[BestViking]

I'm making this topic because I have a couple questions but not sure where each are relevant. If some of these questions seem stupid, it's because I was away from the game for about a decade and try to get back into it.

1: Is there a reason why the limits were reduced back to vanilla? 1024 sectors is not a whole lot.

2: For some reason, panning textures in mapster doesn't work. I don't know if it's a problem on my end or with the program. I downloaded the latest version.

3: Is there an uncommon configuration for skyboxes? I'm pretty sure I've defined the images in the correct order, yet they don't tie together seamlessly.

Any help is appreciated.

[Danukem]

BestViking, on 30 August 2017 - 02:55 PM, said:

1: Is there a reason why the limits were reduced back to vanilla? 1024 sectors is not a whole lot.

They were not. IIRC, mapster displays the old limits until you exceed them, then it displays the new limits.

[blizzart]

BestViking, on 30 August 2017 - 02:55 PM, said:

I'm making this topic because I have a couple questions but not sure where each are relevant. If some of these questions seem stupid, it's because I was away from the game for about a decade and try to get back into it.

2: For some reason, panning textures in mapster doesn't work. I don't know if it's a problem on my end or with the program. I downloaded the latest version.

Any help is appreciated.

LShift + LMouse will let you pan the textures.

BestViking, on 30 August 2017 - 02:55 PM, said:

I'm making this topic because I have a couple questions but not sure where each are relevant. If some of these questions seem stupid, it's because I was away from the game for about a decade and try to get back into it.

3: Is there an uncommon configuration for skyboxes? I'm pretty sure I've defined the images in the correct order, yet they don't tie together seamlessly.

Any help is appreciated.

I had the same problem, maybe the textures are wrong?

[BestViking]

The filenames of the skyboxes are named accordingly to their orientation. I'm going to try with another one from a different source to see if perhaps this one was screwed up.

Figured out the panning issue. It was a matter of numlock.

[Hendricks266]

Are you using GL skyboxes (the "skybox" def token) or ART tile "panel skies"?

If the former, try swapping the front and back, or if that still doesn't work, something similar, potentially X-swapping the images as well.

If the latter, it's complicated. We have the def tokens to set that up but they're not documented.

[BestViking]

I use the skybox command, which defines a cube of images.

skybox {
tile 99 pal 0
front "sky/h2s_ft.jpg" nocompress
right "sky/h2s_rt.jpg" nocompress
back "sky/h2s_bk.jpg" nocompress
left "sky/h2s_lf.jpg" nocompress
top "sky/h2s_up.jpg" nocompress
down "sky/h2s_dn.jpg" nocompress
}

So it should line off and tile, but does not. It could be a problem with the particular skybox in question.


I have a few more questions, so I'll just post them in this thread instead of making a whole bunch of threads.

Would it be possible to implement for a future build of eduke/mapster the possibility to "squash" floor and ceiling textures in more increments?
When pressing "E", the texture squashes into half, which is very useful to make it fit certain floor or ceiling constructs. But with some large textures with sizes 256 and beyond it could be very useful to squash it more to make it fit.

EDIT: another thing: after having added hightiles, mapster is taking forever to load. It also seems to freeze up at start and I have to alt-enter and re-enter it to be able to move around. Some weird behavior is happening like suddenly I can't add vertices, instead it says "sprites duplicated" although there are no sprites in the map yet.

[Hendricks266]

BestViking, on 01 September 2017 - 11:23 AM, said:

I use the skybox command, which defines a cube of images.

skybox {
tile 99 pal 0
front "sky/h2s_ft.jpg" nocompress
right "sky/h2s_rt.jpg" nocompress
back "sky/h2s_bk.jpg" nocompress
left "sky/h2s_lf.jpg" nocompress
top "sky/h2s_up.jpg" nocompress
down "sky/h2s_dn.jpg" nocompress
}

So it should line off and tile, but does not. It could be a problem with the particular skybox in question.

I don't see anything wrong with your syntax, so the problem must be with the skybox. Try my suggestions with swapping the front and back, and X_flipping those two if it still does not work.

One unrelated tip:

skybox {
  tile 99 pal 0 nocompress
  front "sky/h2s_ft.jpg" 
  right "sky/h2s_rt.jpg 
  back  "sky/h2s_bk.jpg
  left  "sky/h2s_lf.jpg 
  top   "sky/h2s_up.jpg
  down  "sky/h2s_dn.jpg
}

BestViking, on 01 September 2017 - 11:23 AM, said:

Would it be possible to implement for a future build of eduke/mapster the possibility to "squash" floor and ceiling textures in more increments?
When pressing "E", the texture squashes into half, which is very useful to make it fit certain floor or ceiling constructs. But with some large textures with sizes 256 and beyond it could be very useful to squash it more to make it fit.

That limitation comes from the way BUILD was originally designed. There is no place in the map format to store further size increments, and the software renderer has no code to draw more than the two options.

As for large textures, you need to shrink the size of the ART using either dummytiles or special shrunk versions of your image, as I mentioned elsewhere.

Please actually try my suggestions before asking for more help.

BestViking, on 01 September 2017 - 11:23 AM, said:

EDIT: another thing: after having added hightiles, mapster is taking forever to load. It also seems to freeze up at start and I have to alt-enter and re-enter it to be able to move around. Some weird behavior is happening like suddenly I can't add vertices, instead it says "sprites duplicated" although there are no sprites in the map yet.

That's strange, but I haven't received any other reports of this. I would recommend using 8-bit mode when mapping.

[BestViking]

I messed around a bit and concluded hightile is too clunky for me, especially when I have no reference tiles, so I can't build in classic mode.
The fact that it takes so long to load mapster on my i7 with 16gb ram and gtx 1080 convinced me that it's best to do the switch now early in the planning stages.

So I decided to start my project in classic, build with the standard textures and add replacement afterwards. I have old userart backup from 10 years ago that I used a lot back then. It looks more unified and coherent than what I put together with hightiles anyway, and skyboxes are near impossible to find unless you want to pay money in some asset store.

In mapster, sometimes when I stretch a wall real far, it changes from red to blue. I remember from past experience there being issues with walls that are too long, and that i had to split it with vertexes.

Basically the situation is that I am making a large outdoors area. One huge sector that i fill smaller sectors in. These are cliffs. The reason for one huge sector is so I can parallax the ceiling, and pull it down in the distance to create a horizon. This way I can make cliffs of varying height, instead of having this straight line wall cliff all the way around.

Like so:



What I would like to ask is for general guidelines to avoid glitching sectors. I know making one wrapped around another will cause it, and that joining of sectors is generally dangerous practice. I always build outside and inwards. Why does too long walls or too large sectors cause problems though? In the past when I mapped more, if the sector was too big, sectors inside it would occasionally disappear, flash or glitch.

[BestViking]

The map is coming along fine. There are some questions I have though. These are more mapping related than eduke, but I post them here in order not to spam up the forums with many threads.

1: Is it possible to make an earthquake without having the sector altered?

2: Is it possible to activate an ambient musicandsfx with a switch?

3: Is there are concise tutorial somewhere on TROR and how to map in that mode?

[Zaxtor]

1
You can make an Earthquake without altering, moving and nor damaging sector.
you make a tiny triangular sector outside your level with the quake etc because sector moves few grid-5 tiles or something when quake is occuring etc.

2
Some map Alejandro made has something like that.. I think.
Ambient thing I mostly do it con-based for activation etc.

3
CTRL+A "automatically greyout of plain sector" so when you're let say at TROR no1, the No2 will be grey so it help being less confusing, prevents from accidentally touching other floor you don't want to alter etc.
Also more on TRORs.

http://wiki.eduke32....m_Mapping_Guide

[BestViking]

Zaxtor, on 08 September 2017 - 01:21 PM, said:

1
You can make an Earthquake without altering, moving and nor damaging sector.
you make a tiny triangular sector outside your level with the quake etc because sector moves few grid-5 tiles or something when quake is occuring etc.

I considered that, but didn't know if the quake effect was global or local. But that clears it up for me. Thanks!

The other stuff looks like it will be long term research for me.

For the ambient thing. Basically what I want to do is I have a generator that I want to activate with a switch, and when I hit the switch it starts playing that machine ambience sound continuously. Could it be masterswitch to work with musicandsfx? It is often used to trigger effects, but I never used it for much other than basic stuff like c-9 and earthquake, and it's years, almost a decade since I mapped. I'm going to try that.

I attach a screenshot of the 2D grid. The map has come a long way in just a few days. At this point it takes time for me to realize my ideas since I have to relearn all the effects and that.



The largest area is the outdoors starting area which transitions into the other large area using water. So the smaller separate sectors are underwater areas. These I hopefully will be able to move underneath the overwater sectors and make the transparent water with TROR, when I figure out the process.

I originally spent hours writing the hightile def for my project, but since I didn't use reference 8 bit tiles it became slow and cumbersome, so I decided to map in classic mode with classic textures and then add texture replacements much later.