[Robman]

MetHy, on 20 July 2014 - 03:58 PM, said:

No I mean, a 'stop sound'. For instance in Duke3D, a door can have a 'start sound' and a 'stop sound', that is to say that a first sound plays when the door opening/closing animation starts, and another plays when the animation is over (for instance, when opening a doom door that 2nd sound plays when the door reaches the top). I couldn't find how to do that in SW and judging by your answer sounds like it probably doesn't exist! (that would surprise me though; since so far i haven't seen anything SW does less than DN3D; instead I've only seen what MORE it can do, which is a lot).

Thanks for the rotating effect, i'll try it.

oh it exists...


Hitag 134: SOUND_SPOT
TAG2 = Match
TAG4 = 1st Sound #
TAG5 = 2nd Sound #
TAG6 = 3rd Sound #
BOOL1= 1: Play the sound once and only once
BOOL2= 1: Play the sound as a looping sound. The sound will
continue to loop until stopped by STOP_SOUND_SPOT
(hitag 150).
1: Also means follow sprite, and needs to be set if
the ST1 sprite will be moving (usually with a sector
object.)
BOOL3= 1: Random play. When the ST1 is triggered, it will
randomly choose between sounds 1 and 2 or between
sounds 1, 2, and 3.
BOOL4= 1: Don't pan sound. This is useful when the sound
is very near the player.
BOOL5= 1: Use doppler effect.
BOOL6= 0: Make sure this is always reset to "0".
BOOL7= 1: The sound is Lo Wang's voice, heard inside his
head at max volume no matter how far from the
SOUND_SPOT he is.

SOUND_SPOT will play the sound specified in TAG4 when the
match tag in TAG2 is triggered. SOUND_SPOT can also be
triggered by operating a vator, spike, sliding door, or
rotating door with the same match tag. Sound numbers can be
obtained from the digital sound index in SWSOUNDS.TXT. Don't
confuse these with ambient sounds, which are used with the
AMBIENT_SOUND (hitag 1002) ST1. If SOUND_SPOT is placed in a
sector object operational sector, the 1st sound (TAG4) will
be the 'idle' sound. The 2nd sound (TAG5) will be the 'drive'
sound. IMPORTANT: The match tag (TAG2) will still need to be
a unique value even though the mapper never sets up a trigger
for it. If you do not use a unique value then other
SOUND_SPOTs with the match value will do the same sound
processing. This could be used as a feature - drive something
and something else on the level makes a noise. Note that you
can specify 3 different sounds. Some things like vators can
have more than one sound attached for different operations
such as moving to the ON and OFF positions. Most of the time
only the 1st sound (TAG4) will be used.
EXAMPLES: DB, DC, DD, and others in EXAMPLE.MAP
SEE ALSO: AMBIENT_SOUND (hitag 1002)

Just give the vator 2 sound spots. 1 opening sound (matched to door lo tag) and then another closing sound that get's triggered by the tag 6 match of the vator st1. Again you might have to play around with the bool 5 of the vator as the on/off positions change when the door comes from the floor or ceiling.

[MetHy]

Yes, I've read this. I think my Doom door example was bad, because it is possible in SW to have a 'stop sound' for a vator. The thing is, I wanted a stop sound for a swing door (ht134), and that however doesn't seem possible (this says SOME things can have more an on and off sound ; which means not all).

So I think you can't give a stop sound to a swing door unlike in dn3D. At least not directly, I'm thinking it might be possible in a tricky way by linking the swing door to a vator, so that when you open the door the vator also triggers and plays the stop sound with the right timing (and while setting the sound so that it's heard at max volume no matter where the player is); however not only that seems overly complicated just in order to have a small sound, and maybe all players would hear it in a DM/COOP game; and also it might not even work.

Anyway it's not a big deal. It's just a small thing, though I like to make 'smart' combinaison of sounds for the stuff i make to make them sound kinda unique in dn3D, and i'm surprised to find something that can be done in dn3D but can not be done in SW.

Edit : wrote this while you edited your post, we had the same idea with the vator ; though yours is better with the tag6. But like I said it seems kinda unnecessary complicated to do that JUST so that the door of a small locker gets a stop sound.

[Robman]

Tag 6 on your sect rotator for the swing door works the same as for the doom style ht 92 vator. It's doable.

Your swing door is ht 143... The pivot st1 does not get any additional tags, just the rotator.

All sounds are done with the sound_spot st1 ( ht 134) unless it's an ambience effect, then the ht is 1002 and the lo tag of that is the ambience sound #.

Indeed some stuff is a pain to create, but once it's done... it's done. Build as you know doesn't care what size something is, even a small locker. If you are ambitious enough to give it a closing sound, go for it.

I rarely do closing sounds...but meh, maybe I'll start.

[MetHy]

Yeah it's do-able, but I'm saying it's kind of a complicated workaround to create a new sector with an effect just to have another small sound when a door opens ; and that it really doesn't seem worth the trouble. In DN3D you just put the number of the sound to a tag on the door, and I'm surprised that's not possible in SW (though it's understandable because iirc nor the original DN3D neither SW used 'stop sounds' for swing doors, only for ceiling/floor doors)

Edit : Speaking of sounds, do you know of a way to be able to listen to every sound use-able in the game while also knowing their tag numbers? For DN3D in mapser there is the F2 menu which I use all the time, and before that there was Dukeroch. Anything like that for SW? (yes I've seen the sound list in the readme; but that doesn't PLAY the sounds which doesn't help when you try to use sounds in non conventional ways)

[Robman]

I don't think sw build can test sounds, that's why Charlie W. created a map with all the ambience sounds called ambience.map .. as for actual sounds I think you're SOL.

For the sounds I have to launch the game and see what it sounds like which is damn tedious at times.

no no, don't create a new sector just for the sound .

put 2 sound spot st1s.

the first sound spot will have a lo tag matched to the lo tag of the door ( sect rotator )

Now pick a new match tag for tag6 of the rotator and make it match the second sound spot st1.

If you've used up the tag6 match tag ( if we are talking about the same gong activated door)
then you just may have to create another sector outside the map which triggers the sound.. in which case things are getting much more complicated just for a closing sound for THAT door.

[MetHy]

I see, thanks. I thought that tag6 could only trigger other effects (like a vator, an explosion, etc) ; I didn't think it could also trigger a lone sound (though I guess a sound is an effect?). Interesting !

[Robman]

How is your ceiling fan coming? ... The bounding box is a fairly important thing to know and build. It stems off into being able to create many other effects.


If you really want to know what the sound effects are.. I guess you could extract all the .voc files from the .grp and play them in winamp or something.
Damn, I should do that lol.

Well I just did, I heard some lines n sounds that I've never heard before so that's cool

[Micky C]

SW mapping certainly sounds a million times more flexible than Duke mapping. There are things that you can't even do with con code (at least not anywhere near as well anyway). In some ways it's a shame that Duke doesn't have some of these sophisticated effects, but by the sounds of this discussion, with the increased functionality comes a serious increase in complexity and frustration which may have contributed to the lack of SW maps and mappers? With all these extra tags the learning curve sounds a lot steeper, and without a clear guide like the Infosuite it sounds pretty difficult to get into. Not to mention the extra information required would make the construction of a SW equivalent of the Infosuite a lot more work.

[MetHy]

Yes, exactly. But I hope it picks up a little bit when EDuke32-SW is done (a SW mapster would certainly help a lot) and when 3DRealms official contest starts ; because there is certainly a lot of potential with SW mapping, not to mention that the textures set is huge and the textures are great and gameplay explosive.

Edit : I'm sure there are plenty of things one could do in SW in terms of puzzles and progression. For instance with drive-able and remote control sectors. I'm actually thinking of doing some of that for my map.

Also imagine a map that's all about driving and shooting with a car.

[Micky C]

What are the odds that Robman or someone else in-the-know would actually go ahead and create a guide comparable to the infosuite? It wouldn't have to be as super-polished, but having something that's clear, detailed, illustrated, and covers the various pitfalls would probably make the idea of SW mapping a lot more appealing. I don't know what documentation is already out there or how complete or self-contained it is, but obviously it could be better. I imagine there's no rush for such a document, and that say half an hour every week as an example of chipping away at it might be a graceful enough pace to maintain motivation.

By comparison, 95% of the questions asked here (especially by noobs), would have been resolved if the asker had just looked in the infosuite, or at least looked in the correct section. Most of the rest of the time the answer is "it's not possible"
I'm not including super complicated stuff that goes well, well beyond what was achieved in the original game though. Unfortunately in SW's case what was achieved in the original game covers a whole lot more.

[MetHy]

Robman, on 20 July 2014 - 04:36 PM, said:

I don't think sw build can test sounds, that's why Charlie W. created a map with all the ambience sounds called ambience.map .. as for actual sounds I think you're SOL.

For the sounds I have to launch the game and see what it sounds like which is damn tedious at times.

no no, don't create a new sector just for the sound .

put 2 sound spot st1s.

the first sound spot will have a lo tag matched to the lo tag of the door ( sect rotator )

Now pick a new match tag for tag6 of the rotator and make it match the second sound spot st1.

If you've used up the tag6 match tag ( if we are talking about the same gong activated door)
then you just may have to create another sector outside the map which triggers the sound.. in which case things are getting much more complicated just for a closing sound for THAT door.

Well I'll be damned. Apparently it's not necessary because I just assigned a sound to tag5 on the sound sprite of a swing door and it works. Tag4 is the start sound and tag5 the stop sound.
What's weird is I'm sure I had tried this and I couldn't get it to work... Hence my question to begin with.


Edit : okay I got the rotating sector to work, thank you. However, I had to use tag 505/506 ; when I used tag 500/501 it would spin towards the closest ROR like you mentionnde; and that even though the ROR doesn't even share any tag at all! (the ror uses lotags 10 and 11), so I don't understand why it did that.
It does work with tags 505/506 though so thanks for that.

Edit: Oops, nope, the rotating sector works but I can't get the sprites to rotate with it. The sprites just diseappear in game if i put a small part of them inside the rotating sector!
If I drag the upper/lower ST1 closer, the sprite appears but doesn't spin. Also if you notice in E1M1 those upper/lower sprites create a zone big enough for the sector, but not for the sprites; which is how it is for me when the sprite don't rotate.
It's really weird, as i'm building other stuff and doing some tests; sometimes the sprite appears and it works, sometimes it doesn't...

I can't find info about slide doors (there is one in EXAMPLE.map but it's not even the kind i want since that one goes into a wall and i don't want that); or sector moving on a X axis it seems every time i want to do something i bump into a wall. An infosuite style faq would be useful indeed when you can't even find info or figure out yourself how to make something as trivial as a slide door.

[Robman]

I thought that might also work, many times there is more than 1 way to accomplish some things. Like I said I hadn't used closing sounds very much in the past.

Try setting the bool 2 value to 1 on your fan blade sprites, might work. OR have them sit directly on a wall that spins, but I don't think that will work out in this instance.
It can be finickity so toy around with it.

Slide doors are kinda a pain compared to the other doors.
you can build them out of red walls or white walls but it seems the textures don't squish when used with white walls.
just place the slide door st1 near the doors and give it all the tags needed.
The inside of the doors ( the butt ends of the doors) will need to be lo tagged as 203 or 202 or 200 or 201 .. those tags tell the door which way it will slide.. left right, up down.


In the map I'm working on now, I have a shootable button that makes a wall section slide back enabling you to pass through. kinda neat.

As for a tutorial, there are lots out there you just have to look.

Using the stock game maps as reference and reading the included documents works fine aswell.

As for the sector migrating towards the ROR effect .. just give your bounding st1 sprites unique lo tags that match each other. Leaving them set as 0 is what is doing this. The base St1 for your ROR having a lo tag of 0 is what is causing this I think.

[MetHy]

That worked for the sprite on the rotating sector thanks.

For the slide door I got it to "work" (it's lotags 220etc btw not 200 etc) , except that it doesn't slide, it shrinks/enlarges instead! Is it not possible to have a simple rectangle sector made of only red walls to move in such a fashion? I see that in example.map they're done very differently, using white walls (i never did my slide doors like that in dn3D and i always wondered why people did it even though a simple recntable sector with red walls works and it's more simple to make. Though I guess i could try it doesn't seem complicated).

Edit : well, I'm making some semi-transparent open-able curtains then

Edit 2: nooope, for the fan, that didn't fix it. It's like before, sometimes the sprite appears, sometimes not. So much trouble for a simple decorative fan that' sjust a copy of E1M1 is totally NOT worth it.

[Robman]

For the ceiling fan sprites, I'd likely have to take a look at it to see what's going on. Your sprites must in the rotating sector to spin with the sector. I'm not sure what kind of sorcery they are using in e1m1. It's an odd map to try and figure out because they have all manner of sectors overlapping and most things are not what they appear to be in that map.

There is a reason Seppuku is the first map.. it's uber complex and acts as a showcase of sorts.

Something you could try to make the slide door not squish the texture is also tag the opposite butt ends of the doors with the same lo tag and that end of the door will slide also. You'd likely have to build a slot in the wall for the doors to slide into for that.
Sorry I got the lo tags wrong for slide door direction, that's what I get for running off just memory. I was close and you got the idea, lol.

Indeed Sw build is very capable and also complex. Learning this stuff on my own has been a challenge and I have spent COUNTLESS hours on some of the simplest things to figure out how they work. Maligned helped me alittle in my first stages of some things some time ago. Don't get me wrong I don't know everything there is to know about it and I am constantly learning new things with it. There is all sorts of combinations of effects you can mash together to make some neat stuff.

You should totally consider putting yer map in the swc cbp now that you are joining the ranks of sw buildness
We need all the fresh good maps we can get in there. AND chances are your map would be played much more than stand alone.

[Micky C]

Robman, on 21 July 2014 - 01:44 PM, said:

As for a tutorial, there are lots out there you just have to look.

See, that's what I'm afraid of. A lot of different text documents you need to invest time into looking for then determining if they're any good. Ideally we could just point interested potential mappers towards a single, self-contained document and be relatively sure they'll find everything they need to know with minimal confusion, even if it's only a collection of other documents with extra explanations at ambiguous places. Another idea would be ultimately including mapster script help files such as what Drek's doing with the sector effectors and so on.

I know I'm sort of doing the "idea thread" minus the thread, where others are required to do the work and I'm sorry about that, but it just seems like SW mapping has huge potential and just a shame you have to jump through so many hoops to get into it. I wouldn't be closed off to making a SW map when I'm less involved with current projects (read: a few years down the line), perhaps there are others. Plus it seems that eduke32-SW, along with the potential 3DR mapping competition are the last big chances to really drive a bit of interest into SW mapping, and if there isn't good infrastructure in place when those opportunities come along, we can't maximize potential.

[Robman]

So far I`ve found that it`s best just to be able to have some1 live to ask questions when it comes to sw build as there is a lot of effect combinations that can be done.
I didn`t really have that and had to bumble around on my own over the years but for now, I`m here for the folks that want to dive into it at the moment. Again certainly not saying I know everything. Methy is now getting into it and some others may just need their memory jogged so things are coming along.

For those with duke3d and blood build experience it will be easier to learn as physically `building`` is the same between duke and sw. The effects however are completely different.

It would be a good idea to have such an ``all-encompassing`` tutorial but for me at the moment time will not allow. Sometimes it aggravates me just how much time and effort I`ve put into Sw but seeing and meeting other people interested in it is worth it and it seems to be picking up a little so that`s cool.

The essentials needed for learning to map for sw are.

1: look at existing maps.

2: Consult the build documents provided by 3dr.
swbuild.txt for keyboard commands.
spritags.txt for st1 effect information.
sounds.txt for all the sound numbers
Walltags.txt for wall tag information
advanced.txt for ROR info.
in that order of importance.

Tutorials are ok but the above you NEED as it is straight from the ``horse`s mouth``

btw: I have many of the tutorials available at Shadow Warrior Central, if needed.
Sign up over at the SWC forum if interested, it`s nice to have a decent user base to give the site some more purpose.

[MetHy]

Robman, on 21 July 2014 - 04:01 PM, said:

Something you could try to make the slide door not squish the texture is also tag the opposite butt ends of the doors with the same lo tag and that end of the door will slide also. You'd likely have to build a slot in the wall for the doors to slide into for that.

[...]

You should totally consider putting yer map in the swc cbp now that you are joining the ranks of sw buildness
We need all the fresh good maps we can get in there. AND chances are your map would be played much more than stand alone.

Thanks that worked for the slide door! But now that I have my functioning semi transparent curtains I think I'm going to keep them. But knowing how to make a slide door will be useful too.
Speaking of semi transparent curtains; what do you guys think is the best? They can be opened/closed atm, they work as a door ; but should they block the player and projectiles? should they be opened manually or using a switch?
Asking this because ; I'm afraid that if I make them block the player, and activate manually; some players will not think of pressing 'use' on the curtain since it doesn't look like a door. I think I'm going to go for block players (but not projectiles) operated by switches. Edit : yeah I went for this last solution and it works fine.


As for the CBP, I'm sorry but like I said I want this map to be standalone. After the Duke Hard episode I'm burnt out of community projects, and also my aim is to make a map per game (SW, Doom, I'd like to try Blood, too; and eventually maybe even Redneck Rampage Rides Again and Powerslave) to find out and show what I can do in different games.

Also, I'm having an issue with sounds. I'd like to be able to read them all except that VLC doesn't run sound files which are less than 1 second (= most of them); you mentionned winamp so I installed it, however it doesn't run .voc files at all! Any idea anyone? I'm never going to get this map done if I can't listen to every sound. The only other idea I have is to create a template map in which you have switches which play every sound; with the sound number above the switch; but that would take long to make since there are over 600 sounds.

[Robman]

Winamp.

Options.

Preferences.

File types.

Indeed it plays .voc files.

cmon now.

[Corvin]

Goldwave still plays them

[Robman]

Not sure if you can have a playlist with goldwave, maybe you can. I found it handy just to load all of the voc files into the winamp playlist and then it just autoplays down the whole list, hands free.

[MetHy]

Okay first of all, no, my winamp doesn't read VOC files (I know some of my questions might sound silly to you but I'm not completely retarded either!). Apparently that's because I'm missing "plugin nullsoft waveform decoder in_wave.dll" ; however I heard that VLC IS supposed to read voc files, too; so I'm thinking that this must be a codec issue. This OS install (windows 8 pro 64bit) is relatively fresh and I must not have installed all sound codecs. Do you guys remember what codec pack you installed? My google fu only found awful shit that would try to install a million shit on my hardware (I hate how every time I try to download and install something this happens nowadays, as trival as the thing I want is ; I miss the internet of 10 years ago when you could find anything you want easily with ZERO extra bullshit!)

Anyway, back to SW itself : I'm having issues with sounds. I mean, in game this time.

I was using sound 429 for a small vator coming down ; the problem is, it would loop, forever. That, even though it was NOT set as looping (bool2=0). So, I set its bool1 tag to "1" so that it's set as only playing once. That still didn't fix it. So then, I put a STOPSOUND st1, which once the vator has come down, would stop that sound (vator tag6=match tag2 of STOPSOUND ; stopsound tag5=match tag2 of the original looping sound); BUT that still didn't fix it!
And finally when I set the already-looping sound as "looping" (bool2=1), stopsound decided to work.
So, I found a fix; but my question is, how comes the sound was looping to begin with with that vator coming down even though it wasn't set as looping?!

Also something else ; earlier I thought that a soundspot linked to a slide door couldn't read all sounds, only a few ones. It was really weird. But now I just tried again and it seems to work fine... (the only thing i was changing both time was the sound number!) Was I dreaming or can't all effects use every sound?

Anyway it seems that I'm coming around though. I'm starting to get used to the making the effects and also to the texture sets, so now I'm starting to build a bit faster (though I'm expecting to bump into a few more walls when I'll need effects I haven't made yet). 265 sectors and 2067 walls so far! As it is, I'm probably going to hit the old limit with this map (and stop there), indeed I have only built 1/4th of what I plan so far.

[Robman]

Gah, yeah I guess you need to get the codecs, I dunno if mine worked fine out of the box or I had to get codecs, I set my winamp up what seems like eons ago. If you can't find it, I could send them to you.

Amen to the internet of ten years ago.

Best I can explain about the looping is that some sounds may be set to loop internally by the game itself. So setting the sound to loop just sets it back to a 0 instead of a 1 or whatever.

You're allowed 1024 sectors ... 8192 walls and 9046 sprites. So yeah, you're 1/4 the way there.

[MetHy]

I'm having an issue with breakable transparent glass/windows.

I'm using texture 282 on a mask wall. Then, if I do B and CTRL+H on it, it is breakable; however it only makes sound and spawn debris if you break it from the right side, and not the left side (ironically if it was the contrary it would be fine then the player will break it form that side...).

So then I tried to recreate the way it's done in example.map in part DE using HT 132, but if I do that, it is breakable indeed, but makes no sound, either.

Any idea? Can't find any info in tutorial/readmes, and I can't find any example of breaking glass in the original game either!

[Robman]

Toy around with what side of a red wall ( although now purple now that it is blocking) you are making hitscan.

I just did it not using any st1's and both sides broke and made noise + flung broken glass.

Keep in mind you can tag both sides of a red wall differently. Not that you are doing any tagging, but this means red walls have 2 sides.

So what I did was ... masked the wall with the correct texture and made sure it was showing from both sides( not 1 sided)
then go to 2dmode, blocked it on 1 side and then hitscanned it from the otherside. ( just have your cursor on the other side of the wall )

[MetHy]

Weird, now it works indeed. Though I didn't do much, just re-did the entire wall from scratch... I thought there might be a trick to it which is why I asked.

Anyway - in the original game map $seabase.map, there is driveable vacuum cleaner which actually takes out the dirt on the floor. Out of curiosity, do you know how they made the driveable vehicule 'destroy' sprites?

Also, I also remember there is a map with a small driveable boat, and you could also go underwater. Which means that the boat would move both overwater and underwater... So, in theory, do you think that a driveable/remote control vehicule ON a RoR surface would be possible?

[Robman]

probably just made the driveable do "ram damage" and made the sprites destructable, that's my guess. I'd have to take a look at it.(maybe later)

I'm not sure about on an ROR surface, but you can have that on diveable water. I guess it is possible, look up the boat and boat2 tutorials at swc.
The boat2 tutorial is just a simple map which "shows" you what is needed, I'll admit it's alittle buggy, like when the boat reaches the outer walls it clips into the walls even with the driveable attribute st1 bool 4 set to 1. but, yeah it's possible.


edit - So I did a test and put some "poo" sprites in front of the tank found in map 4 ( woods) and when you drive the tank over the poo it disappears.
So, no real magic goin' on there. I think the sprites just have to be breakable, either set that way by default by the game or set that way by the map maker.
( the poo sprites are set to be breakable by default )

[Robman]

To save me some time, does anyone know how the skill level system works?

ie: Does it just add in the next skill level selected actors, keeping the previous skill level actors aswell? or?

[Micky C]

If it works like Duke 3D, it keeps the lower skill level enemies as well.

[Robman]

Micky C, on 30 July 2014 - 07:44 PM, said:

If it works like Duke 3D, it keeps the lower skill level enemies as well.

ok thanks, I'd imagine it works the same as DN3D.

[MetHy]

Is it possible to make "one time sounds" like in DN3D?

In DN3D if you give a sector a specific lotag, you can make a sound play when the player steps into the sector. Is there an equivalent in SW or do I have to use a step-into-sector trigger linked to a vator itself linked to the approriate sound?

Also, it is possible to lock/unlock doors (or anything) using a switch like in DN3D? I do mean (un)locking, not opening/closing/activating. All I see about locking is keys.

Yet another question. I'm having an issue with lightswitches. If I have two lightswitches controlling the same light (which can be handy in long corridors) ; then there are issues between the 2 switches. It's like, when I press one, the information doesn't go the other switch ; for instance, let's say the light is on, both switches are on "on" ; i use switch 1 to turn off the light, then if i use switch 2, its first action will ALSO turn off the light which means that it will do nothing because the light is already turned off; and it only turns it back on if i press use a 2nd time on it. Obviously this is just an example as the issue is continuous no matter the scenario; and issues also happen if i set one as "on" and the other as "off" to begin with.
Is there a way to come around this or am I stuck with one switch per light?

Last question, is it possible to make switches (or anything for that matter) DM only? (not "multiplayer" only, "DM" only)

Can't find anything about that in the usual readme files.