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Hi，everyone，I have used mapster32 from 3 years ago ，and now I roughly learned about all engine features somehow。But I think it's a shame that powerful sprite magic can't do complex shape because it’s just a square tile。If it can be triangle, we can make a lot of complex things , just like polygon, with the sloped and wall sprite, we can make maybe "everything"!

I can do it myself somehow but...it feels so lamed（PS+DEF） ,and the texture just has one side...


So, can some make a script or something give all tiles a half-cut and/or translucent（the other half）mode/toggle ？

IF it's possible，maybe we’ll have a more gorgeous AMC Squad/ WG MEGA PACK/Blast Radius or something...

[ck3D]

You can probably achieve most of what you want using sloped parallaxed sectors/maskwalls and what High Treason calls the negatives trick, his video on the topic is a must watch:



This is how the planet-destroying positronic raygun in Blast Radius is made, when it fires the diagonal laser beam that appears is a bunch of the (see-through) space sky sectors moving heights with SE31's and 32's to stop meeting and thus reveal and stretch the maskwalls. Ever since I learned that trick I've been using it a lot but since it relies on rendering order abuse I think it breaks in Polymer where skies are handled differently.

I think the ingredients to achieve what you want already are in there somewhere, you can play with a mix of that technique and sloped sprites even if like me you don't do TROR.

What's really lacking is assets for triangle sprites altogether but that's a game thing, you can mess around with pal 4 versions of the triangular 3DRealms logo to fill in the blanks of spritework sometimes (or the back of the Stop sign from 1.4+) but that is ridiculously limited and not something I can see EDuke really address, you're probably better off making/importing your own triangular art then or mapping for mods that offer more options in that department but even those are pretty rare.

For transparency I'm not too sure what you mean as it's already possible to decide on which exact (mask)walls and sprites are transluscent and/or one-way or not. For maskwalls you just work on each wall side separately (each red line technically has two sides), for sprites sometimes you need to clone and invert one (so use two overlapping one-sided sprites, bottom being the front one just mirrored) to make things look coherent.

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ck3D, on 22 May 2024 - 03:22 PM, said:

You can probably achieve most of what you want using sloped parallaxed sectors/maskwalls and what High Treason calls the negatives trick, his video on the topic is a must watch:



This is how the planet-destroying positronic raygun in Blast Radius is made, when it fires the diagonal laser beam that appears is a bunch of the (see-through) space sky sectors moving heights with SE31's and 32's to stop meeting and thus reveal and stretch the maskwalls. Ever since I learned that trick I've been using it a lot but since it relies on rendering order abuse I think it breaks in Polymer where skies are handled differently.

I think the ingredients to achieve what you want already are in there somewhere, you can play with a mix of that technique and sloped sprites even if like me you don't do TROR.

What's really lacking is assets for triangle sprites altogether but that's a game thing, you can mess around with pal 4 versions of the triangular 3DRealms logo to fill in the blanks of spritework sometimes (or the back of the Stop sign from 1.4+) but that is ridiculously limited and not something I can see EDuke really address, you're probably better off making/importing your own triangular art then or mapping for mods that offer more options in that department but even those are pretty rare.

For transparency I'm not too sure what you mean as it's already possible to decide on which exact (mask)walls and sprites are transluscent and/or one-way or not. For maskwalls you just work on each wall side separately (each red line technically has two sides), for sprites sometimes you need to clone and invert one (so use two one-sided sprites, bottom being the front one just mirrored) to make things look coherent.

Hell! Using glitches to make whatever you want ?That's crazy!

About transparency I mean If there's a script make all texture half-cut and...because of the square tiles，it just can be half-cutted triangle normal texture，and half-cutted triangle "tile 562"( that blank magenta） I think.

[Hendricks266]

Maybe I'm misunderstanding the question... All sprites are rectangles. I don't see any other shapes happening in the engine. You can make half the tile transparent if you want.

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Hendricks266, on 22 May 2024 - 08:20 PM, said:

Maybe I'm misunderstanding the question... All sprites are rectangles. I don't see any other shapes happening in the engine. You can make half the tile transparent if you want.

I can make half the tile transparent by using outer tool and import by DEF, but is there any way to get a toggle/mode in the editor（S，V，rectangle mode/half transparent triangle mode） ?

[ck3D]

I think I can see what you mean with your last description (mode that would overlay sprites with partial transparent masks) but with how sprites generally work and how the engine handles them I'm not sure that's possible (but of course I agree would be cool). My point in posting about the negatives was to show you already can make flat triangles (or really any shape) in Build and even make those transparent, it's not exactly using 'glitches' either as it entirely relies on base engine behavior, so if anything it's less derivative than Polymer is. People were already using variations of the trick back in the 90's, some of the early Roch maps already had weird shaped floating handrails built that way, and two Blast Radius maps have those giant forcefields everywhere. It's being done and has been being done for a long time.

Usually if you want to make something in Build but can't then the approach to the problem is the actual problem, not so much the editor and features (although for a lot of things you do need pretty crazy reaches and pulls). In your case I think your error is focusing on sprites too much and not enough on sector and wall tricks. Technically you can cut any flat shape into a maskwall which means in the case of a negative you control the angles of your triangle in-map with the sector's slopes, you don't need sprites to do that. Forte of Build always was in the possibilities with sectors (and thus walls), sprites very much are secondary bar the effectors.

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ck3D, on 23 May 2024 - 01:30 AM, said:

I think I can see what you mean with your last description (mode that would overlay sprites with partial transparent masks) but with how sprites generally work and how the engine handles them I'm not sure that's possible (but of course I agree would be cool). My point in posting about the negatives was to show you already can make flat triangles (or really any shape) in Build and even make those transparent, it's not exactly using 'glitches' either as it entirely relies on base engine behavior, so if anything it's less derivative than Polymer is. People were already using variations of the trick back in the 90's, some of the early Roch maps already had weird shaped floating handrails built that way, and two Blast Radius maps have those giant forcefields everywhere. It's being done and has been being done for a long time.

Usually if you want to make something in Build but can't then the approach to the problem is the actual problem, not so much the editor and features (although for a lot of things you do need pretty crazy reaches and pulls). In your case I think your error is focusing on sprites too much and not enough on sector and wall tricks. Technically you can cut any flat shape into a maskwall which means in the case of a negative you control the angles of your triangle in-map with the sector's slopes, you don't need sprites to do that. Forte of Build always was in the possibilities with sectors (and thus walls), sprites very much are secondary bar the effectors.

Thanks a lot first of all. Ok I get the trick but...I feel it so lamed because it's only provide visual effect(you can not pass/cross the sandwich-cookies-parallaxed “blank” space ) and even this need to mixed with sprite(It's a lot more flexible with just sprites). It feels like TROR sector punching a little bit，but sector punching is far ahead by the real function.

Then I tested about triangle sprite，my thought was too simple before。Actually it need at least 2-4 different angles of sprites to work correctly.(0, 90, 180, 270). I think maybe Build reach his limit. But with TROR and sloped/custom triangle sprite，we can already do a lot of things through。