How do I make a decent looking force field?

Hello.

I'm having some problems making a good, or at least decent looking force field in one of my maps. I do have a nice looking texture that animates, all well so far. I'm mapping for Boom-compatible ports, by the way.

I had this idea that I wanted it to be possible to "disable" the force field, so I tried making the force field into a "floor", with a switch that lowers it, so it actually disappears, so you can walk through it once it's "disabled". But the problem is, if I only texture the "mid-textures", so the force field gets transparent, then if I use the switch to "lower" the force field, then the mid texture remains, I can walk past but it looks like the whole force field is still there.

The other solution I've tried is to texture the lower texture, if I do that, then the force field isn't transparent anymore, it looks like a starry night sky. When I use the switch though, then the force field disappears completely. This last solution might be the best of these two, but besides the fact that the whole FF looks like a star sky, (blue stars on a black background), it seems that when I use a software port like PRBoom Plus, the whole texture turns blue and really strange and ugly. It only looks half decent in a GL port like GLBoom Plus or GZDoom.

Is there any way to make a force field that is transparent, and that completely disappears, and looks at least halfway realistic, in a Boom compatible port, or do I need to map for ZDoom or similar for this? I hope my explanations made sense, by the way. Otherwise I can post pictures.

The thing about Boom mapping is that there's always a way to get the results you want, but it'll probably take some really ugly hack. Here's the ugliest hack I could think of:

http://www.mediafire.com/?aaow3ym1lh7hxzo

Note that the "forcefield" linedef has had both its front and back sector references manually changed.

You could use transfer heights (line special 242) to do it without the sector reference hackery. Or somewhat less hackery, at least.

Here is another attempt, not sure how compatible it is though.

Thanks for your replies all, and for any tutorial wads, too. This was exactly what I was looking for!

So nice that a good looking force field could be done. :) Back to work for me then. Thanks again!

You might also want to take a look at System Vices. There's a forcefield near the start of map05, for instance. This is a vanilla wad.

waverider said:

I had this idea that I wanted it to be possible to "disable" the force field, so I tried making the force field into a "floor", with a switch that lowers it, so it actually disappears, so you can walk through it once it's "disabled". But the problem is, if I only texture the "mid-textures", so the force field gets transparent, then if I use the switch to "lower" the force field, then the mid texture remains, I can walk past but it looks like the whole force field is still there.

You have the right idea. The thing you need to know is that DooM draws middle textures top down by default. Since the ceiling isn't moving, the texture doesn't, either. Check the line's "Lower Unpegged" flag and it will draw from the bottom up. All fixed.:-)