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audiodef

Closing wall sectors

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Given a large, open area (a large sector) in which smaller sectors are made into buildings, does it hurt anything if, after setting up walls by creating thin sectors with the floor height at ceiling height, one deletes these sectors, leaving what looks like, in DB2, black snakes meandering through the map?

Did I explain this well enough? It seems to me that leaving these sectors in, sectors in which you will never walk and whose only purpose is to create walls around buildings within sectors, serves no purpose.

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You should delete those sectors.

Make a back-up first and be sure to check everything after deleting said sectors.

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I second what gemini09 said. Make sure you have a backup of the map saved somewhere, then delete the sectors if they're not necessary. One place I do this quite often is columns inside rooms. They go from floor to ceiling, so the space inside them can be deleted.

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That's what I thought. I tend to be a stickler for reducing errors from compilers (and DB2 is a compiler... kinda), so I'll just ignore the "sector not closed" errors when I do this.

Also, do I need to concern myself with missing textures on the back sides of linedefs bordering such empty non-sectors? DB2 gives me warnings about these, but of course they're not visible during game play. However, I thought I'd ask just in case it causes any wonkiness while playing the map.

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Hmm, normally deleting a sector should make it void, remove all sidedefs facing the new void, and correct any broken sector errors. Are you sure you did this correct? Were there errors before deleting them? Cause you definitely don't want those errors. :)

I would suggest reading up about what sectors, linedefs, and sidedefs really are. A thorough understanding of Doom geometry will actually go a long way towards knowing how to manually correct broken sectors and how to avoid them in the first place.

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Ditto. Unclosed sectors are bad. Sometimes this is caused by lines that get deleted between two sectors leaving them without one of their common borders. One easy way to fix this (assuming that both the unclosed sectors possess all the same properties like lighting value, ceiling and floor height, or textures and tags) is to simply merge the sectors.

Ditto again. Those impassable lines should never be double-sided and thus should only require texture on the inner side. There shouldn't be an outer side; if there is then that's probably one of your unclosed sectors.

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Related to this, what about sectors used to represent tables, computer desks and things like short pillars that don't go floor-to-ceiling? Deleting these sectors makes the front linedefs go floor-to-ceiling, which is what I don't want. Should these simply be left as sectors, or is there a better way to do it?

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Objects taller than the floor yet shorter than the ceiling (or vice-versa) must be left as sectors, or as you have observed strange and unwanted things will happen.

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Think of it like this: A deleted sector is void, a space whether nothing should exist. You obviously shouldn't have anything existing inside walls, so you should delete any wall-sectors you might have. On the other hand, tables and such can have stuff in them, which is why they can not be void. Similarly you should never have pillars or columns where the ceiling and floor are simply set to same value (unless you intend to make it raise or lower). Instead, always make them void.

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Thanks, guys.

I was trying to think of how tables and chairs could have stuff IN them. Did you mean ON them, or was "in" the preposition you intended to use and there's some neat trick involving table/chair/etc. sectors that can contain things rather than simply have things on top of them?

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When looking at your two-dimensional gridmap, if you have a square table and draw a smaller square box to sit on that table, the four lines for the smaller square are inside the larger square. The box is "in" the table.

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This would be for having different flats on the table, right? Is there any other reason for doing this?

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Sure, but by raising those different flats to a floor height slightly higher than the top of the table you can make it look like objects are sitting on the table. I've seen some map authors go to such detail as to create tables with chairs around them and objects on the table like cups or clipboards.

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That's pretty cool. I might do something to that effect in the map I'm currently working on.

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"clutter" detail is usually distracting and hard to make convincing - not to mention a usual feature of 'my house' wads. Use standard doom2 textures for unintended structures at your own risk ;) That said, I wonder how a doom-style furniture texture wad would go over ... I know one of the flats would definitely be a toilet seat, heh.

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Why do you need a lava lamp in a UAC base? heh. With colored lighting, transparent textures, and something like WFALL or the lavafall texture series, you could make one much more convincing. However colored lighting and transparency are both port features, and only slimefall is in doom2. But I wonder how it'd turn out if you did make the lost soul lava lamp anyway.

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