Jump to content
Search In
  • More options...
Find results that contain...
Find results in...
NaturalTvventy

sector cleanup editor

Recommended Posts

i don't suppose there's a tool out there that looks at the sectors of a WAD and combines all the ones with exact similar properties (floor, ceiling, light, tag, etc etc)? That would be pretty handy for a final cleanup tool to reduce file size before release.

NT

Share this post


Link to post
NaturalTvventy said:

i don't suppose there's a tool out there that looks at the sectors of a WAD and combines all the ones with exact similar properties (floor, ceiling, light, tag, etc etc)? That would be pretty handy for a final cleanup tool to reduce file size before release.

Is file size important? It can be slower after combining for example.

Share this post


Link to post

Also, monsters far away may be awakened by the player if they are in sections corresponding to the sector numbers the player is visiting.

EDIT: Imagine two people starting to talk at the same time with the word also, to point something out.

Share this post


Link to post

Also you will have sound issues after auto-combining, because sounds will be applied to whole combined sector. Monsters will be activated when you did not plan.

Share this post


Link to post

I was just about to start a new thread until I read this one. My question is very closely related to the topic, so please forgive me OP.



Sector A and sector C share the same floor, ceiling, light level and effect. A and C are seperated by sector B.

Is there any benefit or harm to joining A and C? What considerations should be made before doing so?

I have been joining similar sectors by hand in Doom Builder, but wonder if it really helps anything or if I am asking for problems.

Share this post


Link to post
DuckReconMajor said:

I think that's the same question the OP had, which was answered in the following posts.


But I didn't want my carefully worded post and pretty picture to be wasted :(

Also* ... OP asked about a utility, whereas I am doing it by hand.

* (Keeping with the meme of the thread)

Share this post


Link to post

There were advantages to doing this back in the pre-sourceport days when people still played on 486s, but computers and sourceports are powerful enough that it's probably not going to make a difference these days.

Still, I join sectors where I can, simply for the reason it's easier to change a flat in multiple places once than multiple times, or have to keep remembering to select multiple sectors.

I've also seen this functionality in an editor, but can't for the life of me remember which one it was.

Share this post


Link to post

Deepsea has it, but it wouldn't of much use since you probably won't be able to save the map once you've completed the operation.

Share this post


Link to post

Also there might be times when you do not want sectors to be merged for visual reasons. Imagine having a corridor whit a few lights and 2 or so of them flicker. If they have a different sector number they will flicker differently.

The program would join them and they would flicker the same, which potentially would look ass.

The monsters awakening is a much bigger issue tho.

IMO it is OK to join sectors which are in the same room for ease of editing, but that's as far as I would go.

Share this post


Link to post

The enemies aren't the only trouble. For instance, you would destroy raising stairs. All doors with the same properties will open and close at the same time. Same with crushers, ie. if one is blocked, all of them react on it. Even worse, platforms, glowing, blinking etc. rely on the properties of neighboring sectors, which would be messed up as well.
Sometimes these side effects are desired, but you better join the sectors manually then, to prevent messing with the entire map.

Just doing so for the sake of sector count is a bad idea, apparently.

Super Jamie said:

There were advantages to doing this back in the pre-sourceport days when people still played on 486s

I think the contrary is the case, unless you didn't generate a propper reject map. Reducing the sector count reduces the reject table size and its efficiency. I remember playing Doom on a 486DX 50, I got some maps with many monsters which had about 3fps. I rebuilt the reject table, which resulted in almost full speed, which wouldn't have worked with all those sectors joint.

As an interesting fact, IDBSP has only sector properties in the source file rather then actual sector numbers, and builds them along with anything else. Thus, you can't (and neither did id) actually join sectors at will, but if sectors only share a single vertex, they become one. The very first step right in front of you at the beginning of E1M1 is such an example. Also, id put a dummy tag in every second sector for raising stairs to actually prevent IDBSP from joining them.

Share this post


Link to post

The only case where I've found this useful is when making maps for Doom Legacy with 3d floors. You could save a lot of processing power by combining all sectors with the same features if they had 3d floors in them.

Share this post


Link to post

Only consider merging identical sidedefs, not sectors, and by that I mean sidedefs which don't belong to a switch linedef, or one which is subject to any in game texture manipulation. Sidedefs occupy quite a lot of space each, due to their six texture entries.

Share this post


Link to post

Eh? you mean split linedefs I take it?
Tho if they were split they are split for a reason usually, it's not like lines just go and split themselves. The leveldesigner would do that himself to either change texture or segment a linedef for texture alignement reasons.

So in which case would it happen that you would have "identical sidedefs" which are split by a vertex and it was not by design? I would venture to say never. Also they do not take that much space seeing as most of the time not all 6 slots are occupied (while this being possible it would not make sense to have more than 4 slots with texture info.

Out of curiosity I just deleted all the not needed vertexes in a level I am working on (those vertexes were used for aligning textures) with the before and after being:

Vertexes: 4644 / 4281
Linedefs: 5728 / 5365
Sidedefs: 10101 / 9467

and the actual size of the file in bytes:
839597 / 806015

I would not say that a bit more than 30 kilobytes savings does not warrant doing this (esp since the level will look worse as well with badly aligned textures.)

Share this post


Link to post
Ptoing said:

Eh? you mean split linedefs I take it?

I think, he was refering to linedefs which refer to identical sidedefs. Those can be merged in a way that the linedefs not only refer to identical, but also the same sidedef. Side effects are that texture manipulation like switches and scrolling will be shared.
Indeed, considering the tight scrolling texture limitation of vanilla Doom, this can become very handy. You need only one scrolling line type in order to scroll a whole bunch of identical walls. And by having more than one scrolling line assigned to a sidedef, it can even scroll faster than normal.

Share this post


Link to post
Ptoing said:

And how does this work? I mean how do you merge them?

Doombuilder has an option for that, I think. And it automatically recreates the duplicates on loading for editing convenience.
There are some older standalone tools for this, too.
And in editors which allow editing sidedef references (any DEU based should do), you can tweak them by hand and experiment with the side effects.

Share this post


Link to post

I kinda like the idea of joining sectors with similar properties for reasons other than file size. I do a lot of my height variation in visual mode on DB2, having to scroll up on one sector to raise 4 or 5 would be great instead of raising each one individually.

Share this post


Link to post

Yeah, I used to do this with DeePsea but with a sectors that use a few of the newer Zdoom features the tool was unaware of (eg slopes), things could mess up. It used to be quite useful in ye olde days, as a few people have said, but it is of minimal use these days and often comes with unwelcome side effects (such as the ones already cited).

Share this post


Link to post
40oz said:

I kinda like the idea of joining sectors with similar properties for reasons other than file size. I do a lot of my height variation in visual mode on DB2, having to scroll up on one sector to raise 4 or 5 would be great instead of raising each one individually.

It's pretty easy to merge them yourself using the keyboard shortcut for it in 2D mode, though, and that way you end up with full control over how they're combined and (usually) don't end up accidentally affecting something unrelated halfway across the map.

Share this post


Link to post

I was thinking more from a functionality point of view. You guys are all talking about ruining stairs, waking monsters, etc but if the sector has a different purpose then it's not the same so you shouldn't join it.

Of course, that's not an automated process. It wouldn't be so difficult to code a check for sectors that are entrained to stairbuilding, but layout-based joining of sectors would require a human hand.

Share this post


Link to post
TimeOfDeath said:

You could stop monsters from waking up early by making them deaf.



You stop having bad effects by not messing up your map. In general sector merging is very bad. You can get away with it if the parts are near each other but in all other cases: Don't Do It!

Share this post


Link to post
Graf Zahl said:

You can get away with it if the parts are near each other but in all other cases: Don't Do It!


Or if you want to wake monsters up in preparation for teleporting from remote rooms ;)

Share this post


Link to post
esselfortium said:

It's pretty easy to merge them yourself using the keyboard shortcut for it in 2D mode, though, and that way you end up with full control over how they're combined and (usually) don't end up accidentally affecting something unrelated halfway across the map.


I've been steering away from that since I've used Doombuilder 1. If you merged sectors that weren't directly touching each other, it would cause a problem when building nodes so if you tried testing the map or running it in 3d mode doombuilder would crash which is a major problem if you don't save regularly; that of which I do not.

I haven't tried it in doombuilder 2 perhaps for the same reasons. Even though it's probably fixed, I naturally stay clear of the merge button.

Share this post


Link to post
40oz said:

If you merged sectors that weren't directly touching each other, it would cause a problem when building nodes so if you tried testing the map or running it in 3d mode doombuilder would crash which is a major problem if you don't save regularly; that of which I do not.

I do this all the time in DB1. Perhaps that is why I sometimes experience crashes when switching to 3D mode. Though it happens alot less when using both Wine instead of Windows, and ZenNode instead of ZDBSP.

I've just gotten into the habit of saving before entering 3D mode. I have Ctrl+Z if I want to revert changes.

Share this post


Link to post

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×