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Looper

Looking for a program that shows the map outside of the map

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What do you mean?! I mean the void, the area what player shouldn't be able to reach, but is able via void glides or such.

 

Im really curious how does the Doom2.wad, for example, look like outside of the map. The map editor/viewer could show each sector/area with different color, and when you put cursor on top of the sector, it would highlight the area and show the height. Maybe it is possible to highlight walls that somehow extend into the void, which happens in Doom2 Map31 for example (the doors extend far into the void, but not infinitely.)

 

It is easy to get a rough idea how the areas behave in the void, but there are no detailed descriptions anywhere. Exploring the void is especially difficult with extremely thin ledges/stairs. Also, how do the maps behave exactly on the very edges of the void itself (at +- 32768 map units in X or/and Y coordinates). Maybe some switches extend into the void, too!

 

Also, if the void behaves differently from the normal area, maybe it can be used for clever mapping tricks by having textures in the void somehow? I don't think anyone knows how the void behaves in detail.

Edited by Looper

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To view the game area from the void use NOCLIP from the console.

The only way to go into the void during play is, when linedefs bordering the void are set

to doublesided. Which is definitely a mistake.

 

The void area is only used to set up control sectors.

 

What exactly do you mean by "Maybe some switches extend into the void, too!"?

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11 minutes ago, Kappes Buur said:

What exactly do you mean by "Maybe some switches extend into the void, too!"?

@Looper meant the normal switches (especially EXIT ones) that can be activated while player is in the void

 

@Looper is looking for a program that shows potential places to get into the void and the exit switch that can be activated from there, if I got it right

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28 minutes ago, SilverMiner said:

@Looper meant the normal switches (especially EXIT ones) that can be activated while player is in the void

 

@Looper is looking for a program that shows potential places to get into the void and the exit switch that can be activated from there, if I got it right

Since @Looper mentioned Doom2 MAP32, at what point during playing the map is the player in the void?

If you mean the sky on the floor in the exit area, that is not a void, the player is still within the map proper.

 

As I indicated above, when a player, through a mapping mistake, is able to wind up in the void, that is definitely a mistake.

To view potential mistakes beforehand from outside the map, use the preview mode of the editor (UDB).

 

I still don't know what is meant by "Maybe some switches extend into the void, too!"?

 

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Well, for example this:

 

There are obviously some map geometries outside of the map. Things the mapper never mapped. With noclip it is possible to have some rought ideas how the map is outside the map, but not in detail. And it is a huge mess to try to map the 65536*65536 map units for EACH MAP just by running around in the void.

 

The jump in the video did not work, and I got stuck. If I made the jump, you can reach the normal exit and activate it from the void and exit the level. However, this is not the extending I was guessing about. If there is a detailed map about the void, maybe there are some parts of the doors/exit switches somewhere else in the void that makes seemingly no sense, similar to the height differences and some doors. That's the problem, no one(?) knows how the void behaves. Need some kind of "void viewer".

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4 hours ago, Kappes Buur said:

Since @Looper mentioned Doom2 MAP32

My bad, I meant Map31, a typo!

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The extend of a map should be restricted to a 32K square area (or +/- 16k) in an advanced port format and much smaller in an original Doom2 format, or things will go horribly wrong. Using the full 65k area should never be considered.

 

Whichever port you are using is bugged if it allows you to see through to the void, by jumping or whatever. All of those linedefs in that area, which are bordering the void, are marked as impassible and hence what you are experiencing should never happen. What you are seeing is called HOM. You should report this as a bug for the port you are using.

 

As I mentioned earlier, use the preview mode of the editor as a 'void viewer'.

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1 hour ago, Looper said:

There are obviously some map geometries outside of the map. Things the mapper never mapped.

 

No. How could they be in the map if they were not placed in the map. If you mean those weird looking stuff at the top and bottom of the screen, that are just remnants of the last drawn frame, as the screen isn't cleared before the next frame is drawn. See https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Hall_of_mirrors

 

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What @Looper is referring to is that the properties for sectors extend into the undefined areas of the map, sometimes in unpredictable ways. When the player is in those undefined areas after using noclip (or doing a void glide, or with an unclosed sector, etc.), they can still experience differences in heights, sector damage effects, etc., based on the surrounding sectors. Probably the simplest practical example I can think of is doing a void glide in E1M8: the floor that damages you and ends the level when your health is low enough extends into a part of the void, and so the player doesn't have to get back into that sector, they just need to go over to where that sector type affects the player.

 

I'm pretty sure this is the result of how the nodebuilder creates nodes/subsectors. There are tools to examine those in DB2 or its forks, but I think they are still constrained to the actually defined map areas. Someone that knows what they're doing could probably modify them to show how the void is affected, but I am not that person.

 

This would also mean that linedefs including switches don't extend into the void at all, assuming I understand how things are working correctly enough. Though I don't know if the edges of the map could affect anything, especially if a linedef was right up against the edge (but that's pretty uncommon).

 

Just getting DB2 and the nodes viewer from http://www.doombuilder.com/index.php?p=plugins might be enough to give you some insight. (I think forks come with all the plugins available, so you might just be able to get DBX from https://github.com/anotak/doombuilderx. I can't run it on Linux so I can't really test it at all, sorry.)

Edited by plums

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7 hours ago, boris said:

No. How could they be in the map if they were not placed in the map.

Because the sectors extend into the void. Just like doors extend into the void. I don't know how do they extend into the void in detail and that's the problem.

 

6 hours ago, plums said:

Just getting DB2 and the nodes viewer

It has no use. It doesn't show anything outside of the map itself, and if I have understood it correctly, it is not possible (currently) for the map editor to show the outcome of the map's void. Why? Because you would have to load a WAD that has already been compiled by a nodebuilder, because otherwise there's only the properties what is seen in the map editor, placed by the mapper. Of course nothing can be placed outside of the map, otherwise it would be part of the map :D

 

When you play the game though, you will see that there are sectors outside of the map, extended from the map itself... how does this extending happen? There are heigh differences, extended linedefs, etc. There's even a wall that wraps around the universe to interact with a wallrunning otherside of the map.

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I'm surprised at how many people weren't following what Looper was saying. Anyone who has spent any time in the void will instantly know the level geometry extends out from the map itself. Your height bounces all over the place when running around out there.

 

I guess the question is: how does the game decide how far the sectors "leak" into the void, and how does it choose which sectors to take priority?

 

I've never heard of any program to map this though. I'm not sure if anyone's done the due diligence to even work out how it the game chooses it.

 

I wonder if it's something the source code could shed light on?

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And other thing I am curious about... how do the sounds propagate back into the map as it is possible to wake up monsters from there. I assume it is related to the sector you are standing in the void, but again, no definite answer at least from me.

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The only thing I know of that helps in any way with this is Autodoom, and it's only partially and in the automap. See this and some subsequent posts. I have attached the revelant version from 2012 that printz made available at that time (I hope he doesn't mind me doing so). I don't know if the current version has this feature. It is activated using the console command "am_drawnodelines". It just shows how the lines extend part way into the void, and doesn't show heights. But it might be a start.

 

Probably you'd need someone to add this feature deliberately. Might it (NB: I have no idea) be as simple as adding a default texture (or one from a selection) that covers every single surface that lacks a texture? Like the way some ports do with regular missing textures? As far as the engine is concerned, there is no difference between the void and the non-void, after all.

 

Regarding waking monsters, I do know that it is possible to wake monsters as you cross over the "seam" to the other side of the void, as this happened in my pit3 demos (together with telescratching on NM), but I don't know how it determines which sectors that applies to. I suppose you could experiment by running along the seam (either making a sound or not) and seeing which sectors are woken up, but obviously that's messy.

 

autodoom_r23.zip

Edited by Grazza

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I suspect this behaviour is to do with the in-game status when the player enters the void.

 

Do you get the same in-void behaviour, at the same co coordinates, if you leave the map area at different places? If no, I would definitely suspect that last known game data is the culprit. This would also mean a 'void mapper' would be difficult because such a map would be different depending on player position etc. when entering the void. 

 

What @plums said might be seen as this behaviour, particularly the 'unpredictable ways' observation.

 

And @Dylan Omen yes this is an interesting topic.

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Hi, it's me, Foxpup, back from an incredible 5-year Doom hiatus (I had some stuff going on in my life and inexplicably never got back into gaming after it was dealt with, but that's another story). I was going to lurk a bit more before my triumphant return, but I happen to know exactly how this happens, so here I am.

 

@plums has it right. To be precise, the partitions between subsectors (defined in the nodes lump) extend beyond the map boundaries to the entire coordinate space, with the result that the subsectors themselves extend endlessly into the void. Every point in space, even void space, is part of one subsector or another, as determined by the infinitely extended node partitions (see R_PointInSubsector() in r_main.c). Unfortunately, all node viewers I've seen display subsectors as though they were completely bounded by their segs, even though segs are (as far as I know) strictly for rendering; the physical structure of subsectors is determined entirely by the nodes.

 

Note that linedefs do not extend into the void; it may seem that way because nodebuilders use linedefs as a starting point to create the subsector partitions, but the linedefs themselves are exactly where the mapper placed them, and I'm fairly certain that linedef actions (switches, walkovers, etc) can only be activated from the void if a line was erroneously placed in the void by the mapper (as in Doom 2 MAP30, though that line has no action) or if a switch is close enough to a wall to be pressed through it (like the E3M6 secret exit trick).

Edited by Foxpup : fix @mention (not used to new editor)

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Check this picture for example, it is Doom 2 Map31 once again. Important linedefs to notice:

1. The wall in north side of the map, highlighted with bolded red line.

2. Bolded green/orange linedef, which gets cut by the red trajectory.

 

So, what's going on here? You can only wallrun the bolded green part east, but not the orange one. If you edit the map, touch nothing but the red linedef in north side of the map and move it west/east, then the bolded green/orange area moves along with it. So the linedef somehow in the other side of the map affects the other linedef in the other side of the map. I have no clue how, but I know it does.

xkZswMe.png

 

 

And here's one trick, that can maybe used with combination of miko portals to halt a moving player: crush the player with a door that extends into the void, but is no longer in the same block map. This combination should preserve the momentum of the player, but stop its movement, until the door is once again opened:

 

Edited by Looper

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I don't have a huge knowledge about blockmap and HOM, but i agree with what @Foxpup is saying; linedefs have no right to shrink/extend the void, so keep that in mind.

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On 10/28/2020 at 7:20 AM, Looper said:

Check this picture for example, it is Doom 2 Map31 once again. Important linedefs to notice:

1. The wall in north side of the map, highlighted with bolded red line.

2. Bolded green/orange linedef, which gets cut by the red trajectory.

 

So, what's going on here? You can only wallrun the bolded green part east, but not the orange one. If you edit the map, touch nothing but the red linedef in north side of the map and move it west/east, then the bolded green/orange area moves along with it. So the linedef somehow in the other side of the map affects the other linedef in the other side of the map. I have no clue how, but I know it does.

xkZswMe.png

 

Try raising the nearby door ceiling heights and see if that makes a difference.

 

EDIT: nevermind, I thought you meant you couldn't wallrun because you were being blocked by a barrier.

Edited by TimeOfDeath666

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1 hour ago, Looper said:

Check this picture for example, it is Doom 2 Map31 once again. Important linedefs to notice:

1. The wall in north side of the map, highlighted with bolded red line.

2. Bolded green/orange linedef, which gets cut by the red trajectory.

 

So, what's going on here? You can only wallrun the bolded green part east, but not the orange one. If you edit the map, touch nothing but the red linedef in north side of the map and move it west/east, then the bolded green/orange area moves along with it. So the linedef somehow in the other side of the map affects the other linedef in the other side of the map. I have no clue how, but I know it does.

 

Without even looking at the map in a node viewer, I think I'm safe in assuming that that red line is a node partition, and it's splitting the exit room into multiple subsectors. I don't believe there's any other way for it to have such an effect. In particular, note that it does not split the green/orange line, as that line is already split at that exact point (-2880,-896) for the texture change; moving the partition line does not affect where that line is split, so line splitting can't be the culprit. My best guess is that moving from one subsector to another (even when both subsectors are part of the same sector) affects wallrunning somehow (purely a guess on my part since I never did fully understand how wallrunning works in the first place (the comment in P_SlideMove() that the whole function is "a kludgy mess" is a colossal understatement), but I really don't see what else it could be).

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21 minutes ago, Foxpup said:

In particular, note that it does not split the green/orange line, as that line is already split at that exact point (-2880,-896) for the texture change

True. I lied a tiny bit earlier; it only affects certain kind of wallrunning. When you wallrun with ".0000000 trick" east (Y=-880.0000000 for the player), there's a very precise angle where you can exceed the usual 32 speedlimit of that kind of a wallrun, which works/doesnt work green/orange area.

 

Anyways, seeing these subsectors and their extensions into the void created by the nodebuilders would be handy.

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Fabien Sanglard, the guy who wrote the Doom Engine Black Book, figured out a way to visualize BSPs outside of the playable area as you can see in the 2nd image of the below tweet. It's the closest thing that I can think of to what you are looking for. He said at one point that he would release this program after the book was published, but I'm not sure if he ever did.

 

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d231void.png.92645678ac513e53efe5b966015c14d1.png

 

Here's a way to reach the normal exit. I put candles in the void to help visualize in-game where the sectors changed. The orange shape is sector 21 with floor height of -24, so it creates a gap in the floor, but you can sr50 over it.

d231void.zip

 

EDIT: I see you already did this jump in your Into the Void 2 video

Edited by TimeOfDeath666

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