Level 32 Questions/Issues

I have a few questions/issues regarding level 32 of my wad. The premise is a showdown on the top of the turret you're on. Here, WAR is keeping a big nuclear cannon/A-A gun and your side mission here is to turn it off. But I've got some problems:

1. The sky texture displayed in this level is RSKY3. I didn't notice this until I played it. But this is all wrong; see, I'm going to use a "predawn" sky for RSY3, but when you're in level 32 it's supposed to be black with stars (hence the name I gave it, Starlit Showdown). Is there any way to change this so that level 32 displays RSKY2 as its sky? In DeHackEd maybe (since I'm already using a patch anyway)?

2. I wanted to replace the commander keen dolls with some kind of "power column," which when hit would disable the gun and force the doors on its side open (this is where I use tag 666; the exit switch is inside the gun). IIRC, the sprite naming method you use is ****(letter)(number), where the letter is its frame and the number is its viewpoint. I copied all the KEEN?# entries into my wad and replaced them with what I needed. But I noticed that Commander Keen's done differently than other enemies; Frame A is normal, Frame M is hit, and everything in between is the dying sequence. Can I make it so the "power column" has multiple frames? If so, how? (I'm using Wintex 5, if it matters)

3. It also seems that when the "power column" dies, it seems to move up a bit. Basically, the dying sequence is it dimming to blackness, so there's no change in picture size and thus, no change in X/Y offsets. I made all the offsets, A-M, the same. What else could have happened?

4. This is just a slight concern. See, you exit level 31 using the same switch you appear on the rooftop with - it's a door in level 32. On the roof, the sky is at 256 units. But I didn't want the puny start building looking that high, so I made another sector around it with a ceiling of 128. Now, around the roof I made four little towers, facing into the center diagonally. The point of those is to grab new weapons and/or having a good place to snipe from in DM (in the text file I'm going to state that level 32 is the ONLY level which works decently in DM). But they, of course, have floors of 128. So you can look out and see the bugged area where logically you should see roof, but instead you see the product of the sky trick. Besides looking like crap, is there any problem that occurs from this?

1. No the sky in Map32 is always Sky3, unless you're using some sort of source mod (like zdoom or prboom) where you can change it, or unless you change the sky for E3.

2. You can give it more frames appending unused frames by changing the "next frame" column in DeHackEd.

3. The Keen doll normally hangs from the ceiling and falls as it dies. If this is what's causing the movement, make it stand on the ground instead (by changing the bits field in DeHackEd's Things mode.)

Note that the Keen doll works on any map, not just on Map32...

4. Hmm... you might as well have posted a screen shot to show exactly what you mean, but if it looks like shit, why not try something else?

myk said:

1. No the sky in Map32 is always Sky3, unless you're using some sort of source mod (like zdoom or prboom) where you can change it, or unless you change the sky for E3.

2. You can give it more frames appending unused frames by changing the "next frame" column in DeHackEd.

3. The Keen doll normally hangs from the ceiling and falls as it dies. If this is what's causing the movement, make it stand on the ground instead (by changing the bits field in DeHackEd's Things mode.)

Note that the Keen doll works on any map, not just on Map32...

4. Hmm... you might as well have posted a screen shot to show exactly what you mean, but if it looks like shit, why not try something else?

You can also use the Keen Death code pointer for any other object. That will work with the original EXE and any source port except Legacy. (If you want to use the effect with different objects in different levels)

netnomad312 said:

1. The sky texture displayed in this level is RSKY3. I didn't notice this until I played it. But this is all wrong; see, I'm going to use a "predawn" sky for RSY3, but when you're in level 32 it's supposed to be black with stars (hence the name I gave it, Starlit Showdown). Is there any way to change this so that level 32 displays RSKY2 as its sky? In DeHackEd maybe (since I'm already using a patch anyway)?

You can use a "fake sky" - create a flat out of your night sky, and insert it in with Wintex (no DeuSF required, just make sure that it lies between the automatically generated FF_START and FF_END, renaming them if necessary). Use this flat on the ceiling of the "outdoor" sectors (and the night sky texture on the walls if needed) and it'll look like it's outdoors when it actually isn't. (this worked for me in Fragport, btw)

Ultimate DooMer said:

You can use a "fake sky" - create a flat out of your night sky, and insert it in with Wintex (no DeuSF required, just make sure that it lies between the automatically generated FF_START and FF_END, renaming them if necessary). Use this flat on the ceiling of the "outdoor" sectors (and the night sky texture on the walls if needed) and it'll look like it's outdoors when it actually isn't. (this worked for me in Fragport, btw)

Er... I don't get it. I thought Wintex would only accept 64*64 entries for flats. But even so, that wouldn't stay stationary, would it? You'd know all too well that those were normal textures & flats... right?

myk said:

2. You can give it more frames appending unused frames by changing the "next frame" column in DeHackEd.

3. The Keen doll normally hangs from the ceiling and falls as it dies. If this is what's causing the movement, make it stand on the ground instead (by changing the bits field in DeHackEd's Things mode.)

I'm only using DeHackEd for things that aren't necessary. I know that I never used to be able to use dhe patches because I had Doom95 only. Now I know not many people use that, but I guess you could say I have a soft spot for 'em. It's not that noticable, so I think I'll just forget this...

myk said:

Note that the Keen doll works on any map, not just on Map32...

Oh, I know. I just used them for tag 666 (and this is a megawad; I didn't just pick Map32).

netnomad312 said:

I'm only using DeHackEd for things that aren't necessary. I know that I never used to be able to use dhe patches because I had Doom95 only. Now I know not many people use that, but I guess you could say I have a soft spot for 'em. It's not that noticable, so I think I'll just forget this...

OK, I see. Alternately, you could place the Keen replacement on a raised area, like a counter or a tech-style dais, so that the height to the ceiling is equal to the Keen thing's height; thus the thing would not fall as it dies and there would be no movement.

netnomad312 said:

Er... I don't get it. I thought Wintex would only accept 64*64 entries for flats. But even so, that wouldn't stay stationary, would it? You'd know all too well that those were normal textures & flats... right?

Choose a 64x64 part of your sky and copy that into a new bitmap. I know they won't stay still like real skies (and it would be easy to notice that the sky is fake), but it still looks fairly realistic, especially with an appropriate light level.

(and it's still better than not having the night stars at all)

No... I needed a decent light level so you can see the four sniping towers and also the gun, which points off the platform, too. IMO it looks pretty cool; maybe I'll get a screenshot of it sometime...

Anyway, I could just say in the story that the player "is so far up" that they can see the light coming from the distance. Hey, I'm not going to take out a third sky so one level looks good.

On that note, though... anybody know where I can get such a sky texture?