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Koko Ricky

Questions about the ROTT engine

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1) What appear to be middle textures can be walked over (provided the player used pads or a trampoline to reach the higher area). How was this achieved and how does it compare to Doom's inability (without hacky trickery) to allow for a similar effect?

2) Ceiling height is fixed within a map, but can it be different from map to map?

3) What makes it possible to have moving blocks and why is it easier than in Doom, where mappers are forced to use polyobjects?

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1) What appear to be middle textures can be walked over (provided the player used pads or a trampoline to reach the higher area). How was this achieved and how does it compare to Doom's inability (without hacky trickery) to allow for a similar effect?

As I understand it, ROTT has floating circular disc sprites that you can walk on top of. Presumably the mid-texture walls are a similar effect; perhaps (this is just my uninformed guess) there are "invisible discs" there that you're standing on top of? You can do similar things in Doom using mid textures to build bridges, while the player stands on top of an invisible floor.

Essentially ROTT makes up for its primitive rendering engine by using more advanced physics (even Doom doesn't do the 3D over/under calculations that let you stand on top of other objects). This is a lot easier to implement than it is to do full 3D rendering.

3) What makes it possible to have moving blocks and why is it easier than in Doom, where mappers are forced to use polyobjects?

This shouldn't be surprising. The engines are completely different. ROTT uses a ray casting engine (same as Wolf3D) while Doom is BSP based. Doom is only able to do fast rendering because of the precomputed BSP tree; this makes it possible to render the screen in a very efficient manner but the downside is the reliance on that expensive precomputation: the (2D) structure of the level is set in stone because if it changed, the BSP tree would no longer be valid.

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ROTT has lots of sprites you can climb on. Several types are for making the maps more vertical and others include things like those spinning blades. It also has height-checking on every passable block boundary. All doors would be as high as the map if this wasn't the case.

While we're talking about things Doom doesn't have, there are also decorations with rotations and simple dynamic lights.

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GoatLord said:

2) Ceiling height is fixed within a map, but can it be different from map to map?

The answer seems to be a really obvious yes (various RoTT levels have various ceiling heights). Or do you mean it somehow else?

The engine apparently handles height checks even for sprites and midtextures, which is a feature more advanced that Doom has.

Aliotroph? said:

simple dynamic lights.

They're so subtle that I never really noticed them, but now when you mention it, I realize they're there. It's those torches and other light sources, right, or are the dynamic lights used somewhere else too?

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