WadAuthor....my building is floating in air

[Guest fragg]

Rather strange..... I must be doing something wrong.
(Maybe this would be a good subject for Wildman to discuss in his upcoming "WadAuthor Tutor").
Note: I not using any of the fancy ports for this, my first Wad.

I have a gigantic, empty, Doom2 sector (w/ Sky texture) that is surrounding a very fancy, complex, building.
I'm gonna construct buildings n' streets in this Big Sector.

Hopefully, to achieve this Purpose.....
"Street-by-Street"/"House-by-House" Fighting (machine-gun nests, ambushes, snipers, overlapping fields of fire, the whole nine yards). One marine alone against fanatical dug-in commandos, shotgun sgts, riflemen etc. .... fighting every bloody step of the way against entrenched troops, slowly working your way into the center of town, towards your goal: the central building ("Ground Zero").
Since there'll be few rest periods, there'll be ammo n'medikits along the way (you're really gonna need'em).

I've thot about this Wad for long time.
And for my first effort --- I was just not interested in dumping tons of enemy monsters into a Wad, then dumping a Player into it, for a humongous big "free-for-all". Been there, done that.
Nor, in building dark, slimy, underground tunnels, dungeons, and lava pits. Been there, done that ("Halp!!---Lemme Out!!-- Enough Already!!-- If I'm gonna die, let it be in city street-fight, hopefully out in sunshine!!").
Besides, there's already tons'o'Wads that do the "dungeon trip", I've played tons of 'em till I finally got bored. So I'm NOT knocking them, because some of them are real fine Wads.

My problem:
(I got around it by building sectors "differently", but I thot I'd mention it anyway, and see if u guys have an answer, 'cause I have no answer to "why").....

Far out in the boondocks of this empty Big Sector (that surrounds the fancy building) I built a small sector.
It was 2-sided. Floor=0, ceiling=216. (Note: These are same numbers Big Sector has).
I slapped textures on both sides of it. Wadauthor said "OK", so I ran the game and walked up to it to look it over -- my first "street-fight" building.
It was floating in midair! I could walk under it.
So I fired editor up, added "lower"tex. to both sides (of all 4 sides) and checked again.
It was still floating, no lower text. visible, I could still walk under it (the other textures, above, were all visible, inside and out). Wierd.
I played with different floor/ceiling heights. It still floated!

Finally, one of these two tricks worked.......

I built a "Make Collumn" sector in the Big Sector. Set Floor height 128, Ceil. ht 216. Set "impassible" flag. It worked fine. Looked real nice. Solid. No floating! BUT the downside is, it doesn't remain a "sector". It becomes "part" of the Big Sector it was built in. (So forget about ever changing its "height" in the future). Hmmm, scratch that trick.

Next trick, worked......
Built 2-sided sector in the Big Sector. Gave it Flr ht 128, Ceil ht 216. Set "impassible" flag. Fired up game, saw a nice solid building sitting on ground, walked all around it, banged on it, saw it was right height for a street-fighting building. The "Floor" -- is the "Roof" of the building!
Hey, I ain't gonna look a "gift horse" in the mouth!
If it works, I'll use it!!
I'll build my little city using this method, varying the building heights for variety (or should I say, "varying the Floor Heights"?? Heh, heh, yuk yuk).

Question:
Did I somehow accidently solve my problem? What the heck was wrong? Big thanks guys for any info....
Fragg

[NiGHTMARE]

Lower texture is used only when a sector has a different floor height than the sector it's joined on to.

Normal texture is used on 1 sided lines (i.e. there's only a sector on one side of it), and in this case it covers the entire wall.

Normal texture can also be used to have things like grates on 2 sided lines, but it only covers the height of the texture (usually 128 pixels). If you want a normal texture on a 2s line to be on the floor, set the "lower texture unpegged" flag, otherwise it its drawn from the ceiling downwards.

Upper texture is used only when a sector has a different ceiling height than the sector it's joined on to.

If you're trying to create a building that is as high as the sky ceiling, then you just need to create 1 sided lines in your sector, making sure they're pointing outwards.

If you want to have a building that's lower than the sky ceiling, you can either do the same as above but put another sky sector surrounding it with a lower ceiling height, or do what you've done before and create a sector with a raised floor.

Note that the standard Doom engine isn't capable true 3D, so if you create a sector with a raise floor you won't be able to have any rooms in it.

[ReX]

NiGHTMARE has provided a thorough discussion on the use of textures, so I won't rehash it. I will point out, however, that to create an outdoor building in WadAuthor, the best thing to do is begin by creating a column (void space enclosed by one-sided linedefs) in your open-air sector. Remember that a column is not a sector; think of it as solid space such as walls and pillars. Stretch your column (i.e., move and lengthen your linedefs) to the desired building dimensions. Then, create sectors within the column to represent your rooms, doors, windows, etc. The void space between these sectors represnts the walls of your building.

When inserting a column into a sector, the column automatically stretches from the floor to the ceiling of the surrounding sector. In other words, your building will be as tall as your sky height (in this case 216, which btw is an odd height). All other buildings in that outdoor sector will have the same height if you use columns. If you want to give the illusion of a shorter building there are a couple of things you can do. One, create terraces, ledges, overhangs, etc. that break up the profile of your building's roof and reduce or alter the roof "height". (DooM2 Maps 13 and 15 are good examples.) While providing architectural variety, this method has a big drawback, as NM pointed out. You can't create a room under terraces or ledges (the floor-over-floor limitation).

Two, as NM suggests, within your outdoor sector create a sector with a lower ceiling than the outdoor sector, say 192. Make sure the ceiling flat stays F_SKY. Within this new sector create a column and proceed with adding rooms, etc. When using this method, however, there could be what I call the line-of-sight problem. Say your shorter building is adjacent to a taller building. If you were far enough behind the shorter building looking toward the taller building, the sky above the shorter building would obliterate the part of the taller building directly behind (i.e., in the line of sight) the shorter one. This is because the sky is being drawn to a lower height (i.e. 192) above the shorter building than above the taller one (i.e., 216). The best way around this visual problem is to make sure that your shorter building is on the periphery of your outdoor area so that the player can not get far enough behind (or to the side of) the building to be affected by the line of sight.

[Guest fragg]

NiGHTMARE said:

Wow. Clear, excellent, "info".
Thank you both (Rex, NM).
Rex says 216 is "odd" Ht for big outdoor Sky sector. I'll assume this means it would be best to use multiples of 128. So I'll crank it up to 256 (or even 512 if u don't think that's too high).
Thanks again .... I've printed out both Replys for study now, and will keep them as "ref." docs for future use.
fragg.

[Lüt]

Whoa- post a picture of this!

[Guest fragg]

Lut, your request for "photo" of my magic floating Building arrived too late.
I had already lassoed it, dragged it down, stuck a pin in it (it went "woosh!") and now it stays on ground -- just like any respectable, decent, law-abiding Building should.
fragg