Essel's Mapping Tips and Tricks

[Gez]

If the ceiling is low, can the caco be pushed forward by another, non-flying monster?


(... Or by a polyobject, but if you're using them, you can as well use ACS to spawn or teleport the monsters anyway...)

[DooMAD]

If the player can't push cacos around, I doubt other enemies can, even with a scrolling floor.

[kristus]

esselfortium said:

Neat! Thanks for that, DooMAD!

Speaking of flying monsters, does anybody have a reliable way of forcing them to teleport in Boom? I know there's always the standard vanilla method, but then there's the (exploitable) chance of them not waking up if you don't make noise in the designated areas...

Tried making the ceiling low enough that they always got contact with the floor?

[Creaphis]

Has everyone forgotten about Boom's wind, current, and pusher/puller effects? Come on people, read your editrefs. Now, for some reason, wind (action 224) fails to affect flying monsters, which I can't explain, but point pushers work beautifully.

http://img91.imageshack.us/img91/1840/windbr3.png

We now have a method by which to impart momentum to fliers. The rest is simple.

EDIT: Nevermind... it works in PrBoom Plus -compat 9 but not in Boom.exe...

[andrewj]

Looking at the Boom code, if you make the scrolling sector underwater (the target of a 242 linedef I guess) then it will push floating monsters as well.

[esselfortium]

Ajapted said:

Looking at the Boom code, if you make the scrolling sector underwater (the target of a 242 linedef I guess) then it will push floating monsters as well.

Woah, very cool! I never would have thought of that -- thanks for the tip! :D

[Quasar]

The behavior of wind was changed in MBF, which is why it differs in PrBoom+ depending on the comp level. In MBF (and in Eternity), it affects monsters.

[Creaphis]

Ajapted said:

Looking at the Boom code, if you make the scrolling sector underwater (the target of a 242 linedef I guess) then it will push floating monsters as well.

Maaan, I'm supposed to think of things like that. I'm off my game.

[Grazza]

Creaphis said:

EDIT: Nevermind... it works in PrBoom Plus -compat 9 but not in Boom.exe...

Eh? Something wrong there, as -complevel 9 is one for Boom 2.02 compatibility, and so the behaviour should be identical to that for Boom (if not, and you are using the current version, report it as a bug).

Unless you are literally using "-compat 9", which is the wrong syntax, and will be ignored, and the default compatilibility level from the cfg used instead.

To get MBF behaviour, use "-complevel 11".

[Super Jamie]

This should be a sticky.

[printz]

Quasar said:

The behavior of wind was changed in MBF, which is why it differs in PrBoom+ depending on the comp level. In MBF (and in Eternity), it affects monsters.

Which asks for a backward compatibility option, since it's common to want hazards that only harm players, and monsters are immune to it. Really, point push/pullers have been broken by this, because AFAIK there's no way to restrict it to players, so no more "fight spiderdemon while stuck in the middle" scenario (unless using some sector-based wind hack for similar effect, but it's ugly and impractical).

[Super Jamie]

How to make blocking windows in Boom

Graf Zahl said:

In Boom you can use linedef type 242 (transfer sector heights.)

Make the window sector's floor height the same as the ceiling and then transfer the floor height you want from another sector.

For the game such a construct will be considered closed but you can see through it.

I know alot of people use this thread as a reference so it seemed and appropriate place to repost.

[Quasar]

printz said:

Which asks for a backward compatibility option, since it's common to want hazards that only harm players, and monsters are immune to it. Really, point push/pullers have been broken by this, because AFAIK there's no way to restrict it to players, so no more "fight spiderdemon while stuck in the middle" scenario (unless using some sector-based wind hack for similar effect, but it's ugly and impractical).

I don't believe any maps for BOOM exist that expect you to fight monsters while being under the penalty of wind and use that as some kind of meaningful difficulty enhancement.

EE, for its own wads, has a couple of ways to disable wind on things. You can use Heretic wind, which only affects players and things specifically marked with the WINDTHRUST flag, or you can use BOOM wind and give the things you do not wish to have thrusted the NOTHRUST flag, which disables BOOM wind, push/pullers, etc. for that thing.

[esselfortium]

[esselfortium]

As an added bonus, here's another tip that I put together back in 2008 and never got around to posting here:

Tip 7: Getting Started with Natural Terrain Using Triangle Slopes


(Link to bigger version here)

And a bit of a continuation from what I wrote in that guide:



If your slopes aren't working properly, make absolutely sure that you've got them in an alternating AVAVAVAV formation; the alternation between up-facing and down-facing is key. Make sure that the heights are also alternated correctly, as the blue/yellow illustration at the bottom of the guide specifies.



You can put multiple donuts or rows adjacent to each other for more complex and natural shapes; as long as there is a flat, non-sloped sector in between each row so that the slope lines will know the correct height they should be sloping to.

Depending on what you're building, it might be preferable to make the flat sectors in between your rows as thin as possible to hide their existence, but if I'm designing hills or a large rocky ceiling I'll often take advantage of the flat sectors between rows, making wider or narrower sections of slopes and flat regions in different areas; you can get more bang for your buck this way, so to speak, creating more complex-looking natural landscapes without needing even more rows of sloped sectors.



While the guide specifies line type 181 (which is Plane_Align in ZDoom in Hexen format or UDMF), this technique is usable with the corresponding line-slopes in Eternity, ZDoom in Doom format, and presumably also EDGE though I haven't tried it myself. Basically, any source port that allows you to define slopes using Plane_Align or a similar system should be able to support this method. :)



Nowadays it's often preferable, in ZDoom at least, to make use of the more flexible vertex-slope system instead, but this technique can still come in handy at times -- also, if you're creative enough, there are various ways it can be expanded upon for more power and more complexity (and besides, I wrote it already, so I might as well post it).

[Gez]

Would you mind if this were wikified?

[esselfortium]

Gez said:

Would you mind if this were wikified?

Do you mean just the slope terrain guide, or the whole thing? Either way, uh..sure, I guess!

[JadedLexi]

I just read this, some stuff in here is very nice. :)

[Gez]

esselfortium said:

Do you mean just the slope terrain guide, or the whole thing? Either way, uh..sure, I guess!

Several months later: http://zdoom.org/wiki/Using_slopes

[MajorRawne]

This thread is excellent. Thank you :)