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Doom Editing Digest Vol. 01 Nr. 350
From: owner-doom-editing-digest
To: doom-editing-digest@nvg.unit.no
Subject: doom-editing-digest V1 #350
Reply-To: doom-editing
Errors-To: owner-doom-editing-digest
Precedence: bulk
doom-editing-digest Tuesday, 18 July 1995 Volume 01 : Number 350
Re: How Much Stuff
Re: WINDEU
Re: MIDI Files
Re: How Much Stuff
Visplane Overflow
re:vis plane overflow
Re: How Much Stuff
Re: Data Utility License
re:vis plane overflow
Re: How Much Stuff
Re: How Much Stuff
Re: How Much Stuff
Re: 'Split' sector bug
Re: How Much Stuff
----------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Denis.Moeller@kiel.netsurf.de (Denis)
Date: Sun, 16 Jul 95 18:14 GMT
Subject: Re: How Much Stuff
Hi!
>The method I use has been incorporated into a program which Bill McClendon
>has been kind enough to test. It looks at how many monsters you have on a
>given degree of difficulty; totals monster damage points, health points,
>armor points, and weapon damage points; then lists the ratios of these
>with respect to monster damage points.
>Anyway more monsters means you need more stuff. And a higher degree of
>difficuly means you need less stuff per monster. Ratios of all this can
>be useful numbers.
Surely this CAN be a nice help to the amount of stuff. But it won't
'see' the placement of the things. This means you could place all stuff
at the end and the player will have problems while getting to it.
The ratio is okay, but the level is unplayable though.
Another problem is when compiling more than 1 level, the players
will take a bunch of ammo INTO the level, which is mostly unknown.
>I'm getting verbose here. All I really want to know is how you other WAD
>builders are deciding how many monsters, health, armor, and ammo to put
>on your level in the hopes that we may prevent release of some truly
>awful WADs in the future.
I'm always putting some stuff in after I put the monsters in. I do
this with a kinda 'feeling' for it. Playtesting is the key. Always put
a bit more stuff in as you really need. This makes the level more
fun to play - besides this, you as the editor know every secret etc.
therefor play the level without using secrets, use some strange weapons
combinations. Before releasing the WAD let some friends play your WAD
and check out how they are playing and where problems are.
This helps a lot. I really think that there is no 'ultimate' way of
placing ammo and stuff...
cya
Denis
[] Denis Moeller, author of NWT v1.3 and TiC's WAD Reviews. []
[] Just play our Doom (2) Add-Ons: Sudtic, Teutic, Obtic. Thanks. []
------------------------------
From: mmathews@genesis.nred.ma.us
Date: Sun, 16 Jul 95 21:39:11 -0500
Subject: Re: WINDEU
>
> I may be missing something. What are the benefits to level editting under
> Windows? I'd always assumed that you had to shut down Win to test under
> the DOOM OS.
>
> Scott
>
Microsoft is porting DOOM over to Windows. That's one good reason.
Mark Mathews mmathews@genesis.nred.ma.us TEAM OS/2, TEAM DEU
Are you using DEU, WARM or DEUTEX for DOOM? WHY NOT??
------------------------------
From: DRCJ@AOL.COM
Date: Sun, 16 Jul 1995 23:22:34 -0400
Subject: Re: MIDI Files
grenade2.wad has a kick ass plasma gun I think you will like it!
------------------------------
From: DRCJ@AOL.COM
Date: Sun, 16 Jul 1995 23:22:26 -0400
Subject: Re: How Much Stuff
Hello!
I am DRCJ from Milwaukee. I saw that you like to make levels and I am
having problems with elevators in DoomCad 5.1. I can make them go up then
down, but not back up? I am preaty sure it has to do with the switch
buttons. Do you know what switches I need for the most basic elevators?
Thanks if you can help!!
DRCJ
------------------------------
From: ariens@sierra.net (Andrew)
Date: Sun, 16 Jul 1995 23:40:18 -0700
Subject: Visplane Overflow
Taking a cue from the first level of Thy Flesh Consumed, I decided to put
the logo of my favorite band (Metallica) in one of my WAD's. I set it up to
start out flush against the ceiling. When you flipped a switch, it would
lower to 8 pixels above the nearest floor. It looks GREAT, but when you
look at it from a certain angle (like from the left side of the 'M'), Doom
would crash and give me this error message:
R_DrawPlanes: visplane overflow (129)
HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
------------------------------
From: Gerald Hannafin <pothead@pipeline.com>
Date: Mon, 17 Jul 1995 07:28:50 -0400
Subject: re:vis plane overflow
It seems that one limitation of the doom engine is that you can never be
looking through more than 64 clear two-sided linedefs... if you throw in
some columns to obscure some of them, your wad will work...
- --
Never let your schooling interfere with your education - Mark Twain
------------------------------
From: Gerald Hannafin <pothead@pipeline.com>
Date: Mon, 17 Jul 1995 07:36:45 -0400
Subject: Re: How Much Stuff
On Sun, 16 Jul 1995 DRCJ@AOL.COM said:
>Hello!
>
>I am DRCJ from Milwaukee. I saw that you like to make levels and I am
having
>problems with elevators in DoomCad 5.1. I can make them go up then down,
but
>not back up? I am preaty sure it has to do with the switch buttons. Do
you
>know what switches I need for the most basic elevators? Thanks if you can
>help!!
>
>DRCJ
I think your problem lies in the inherent difference between a button and a
switch... a switch will perform an action just once, a button will perform
the same action many times... the same distinction lies between a trigger
and a retrigger... likewise for doors- open will open a door permanently
(until it's closed), raise will open a door and let it close again...
- --
Never let your schooling interfere with your education - Mark Twain
------------------------------
From: Bernd Kreimeier <Bernd.Kreimeier@nero.uni-bonn.de>
Date: Mon, 17 Jul 1995 13:30:33 +0200
Subject: Re: Data Utility License
The Data Utility License covers the "use of trademark" (read: "DOOM"
and the DOOM-likeness) with third party products. Details are
available via www, on Steve Benner's recommended DOOM www page
http://cres1.lancs.ac.uk/~esasb1/doom/index.html
- --------------------------------------------------------------
Advice: if you do not intend to do commercial stuff, ignore
the DUL. This applies to nearly all people on this list.
- --------------------------------------------------------------
Iff you *do* intend to do commercial stuff, look at said www page,
get a FAX copy of the DUL from Id, and ask a lawyer. Do *not* sign
the DUL w/o additional advice. If you are determined, you'd better
*NOT* try help@idsoftware.com, or any help desk guys, as (judging
from experience) you won't get any answer on this topic. Jay Wilbur
handles the DUL stuff, and you'd better contact him by FAX, *iff*
your lawyer thinks it's at all a good thing to do.
I'd like to suggest doing some advanced DOOM editing instead ;-).
B.
------------------------------
From: S.Benner@lancaster.ac.uk (Steve Benner)
Date: Mon, 17 Jul 95 13:58:08 +0100
Subject: re:vis plane overflow
At 7:28 am 17/7/95, Gerald Hannafin wrote:
>It seems that one limitation of the doom engine is that you can never be
>looking through more than 64 clear two-sided linedefs... if you throw in
>some columns to obscure some of them, your wad will work...
oh dear, oh dear, that ol' myth again....
There is no such clear-cut limit: the visplanes error is rather more
complex than that. It is very common in WADs which use complex shaped
sectors (like the one(s) making up the Metallica logo mentioned in the
original posting) so it is clearly related to the number of lines in view,
but no-one has yet come up with a good rule. Adding columns, as suggested,
can cure the problem... or can make it worse, as it generally requires a
more complex Node Tree. The best solution is to simplify the shapes in use:
the original posting gave the error message as:
R_DrawPlanes: visplane overflow (129)
The number in parentheses show how many visplanes DOOM was trying to deal
with at the time of the crash. The limit is 128. Looks to me like you
shouldn't need to alter too much, Andrew....
- -Steve
------------------------------
From: S.Benner@lancaster.ac.uk (Steve Benner)
Date: Mon, 17 Jul 95 14:12:55 +0100
Subject: Re: How Much Stuff
At 7:36 am 17/7/95, Gerald Hannafin wrote:
>On Sun, 16 Jul 1995 DRCJ@AOL.COM said:
>
>
>> I am
>having
>>problems with elevators in DoomCad 5.1. I can make them go up then down,
>but
>>not back up? I am preaty sure it has to do with the switch buttons. Do
>you
>>know what switches I need for the most basic elevators?
>>
>I think your problem lies in the inherent difference between a button and a
>switch... a switch will perform an action just once, a button will perform
>the same action many times... the same distinction lies between a trigger
>and a retrigger... likewise for doors- open will open a door permanently
>(until it's closed), raise will open a door and let it close again...
>--
Sorry to argue again, Gerald.... but this sounds more like the use of a
"lower floor to next adjacent" code, instead of a "start lift" code. Please
confine questions of this kind to "beginner's corner"
(S.Benner@lancaster.ac.uk). Thanks.
- -Steve
------------------------------
From: DRCJ@AOL.COM
Date: Mon, 17 Jul 1995 16:15:03 -0400
Subject: Re: How Much Stuff
Where is the beginers corner-I would love to check it out
------------------------------
From: fenske@rocke.electro.swri.edu (Robert Fenske Jr)
Date: Mon, 17 Jul 95 17:49:43 CDT
Subject: Re: How Much Stuff
>I'm getting verbose here. All I really want to know is how you other WAD
>builders are deciding how many monsters, health, armor, and ammo to put
>on your level in the hopes that we may prevent release of some truly
>awful WADs in the future.
Having an automated way of determining the ratio of creatures/health/
etc. is a neat idea. It would be interesting to run your program on a large
set of single player/co-op WADs and a set of deathmatch WADs and see what kind
of numbers you get. I'd say that DM WADs will have a greater spread of ratios
since I think there is more variability in such WADs. In fact these ratios
may not mean much for DM--the architecture of the WADs is more likely the
driving factor (at least for the good ones).
Robert Fenske, Jr. rfenske@swri.edu Sw | The Taming the C*sm*s series:
Electromagnetics Division /R---\ |
Southwest Research Institute | I | | "The Martian canals were the
San Antonio, Texas USA \----/ | Martians' last ditch effort."
------------------------------
From: fenske@rocke.electro.swri.edu (Robert Fenske Jr)
Date: Mon, 17 Jul 95 17:57:47 CDT
Subject: Re: 'Split' sector bug
> I've recently started getting a strange bug in a deathmatch wad I've
>been building. A couple of the sectors have started getting 'split' by
>thin triangular black slices that are apparently not in any sector. The
>base of the triangle is one linedef of the sector, and the vertex is the
>player. If a triangle is lined up right with another sector, it is even
>possilbe to 'fall in' and get trapped. The strange thing is that I have
If I understand you correctly, I'd say this is not due to any node
generation error, but due to the DooM engine fixed point math. This kind
of visual effect is not that uncommon. It's present in E1M1 of DooM I if
you look (from the right spot) across the acid area at the imp(s) on the
ledge as you enter the acid area. However, this effect does not move with
the player. If the problem you have does move with the player, then there
probably is some kind of nodes error.
Robert Fenske, Jr. rfenske@swri.edu Sw | The Taming the C*sm*s series:
Electromagnetics Division /R---\ |
Southwest Research Institute | I | | "The Martian canals were the
San Antonio, Texas USA \----/ | Martians' last ditch effort."
------------------------------
From: as4603sukwil@sunbelt.net
Date: Mon, 17 Jul 1995 19:46:15 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Re: How Much Stuff
The problem that you are having is that you are using a SWITCH setting.
This allows something to work only once. Choose a BUTTON with the other
attributes the same. This will make it work over and over! BTW, DoomCad
6.0 is out - give it a try. It's on alt.binaries.doom newsgroup.
Michael Wilcox
>Hello!
>
>I am DRCJ from Milwaukee. I saw that you like to make levels and I am
>having problems with elevators in DoomCad 5.1. I can make them go up then
>down, but not back up? I am preaty sure it has to do with the switch
>buttons. Do you know what switches I need for the most basic elevators?
> Thanks if you can help!!
>
>DRCJ
>
------------------------------
End of doom-editing-digest V1 #350
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