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Linguica

Stupid BSP Tricks

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Linguica said:

Oh hey it works! A "portal" in vanilla Doom!


Get the fuck out of here.

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These are educational!

Interesting portal effect. I would look odd in a GL port that doesn't fill the empty space with the flats of the red sector it isn't supposed to be drawing.

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Linguica said:

Oh hey it works! A "portal" in vanilla Doom!(not in ZDoom)

Alright, that does it. I'm gonna make a batch script that does all the necessary changes to have this feature in the BSP tree, no matter how much the map editor resets it back.

Is that portal merely visual or does it also affect physical interaction in any way? Regardless, can you see the things too, or only the walls [EDIT: I just looked at the test map, it has thins]? Can you use it as a portal-camera?

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I just played with it a bit. I replaced all spikes with cyberdemons and raised the platform a bit. I had to no-clip into the red area to wake them up. It seems that sprites clip wrongly with the floor.



The "portal" surface is like any other wall, can't be passed through by bullets or projectiles. Probably you can't press buttons behind the portal either.

I wonder if this scenario is possible: you see an object (switch, item, doorway etc.). As you get close to the object, the object runs away from you and you see how the corridor expands.

I wonder how far R_PointInSubsector affects gameplay in any way, with this.

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As the inventor of this trick I believe I have the honor of naming it. So I introduce you to the linguortal.

linguortal (lin-GWORE-tal) (noun) - a non-euclidean portal-like effect that works in vanilla Doom.

Examples of usage:

- Upon seeing the linguortal, Graf Zahl cussed and threw his chair across the room.
- BTSX E3's penultimate level, even with all the fancy linguortals, is still a dull and overlong affair.
- >Brutal Doom supporting linguortals when?

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Linguica said:

- Upon seeing the linguortal, Graf Zahl cussed and threw his chair across the room.

Be thankful that he didn't see this thread (yet)... :P

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WTF am I seeing? Now, wait a minute! If you're able to modify the BSP walk, you should be able to make multiple stretches of portals, right? Good Lord, I'm thinking of a runtime BSP hack... I can't get my head around what this can allow, but I think it's big. Ok, what software do you need to go beyond hex edits? First, you need to control how the BSP is built - you need to control where the splits are, or aren't, so it will support your custom BSP walk.

I can't even type - this seems so obvious, like we should have been doing it for years. Fuck em, man - keep hacking at it. Maybe a custom node builder (or a runtime builder), coupled with some line specials that mod the BSP walk at runtime... or reverse it for a mirror. Shit, I'm excited! Ready for portal04.wad.

No, the "portaling".

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This is really awesome.

I think what would help with manual nodes hacks a lot would be some kind of nodes "IR" in a textual format for humans to manipulate. So a builder would be a two part tool: one to calculate the nodes and write out the results in this text/human readable format, and a simpler one to turn the text into a traditional BSP.

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andrewj said:

Very neat. I'm surprised it doesn't work in PrBoom though.

Crispy Doom is closer to Choco and it doesn't work there either.

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I could only smile at that in-game acting ;
"Hey, nothing to see here... lets look again. I cant believe this, quikly glances again."

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So it works in Mocha Doom? I couldn't get it running (well, it RAN, but all I got was a black screen that I had to ctrl-alt-del out of).

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Also I found that it works in Boom but it's broken in MBF, so we can probably thank Lee Killough's various optimizations for causing it to not work in most modern ports...

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I think the biggest 'problem' with these hacks is that it will cause a flood of bug reports for the poor source port authors whose engines have moved beyond the state where this stuff works.

That's something that should be clear to anyone seriously thinking about employing this stuff in a real life map. Your maps will be limited to one or two ports, and these will most likely only be those who get used by the hard core Doomers, leaving most casual players in the dust.

And what for? Some second grade proof-of-concept effect that won't add anything of value? Great...

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Maes said:

That site is listed on the "Malware Domains" subscription list I'm using for my adblocker, so I can't see the image.

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There's some serious butthurt from zdoom fans here. It's not a black-and-white world: you can run more than one port.

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Jon said:

There's some serious butthurt from zdoom fans here. It's not a black-and-white world: you can run more than one port.



Right, but many users won't ever touch Doom.exe or Chocolate Doom, so any trick only working on these is almost doomed to obscurity.

And even if you get PrBoom into the picture, what about those who prefer OpenGL? Screwed again, eh?


No, sorry, if you use this stuff in a map, you have effectively limited its potential user base to a small subgroup of this forum.

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ZDoom and GZDoom already support portals and have an extensive system for modifying maps at runtime, so if these could be detected then couldn't they be supported in ZDoom regardless of renderer by automatically flagging a couple of lines?

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Graf Zahl said:

Right, but many users won't ever touch Doom.exe or Chocolate Doom, so any trick only working on these is almost doomed to obscurity.

And even if you get PrBoom into the picture, what about those who prefer OpenGL? Screwed again, eh?


No, sorry, if you use this stuff in a map, you have effectively limited its potential user base to a small subgroup of this forum.


I somehow don't think that's what your objection actually is. I for one don't see why that's a problem. It is what it is.

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Graf Zahl said:

Right, but many users won't ever touch Doom.exe or Chocolate Doom, so any trick only working on these is almost doomed to obscurity.


I'm not one to bring up history, but the developers of BSP 1.x and DEU 5.x actually knew about this BSP behaviour during development and had plans to create a GUI for manipulating the BSP directly. If they had succeeded, this effect would likely be as common as any voodoo doll trick.

Edit: I worded this wrong. the BSP guys were aiming for a GUI for BSP, probably to correct the HOM effects manually on BSP generation, if my ASSumptions are correct.

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