Player in bad sector? Hmm.

[netnomad312]

I was playing an Ultimate Doom wad today when I noticed something cool that I never thought of before: a winding staircase which appears at the push of a switch. After I exited, I copied that architecture(sp?) into my own Doom II wad. It works fine; I even extended it so that when you reach the top, every sector sinks into the surrounding radiation but the top one, which sinks to that level +16. I don't know how I did it, but I like it.

Before I got that, though, I tried something slightly different. The tag was originally just the switch and the first sector of the staircase. But I eventually added all the stair sectors to that tag because I wanted them all to lower (and I couldn't have two tags because the lowest stair was already tagged). Now, before I got the idea to lower the staircase, I had made one extra sector. See, the staircase I copied from the other wad was like this (s is stair sector, S is first stair, P is the top platform):

sss
sPS
ss

It looked ugly because the blank spot had the radiation floor texture, while the rest had FLOOR7_1. So I made an extra sector to fill the blank spot. I did not include that sector in the tag. When I played the leve, it worked fine until the platforms stopped sinking; not only did the middle platform totally sink into the radiation, but the game crashed, saying I was in a bad sector, or something. It specified "-19557." Now, I never made a sector with that number. I tried playing it again, and this time I jumped off the platform before it hit the ground. But when I tried to get back on again, the game crashed.

Now, of course, that's not a problem. By including my new sector in the tag, the middle platform stays 16 units above the radiation, and the bug never happens. Only now, the new sector rises to the first stair height, so I have a double-sector bottom stair. That's not a problem. But I was wondering if anyone knows what went wrong? Or is it something a two-month wad editor like myself couldn't possibly understand?

[The Ultimate DooMer]

I assume you're using Floor: W1 down to lowest floor + sector texture. For some reason, this special only works properly if the sector being lowered is not touching more than 1 other sector. If it is touching 2 or more, the floor will not change and you'll get the PlayerInSpecialSector crash.

[netnomad312]

Every tagged sector is connected, so there are definitely more than two apiece. But when I included my own sector in the tag, the center platform never hit the radiation, it stayed there like a little island. And that's cool. I can still touch the other sectors, too; they now hurt you, though (which is also good). You stand on that little island while monsters start teleporting into the room on four sides. It'll look pretty good.

[Grimm]

I assume you're using Floor: W1 down to lowest floor + sector texture. For some reason, this special only works properly if the sector being lowered is not touching more than 1 other sector. If it is touching 2 or more, the floor will not change and you'll get the PlayerInSpecialSector crash

Are you sure about that? I think you might mean more than one lower sector, because I definately get an error there. But I do have that effect with two touching sectors. Either way, the switch version NEVER works.

[The Ultimate DooMer]

Yes, I am sure. I found out the hard way when building some of my early maps - it always crashed unless the sector was an island inside another sector.

[Fletcher`]

Ultimate DooMer said:

I assume you're using Floor: W1 down to lowest floor + sector texture. For some reason, this special only works properly if the sector being lowered is not touching more than 1 other sector. If it is touching 2 or more, the floor will not change and you'll get the PlayerInSpecialSector crash.

It's Floor change donut. And I hate that bug.

[netnomad312]

That explains why donut & sector texture didn't work in one of my other levels. It was a radiation pit with more than one sector on the side; it was being "fed" by a few radiation rivers. When I used that, the center sector lowered, but the donut didn't rise. I didn't get the crash, though. I'm not sure why. Perhaps I was never in the sector, because its linedefs are all teleports.