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Quasar

Eternity Engine v3.31 beta 1

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Ok so it got delayed a bit by schoolwork and poor health, but it should be out tonight or possibly tomorrow during the day at the absolute latest.

Editors will be happy to know that the delay has bought them a very cool new feature by SoM which enables very easy pseudo-3D constructs with no sector reference tricks or gross hacks.

I won't go into too much technical detail, but basically the feature is a new line flag with value = 1024. A line with this flag only clips things that hit the drawn area of its middle texture. This allows use of textures as fake 3D floors, as well as short fences you can jump over, and 2S lines that block projectiles. SoM believes you could even make a free-standing elevator platform, although I've yet to see a working example of this. Hopefully he's gotten it going though.

Its a great feature that should expand the horizons of what is possible in a traditional editing environment. The upcoming beta will include a small sample level I made which has crossing pseudo-3D bridges, each of which you can freely go under/over and between without any invisible lift action going on.

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BBG: thanks for posting that shot ;)

Although really I don't think the shot on its own is that impressive. Mainly because this isn't the only or probably even the best way to use this stuff. Plus I kinda just hacked that level together in about 30 minutes as a test of concept.

I considered trying to make a 3rd bridge above the second, but the more you carry that on, the more and more linedefs you get crammed into the middle and the texture alignment and stuff becomes a nightmare ;)

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Quasar said:

BBG: thanks for posting that shot ;)


I wish Orion would hurry and get that submission form working for me...

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Sorry everybody I just keep lying about the release. Well, not intentionally of course ^_^

I was going to release last night, truth be told, but then I looked at cph's MBF bugs page and found about 5 things that I needed to fix but was putting off, and now SoM is working on a cool level to show off the 3DMidTex line flag and he wants until Saturday to finish it. So, I'll do the release this Saturday. A week later than I had hoped, but at least there's a cool new feature that's been bought by the delays.

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You take a 2S linedef, preferably with the lower texture unpegged and a suitable step-style texture on it (the texture on the first sidedef is always used for clipping purposes), and add 1024 to the flags value. This marks it as a 3Dmidtex line.

If its a line over which monsters shouldn't be able to hang, you also mark the "monster blocking" flag, which behaves differently on these kinds of lines and lets monsters cross as long as they're not normally blocked or directly walking on the lines.

3Dmidtex lines clip things in the visible range of their textures. So if you have a 24-tall lower-unpegged middle texture sitting at vertical offset zero, so that its bottom is even with the floor, you have just created a 24-tall step that can be stood on, leaped over, etc.

3Dmidtex lines can be used for short fences and other more usual stuff, and also have the useful property of blocking projectiles, something no other 2S lines can do. This is one of those features that its really up to the editors to fully exploit and show what it makes possible.

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I'm also planning on adding some new linedef types that will make it possible to create doors and lifts out of 3d-sides. the new linedef types won't make it into this release but the next one should have them.

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...btw, tonight I went through with just the intellectual exercise of designing that free-standing elevator (not in an actual editor, mind you).

Take your lines that make your floating platform, and give all the lines running one direction tag X, and all of the perpendicular lines should have tag Y (X and Y being arbitrary numbers NOT ALREADY ASSIGNED TO STUFF).

Next, place a square sector (to move at normal lift speed, I think it should be 128x128), and tag two adjacent sides with tags X and Y (so that the line tagged X is parallel to all of the lines tagged Y in your platform). Give both of these lines type 249.

Set this sector to moving (perpetual lift or such); the floating platform will move in the opposite direction (as the lift moves up, the platform will move down, and vice-versa).

KNOWN (possible) PROBLEMS: Eh, Eternity has no real way of handling the situation where the 3dmidtex lines' textures move down into an object, according to Quasar`. So who knows what'll happen if you try that. (Also, who knows if it'll actually carry you up; you might get left behind by it if it doesn't check correctly.)

So, SoM... tell us if that works (and fix it if it don't)!

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Its not a matter of just "fix it if it doesn't," because the fix needs to be clean and obvious and fit with the existing code. I won't hack DOOM to pieces to allow this kind of thing.

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Quasar said:

Its not a matter of just "fix it if it doesn't," because the fix needs to be clean and obvious and fit with the existing code. I won't hack DOOM to pieces to allow this kind of thing.


Durrrr, we know that.

Still, if it doesn't work, it does need to be fixed. :-)

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