Sloping floors this way and that way

I'm working on an 'outside' area and trying to use zdoom's slopes to add realism to the ground (piles of dirt, etc...) but i'm having the darndest time making this look good. Can anyone refer me to a level where someone has accomplished this in an exceptional way? Sticking to parallelagrams or triangles seems to be the way but i'm just not nailing what i'm goin' for. And this zdoom sure is taking alot of CRAP i'm throwing at it! man i'd really appreciate having something to look at as an example.

http://sl4.poned.com/screens/tutorial/slopeguide.png
Here's a guide I made a while back on the usual triangle-slope technique.

Make a few rows (or "donuts") of those, separated from each other by a bit of non-sloped flat space (or else the slope lines will end up using the wrong height and it won't work properly at all).

I generally keep the rows and donuts in relatively simple shapes when I'm building them, and then once I've got them set up I'll start dragging vertices around to really mix up the shape of the hills, for a mixture of steeper and flatter areas. I also sometimes mix up the size of the flat non-sloped border sectors between each row: while in some cases it's preferable to just hide the flat areas by making them as thin as possible, I sometimes give them a mixed-up unusual shape as I'm doing the same to the sloped rows. The end result can look fantastically natural.

http://sl4.poned.com/screens/tutorial/slopeymess.png Map shot (probably a bit out of date)
http://sl4.poned.com/screens/32in24-8-wip/3/Screenshot_Doom_20080902_100101.png Ingame shot (yeah yeah, the rock texture tiling is obvious)

Hope this helps!

Fantastic post, and that ingame shot looks incredible. I'm bookmarking this thread for future reference!

Also, would you mind pointing somewhere that might have as nice of an explanation on how to use the Slope Things too?

aw jeez you are exactly what i'm lookin' for! Yes the problem is when i try to pull out those "mixed-up unusual shapes" but I HAVE figured out that adding a square between parral...grams yeah lets me pull that sector foward or even to a point by halving that sector that i ...oh stop me here and lemme go check this out. Thanks esselfortium !

http://sl4.poned.com/screens/32in24-8-wip/3/Screenshot_Doom_20080902_100101.png Ingame shot (yeah yeah, the rock texture tiling is obvious)

I have a sudden interest in porting might and magic 7 to zdoom in hexen format ... >.<
^^^^^Bad AB, will not work! (but maybe MM8? it could be played with only the main hero ...) <<<<<BAD AB! MM gameplay relied on party balance in gameplay! (but it's a port in the spirit of MM?)
^^^^^ JUST GET BACK TO MAPPING! (fine ... :| )

ArmouredBlood said:

I have a sudden interest in porting might and magic 7 to zdoom in hexen format ... >.<
^^^^^Bad AB, will not work! (but maybe MM8? it could be played with only the main hero ...) <<<<<BAD AB! MM gameplay relied on party balance in gameplay! (but it's a port in the spirit of MM?)
^^^^^ JUST GET BACK TO MAPPING! (fine ... :| )

^ Internal struggle of the mapper and his imagination, sadly with this poor fellow, he lost his mind and cannot do what his mind speaks...

As for the slopes, they make places look cool as you know, and having pyramids in locations of the map could add on to visual aspect, but the sectors you wish to have as a pyramid MUST have equal distance between floor/ceiling, same height levels. But for hills... different heights, but have to be at such slope angles to achieve walk-able hills.

Edit-- Zdoom.org has a Wiki with Linedef actions on how to deal with Slope on G/ZDoom ports, which is in Editing>Linedef/Line Actions>-linedefs- .
Oh yeah, a level set in general, KDIZD has alot of slope, take a look.

I think for weirdly tilted sectors it's better to use slope things http://zdoom.org/wiki/Slopes

Makes it quite easy: http://62.143.31.174/boris/db2/bezier.zip

Nomad said...
I'm bookmarking this thread for future reference!

Ditto.

I've always wondered about doing that kind of sloping but I never really understood how to accomplish it. I have tried but the result was kind of disturbing :S

all those are great examples of slopes! Which does zdoom handle better...a slope THING or setslope on a linedef? I noticed the word "new" on the Thing description.

Linedef is easiest, specially on DB 2, where you could set the slope either on ceiling or floor.

For terrain the vertex height thing comes in handy.

http://zdoom.org/wiki/Slopes under Slope Things