Offsetting Flats

[Foodles]

Doubtless one of the most annyoing things when building a level is creating a room, then trying to put a teleporter etc. in the centre of said room, then realising that it hasnt offset correctly, there seems to be no easy way to fix this problem (yes I know you can use ZDOOM scripting to offset the flats but this is very tedious). Is there something wrong with the engine of Doom that prevents you from just using the arrow keys to allign flats (the same way you allign textures). Ive played many a WAD (some by well respected mappers) where I find a flat that hasnt been alligned properly, this can make the map look ugly and like the author hasnt been bothered to sort out the problem (I can't say I blame them). So I guess what I'm asking is does anyone know why you cant easily allign flats the same way you can allign textures?

[Gez]

You can either use an UDMF map, since flat offsets can be set there as a property, but that'll limit you to (G)ZDoom, Skulltag and Vavoom for the moment; or you can use an ACS script but that'll also limit you to these ports.

Alternatively, you can create "offsetted" graphics and use them. It'll increase filesize but it'll be compatible with everything.

Lastly, you can rework your level layout so that it's not needed.



The simple fact is that sectors do not have any property for flat alignment. And the binary Doom and Hexen map formats do not allow to add new properties such as those.

[Graf Zahl]

Gez said:

The simple fact is that sectors do not have any property for flat alignment.

Actually, this stuff is fully present in Boom and required for scrolling flats. For whatever reason they never added an option to set it from the map editor.

[Gez]

I was talking about the map format. You could try to contrive a way to store offsets in the sector special as flags, but well, that'd just be horrible.

[esselfortium]

Gez said:

I was talking about the map format. You could try to contrive a way to store offsets in the sector special as flags, but well, that'd just be horrible.

Boom already had tons of specials involving control lines, they could have added a couple more. :P

[printz]

I use displacement scrollers in Boom to align flats.

[Phml]

Printz, would you care to elaborate ? That sounds pretty interesting.

[traversd]

Like this (I think.

The height variation from a sectors starting height is used to scroll a flat texture (it can carry objects or just scroll the texture IIRC). So it you need to align a flat setup 2 dummy sectors together with the height difference between the exact amount of distance needed to scroll the flat into alignment and then at the start of the map using a voodoo doll or just a linedef somewhere before the player enters the area make 1 of the dummy sectors move to meet the other. There are a few other aspects such as up or down I think may change the direction of scrolling as well as what way the linedef is pointing.

Sorry, Can't recall the linedef type # (somewhere between 240 and 260 IIRC).

Cheers,
Travers

[printz]

Phml said:

Printz, would you care to elaborate ? That sounds pretty interesting.

http://eternity.youfailit.net/index.php?title=Scroller_linedef_types#Dynamic_Scrolling

Despite the Eternity moniker, most (all) of those settings exist in Boom.

[Phml]

Thanks for the explanation !