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glenzinho

Slope problems & format conversion

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1) Slope problems

I can't get my head around slopes. I've found tutorials and info on the ZDoom wiki but I still can't make heads or tails of it. I can get basic slopes working fine and four sided pyramid like structures to work, but when I add any more sides either one side or every second sector doesn't slope. I'm working on a mountain type map and I'm trying to get some natural looking mountain structures to work. Can anybody help or does someone have any prefab mountains for DB2 lying around?

2) Format conversion

I've found some old maps around that I started on about 12 years ago or so and I want to finish them off. I want to convert them from Doom to Doom in Hexen format but I keep having major problems after I've done that, like ZDoom crashing on startup. Is there an easy way to convert formats? I would have thought Doom format has a pretty basic structure that would convert upwards without too many problems...

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Since there are a gazillion methods to define slopes, you should tell us which one you've attempted.

If you've used vertex heights, then as the wiki says, they only work on sectors that have an absolute total sum of no more than three vertices. Add just one more vertex, even if the shape is still a perfect triangle, and it won't work.

As for converting from Doom to Hexen format, as far as I know, there's still only zwadconv. The resulting map shouldn't crash. Please post your console log if it does.

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Gez: I've attempted the line special 181 plane align - slope.

I'm at work now so I'll check out zwadconv and ZDoom Terrain Generator when I get home.

/EDIT: I've just checked out some screens of the ZDoom Terrain Generator, does this thing work as good as it looks?

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glenzinho said:

/EDIT: I've just checked out some screens of the ZDoom Terrain Generator, does this thing work as good as it looks?



Not really. It uses an outdated methods for defining slopes so they are not seamless. It's ok but if the tool could be updated to use vertex slopes it'd be much better. AFAIK the source was lost.

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glenzinho said:

I'm working on a mountain type map and I'm trying to get some natural looking mountain structures to work.

Creating a realistic looking "mountain" from scratch will take a lot of patience as you stitch together the various sectors that make up the surface of the mountain. The main reason it will take a lot of time is that you're working to create a very large shape, and to get a more natural looking structure you'll have to use many, many sectors, some of them fairly small (to get properly rounded surfaces).

Generally, for seamlessly changing slopes your best bet is to use vertex height things (note that the height assigned to the thing must be an absolute value, not the height above the surrounding ground). Using line special 181 (plane align) will impose some limitations, including the need to create "tiered" sectors.

Also, check out esselfortium's tutorial on Getting Started with Natural Terrain Using Triangle Slopes.

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Cheers Rex... I've seen that tutorial somewhere before but I didn't quite understand it all until now.... gonna play with it soon. Is there a good tutorial on vertex height things you can recommend?

//EDIT: Thanks to the above helpful pointers I've figured out Line special 181 slopes and vertex height things as well, cheers everyone!

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glenzinho said:

Is there a good tutorial on vertex height things you can recommend?

The basic usage is very simple. Start by creating two or more triangles that are adjacent to each other and each triangle shares a common linedef with the adjacent one. From the start, your many triangles will share a common vertex. Your vertex slope thing will go on that vertex. [Think about a cone, which is really a series of triangles that radiate outward from the apex. Place your vertex slope thing on the exact co-ordinates of the vertex, and assign it the desired absolute height value.]

I'm on a plane right now and am using my phone, so I don't have the means to do a description of a more complex shape. When I have the opportunity I'll write it up.

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kristus said:

Didn't Boris make a bezier patch slope generator for DB2?

I searched for the utility, but couldn't find it.

Grubber had created a terrain generator, mentioned in this post.

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I wouldn't recommend a terrain generator, I have played with that kind of stuff before and it always comes out looking pretty ugly looking. I recommend using 181 and slope things to achieve what your looking for. There is a real easy way to do terrain stuff very quickly and effectively with some drawbacks but are overshadowed by how fast you can achieve satisfactory results.

I whipped this up quick as an example for you, if your interested in seeing how to do that in less than 10 minutes I can make a video.

Skulltag Hexen format map

http://www.mediafire.com/?g5n0vkuicv58wgm

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Pottus said:

There is a real easy way to do terrain stuff very quickly and effectively with some drawbacks but are overshadowed by how fast you can achieve satisfactory results.

To my knowledge, there is no "easy way" to get natural-looking terrain without some type of automated program. To avoid getting sharp points and ridges (i.e., getting smooth gradients) requires a great many triangles (on a model the equivalent would be called polygons), which in turn calls for a considerable amount of work. A terrain generator generally eliminates the need to manually stitch together all those triangles.

I whipped this up quick as an example for you...

Your example is a good illustration of how to use the plane align linedef special (181), but it highlights the limitations when building contiguous slopes that need to be smoothed out. In order to avoid having a pointy hill-top you'd have to use a great many vertex slope things, and a great many more sectors. And in order to avoid the "tiers" or "terraces" you have between the sloped bands, you'd have to do the entire thing using vertex slope things and avoid the 181 linedef special altogether. These are the limitations I pointed out in my earlier post. In many instances these limitations are not a real hindrance. But for large landscapes that need to look natural, there's no way around creating and working with many sectors.

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Thanks, try and get good with 181's then start using the slope things, use copy floor/ceiling slope things first they are the easiest and some of the most used you'll probably find. Also look into using slope floor/ceiling to here things which are good for setting more than one angle.

What can copy floor/ceiling do for you? Well, it allows you to create a reference of your slope that can actually be outside of the map, this will allow you do as much sector work on a slope as you want by still maintaining a reference of the original plane of the slope. Generally you get your reference in one of two ways 1'st a sector that still holds the original plane which is usually a piece of the sector you have edited or you can create a remote sector reference by placing a copy of the slope with a delta along the plane. This works well when the rotation of the line of the slope is along a x or y plane or 45 degrees which is a little bit harder. There is a way to do it with any rotation but it takes longer.

Here is a screen of using lots of copy floor/ceiling things that uses a bunch of remote sector reference to achieve slopes over architecture.



Here is using slope floor ceiling to here

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ReX said:

Your example is a good illustration of how to use the plane align linedef special (181), but it highlights the limitations when building contiguous slopes that need to be smoothed out. In order to avoid having a pointy hill-top you'd have to use a great many vertex slope things, and a great many more sectors. And in order to avoid the "tiers" or "terraces" you have between the sloped bands, you'd have to do the entire thing using vertex slope things and avoid the 181 linedef special altogether. These are the limitations I pointed out in my earlier post. In many instances these limitations are not a real hindrance. But for large landscapes that need to look natural, there's no way around creating and working with many sectors.


I think that sums up the drawbacks I mentioned thanks!

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