Monsters fireballs hit the floor while elevator moves up ???

[mikenet2007]

Well I think I now have the effect I want, only a couple kinks to iron out at this point.

What I did was reduce the height the elevator had to climb from 10,000 to almost 4000 units then I reduced its speed from 12 to 4.

4 is very slow and it takes it about 4 minutes to climb the 4000 units up.

However the lift appears to be moving at a speed of 16 not 4 because the exterior moves down at a rate of 12. This makes it seem like the elevator climbs a lot more than it actually is.

In the end I decided to have the elevator actually climb some simply because the slight vibration caused by the slow moving elevator as well as the fact that the fireballs do still appear to move downward slightly gives a realistic effect. the fact that its not moving near as fast as it appears prevents the fireballs from ever hitting the floor.

This is the simple script for both the exterior and interior sectors........


FloorAndCeiling_RaiseByValue (1,4,3870); //elevator

FloorAndCeiling_LowerByValue (9,12,11610); //exterior sector


the exterior stops moving at the exact same time as the elevator because while it is going 3 times faster it also has exactly 3 times the distance to travel so this setup seems to work out nicely.

[MG_Man]

This might not be what you had in mind, but one way to do it can be simple.

When you get on the elevator, make a script that raises the elevator until the entrance is gone, then have it stop and move the wall textures down. Then for the exit you might have to give it a door and have the hall that connects the elevator to the door lower (ceiling and floor) at the same speed as the texture, then stop the texture scrolling. (Place the exit so that the floor is aligned with the ceiling of the shaft, then lower it until it is aligned with the other side of the door in the elevator exit.) This way you don't go up that much and it gives the illusion of a moving elevator, without the projectile kinks.

Ah, but there's one small problem, while the elevator is resting, the ceiling can't be visible or the effect is ruined. Or you can make it lower with the exit, and time it according to that.

I might edit this post with an ACS example later. But this way you can make it stop when a certain enemy dies as well, or make it happen in a time limit.

[mikenet2007]

Yea, hehe what a coincidence because when I was saying I think I have it figured out but I have a couple kinks to iron out, those were the kinks I was referring to. The entrance and the exit is a problem for the reason you described.

Since this is a one way trip I fixed the entrance part of the problem by blocking it off with a support structure that has to be risen before the lift will operate, it is the with of the entrance and after it is risen it completely blocks the entrance, Then moves down at the same rate the exterior sector does to give the illusion the lift is riding the support beam up. The other two support beams are for visual effect only and don't actually block anything, but I'm trying to rewrite the script so that all three switches "one for each beam"
have to be activated in any particular order before the elevator moves.

I asked about that here yesterday.....

http://forum.zdoom.org/potato.php?t=14396

When I get this lift complete I'll show in game shots of it, its looking nice.

[mikenet2007]

Here are the pics of the lift almost 100% complete. Not much left to do in it apart from getting the monster sequence right. These pics show all three switches required to lower and raise the support beams in order to start the lift.

The new overhead has changed and the number of sidedefs doubled from what it was before. This is the most complex lift Ive made to date, even for newer games.


The rest of the level is coming along nicely as well, how its set up is you have to destroy 2 generators to deactivate lazers blocking the lift that brings you to the surface. This level will be a great deal smaller than the following two are but should be fun.

[MG_Man]

Ah, so the ceiling is part of the elevator? In that case you don't need to worry about the ceiling part of my post.

[mikenet2007]

Yea the ceiling moves with the floor, instead of just the floor.
The entrance and exit was something I had to consider though. you can see in the pic how the entrance gets blocked of by a support beam, now I just have to worry about stopping the exterior from moving down before the exit comes into view or else you can see the texture on the outside is scrolling more than the lift.

Ill just speed the lift up after stopping the exterior, if I time that right it should be no problem.