[PsychoGoatee]

Another newbie mapping question folks. How do you make a window looking outside of a building? I've read the infoguide and I looked at maps in the Duke grp to try and figure out how it works, tinkering around just couldn't figure it out. So figured I'd ask.

I know how to make a window in the middle of a room, by raising and lowering a subsector and putting a flat glass sprite on the opening and making it blockable. But I can't figure out how to make a window in an outside wall. Or an opening in general, looking out into another sector.

I've attached a screencap of where I'd like to put a window. I made a sector outside of the building which is going to be an open street area. The wall I'm trying to make a window on is a white line one-sided wall I guess? It's confusing. I tried making a thin windowsill type of thing but when I insert the points on the wall, clicking spacebar doesn't do anything. It's like it doesn't want me to interact with the wall. I have guesses at why it isn't working, but not sure how to make it work. Thanks.

I'm guessing I want the walls to be red and two-sided? I loaded an earlier version with just a couple rooms and it did let me make a thin red wall around the room, so I'm guessing having an adjoining vertex with the outside street is the problem? So I probably have to get rid of the street first? Though even in that file I'm still not succeeding in making a little thingy I can raise and lower in the wall to make a window.

Random note, I did make a parallax sky sunroof window on the ceiling at least, as suggested in Micky C's guide. That looks cool.

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[Mark]

You will have to make the white wall into a red wall of whatever thickness you want the wall to have. Then raise or lower the ceiling or floor of that wall to meet where you want to make your window, same as you made before.

[PsychoGoatee]

Mark., on 05 August 2015 - 05:39 PM, said:

You will have to make the white wall into a red wall of whatever thickness you want the wall to have. Then raise or lower the ceiling or floor of that wall to meet where you want to make your window, same as you made before.

It doesn't let me turn it into a red wall unfortunately. Because Alt+S doesn't work for me for some reason, the way I turn white lines into red lines is by going over around the sector twice with spacebar. When I try to interact with this particular outside white line, it just won't let me do it. I press space bar and nothing happens. This screen cap is of me highlighting that line and trying to hit spacebar on a point to make it a sector, but nothing happens when I press spacebar. Any point I have on that white line it ignores when I press spacebar.

Here's a bonus question. Also in that screen cap is a door problem I'm having. A weird quirk, when I build a little ceiling sector thingy to drag down and cover the top of the repeating ceiling door texture, it seems to repeat the sector properties of the larger sector it's in. I have a sound effect in that sector to make Duke say a one liner, it's shown in the middle of the room. Now when I made the three little red triangle thing over the door it made a copy of that sector tag in it. And when I load the level, the door won't open from that side anymore.I've fixed this on other doors by hitting T and changing the sector tag back to 0. In this case I checked and the sector tag for the new little area is listed as zero when I hit T. but it still shows up as 10289. Or 20, 10289. If I remove the door's lotag of 20 it then it just says 10289, But I'm trying to get rid of the 10289. The hightag is also listed as 0 when I hit H. Any ideas?

I have no idea why nothing seems to be working smoothly, but it's still fun to mess around with.

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[Mark]

Im not quite sure what your saying, but one thing I can tell you is that under some circumstances the sector tag will display on screen like it is another sector but its really in the one you placed it in. It can be confusing.

[PsychoGoatee]

Mark., on 05 August 2015 - 06:36 PM, said:

Im not quite sure what your saying, but one thing I can tell you is that under some circumstances the sector tag will display on screen like it is another sector but its really in the one you placed it in. It can be confusing.

Maybe I'm getting my own all new unique bugs, so nobody knows. When I made a few red lines in front of a door to make some decoration, it made a second copy of the sector tag in it. The main one shown in the middle of the room on the right is seen in this pic here, as well as that one. Before when I made a thing above a door with three red boxes it has made three seperate copies. I get the impression these subsectors all got it because the sector had it. In the past I was able to fix it by setting those copies of the tag back to 0, but here that isn't working.

Maybe I should just try using Build. (I kid, I need that undo button. And I'd probably make a corrupted map by accident)


I'll also throw a longshot question out there. You know that parallax ceiling window thing you can do (I'll post a pic too). Is there some way where I can somehow get that effect on a wall? Then I could sort of fake having a window? Probably not, but it would be cool. I'll throw in a pic of the fake windows I made for fun too.

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[Jblade]

That's possible - basically create your window sector, and then another one the same size on the side of that window you want to be a sky view. Make the ceiling AND floor parallexed - then create a further sector surrounding the other walls of that sector, make it's floor and ceiling parallexed, and then move it's ceiling all the way down to the floor.

[blizzart]

PsychoGoatee, on 05 August 2015 - 04:24 PM, said:

Another newbie mapping question folks. How do you make a window looking outside of a building? I've read the infoguide and I looked at maps in the Duke grp to try and figure out how it works, tinkering around just couldn't figure it out. So figured I'd ask.

I know how to make a window in the middle of a room, by raising and lowering a subsector and putting a flat glass sprite on the opening and making it blockable. But I can't figure out how to make a window in an outside wall. Or an opening in general, looking out into another sector.

I've attached a screencap of where I'd like to put a window. I made a sector outside of the building which is going to be an open street area. The wall I'm trying to make a window on is a white line one-sided wall I guess? It's confusing. I tried making a thin windowsill type of thing but when I insert the points on the wall, clicking spacebar doesn't do anything. It's like it doesn't want me to interact with the wall. I have guesses at why it isn't working, but not sure how to make it work. Thanks.

I'm guessing I want the walls to be red and two-sided? I loaded an earlier version with just a couple rooms and it did let me make a thin red wall around the room, so I'm guessing having an adjoining vertex with the outside street is the problem? So I probably have to get rid of the street first? Though even in that file I'm still not succeeding in making a little thingy I can raise and lower in the wall to make a window.

Random note, I did make a parallax sky sunroof window on the ceiling at least, as suggested in Micky C's guide. That looks cool.

By looking at your first screen, there seems to be something very wrong already. The rooms should have automatically red lines, because there substracted from a white lined sector.

[MetHy]

PsychoGoatee, on 05 August 2015 - 06:50 PM, said:

I get the impression these subsectors all got it because the sector had it. In the past I was able to fix it by setting those copies of the tag back to 0, but here that isn't working.

Yes if you create a subsector it should automatically have the same tags, iirc. As for "not being able to set it back to 0", are you sure you're checking the right sector and the right tag? Tags should always appear in the middle of a sector in 2D mode, but this isn't always exactly the case. Sometimes if your sector has an odd shape if you have several tiny sectors around the same area, the tag may not show up in the middle of the sector or it may look as though it belongs to another sector. In some cases of very oddly shaped sectors I even spotted tags showing up really far from the sector itself.

Another way to check if a sector is tagged is in 3D mode, if you have your mouse cursor on it it will show tons of info about the sector in the bottom left part of the screen (only EDuke32 does that iirc, not Build).

Then if you want to get rid of the tag in 3D mode, you can. Just copy an un-tagged floor sector and paste it on the floor of the sector for which you want to get rid of the tag (you may need to press Enter twice to paste all properties, i'm not sure anymore). Remember that this works both ways, so if at some point you want to copy paste a floor texture, remember that it may also copy the tags with it.

Oh and also, in your 2D mode screenshots, it seems that you dragged a red wall on top of a white wall. Don't do that. not only it may cause visual glitches, but it may also get your map corrupted eventually. If you really need to have a wall just next to another, make it as close as possible to the other wall. To do this, build your wall, and then"unlock" the grid by press the "L" key in 2D mode, this way you can move pointers (and everything) independantly from the grid, and place the wall as close as possible to the other one. To any player, it will seem like it's one wall, and it avoids map corruption and other glitches.
This technique is often used by mappers to do texture combinaison (like to pretend the wall has 2 textures, one for the bottom half, one for the top half)

[PsychoGoatee]

Cool, thanks for the tips folks.

[PsychoGoatee]

Ok this is my last newbie how-to request for a while honest, sorry for the double post.

Destructable wall, just putting a crack on a wall as an alternative to having a door link two rooms. This page on the infosuite is what I went by, and I also read the reference page on sector tags, special textures, etc. Couldn't find any other pages or any videos on it. As far as I can tell I did what it says, give the crack sprite a hightag 1 of and lotag of 0, give the S sprite a hightag of 1 and lotag of 13. I put the crack on a red wall doorway area, and the S sprite inside of that little sector. What did I miss? Thanks.

When I try throwing a pipebomb at it, the crack sprite disappears but nothing happens to the wall. I've also tried changing the sector itself's tag to 13 or 1,13 to expirement, but that didn't do it. According to the guide, you're not supposed to change the sector tag? Just the sector effector sprite's tags and the crack sprite's tags right?

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[Jblade]

by the looks of things the SE sprite has been turned into a wall sprite too - change it back to a normal sprite and it should work.

[PsychoGoatee]

Jblade, on 06 August 2015 - 12:15 PM, said:

by the looks of things the SE sprite has been turned into a wall sprite too - change it back to a normal sprite and it should work.

Just changed it to a view aligned sprite and put it back in the wall, the wall is still standing when I throw a pipebomb at it though. The screen shakes a bit and the crack sprite disappears, but the wall remains intact. Is there another step involved? Also with a view aligned S sprite, does it matter which way the line of where it's facing is? I keep it facing forward anyway.

[blizzart]

PsychoGoatee, on 06 August 2015 - 01:23 PM, said:

Just changed it to a view aligned sprite and put it back in the wall, the wall is still standing when I throw a pipebomb at it though. The screen shakes a bit and the crack sprite disappears, but the wall remains intact. Is there another step involved? Also with a view aligned S sprite, does it matter which way the line of where it's facing is? I keep it facing forward anyway.

I just tested it by myself with the exact Hitag value you used and everything worked fine.

By what you wrote, the effect takes place in some way. So maybe something is wrong with the wall itself.

[PsychoGoatee]

blizzart, on 06 August 2015 - 02:21 PM, said:

I just tested it by myself with the exact Hitag value you used and everything worked fine.

By what you wrote, the effect takes place in some way. So maybe something is wrong with the wall itself.

I've tried it on a couple different test walls, am I supposed to so something to the wall in particular? It's just two red lines with two thin white lines on the side to make a box like I'd use for a door sector. I use pgdn to lower the ceiling down to the floor to make that little red box into a wall, like I'd do for a ceiling door.

I'll throw a bonus last newbie how-to question in with that one. I can't even get breakable glass to work. Like this page says, though I wish that infoguide included 2D views for thee examples as well. I've tried either giving a wall that glass texture and making it hittable with H, or stretching a glass sprite over a window opening and making the sprite hittable with H and blockable with B. The glass never breaks when I shoot it. I wonder if mapster on my computer is cursed or something.

Also, if I'm supposed to texture a red line wall with the glass texture, how do I do that? Since I can't see a redline wall in 3D mode? Unless it's two lines thick and I raise it. I assume glass isn't supposed to be a thick sector maybe? Is breakable glass supposed to be a masked wall thing? That's not mentioned on the breakable window page there.

[Mark]

I gave a quick look at the infosuite page. It says make sure your tag is facing up ( not forward ) and leave the ceiling and floor of the explodable wall where you want them to be AFTER the explosion, which would be in the opened position. Maybe you were closing the wall.

[PsychoGoatee]

Mark., on 06 August 2015 - 02:54 PM, said:

I gave a quick look at the infosuite page. It says make sure your tag is facing up ( not forward ) and leave the ceiling and floor of the explodable wall where you want them to be AFTER the explosion, which would be in the opened position. Maybe you were closing the wall.

Holy moly, you're the greatest teacher since Obi-Wan. Or Yoda if you prefer. Thanks! I misread that part of the guide, thought if involved if I wanted slanted floors. That works perfectly now. I just assumed it blew up that whole wall sector.

Now if I can get this breakable glass thing working, I'll be all set. Even if more advanced effects are boggling my mind, breaking stuff and exploding stuff can make for an amusing map.

[Mark]

The instructions say press b and h keys. I guess some people might read that as pressing them both at once. Press the keys seperately. Try that. As you press each one a message should appear saying something like blocking bit set and hitscan bit set.

[PsychoGoatee]

 Mark., on 06 August 2015 - 03:01 PM, said:

The instructions say press b and h keys. I guess some people might read that as pressing them both at once. Press the keys seperately. Try that. As you press each one a message should appear saying something like blocking bit set and hitscan bit set.

I've been hitting them seperately, I know H makes it say "hitscan sensative bit on" and B makes blocking bit on. Blocking bit works, I can make a glass window sprite either blockable or not. The H to make it break when I shoot it doesn't work though. I've also tried it both with 1 to make it two-sided and also one sided. Are glass sprites breakable?

Granted the article says to texture a wall with that sprite, which makes walls pink similar to how a mirror is in mapster. Those walls also don't work, and they don't display probably for me in test mode, as the guide mentions will happen to a thick wall. I'm guessing maybe I'm supposed to be using a masked wall? That's one of the various things I haven't quite figured out yet. A glass sprite (503) isn't breakable though? I know that's not mentioned on that page.

[Mark]

Use a masked wall. Point just below your blank window opening and hit M

I think its a brick wall texture that fills in the opening by default. Change that texture to the breakable glass texture and then press the H and B on it. Press T a few times to make it one of 3 transparency levels. Also 1 to toggle between 1 or 2 sided.

[blizzart]

IMO the Infosuite is a good source when you already familar with Build/Mapster and you´re looking for some advanced stuff.

Back in the days I started with this guide: http://dukertcm.com/...ld/mpfqdn21.zip and I am still using it to refresh things I´ve forgotten effects or don´t know how to do something anymore.

[PsychoGoatee]

 Mark., on 06 August 2015 - 03:14 PM, said:

Use a masked wall. Point just below your blank window opening and hit M

I think its a brick wall texture that fills in the opening by default. Change that texture to the breakable glass texture and then press the H and B on it. Press T a few times to make it one of 3 transparency levels. Also 1 to toggle between 1 or 2 sided.

Thanks! That worked like a charm. My level is just going to involve jumping through windows and exploding through doors constantly. Because I can.

[Mark]

Yeah, I printed that out and it was a big help for me too.

Mapping is lots of fun and eats up a large amount of time. Good luck.

[Mark]

I asked this before and I don't recall getting an answer. Is there a way to toggle on /off fogpal visibility in Mapster? With it enabled its almost impossible to see what you are doing in 3D mode. I know there must be a way because I can't imagine mappers who use fogpals extensively could map with it enabled.

[Sixty Four]

I think you mean this but I am not 100% sure hope it helps.

Highlight the entire map with alt. Then go into 3D mode and press ;+v while aimed at a sector, this enables options to change visibility of selected sectors enter 240 for full bright

[Mark]

I know about that one, but thanks. I don't want to have to do that change back and forth a whole lot of times during the long creation time for the map. I'm hoping for a much easier solution like a "secret" console command I can type in.

[Micky C]

There's alt-ctrl-keypad +/minus for changing the global visibility in mapster without actually changing the values of the sector visibility.

Should be exactly what you're looking for.

[Mark]

Thanks Micky. It was a step in the right direction but still not perfect. Using that method I can adjust the global visibility from 16384 down to 32. For some reason it stops at 32 which still leaves some fog displaying. That would probably be good enough if it was a bright map but this is a dark one. To get the results I want, I also have to raise global shading up about 10 steps. Then the textures break through the fog.

[Daedolon]

Hold SHIFT to do steps of 1, I think?

[Mark]

Shift works for fine tuning other features but has no affect on adjusting the global visibility setting. For whatever reason its been programmed to bottom out at 32.

[pmw]

Unbreakable mirror, is it possible? If is, does anyone know how? I've tried multiple different techniques, with no success.