Wall portals

[ibm5155]

OFF: Why all that talk about Action Doom 2? it was released and it's working :s or the author wants to update the map?

ON: @Graf, are you already touching this code to be opengl compatible? or for now this kind of portals is software only?

[Gez]

Urban Brawl uses a lot of [wiki]stacked sectors[/wiki], so it's a good reference for doing regression tests on ZDoom's existing portal functionalities.

The aforementioned bus, notably, uses an ingenious hack with a stack on a very steeply sloped sector to create the illusion of a line portal.

[Major Cooke]

OpenGL can handle anything the software renderer can, plus more... I don't know what makes you think it would be software only.

[Graf Zahl]

ON: @Graf, are you already touching this code to be opengl compatible? or for now this kind of portals is software only?

Strictly parallel portals Eternity style are already working, albeit in a separate branch. Adding full functionality for this is one hour of work at most (namely to rotate the matrices to the desired view direction.)

It will be done as soon as this here gets merged.

[Graf Zahl]

Urban Brawl uses a lot of [wiki]stacked sectors[/wiki], so it's a good reference for doing regression tests on ZDoom's existing portal functionalities.

The aforementioned bus, notably, uses an ingenious hack with a stack on a very steeply sloped sector to create the illusion of a line portal.

The only problem with this mod is that it pushes the hackish implementation in ZDoom to its absolute limits which pretty much makes any change to the current stacked sector code impossible.
If true sector portals ever can be made to work it'll probably require quite a bit of redundancy to perform the new stuff in a saner and less performance degrading fashion without breaking the old one. Just getting Vaprdemo.wad started with the software renderer shows some pretty strong performance impact in the starting train which simulates a reflective floor with as portal. Something in there is not doing things right...

[ibm5155]

What happens if a 3D floor wall is a wall portal? does it work?
Also one nice thing to test, that I didn't saw on the demo wad are movable walls, almost all the portals has fixed sizes over the map, add a floor waggle and lets see the result with the portals

[Major Cooke]

I believe it does, the massive disco room had some? perhaps? I think... The massive tower in the video on the first page definitely looked like it had some portals potentially on 3D floors.

[Graf Zahl]

What happens if a 3D floor wall is a wall portal? does it work?

No, that won't work.

Also one nice thing to test, that I didn't saw on the demo wad are movable walls, almost all the portals has fixed sizes over the map, add a floor waggle and lets see the result with the portals

That should be possible, but why are you so intent of going crazy on this.

[ibm5155]

I believe it does, the massive disco room had some? perhaps? I think... The massive tower in the video on the first page definitely looked like it had some portals potentially on 3D floors.

It wasn't actually a 3D floor, but, a Big PolyObject wher his interior was that little rom with 3D floors (quite well done)

Also one nice thing to test, that I didn't saw on the demo wad are movable walls, almost all the portals has fixed sizes over the map, add a floor waggle and lets see the result with the portals

That should be possible, but why are you so intent of going crazy on this.

For testing the code limits

[Gez]

Also one nice thing to test, that I didn't saw on the demo wad are movable walls, almost all the portals has fixed sizes over the map, add a floor waggle and lets see the result with the portals

There's actually a portal door in the demo map. At least, I think there's one; maybe I didn't upload the version with it, it's been a while.

[hfc2x]

That said, there are advantages to Eternity's more restrained portal features. It allows to make neat stuff with the automap:

If the same thing was successfully attempted on ZDoom, the automap view for the test map would completely spaz out.

I think that feature can be actually useful in ZDoom too. The only thing needed would be (if possible, obviously) to restrict automap overlaying only when using static, Eternity-like portals, and disable that when it's a dynamic one so it doesn't cause major problems.

The only problem with this mod is that it pushes the hackish implementation in ZDoom to its absolute limits which pretty much makes any change to the current stacked sector code impossible.
If true sector portals ever can be made to work it'll probably require quite a bit of redundancy to perform the new stuff in a saner and less performance degrading fashion without breaking the old one.

Is it possible to make the engine use the old rendering code for some exclusive maps only? That way you wouldn't have to worry about breaking compatibility..

[Graf Zahl]

Hard to say. I never tried to understand the gory details of software rendered portals. All I see is that it glitches like crazy and is quite a bit slower than Eternity is.

[Tormentor667]

Is there a binary that can be downloaded?

[Gez]

Look more carefully at the first post.

[Tormentor667]

Now I found it, thanks Gez

*EDIT*
Just tried it, this is really great... imagine the possibilites One question though: As of now this is for the software renderer ZDOOM. How hard will it be to make this also work in hardware GZDOOM?