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Chopkinsca

Are there any outdoor wads with variable height buildings?

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I want to play a map which has buildings that you can enter, but not are all the same height (like most 'city' maps). But I don't know if any exist.

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Too hard to do without the walls getting cut off by skies being drawn in front of them as a result of the way Doom renders stuff.

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yeah, i've seen this effect used in a few random maps and in many of my own. But it's tricky as UV pointed out. cchest map13 has a few examples of this.

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Yeah, I know quite well how tricky it is. I have several ideas right now on how to do it, but I wanted to see how other people did it first.

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Endgame map07 (the blue key building), AV map24 (the first open area).
There's quite a few out there, Mordeth TC?

There's some effects using differing sky heights in 'The Darkening'

I could send you an example map I built if your interested.

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It's possible to do this with Zdoom's transfer heights action. This effect is used more than once in The Ultimate Doomer's Super Sonic Demo...

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cyber-menace said:
It's possible to do this with Zdoom's transfer heights action.


You don't need source ports for these things, and in this case it won't help you at all.

Basic rule #1: You vary building heights by varying the height of the sky sector surrounding this building.

Basic rule #2: When doing this you should keep in mind that a lowered sky ceiling will block towering structures behind it. To avoid this, use perspective blocking.

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there's an example of this in e1m1 the outbuilding that houses the stairs is shorter than everything else. the fence adjacent to it is cunningly angled so that you can't (quite) stand in a spot that would allow the sky to block one of the taller sides of the main "U" shaped building

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theres a few in the skulltag maps and tokeDM, the skulltag map has a good example of the effect breaking down.

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My current situation is this.
For now I am leaving it until I feel like trying to overcome it.
The white building should have no problems, but the red one will be tricky. I may have to give up it's windows..

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Windows aren't a problem, the wall sections behind the buildings will always be obscurred unless you lower the players viewpoint.

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Try making a dummy sector with the height you want your builing to be, then make JUST the outside sidedefs reference to that sector. *Might* work. But probably not.

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KoRn said:

My current situation is this.
For now I am leaving it until I feel like trying to overcome it.
The white building should have no problems, but the red one will be tricky. I may have to give up it's windows..


That definatly looks like Zdoom... the only problem with the transfer heights trick is that you WOULD have to give up your windows... hopefully you'll fix that up on your own.

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The ealiest outdoor example using different tall buildings is probably E3M6, and yes, there are some places where the sky blocks the sight to other buildings, mostly noticable when walking around in the lava areas.

Mordeth said:

Basic rule #2: When doing this you should keep in mind that a lowered sky ceiling will block towering structures behind it. To avoid this, use perspective blocking.

This limitation can be beaten with doom ports using glnodes. Might be insterresting in case you're designing especially for such a port.
Check out UAC_DEAD.WAD in Vavoom! You can look over the track and see the big building behind it. Also at the balcony in that building (in front of the fake swing door), you can look to the startarea, which isn't possible with the original renderer. (Unfortunately the invisible stairs don't work in this port.)

Unfortunately don't having this limitation also means revealing design flaws. Check out E2M1, use the first teleporter and look to the window in the ceiling. You can see inside the tall rooms surrounding it as the sky sector is too low to be realistic.

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I worked out a solution to my problem.
If you want, you can find the demo wad on my website here
it's under adventure in the uncompleted project section.

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ZDoom's sloping effects work well on sky textures as well.......they can get kinda tricky, tho

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KoRn said:

My current situation is this.
For now I am leaving it until I feel like trying to overcome it.
The white building should have no problems, but the red one will be tricky. I may have to give up it's windows..

Try seeing what your level how it is there looks in Vavoom...

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