 6 6
dm2ttlcountd

Text 6 6
dm2intja_cer

Yes I am ten billion percent certain this is the right WAD.

4 hours ago, Gez said:

Did you open pl2.wad in a wad editor such as SLADE 3? Did you notice that the music lumps are given names such as D_JP_PYR or D_JR_BLO instead of D_RUNNIN or D_STALKS? Did you wonder why the music is the same in PrBoom as in ZDoom despite not using the hardcoded lump names? Did you look at the DEHACKED lump to see this at the end?

Ah, I see now. I thought that you were saying it was also possible to "set the cast roll music to something other than the MAP32 MAP31 music", which Plutonia 2 does definitely not do, and which was the main reason I had asked the question.

Text 4 6
evilrp_sin

Of course, this changes the music for both MAP31 and the cast roll, and the music for them is not changed separately.

I would love to add recoil to some of my weapons but i'm not sure how to do it. So far i found out it have something to do with a_setpitch but is there a second way how to achieve recoil since my fire code part in decorate allready look like this?

Fire:
   NULL A 0 A_Jump(150,"fire1")
   NULL A 0 A_Jump(150,"fire2")
   NULL A 0 A_Jump(150,"fire3")
   NULL A 0 A_Jump(150,"fire4")
   NULL A 0 A_Jump(150,"fire5")

Line has allready action that are important for correct weapon work and i'm not sure if i could do it somehow.

1 hour ago, Marlamir said:

I would love to add recoil to some of my weapons but i'm not sure how to do it. So far i found out it have something to do with a_setpitch but is there a second way how to achieve recoil since my fire code part in decorate allready look like this?

Fire:
   NULL A 0 A_Jump(150,"fire1")
   NULL A 0 A_Jump(150,"fire2")
   NULL A 0 A_Jump(150,"fire3")
   NULL A 0 A_Jump(150,"fire4")
   NULL A 0 A_Jump(150,"fire5")

Line has allready action that are important for correct weapon work and i'm not sure if i could do it somehow.

Use A_Recoil :P

https://zdoom.org/wiki/A_Recoil

1 hour ago, Marlamir said:

Line has allready action that are important for correct weapon work and i'm not sure if i could do it somehow.

You can assign multiple actions to a single frame like this:

TNT1 A 1
	{
		A_Action(blah, blah);
		A_Action2(blah, blah);
		A_Action3(blah, blah);
	}

Remember the semi-colon at the end of each line, that's a difference to how Decorate normally works.

Is there any way to change an actor's height through ACS? It's not one of the options in SetActorProperty for whatever reason.

EDIT: Also, is there any way to make an actor infinitely tall, regardless of the compatibility flags in use?

@Bauul Ohh This is what i exactly need  thank you bauul howewer idk if this is gzdoom bug or not but everytime i shoot from that weapon gzdoom freeze, no errors just freeze :/. From that point i was trying came with diff. solutions and i decide to duplicate frame line with 0 tick and add action i need. Work like charm(Gzdoom you will not gonna stop me :))

1. I'm trying to make a series of nested octogons. Using the ellipse tool, I got the first one to be within 1 mu symetrically on all sides. In GZ Doombuilder, is there some way to resize a sector proportionally? I can't seem to find it, all I can do is resize one axis at a time and that's just not working right.

2. Also in GZ Doombuilder, when I add a sector with a different floor/ceiling height to an adjoining area, is there some setting so I can tell it to just keep the wall texture which was on the old one-sided wall for the upper/lower textures so I only have to adjust it, instead of reapplying it AND adjusting it? It makes adding little switch nooks a hassle. I found an option somewhere "don't clear sidedefs", but experimentally trying that out didn't work.

3. The player has just killed a "Hanging Keen" which had a "0" on the floor in front of it. What do you think the message in this screenshot is trying to tell the player? (Also, note that most of the letters and numbers, do not produce lighted sectors on the ceiling.)

4. ANSWERED - The old vanilla limit of "30 moving sectors" only counts for perpetual movers - crushers and lifts, right? I want to make a 48 sector staircase which rises, without using self-raising stairs because I need the entire room tagged with the same tag so I can lower it all at once. EDIT: Gez has answered. I'm using line types 23 and 18, so I'm good.

5. Design-wise, what are people's thoughts on maps which use sectors tagged with "Reduce player to 1% health and exit map" as an exit? Does your opinion change if there's also a second, regular exit available, but more difficult to open?

20 minutes ago, Stabbey said:

4. The old vanilla limit of "30 moving sectors" only counts for perpetual movers - crushers and lifts, right? I want to make a 48 sector staircase which rises, without using self-raising stairs because I need the entire room tagged with the same tag so I can lower it all at once.

There's a 30 limit for "plats" (platforms). This is only used by linetypes 10, 14, 15, 20, 21, 22, 47, 53, 62, 66, 67, 68, 87, 88, 95, 120, 121, 122 and 123: the proper lifts as well as the other generic floor changes (with or without texture changes). Crushers, stairs, donuts and doors do not count against this limit, even if they change the floors.

4 hours ago, Stabbey said:

1. I'm trying to make a series of nested octogons. Using the ellipse tool, I got the first one to be within 1 mu symetrically on all sides. In GZ Doombuilder, is there some way to resize a sector proportionally? I can't seem to find it, all I can do is resize one axis at a time and that's just not working right.

 

 

If I undestood it right..

Create one octagon with ellipse tool. Then select it and use "stair sector builder". Now you can have as many nested sectors as you want to.

3 hours ago, Gez said:

There's a 30 limit for "plats" (platforms). This is only used by linetypes 10, 14, 15, 20, 21, 22, 47, 53, 62, 66, 67, 68, 87, 88, 95, 120, 121, 122 and 123: the proper lifts as well as the other generic floor changes (with or without texture changes). Crushers, stairs, donuts and doors do not count against this limit, even if they change the floors.

I had it mostly right, then, although I didn't know it affected changing-floor actions. Luckily this isn't a case of that, I'm only using actions 18 and 23.

28 minutes ago, Jaska said:

 

If I undestood it right..

 

Create one octagon with ellipse tool. Then select it and use "stair sector builder". Now you can have as many nested sectors as you want to.

Oh, brilliant, that worked wonderfully, I hadn't thought of that. Thanks, very helpful.

SOLVED

Why does this text in MAPINFO go off the screen instead of word-wrapping? How can I get it to word-wrap properly?

Quote

clusterdef 1

{
 flat = RROCK14
 exittext = "You have won! Your victory has enabled \n humankind to evacuate Earth and escape \n the nightmare. Now you are the only \n human left on the face of the planet. \n Cannibal mutations, carnivorous aliens, \n and evil spirits are your only neighbours. \n You sit back and wait for death, content \n that you have saved your species. \n \n But then, Earth Control beams down a \n message from space: 'Sensors have located \n the source of the alien invasion. If you \n go there, you may be able to block their \n entry. The alien base is in the heart of \n your own home city, not far from the \n starport.' Slowly and painfully, you get \n up and return to the fray."
}

Try removing the \n and hitting the enter key in their places.

That way it looks like:

clusterdef 1


{
 flat = RROCK14
 exittext = "You have won! Your victory has enabled 
humankind to evacuate Earth and escape 
the nightmare. Now you are the only 
human left on the face of the planet. 
Cannibal mutations, carnivorous aliens, 
and evil spirits are your only neighbours. 
You sit back and wait for death, content 
that you have saved your species. 

But then, Earth Control beams down a 
message from space: 'Sensors have located 
the source of the alien invasion. If you 
go there, you may be able to block their 
entry. The alien base is in the heart of 
your own home city, not far from the 
starport.' Slowly and painfully, you get 
up and return to the fray."
}

SOLVED

That was the first thing I tried after the text went off the screen, and I knew it wouldn't work because the next line goes to gray instead of the proper red." I tried it again and it says, as expected that there's an unterminated string constant.

Searching took me to a thread which says that \n is supposed to create a new line. It doesn't for me (and to be sure I tried with both directions of slashes)?

For that matter I don't know the format to get quote marks to appear in a text screen. \" didn't work. EDIT: Just using two single quotes in a row works fine.

I poked around the gzdoom.pk3 and I found in the MAPINFO, it looks for something in the LANGUAGE text. There, I found this:

C2TEXT =
	"YOU HAVE WON! YOUR VICTORY HAS ENABLED\n"
	"HUMANKIND TO EVACUATE EARTH AND ESCAPE\n"
	"THE NIGHTMARE.  NOW YOU ARE THE ONLY\n"
	"HUMAN LEFT ON THE FACE OF THE PLANET.\n"
	"CANNIBAL MUTATIONS, CARNIVOROUS ALIENS,\n"
	"AND EVIL SPIRITS ARE YOUR ONLY NEIGHBOURS.\n"
	"YOU SIT BACK AND WAIT FOR DEATH, CONTENT\n"
	"THAT YOU HAVE SAVED YOUR SPECIES.\n"
	"\n"
	"BUT THEN, EARTH CONTROL BEAMS DOWN A\n"
	"MESSAGE FROM SPACE: \"SENSORS HAVE LOCATED\n"
	"THE SOURCE OF THE ALIEN INVASION. IF YOU\n"
	"GO THERE, YOU MAY BE ABLE TO BLOCK THEIR\n"
	"ENTRY.  THE ALIEN BASE IS IN THE HEART OF\n"
	"YOUR OWN HOME CITY, NOT FAR FROM THE\n"
	"STARPORT.\" SLOWLY AND PAINFULLY YOU GET\n"
	"UP AND RETURN TO THE FRAY.";

In the MAPINFO, it says this:

//MAP11 exittext
cluster 6
{
	flat = "$BGFLAT11"
	exittext = lookup, "C2TEXT"

}

Try adding closing quotations to the lines and use \" where you want to insert quotation marks in the text.

In LANGUAGE, you have to put the \n to make a new line; however in MAPINFO I believe you can use commas outside the quotes.

clusterdef 1

{
	flat = RROCK14
	exittext = "You have won! Your victory has enabled",
		"humankind to evacuate Earth and escape",
		"the nightmare. Now you are the only",
		"human left on the face of the planet.",
		"Cannibal mutations, carnivorous aliens,",
		"and evil spirits are your only neighbours.",
		"You sit back and wait for death, content",
		"that you have saved your species.",
		,
		"But then, Earth Control beams down a",
		"message from space: 'Sensors have located",
		"the source of the alien invasion. If you",
		"go there, you may be able to block their",
		"entry. The alien base is in the heart of",
		"your own home city, not far from the",
		"starport.' Slowly and painfully, you get",
		"up and return to the fray."
}

No comma on the last line. I put each line on a separate line for legibility of the code, but that's not technically needed, it's just the commas that create linebreaks. IIRC it should work.

1 hour ago, Gez said:

In LANGUAGE, you have to put the \n to make a new line; however in MAPINFO I believe you can use commas outside the quotes.

clusterdef 1

{
	flat = RROCK14
	exittext = "You have won! Your victory has enabled",
		"humankind to evacuate Earth and escape",
		"the nightmare. Now you are the only",
		"human left on the face of the planet.",
		"Cannibal mutations, carnivorous aliens,",
		"and evil spirits are your only neighbours.",
		"You sit back and wait for death, content",
		"that you have saved your species.",
		,
		"But then, Earth Control beams down a",
		"message from space: 'Sensors have located",
		"the source of the alien invasion. If you",
		"go there, you may be able to block their",
		"entry. The alien base is in the heart of",
		"your own home city, not far from the",
		"starport.' Slowly and painfully, you get",
		"up and return to the fray."
}

No comma on the last line. I put each line on a separate line for legibility of the code, but that's not technically needed, it's just the commas that create linebreaks. IIRC it should work.

Yes, that did it!

Instead of the two commas in a row, though, the empty line has to be "", but other than that, it works perfectly. Thanks a bunch.