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Real room above room

Posted: Sun May 22, 2005 8:28 pm
by Compwhiz128
Well i discovered in Duke nukem in the levels they just put a room above a room by building a sector that was higher. so this is a suggestion. Make it so you can have a room over a room

Posted: Sun May 22, 2005 8:36 pm
by HobbsTiger1
Although you can do the very buggy Stacked Sectors a true room over room (ala Quake or Half-Life) would pretty much require a major rewrite of the games engine.

Posted: Sun May 22, 2005 10:25 pm
by Sir_Alien
Wow! True room over room?!! I can't believe no one has ever thought of that before!! What a totally amazing, excellent idea!!

Posted: Mon May 23, 2005 1:26 am
by Cutmanmike
Sir_Alien wrote:Wow! True room over room?!! I can't believe no one has ever thought of that before!! What a totally amazing, excellent idea!!
:lol:

Re: Real room above room

Posted: Mon May 23, 2005 3:15 am
by David Ferstat
Compwhiz128 wrote:Well i discovered in Duke nukem in the levels they just put a room above a room by building a sector that was higher. so this is a suggestion. Make it so you can have a room over a room
Let's be merciful to him/her.

3D games all require a "game engine" of some sort to calculate and draw the geometry of the level; that is, all the architecture.

Doom, Heretic, Hexen and Strife all used the (surprise, surprise) Doom engine. Zdoom, descended from the same source, uses the same engine.

Duke Nukem 3D, Blood, Shadow Warrior and Redneck Rampage all used the Build engine.

Given that the games have different engines, each, logically, with it's own abilities and limitations, why should the presence of a feature in one engine mean that it can be easily added, if added at all, to another?

It turns out that it is simply not possible to add true room-over-room to the Doom/Zdoom engine without a lot of work. Some Doom-descended engines (Edge, Legacy) have implemented room-over-room, but with very mixed results.

In future, please do a bit of research in the Zdoom forums before making your suggestions for new features. The rule of thumb is that, if you can think of a really cool and blindingly obvious feature, there's a good chance that somebody else has too, and has posted it here.

The advantage of this to you is that it will save you from mockery and insults, and possibly even flaming, from those people already here. The advantage to us is that we don't have to waste our time with questions that have already been asked, and answered, before.

Re: Real room above room

Posted: Mon May 23, 2005 3:28 am
by Sir_Alien
David Ferstat wrote:Let's be merciful to him/her.
Meh, forgive me my momentary fall from grace. I've just worked the last 19 days straight and it looks like another 9 on top of that before I get some time off... I'm a little edgy...

Besides, my way was more concise. :)

Re: Real room above room

Posted: Mon May 23, 2005 4:09 am
by Vader
Compwhiz128 wrote:Well i discovered in Duke nukem in the levels they just put a room above a room by building a sector that was higher.
I think you all got him wrong!
Instead of true viewable room over room, i think what he meant is that you could do something like this:

Image
(the iso-view partially sucks :P )

Let´s say the above picture is taken in the editor of your choice.
now what I think Compwhiz128 is trying to do is:
Drawing a simple room + a stairway leading down(1)
Connecting the stairway with another room, wich is about in the same position as the first room only a few mapunits below it´s floor (2)
Given a hypethitical isometric view, it would look like shown in 3.

You wouldn´t be able to see the above room from the room below or vice versa.
I know that it was possible in Duke3d, but I´ve no clue about how it could work in Zdoom:?

Posted: Mon May 23, 2005 4:53 am
by Cutmanmike
It just wasn't meant to be :(

Posted: Mon May 23, 2005 6:47 am
by Graf Zahl
The Doom engine can't handle it.

Posted: Mon May 23, 2005 7:27 am
by Vader
Thats sad :(

Posted: Mon May 23, 2005 7:33 am
by TheDarkArchon
Barring the Silent Teleport trick, natch.

Posted: Mon May 23, 2005 7:41 am
by Vader
Would work, but isn´t exactly the same!
If you could make it like I showed above, you could have an real multi-level building with windows and everything...
though the windows couldn´t be on top of each other .

Posted: Mon May 23, 2005 10:01 am
by David Ferstat
Ok, it's back to basics.

The Doom engine (and, still, Zdoom) has one major, nay critical, shortcoming. No point on the map can have any more than one true floor and one true ceiling.

Note the use of the word "true". With Zdoom (as inherited from Boom) you do have the Transfer_Heights special, which allows you to have fake floors and fake ceilings.

The fake thing about these is that they are purely optical illusions. You can't walk on a fake floor unless you put down some bridge objects, and monsters can see through the fake floors and ceilings, and they'll try to attack you if the do.

It's also possible to fake it using the Teleport_Line special, which would be the Silent Teleport that the DarkArchon referred to. With this, the player can move from one room, down a corridor and appear in an identical section of corridor leading to another room.

However, it just isn't possible to properly create the architecture that you sketched for Zdoom.

Posted: Mon May 23, 2005 10:06 am
by Vader
Well, I know that...
I just wanted to make clear, what Compowhatever was looking for in his initial post :wink:

Posted: Mon May 23, 2005 10:08 am
by Phobus
Yeah, Doom engin cannot draw two different objects (such as vertecies and possible linedefs) on top of each other at a different z height (if X was along and y was forwards, z is up), Therefore the example written above (with the pictures) is 100% impossible. Anyway, is there a Doom Editing program that can do that with out problems?