Neat WAD design


This text is an ASCII conversion of the WWW page:

	http://www.daimi.aau.dk/~hykkelbj/doom/special/neat.html

Check this page to see some better illustrations.
You will also be able to download the mentioned WADs directly 
by clicking.
................................................................

There are of course a lot of neat things you can put in your WAD. Currently
I've only put in the following small thing:

  1.  Door on top of Lift
        or "Hallways that pass without holes in the floor".
  2.  Descending Stairs

                            1. Door on top of lift

The title says it all. If you have two hallways that cross in a square sector,
you can basically make this sector into a combination of a lift and a door.
Meaning that the lower part of the sector is a lift, while the upper part is a
door. I'll try to draw it in a 3d way:

	    ----------------x-----------x----------------------
			   /|	     	|\
			  / |		| \
			 /  |		|  \
	----------------x-------------------x-----------------------
			|   |		|   |
			|   | /	      \	|   | <------DOOR
			|   |/	       \|   |
	    ------------|---x-----------x---|------------------
			|  /|		|\  |
			| / |		| \ |
			|/  |		|  \|
	----------------x-------------------x-----------------------
		       /|   |       	|   |\
		      / |   | /	      \ |   | \
		     /  |   |/	       \|   |  \
		    /   |   x-----------x   |   \
		   /    |  /             \  |    \
		  /	| /		  \ |	  \
		 	|/		   \|	   
			x-------------------x
		       /		     \
		      /		^	      \
		     /		|	       \
	            /		|		\
		   /	      LIFT		 \
		  /				  \


I figured this out on my own, and published it to the doom editing mail list in
October 1994. However at the time this was a well known effect, and even id
used it in DOOM ][. However I'll include my example wad from back then:
doors.zip (9K)

                            2. The Descending Stair

How to make a raising stair is well known from the original DOOM levels, but
it's actually also possible to create a descending stair. It's not too
complicated, as the descending stair looks much like the raising one, at least
on the map:

                             
	(The numbers are sector numbers)

	:		:
	:	7	:
	|		| (The dotted lines are two sided
	x...............x  linedefs, while the dashed lines
	|		|  are one-sided)
	|	6	|
	|		|
	x...............x
	|		|
	|	5	|
	|		|
	x...............x
	|		|
	|	4	|
	|		|
	x...............x
	|		|
	|	3	|
	|		|
	x...............x
	|		|
	|	2	|
	|		|
	x...............x
	|		|
	:	1	:
	:		:


When you have made this map, you should assign a floor height of 48 to the
sectors 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 while sector 1 should have a floor height of 0. Now
you can set up the normal raise stair linedef and tag it to sector 1. When the
linedef is activated, the stair will snap into place immediately. Be careful
when you design the stair, as each step will have a height of at most 8 pixels,
which can easily prove to be too little.

The descending stair was first demonstrated by Sean Malloy
(malloy@crash.cts.com) who released the dnstair.zip (3K). The effect is also
demonstrated in special.zip (53K), where you can find it by going through the
SKY door, turn right and press the switch. This should lower the floor you're
standing on into a descending stair.

To get around the 8 pixels limit on the height of each step, you can create
"dummy" sectors where the floor height of the dummy sector sets the level you
want the step to drop to. To illustrate, consider the following map:

    		(The numbers are sector numbers)

	:		:
	:	7	:
	|		| 
	x...............x--x 
	|		:  |
	|	6	:12|
	|		:  |
	x...............x..x
	|		:  |
	|	5	:11|
	|		:  |
	x...............x..x
	|		:  |
	|	4	:10|
	|		:  |
	x...............x..x
	|		:  |
	|	3	:9 |
	|		:  |
	x...............x..x
	|		:  |
	|	2	:8 |
	|		:  |
	x...............x--x
	|		|
	:	1	:
	:		:


Here you can set the height of sector 1 to be 0, and set a height of 120 for
the sectors 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7. The sectors 8-12 should be a stair from height
0 to 120 with a step height of 20. You can set the ceiling height of each of
these sectors to equal the floor height, which should conceal the sectors
completely (if you align the textures). Now set up a linedef like 23 to all the
sectors 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6. The linedef 23 drops the sectors to the lowest floor
height in the adjacent sectors, which means that each step is lowered to the
floor height of the adjacent "dummy" sector.

This special effect is also demonstrated in special.zip (53K). You can find it
by taking the door to the south east. Go straight through the following room,
and press the switch in the hallway. The hallway behind you should then drop
into a combined stair that goes down and back up. This effect was described by
Ray Greenwell (ray@frappe.extern.ucsd.edu).

The previous way of creating the descending stair works well if the stair goes
down alongside a wall. If that's not the case, you'll have to experiment with
other linedefs and other ways of concealing the dummy sectors. (Like making
them small, or creating them away from the map in a place where the player
never enters. See how it's done in the invisible raising stairs section).

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jens Hykkelbjerg / hykkelbj@daimi.aau.dk