Mapping: how do I do a "bottomless" pit?

[DBThanatos]

In udmf, how do i do it?

Here's the thing i want to achieve but i have no idea how to do it.
1. Make it darker the deeper it is.
2. To trigger insta death upon reaching a certain z level, rather than when touching the "bottom"
3. Make objects disappear when they fall into the pit (like ammo drops or whatever else), to avoid having a whole bunch of items at the bottom, or even corpses.

[Ral22]

I've done it where I use 3-d platforms that have no texture with decreasing brightness settings, layered and darker as they go down. Then I placed one that had an 80 height or so from the bottom with a solid black texture, which things would "disappear" under.

You could also opt for using floor glow that's a solid black glow, with a far reaching glow, then sit use that solid black textured 3-d platform at the bottom. That's probably the easiest way to do it, but only if you're using GZDoom.

Hopefully that makes sense. I could probably diagram it, if need be.

[Enjay]

[wiki]ExtraFloor_LightOnly[/wiki] can be useful to make a pit get darker and darker looking as you go down. It can take quite a few control sectors to get a nice smooth look though. These days I just tend to put a completely black texture on the bottom and put a large subtractive dynamic light at the bottom to get the darkening as you go down effect.

[jdagenet]

As of GZDoom 2.4.0, you can make this effect very easily using the Doom 64 sector coloring features. Of course if you're aiming for cross compatibility with Zandronum then your best bet would be to follow Enjay's method.

[Major Cooke]

1. Either Enjay's method, or Glowing Flats could be used.
2. "Actor Enters Sector" special, have it call ACS_(Named)ExecuteAlways and have a script track the thing. When below a certain Z level, make 'em die.
3. I think you can use PickActor. That, or you'll have to create a custom actor and place it at the bottom which performs things like A_CheckProximityor the likes and removes the stuff accordingly after grabbing the tracer.

Alternatively alternatively, have a custom actor with -SOLID and utilize the Activation property.

Give it the USESPECIAL flag, and the following THINGSPEC_ flags for activation property:

• TriggerActs
• MonsterTrigger
• MissileTrigger

Give it a special that executes an ACS script that kills any activator and destroys all other things.

That, for the most part, should do it I think... If you need help, you know where to find me.

[Reactor]

For a bottomless pit, I would recommend the "Half-life death" for it, to make it truly bottomless. Even in Quake 3 Arena, seeing the pillars and the corpse hitting a black floor broke the illusion. I haven't the slightest idea, how to re-create the Half-life fade-to-black death, but that'd be a perfect way to make a bottomless pit actually seem bottomless.

And yes, bottomless pit death could not be avoided by using IDDQD or Invulnerability.

[Major Cooke]

Actually in half life, god mode protected against that.

I suggest heavily against foiling god mode at least -- but then again, you can't kill players with god2 or buddha2 enabled.

Regular invulnerability is okay.

[Reactor]

Are you sure? I've tried to explore the bottom of the cliff in the level "Surface Tension" at the cliffside, and I always died when I fell off the cliff. Of course, if an enemy fell down, he was fine

[Major Cooke]

Yeah, I've never died with godmode on anywhere in HL.