a church and a forest... need help

[ellmo]

I've decided to switch this very ambitious ZDoom project *cough* to a single ambitious GZDoom map.

As you could suspect I would damn like to use 3D floors and dynamic lightnings here. And here come both problems. Take a look at the shot:


1. Is it possible to put a sloped "roof" on the tower ahead of the player?
2. Why the hell some of those slopes under the torches are affected by dynamic light, while others aren't?

[Skadoomer]

Is it possible to put a sloped "roof" on the tower ahead of the player?

Using portals i think you should be able to. Just make a sloped roof like area and tag to portal to the top of the tower. I think vader did something like this a while back.

Why the hell some of those slopes under the torches are affected by dynamic light, while others aren't?

Depends. What are the angles of those slopes? Because of thw way doom does lighting, some lines are lit differently than others. Try using evenlighting in the mapinfo file for this level and see if that makes a difference.

[ellmo]

Well... I tried using portals... but it didn't really work. I get a hundred-mile-length HOMs and such... Mind If I sent this to you so you could take a look?

[Paul]

You could get away with sloped skyvoids if anything. If the map is dark and the roof is tall no one would notice.

Portals are a bit harder to set up than one could think. I believe upper stacks shouldn't have low-linedef textures. That's most likely causing the HOM effect. I know however they are buggy. Very. So they're the last thing I'd suggest.

Above all else

single ambitious GZDoom map.

I'm not completely aware of this, but doesn't Gzdoom support 3d slopes?
It does support 3d floors (true ones) so that would be efficient, and with some smart texture tricks it wouldn't look that squarey.

[ellmo]

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "sloped skyvoids"... to be honest, I don't understand a single word.

And 3D_Floors would be a pain in the ass, because the Tower looks complicated as this:

Not to mention that there are polyobjects, a lots of slopes, and a transfer_line under the tower... Yuuck.

[Paul]

... to be honest, I don't understand a single word.

There are lots of maps that use the skyvoid technique. It's basically a lowered ceiling with the sky as the ceiling, making things "vanish" to the sky. When sloped can create many interesting architectural accents.
I'm quite surprised You've never heard about them TBH

About 3d floors-that screenshots isn't really that complexed I know what I'm saying.. having an experience of working on maps per 7000 sectors in the past, which weren't that all pleasurable to edit

[ellmo]

There are lots of maps that use the skyvoid technique. It's basically a lowered ceiling with the sky as the ceiling, making things "vanish" to the sky.

Well, at first I thought you thought of something different, but since you say, what I was afraid to hear:
1 If that's called skyvoids - then I heard about them, and used them many times
2 That wouldn't definately look well here. The church is visible from all directions and from long distances.

About 3d floors-that screenshots isn't really that complexed I know what I'm saying.. having an experience of working on maps per 7000 sectors in the past, which weren't that all pleasurable to edit

Yeah, I admit This isn't really complicated to make a 3D_Floor, as long as it is flat. I already had one on top of that. But sloping all four sides of the tower, towards it's center... No no no...

[Graf Zahl]

Portals are a bit harder to set up than one could think. I believe upper stacks shouldn't have low-linedef textures. That's most likely causing the HOM effect. I know however they are buggy. Very. So they're the last thing I'd suggest.

With hardware rendering, a Z-buffer and a stencil buffer they are much more robust in GZDoom now than they are in ZDoom's software renderer. All the clipping issues are a non-issue and since I have taken care of Zen Dynamics all the other glitches should be gone, too.

I'm not completely aware of this, but doesn't Gzdoom support 3d slopes?
It does support 3d floors (true ones) so that would be efficient, and with some smart texture tricks it wouldn't look that squarey.

You can define sloped 3D-floors but only if they are purely decorative. ZDoom's slope walking code can't handle them and I haven't rewritten that yet.

[solarsnowfall]

If I may add, the sloped 3d floors only work at full opacity, or complete invisibility (alpha 255, or 0). Check this file out for a "demo" http://solarsnow.drdteam.org/geometry.rar

[Paul]

You can define sloped 3D-floors but only if they are purely decorative. ZDoom's slope walking code can't handle them and I haven't rewritten that yet.

Well that's the thing in this case. Thanks for the info Graf! (It means a lot to me as well)