Translucent flats in Boom!

[NiGHTMARE]

I was messing around with my Boom tricks wad, and I came up with this really, really cool effect that gives the illusion of translucent flats. It should work in any Boom compatible port (PRBoom, MBF, SMMU, Eternity, ZDoom, etc) as well as Boom.

Go to my site to grab the wad that contains this effect (and eleven other Boom/Doom effects), and to see a couple of screenshots of it.

The only problem with it is that it messes up slightly when you look down, but I may have a way to make it look better when you do this.

[NiGHTMARE]

I almost forgot, big thanks to fen boi for making me think about experimenting with translucent walls and negative Y offsets :)

[fen boi]

I did?, cool :)

The water effect is very nice.

[NiGHTMARE]

Oh wait, it was Jayextee. But thanks anyway :)

[fen boi]

Do you plan to use the examples I sent? if not i'll probably tidy them up and upload them to newstuff.

[NiGHTMARE]

Yep, although as I mentioned before, there's still some stuff of my own to put in first :)

[Fredrik]

The transparent water trick is extremely nice.

[Mordeth]

!!!

[Linguica]

Cool, too bad you can't put another flat right underneath it. OR CAN YOU?

[boris]

Can someone explain how exactly that trick works? I don't have a level editor at the moment, so I can't check myself.

[Mordeth]

Tarin,

I haven't checked this trick out in a level editor (yet), but I assume it's done by transposing a translucent wall texture into the floor..?

Most levelmakers know this effect by accidently using a middle texture that is too big for the room's height, and the sectors bordering on both sidedefs have the exact same properties. In that case the middle texture 'bleeds' into the floor.

Here, a translucent middle texture is used with a negative Y offset to make it bleed into the (fake) floor of a deep water sector. You can't see the actual floor of the deep water sector (or so I think)... when you can see below the transposed texture the effect just stops, making the (fake) floor revert back to a solid look. And 'underwater' you won't have any effect at all.

[fen boi]

Mordeth is right, it looks essentially like a standard Doom2.exe fake water effect (using self referencing sectors). But with the addition of increasingly deeper sectors at the edge of the pool, each with transparent middle textures with negative offsets.

UPDATE: you can have a solid floor, but at the moment there is a small gap all around the outside of the pool. Also mouselook see's through to the lowest floor (-512, slime01 flat).

I've tried making the flat reach the edges of the pool, but you end up with two transparent floors instead of one.

UDATED UPDATE: Bugger, there is a space around the player where the water isn't drawn, just the new floor

[Jayextee]

Heh, I've found this trick works nicest in moderation. I'm not going to be using it in large pools or anything, but Murderous Intent 2 (My current project) now has some "transparent" ceiling windows a la Quake 2 with this trick. It looks very nice on 64x64 squares where you can't possibly MLOOK to see the (lack of) additional ceiling/floor.

Actually, I may be playing around with .BEX's translucency bit for things, wierd offsets with hanging sprites and this trick to emulate the bits in Quake 2 where you see POWs on the floor above, through glass. If this can be done correctly, this will look übercool!

Shame about Legacy's lack of support for .bex -- Intent 2 may not actually be as multi-port as I had wished, unless somebody wishes to make a few e-mails... ;)

[NiGHTMARE]

I'd just like to point out that the correct term isn't 'transparent' (which means completely see-through), it's 'translucent' (which means partially see-through) ;)

Anyway, if you want to use this effect on a floor that isn't solid, as I did, you should be able to use Boom's deep water effect if you want. I used the old doom.exe deep water effect myself, but this was only really due to laziness ;) I'll probably update the level to use the Boom method in the next version.

Also, you'll have to make sure the player's view doesn't go below the surface, otherwise things will look a little weird. In anything other than ZDoom, use self-referencing sectors to stop the player going too deep. In ZDoom, I recommend using invisible 3D bridge objects to stop the player from going too deep.

As both Mordeth and fen boi pointed out, you CAN have another flat below the apparently translucent flat, but the translucency effect doesn't cover it. I've tried playing around with making a new texture that's identical to the pool bottom, and having more translucent middle textures surrounding the pool bottom that use this new texture, but it doesn't really look very good.

If you mess around with the linedefs' translucency levels (VERY easy to do in ZDoom, not so easy with other ports), you can make the translucent flat effect look much better, and it also looks better or worse depending on what flat you're using. Messing around with either of these, you can create the appearance of a solid bottom, although it's entirely one colour.

However, as Jayextee suggested, using the translucent flat effect in a way so that you can't see the bottom/top, either by using the effect only in relatively small sectors, or using lots of linedefs, is probably the best way to get around the problem.

[Shaviro]

You can also use this for a mirror effect. It is hard to do, tho.

[ReX]

NiGHTMARE said:

Go to my site to grab the wad that contains this effect

Ungrabbable (i.e., can't be grabbed). Error message, as follows:

Forbidden
Remote Host: [24.28.57.16]

You do not have permission to access http://haunt.8m.com/nb_bmtrk.ZIP
Data files must be stored on the same site they are linked from.

Thank you for using FreeServers

Any chance you could email it to me: gurkha_boy@yahoo.com

Thanks.

[Lazer]

After messing around with the effect a little, I think you need to compromise to use this trick... i.e.:

-You only use it as scenary. Like you walk near some water, but can't go in or see the bottom of it.

-You make it in the style the NiGHTMARE did.

-You use lines to put a floor made of close lines which looks like a floor.

[Use]

oo, some nice work there nightmare! the breaking doors/lifts are fun.

[The Ultimate DooMer]

ReX said:

Ungrabbable (i.e., can't be grabbed). Error message, as follows:

Forbidden
Remote Host: [24.28.57.16]

You do not have permission to access http://haunt.8m.com/nb_bmtrk.ZIP
Data files must be stored on the same site they are linked from.

Thank you for using FreeServers

Well, I just grabbed it without any trouble.

[NiGHTMARE]

ReX said:

Ungrabbable (i.e., can't be grabbed).

Save As doesn't work, you have to left click. If this isn't your problem though, let me know and I'll send it :)

[Fredrik]

Damnit Nick why are you still using that 8m crap like some clueless Internet newbie. Move. Now.

:P

[NiGHTMARE]

Where do you suggest? All free internet space providers are crap in some way or other.

[Fredrik]

Doomworld is great!

(Then there are places like slipgate... or perhaps nautrup.com? :P)

[ReX]

NiGHTMARE said:

Save As doesn't work, you have to left click. If this isn't your problem though, let me know and I'll send it :)

Nope. Already tried the left click method, which gives me the same error message. Ah, well.

[Mordeth]

The problem with using a second transposed translucent texture to mimick the 'bottom of the well' texture is that this texture is displayed as a wall and not as a flat, so it looks wrong from the player's perspective.

Still, it's nice to use on deep pits but especially on skylights. Provided you keep those skylights small so the player doesn't get to look at the actual (but missing!) sky. And no mouselook either :)

But, what about NOT compensating the missing lower texture at the edge of the pool? Meaning, a 'normal' sector surrounding the self-referencing ones, ceiling down to normal floor level, floor almost up to normal floor level, lower texture missing, and the transposed texture only partly covering up the gap. That way, you can 'bleed' the floor (or, depending on the actual construction, the ceiling) flat of the surrounding sector instead. And this bleed IS displayed as a flat. Question is, is this visible from the player's POV and how does it combine with the translucent texture?

[Lazer]

NiGHTMARE said:

Where do you suggest? All free internet space providers are crap in some way or other.

http://www.brinkster.com

Lots of free space and no advertisements.

[NiGHTMARE]

Lazer said:

http://www.brinkster.com

Lots of free space and no advertisements.

I've finally gotten around to checking them out, but as I suspected, there's a drawback. In this case, EXTREMELY limited bandwidth. As I said, they're all crap :(

[Fletcher`]

geocities is just plain out pitiful- just look at my site (till i fix um some new stuff tho)