*** The "ask a miscellaneous editing question" thread ***

[Li'l devil]

What nodebuilder should i use for making Vanilla/limit-removing maps?

I'm asking this because GZDoom Builder's default nodebuilder (ZenNode) for some reason stopped working for me. I now use BSP-W32, it works alright, but i'm not sure if it's the correct one for Vanilla maps.

[scifista42]

BSP-W32 (normal), Zennode (normal), and ZDBSP (zero reject) all make vanilla-compatible nodes and reject. Zennode is the default node builder for being fast and minimizing seg splits, but if it fails on a particular map, feel free to try one of the other node builders.

[Spectre01]

Hey, quick GZDB functionality question here. Let's say I have a complex room connected to a hallway with a bunch of sectors/things and all that jazz in it. Is there a clean way of separating and moving large parts of the map to add additional locations without breaking sectors or having the vertices/linedefs mess up?

[Kappes Buur]

rileymartin said:

Hey, quick GZDB functionality question here. Let's say I have a complex room connected to a hallway with a bunch of sectors/things and all that jazz in it. Is there a clean way of separating and moving large parts of the map to add additional locations without breaking sectors or having the vertices/linedefs mess up?

That depends on where what you want to move is located.
If the sectors you want to move are on the outside then using regular selecting, additive selecting and/or subtractive selecting may be the way to go. If the sectors are surrounded tightly by other sectors, then cut and paste may be the easiest to use.

Can you supply a screenshot of your map, or even the map itself?

[Spectre01]

I think I got the moving sectors figured out. Is there a way to make all the things move with the sectors so I don't have to manually re-position all the dudes and items?

[baja blast rd.]

Moving the sectors will move the things too. You can highlight linedefs and things simultaneously if you can't move sectors for whatever reason.

[Spectre01]

Looks like synchronized things editing got turned off somehow. I remember things moving with sectors but then they stopped. Got it fixed now.

[uhbooh]

I want to make a requiem style bridge but instead of middle textures for the floor, it will use boom's "create fake ceiling and floor" line special. Is this possible?

[scifista42]

Unfortunately, no. Boom's fake floors/ceilings cannot be used to create the appearance of 3D floors / bridges in the middle of a room - when viewed from a side, the fake ceiling would be drawn covering the entire space above the bridge, respectively the fake floor would be drawn covering the entire space below the bridge. Unless you're mapping for a port that supports actual 3D floors (like ZDoom), or unless your bridge is surrounded by walls instead of being in the middle of a room (so that it couldn't be viewed from sides at all), you're limited to midtextures to use on 3D bridges.

[Agentbromsnor]

A non-technical question, really: I'm curious about the history of the DECORATE language. Who created it, and how it changed throughout the years, etc. Google didn't help me much, unfortunately.

[Edward850]

Agentbromsnor said:

A non-technical question, really: I'm curious about the history of the DECORATE language. Who created it, and how it changed throughout the years, etc. Google didn't help me much, unfortunately.

It's a ZDoom invention by port developer Randi that started life as a means to create simple decorations (hence the name). It then expanded to an actor (static and AI) frame table constructor and later on to weapons after a push from the community build (although implemented differently).

[RetroNuva10]

How would I use scripting to make a floor lower 8 units upon walk once? And when I do that, how do I assign it to a linedef?

[scifista42]

Assign Generic_Floor action to a linedef and give it appropriate arguments and activation flags.

[Kappes Buur]

Agentbromsnor said:

A non-technical question, really: I'm curious about the history of the DECORATE language. Who created it, and how it changed throughout the years, etc. Google didn't help me much, unfortunately.

The original dialog about DECORATE started before 2003 when the old ZDoom phorum was still active. But that is long gone, except for some snippets on the waybackmachine.

For the DECORATE evolution since 2003 you could check the ZDoom WIKI history for DECORATE or do a search for DECORATE on the ZDoom forum.

[Dragonfly]

Is there a way to view the current Visplane count in any of the following source ports:

- Chocolate Doom
- PrBoom
- (G)ZDoom

Currently don't have time to search it myself, so very appreciative of answers!

[scifista42]

There's a fork of Chocolate Doom, called ChocoRenderLimits, that displays visplane count and other stats. PrBoom-plus has an IDRATE cheat code that displays several stats, including current visplane count. I don't know about (G)ZDoom.

[Kappes Buur]

There is also andrewj's Visplane Explorer

http://eureka-editor.sourceforge.net/?n=VisExp.Main

or, if you use GZDoom Builder there is a Visplane Explorer plugin.

[Dragonfly]

Chocorenderlimits seems perfect!

I've searched for a download of chocorenderlimits as that would be preferable, but cannot seem to find one. The ReMooD website that is commonly linked seems to take you back to the homepage when trying to visit the chocorenderlimits page. If anyone has a copy they could upload or knows of a working link, please can you share it?

After reading it seems the PrBoom IDRATE 'cheat' is only accurate to Boom, not to vanilla, which is a shame.

GZDoom's Visplane Explorer doesn't account for moving platforms, doors and the like. I imagine the Visplane Explorer for Eureka is much the same?

Many thanks for your responses!

[Spectre01]

I'm trying to add an Afrit to my wad but clearly doing it wrong since he dies in one shot and leaves behind the final frame of his death animation. I want to use the one found in Bloodstain that replaces Keen but how do I import him properly into my wad?

[scifista42]

That Afrit is made in DEHACKED, and moving just a part of content from DEHACKED to DEHACKED is generally not easily possible, so I suggest you to take Bloodstain's whole DEHACKED, put it to your wad, and carefully edit it afterwards to remove whatever part of Bloodstain's DEHACKED that you don't want to keep (like map names, other custom monsters, and whatever). Also look into Bloodstain's maps to find out which thing type it really uses to spawn Afrits, because it might be possible that multiple thing types use Afrit's states, but only one is the real Afrit and the other ones are just leftovers of the DEHACKED work that aren't supposed to be used in maps.

[MaxED]

Dragonfly said:

GZDoom's Visplane Explorer doesn't account for moving platforms, doors and the like.

[Memfis]

Btw how does it decide what to open? Will it notice a walkover trigger, for example?

[Spectre01]

scifista42 said:

...I suggest you to take Bloodstain's whole DEHACKED, put it to your wad, and carefully edit it afterwards to remove whatever part of Bloodstain's DEHACKED that you don't want to keep...

Thanks, that worked! And they do spawn by placing Keens.

[MaxED]

Memfis said:

Btw how does it decide what to open?

Here's how

[Dragonfly]

Thanks MaxEd. Will be checking this out later on today.

[Zulk RS]

Don't know if this question belongs here but...
I know edited IWAD levels are not accepted. What exactly qualifies as an edited IWAD level?

IS it restricted to editing the IWAD or are parts of the IWAD maps taken as prefabs and using it in other wads also count? what about a near-perfect replica of a IWAD room made from scratch?

[Dragonfly]

I think that's a largely ignored request otherwise shit like dwango5.wad wouldn't be around. That said, this 'rule' is only applicable to the /idgames hosting.

Personally I fully recommend you fulfill those rules and steer clear of anything that may resemble the IWAD enough to be questioned. Instead, if you really want to use an IWAD location in your map, use it as inspiration rather than a prefab. Make it fresh, make it better, make it unique.

An example of such is KDIZD - Areas that are very similar to the original 1st Episode of ultimate doom, but vastly different at the same time.

[dobu gabu maru]

How does Action 53 "W1 Floor Start Moving Up and Down" work in vanilla Doom? I have a tagged sector that's 64 units higher than the ground that I want to go down and then back up, but when I walk over the trigger the floor goes up 320 units...

[scifista42]

When you walk over the trigger, the floor will:

1. check its neighboring sectors to find the highest and lowest floor levels
2. move up until it reaches the highest floor's level
3. wait a short while
4. move down until it reaches the lowest floor's level
5. wait a short while
6. repeat the process since point 2 perpetually

However, the function that finds the highest floor has a limit that the floor may not have a lesser Z coordinate that -500 map units. In other words, if the moving sector's highest neighboring floor level is lesser than -500, the game will think that the highest floor level is actually -500, and so the moving floor will go up to height -500. If you run into this problem, just move your entire map upwards, so that the moving floor's highest neighboring floor level will be higher than -500.

[Forli]

When adding new things in decorate, it seems like everyone goes with replacing an existing thing instead of just giving the new one a new number so they can keep all the old ones. Is there any particular reason why doing this is better?