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Knas

Lights, teleports and player size

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This is for UDoom btw.

So I was wondering, when you add a lighting effect to a sector it appears to be changing from a brighter light, darkening to the level of a sector next to it. Is there a way to make the light change from being darker to increase in brightness instead?
Also, when you place 2 sectors with lighting effects next to each other one of them seem to change between current level and 0. How do I avoid that?


I also have a teleporter trap that I want to funnel a lot of monsters in a specific order. Easiest way to do this just to place the monsters in a narrow path. But the more monsters that teleport out, the more room there is for the rest just to wander back and forth, and I want a constant flow. Any tips of how to do this?


Third question. How wide is the Doomguy in game? In the editor he's 32 and when I checked the wiki it said the radius was 16. But in the game he can't pass through 32 wide gaps. I have a few places in my maps that are 32 wide holes next to walls and if the player falls down there they are stuck and I don't want that. So right now you can't fall down which is good, but is it possible to glitch yourself into them or something?

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AFAIK it is possible to fall down in 32 pixel width holes, but I use such things extensively in my maps and have never had it happen to me, nor has anyone who playtested my stuff reported anything, so it's pretty rare.

Not directly related to your question, but there's a speedrunning trick called "glide" that lets you squeeze through 32 pixel width gaps - so for example, if you're making pillars to block off an area until they are lowered through a switch and if you don't want players to be able to skip parts of your level, you want to make sure those pillars are 31 pixels or less apart.

Regarding teleporters, everyone seems to have their own way to make one, and it seems to work out OK for most mappers. Personally, I like narrow pathways like you do. I don't make them too deep, generally no more than 5 monsters in a row, and I put plenty of these next to each other, within the same sector but separated with impassable lines (block monster would work just as well, but I like impassable because it's easier to tell apart in the editor).

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There is a problem with narrow paths. This is what happens quite often with them: pic
This might slow down the teleportation process significantly because the monsters will prevent each other from crossing the teleport line. Especially annoying in speedruns.

To make the monsters teleport in a specific order I would do something like this: pic
When the player activates the trap, sectors 1-4 start to lower. Since sector 1 is closer to the floor, the corresponding monster should be the first one to teleport. However, this system can be broken by blocking the teleport destination.

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I've found these designs to be less susceptible to the aforementioned issues. Though I still avoid making the second one too deep in the same way phml mentioned

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This might slow down the teleportation process significantly because the monsters will prevent each other from crossing the teleport line.


I wouldn't say "significantly", unless you make your paths very deep. When it's about 4-5 monsters deep, it's generally a matter of seconds.

Sometimes I even consider this useful. In slaughtermaps at least, I find ambushes work well with a strong outpour at first, as to force the player to react, and then a softer rhythm, as to not overwhelm him. Playing with the deepness of your teleporting sectors is a quick way to adjust this on the fly.

I agree it's not as reliable as setting things up individually (i.e. as you suggest) so the result is pitch perfect, but the advantage for me is it's so much faster to build; which also makes it much easier to tweak and edit as needed until everything works out.

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Phml said:

I wouldn't say "significantly", unless you make your paths very deep. When it's about 4-5 monsters deep, it's generally a matter of seconds.

I guess you're right. I was thinking about Crusades e4m1 but that one had more like 8-9 monsters. And all of them but the first one were lost souls, so that was very annoying for uv-maxing: sometimes I would get the imp immediately, but other times he would fail to teleport and I would get useless (as they don't need to be killed) lost souls instead. >_<
Also interesting point about the rhythm. And nice idea with diagonal lines Ribbiks, I think I'll use it from now on.

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Knas said:

Third question. How wide is the Doomguy in game? In the editor he's 32 and when I checked the wiki it said the radius was 16. But in the game he can't pass through 32 wide gaps.


It's a small bug, or at least inaccuracy in the Doom engine, that is responsible for that. Basically, there are tables containing the cosine, sine, and arctangent values for all possible angles in the game. There is, however, a finite number of angles that can be stored this way, and since the game uses a 32-bit number to store an actor's angle, the maximum precision would require over 4 billion values. It's not really feasible, especially not in an engine designed in 1993.

So, the angles are converted into "fine angles" first, which are less precise so that there are only 8192 of them. Each of the fineangles corresponds to a full range of 524288 "normal" angles. A normal angle has a precision of about 0.000 000 084°, but a fine angle has a precision of "only" about 0.044°.

The finesine/cosine table is filled with values according to the angle in the middle of the range. So the finesine for angle 0 is actually the finesine for angle 262144... And likewise for all other angles.

This basically means that it is not possible to move perfectly along one axis. If you think you move straight north, you will also move very slightly on the east-west axis. Your angle isn't a perfect 90°, it is more like 90.022°.

So if you have a 32-unit gap right in front of you, which is aligned to the grid, and you try to move through it, what happens is that you'll also move a bit to the side. Which is blocked by a wall. So your movement is blocked.

In some conditions, though, you can still pass through the gap. So to be sure, if you want players to pass through a gap, make it at least 33 units, and if you want players not to pass through a gap, make it at most 31 units. 32 units is unreliable either way.

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I'm pretty sure the only way to squeeze through a 32-unit gap between parallel pillars is to run directly at it after teleporting, so long as your center is exactly on the midline and you don't turn at all. Has anyone broken this in a demo somewhere-ish without relying on map-specific quirks?

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About the teleporter trap, yes I want to use it for alooooot of enemies telporting in a specific order so I really don't want to use a narrow path for reasons mentioned above. Thanks anyway.

Anyone got some input on my lighting issue?

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Xaser said:

I'm pretty sure the only way to squeeze through a 32-unit gap between parallel pillars is to run directly at it after teleporting, so long as your center is exactly on the midline and you don't turn at all. Has anyone broken this in a demo somewhere-ish without relying on map-specific quirks?


It is possible, just tricky, and the difficulty isn't the same in every situation (according to people who can glide - I can't, so I wouldn't know). A search for "glide" should bring up several results, explanations, examples in the speed demos forum.

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If you start in a 32 unit corridor, then you can move out of it, but not likely to get back in it, even if you just press forward/backward. I think I tried it once.

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