Mirror Mirror on the Wall

[chronoplasm]

So, I'm new to doom editing, but I had an idea for a map I'm working on.
I want to have a restroom/washroom in my map.
You can open up the stalls and shoot enemies in the backs.
Theres an armless hanging corpse and the words "Wash Your Hands" written on the wall in blood...

The thing is though, I want to have a mirror on one wall.
Rather than trying to do some kind of crazy script or whatever, I'm thinking of simply making an inverted version of the room complete with backwards wall-graffiti and separating the two rooms by sinks and an invisible wall. I'm thinking of having some kind of switch that opens the wall so that you can step into a mirror-universe where everything is inverted, red doors are blue, blue doors are red, and the same place that you found the red key in the other half of the map has a blue key in the inverted half.

However, I still want the player to have a reflection in the mirror, and it would be cool if you could fight your reflection as an enemy in the inverted half of the map. Is this possible?

[EarthQuake]

Not really.

I'm sure you could fake a mirrored opponent by using some scripting to reposition it based on where you are, but what happens if you shoot it? How are you going to determine what weapon it will use? What happens if you kill it? What happens if it kills you? Any of these things would require some hefty scripting.

It just depends on how far you want to take this. If I were you, I'd just put a monster that looks like a marine and be done with it. Sounds like a lot of trouble otherwise.

One neat thing about a mirror-world, you could have like items/powerups in one world that make their respective items disappear in the other world. It would be as simple as putting the items in small sectors that sink into the floor when their mirror image is taken. A very convincing and vanilla compatible effect!

Btw, probably not immediately useful to you, but ZDoom is capable of "real" mirrors.

[chronoplasm]

EarthQuake said:

Btw, probably not immediately useful to you, but ZDoom is capable of "real" mirrors.

If ZDoom is capable of mirrors then ZDoom is what I need to use. Thanks!

*edit*

Hey, can anybody tell me how to do that?

[GreyGhost]

Line_Mirror - with link to a small example map.

[chronoplasm]

Oh! Now I see...

It's Hexen stuff...

Wow. This stuff looks pretty advanced, but it looks like theres a lot of stuff to have fun with here.

Coolies. Thanks. :)

[chronoplasm]

OK, so lets say I want that mirror to also be a door that opens remotely when a switch somewhere is pulled. Can I do that? How do I do that in Hexen?

[EarthQuake]

You can't do your mirror world concept with ZDoom mirrors. For one, you can't make it a door without having weird renderer errors, and two, a ZDoom mirror requires as much space as needed to render the contents of the mirror on the other side. So basically, it's still pretty limited, as you need to have exactly the right amount of empty space on the opposite side of the mirror. Otherwise you will get HOM.

Personally, I would stick with the lowest port compatibility and go for the faked, copied, and mirrored sectors method. It would seem like a neat concept for a wad based around a "mirror world", especially if you did things that affect the opposite side (like the items idea I suggested). You can probably come up with some neat tricks if you were creative enough.

[milo]

You could probably rig something up with silent teleport lines right in front of the mirror. 33 units sounds about right. Instead of having the mirror be a door that opens, it would end up looking more like a portal that you walk through.

[NiGHTMARE]

You could also try making creative use of a skybox or camera texture instead of a mirror.

[chronoplasm]

milo said:

You could probably rig something up with silent teleport lines right in front of the mirror. 33 units sounds about right. Instead of having the mirror be a door that opens, it would end up looking more like a portal that you walk through.

I like that idea.

Question:

Is there any way to teleport the player without the player knowing it? That is, what if I want the player to walk into a room, and when they exit they notice that the area outside of the room isn't the same as when they were in there before; everything has been flipped around.

[EarthQuake]

You'd have to take a step upwards and use Boom's features. There are silent teleport line specials that give a pretty good illusion of just walking into another area without any stopping or scenery change (provided the destination area looks exactly like the former area).

You're obviously going to lose the vanilla compatibility, but a neat thing is that you'll be able to use Boom's translucent textures for the mirror, which will add to the effect. Boom features are widely supported by modern source ports, so people will still have many options for playing your wad.

[printz]

Or try "morphing" the room itself, with no teleportation illusions. This means triggering with a big series of actions to completely retexture, relight and reshape a room. It's possible in vanilla but requires a lot of designing and can be quite noisy in the end; use of a Boom advanced port makes it easier thanks to conveyor/fake player thing scripting, and even more advanced ports can comfortably use code scripts.

In fact I'd be against silent teleportation for illusions because they'll work badly in multiplayer.

[Sporku]

printz said:

Or try "morphing" the room itself, with no teleportation illusions. This means triggering with a big series of actions to completely retexture, relight and reshape a room. It's possible in vanilla but requires a lot of designing and can be quite noisy in the end; use of a Boom advanced port makes it easier thanks to conveyor/fake player thing scripting, and even more advanced ports can comfortably use code scripts.

In fact I'd be against silent teleportation for illusions because they'll work badly in multiplayer.

That sounds pretty much masochistic to pull off though, even in engines with advanced scripting languages. :P

[chronoplasm]

OK, so I'm thinking of using a voodoo doll to represent the players 'reflection' in the mirror. What are some different puzzles that can be solved using a voodoo doll?

[GreyGhost]

A combination lock or sequential switch are two that spring to mind if it's a Boom map.

[EarthQuake]

Heh, if it's a Boom map, pretty much anything can be done with voodoo dolls. It's just a matter of being creative enough. I actually set out one time to do "Boom Pong" using dolls in a complex circuit to update a screen of pixels. Only got so far because of the vast complexity of it though. ;)

My question now is, do you plan on moving the doll with the player? Or are you planning on having the player manipulate the doll to perform said puzzles?

[chronoplasm]

Well, I have a Doom 2 map I made but haven't released yet that has a doll on the other side of a 'mirror'. To obtain the red key, you must pull a switch to raise the platform that you and your doll stand on, and you must shoot at it to knock it backwards into the red key.

I like the idea of having to shoot yourself as a solution to puzzles. I think it would be cool to have the words "The Only Escape is Suicide" scrawled on a wall in blood somewhere, and to fight against a monster that looks like you as a boss fight.

I'm wondering if there are other ways I could convey this idea besides just shooting at yourself. So far my map has an oven in one part. I'm wondering how I could work in a puzzle where you have to somehow get your voodoo doll inside the oven in order to open a door.

I mean, the game is all about fighting your way out of hell, right? And people who commit suicide are supposed to go to hell according to judeo-christian beliefs, right? I think that whole idea, plus the connection with mirrors, could make for an interesting theme for a wad.

[bullsquid]

This stuff reminds me of a map in duke nukem 3d where there is a bathroom and if u turn on noclip mode u can walk trough the mirror to a complete mirrored version of the room. Pretty cool actually

Would be nice to see when your map is done. If u want i can playtest it for u.

[GreyGhost]

Just for the hell of it I decided to see if I could create a walkthrough mirror using cameras. The results aren't pretty - in the demo map it's an obvious fake when compared to the mirror on the opposite wall - but it works. With some fine tuning and a darker setting it would probably look quite convincing.

One thing I noticed when testing with GZDoom 1.1.05 - gunfire made the walls turn white! That might be my setup. No problems with 1.1.04, haven't yet tried 1.1.06.

Here's the demo map.

EDIT - I also get white walls with 1.1.06 :(

[Graf Zahl]

GreyGhost said:

One thing I noticed when testing with GZDoom 1.1.05 - gunfire made the walls turn white! That might be my setup. No problems with 1.1.04, haven't yet tried 1.1.06.
EDIT - I also get white walls with 1.1.06 :(

Please post a bug report, describing the problem in detail, the precise OPenGL options you use and your hardware and a link to the map. It works fine for me so I need precise information how to reproduce this.