Blinking light troubles

Hi there! :>

I'm using Doom Builder 1.67 with a Doom II configuration and I can't seem to get these effects to work:

1 - Light Blinks (randomly)
8 - Light Glows (1+ sec)

I've tried them in the exact same situation as all the other light effects, and they all work, except these two. I've tried light levels of 0 to 255 and everything in between, I've checked and double checked to see if all my settings were correct (and they must be because when I apply any other effect it works fine), but they just won't blink/glow. I've tried both Zdoom and Jdoom with the same results, although these same effects seem to have no trouble when they appear in any of the official Doom levels.

I've scoured all the DB documentation I could find but to no avail.


That's my main problem, but I've got some other questions:

1.
In Doom Builder, long thin gaps sometimes appear in the polygons in 3D mode, and stay there until I edit that sector, even when I reload my file. They mostly seem to appear when I create a child sector and drag its vertices around and stitch them onto other sectors or linedefs that way. They don't show up when I play the level, but they're mighty annoying. Anything I'm doing wrong?

2.
I'm trying to keep my levels compatible with vanilla Doom, but I can't seem to find a list of exact specifications. I've read that you can't have more than 128 sectors on screen at any time, and also no more than 64 things. Anything else I need to watch out for?

3.
What's with all the fish avatars?

Those lighting effects depend on having an adjacent sector which is darker. The darkest neighbour is the low value of the light, and the sector itself is the high value.

Nikanoru said:

1.
In Doom Builder, long thin gaps sometimes appear in the polygons in 3D mode, and stay there until I edit that sector, even when I reload my file. They mostly seem to appear when I create a child sector and drag its vertices around and stitch them onto other sectors or linedefs that way. They don't show up when I play the level, but they're mighty annoying. Anything I'm doing wrong?

I don't think so - it happens to me too, and even after checking for errors and testing it in game, there's really nothing wrong. I guess it's just a rendering bug with DB.

2.
I'm trying to keep my levels compatible with vanilla Doom, but I can't seem to find a list of exact specifications. I've read that you can't have more than 128 sectors on screen at any time, and also no more than 64 things. Anything else I need to watch out for?

If you're running an advanced source port like Boom, there's an option that will show you a VPO icon in any case where the Vanilla EXE would crash with a visplane overflow. As far as I can tell, that's about the only thing left (though I haven't worked with Vanilla that much).

3.
What's with all the fish avatars?

Old Doomworld trend, I suppose.

Ajapted said:

Those lighting effects depend on having an adjacent sector which is darker. The darkest neighbour is the low value of the light, and the sector itself is the high value.

Seems that was my problem, the surrounding sector was set to fullbright. It works now, thanks!

WildWeasel said:

I don't think so - it happens to me too, and even after checking for errors and testing it in game, there's really nothing wrong. I guess it's just a rendering bug with DB.

Heh, that's good, I was getting worried there for a second when half my architecture disappeared after moving one vertex by three units.

If you're running an advanced source port like Boom, there's an option that will show you a VPO icon in any case where the Vanilla EXE would crash with a visplane overflow. As far as I can tell, that's about the only thing left (though I haven't worked with Vanilla that much).

That sounds very handy. Which other source ports have this option? I can't seem to find it in Zdoom.

Well, thanks for zee help.

Nikanoru said:
That sounds very handy. Which other source ports have this option?

This should be in Eternity and PrBoom, but not in ZDoom. It should be relatively accurate, but to be exacting it's best to use Doom2 itself; you can run it smoothly even on newer versions of Windows if you disable sound (with -nosound, for example.)

The amount of sprites that may be viewed varies; apparently at about 64 it starts to make some invisible, but you won't really notice it that much unless there are considerably more, and it also depends on how they are positioned. And the VPOs have a limit on visplanes, not sectors in sight. You can get a VPO in an area with few sectors but many columns cutting view into many such "planes," for example.

Ok, I'll try some of that, thanks.

I've got another question (just tell me if I'm supposed to make a new thread or something):

So far I've found no reliable way of determining which texture the ground changes to when using one of the raising floor options that do this. At first I thought it would change to the parent sector's texture, but that doesn't seem true in various cases. I'm confused. Anybody?

AFAIK the flat is set by the floor texture, the first side of your raise_floor special line is facing.
So, if you´ve got a switch that raises a sector, the floor texture underneath the switch is taken for the raising sector.

Once again, my problems have been solved. Thanks for the help!

I think that's it for now, heh.