                                                           Part 4 Page 1
   B E G I N N E R S   G U I D E   T O   D E U

Part 4 - Pits, Stairs, and Windows

Before we start with part 4, let me mention that I made a slight error
in the PCX diagram for part 3.  If you followed my instructions, the
east and west walls of Sector #0 should have 5 Vertices and 4 wall sections
each, but the PCX shows only 4 Vertices and 3 sections.  Oops!  No real
harm done, the Sector works either way, but I apologize for any confusion.
Two PCX files are included with part 4.  Print them out now so we can
refer back to them later.

On to part 4!  Load in your level from Part 3, and we'll add a nuke waste
pit to stumble into.  First, take out the tripwire LineDef that activates
the door Sector.  Hit "L" to get into Line mode, select the tripwire Line
by moving the mouse cursor over it, and delete it by hitting the Delete key.
If you go to Sector mode and select the door Sector, you will notice that
the LineDef tag now reads "37 (none)".  You can edit the Sector and change
the LineDef tag to 0, since we aren't going to activate the door with any
LineDefs.

Move the cursor to the middle of the southern room (Sector #0) and hit the
F9 key to bring up the "add a Sector" menu.  Choose 1 - Rectangle, and
enter in a width and height of 150.  While all the new Lines are marked,
hit the Insert key to make 'em into a new Sector.  A note here:  when you
use the F9 key menu with the cursor INSIDE a Sector, a new Sector is
NOT automatically created, you have to do it yourself.  When you use the
F9 key while the cursor is OUTSIDE all Sectors, a new Sector IS automatically
created, and you DON'T need to hit Insert.  (If you DO hit Insert in this
case, you can create problems).  You should now have something similar to
Figure 4 of DEUGP4A.PCX.

In Sector mode, select the new Sector, and give it a Floor height of -24
(minus twenty-four), and a ceiling height of 128.  This makes the pit floor 
lower than the surrounding room.  Note: a player can jump down from any 
height, but cannot "walk up" a stair or pit side that has 25 or greater
units difference in height.  Go into Line mode and select each of the Lines
of our pit Sector.  Notice that they are all 2 sided Lines, with 1st and
2nd SideDefs, but with no textures assigned.  All of the Normal Vectors
point outside of the pit, meaning that we will never see the 1st SideDef
textures.  Imagine sitting in the pit, you will see the inner walls of the
pit (2nd SideDef), but the outer walls (1st SideDef) will be buried in
the floor of the surrounding Sector.  So, mark all four of the wall Lines,
hit Enter to edit them, edit the 2nd SideDef, and change the lower texture
to NUKE24.  We don't need an upper texture (it would be above the ceiling)
and we don't need a normal texture (this is what we walk through to enter
the pit).

A note here about marking LineDefs: by MARKING, I mean to move the mouse
cursor over a Line to select it, and then hit the left mouse button to
mark it.  When you have a single Line selected, editing it works just fine.
But, when you want to work on a group of Lines, make sure they are ALL
marked, not just selected.  This is especially important when creating new
Sectors - if you don't have ALL the Lines marked, a new Sector will not
be formed correctly.  And modifying the LineDef Sector references is not
a fun job.  










                                                           Part 4 Page 2

Hit "S" to get into Sector mode, select our pit Sector, and change the 
Type to 7 - -2/5% health (acid floor).  Change the floor texture to NUKAGE1.
This texture will cycle through NUKAGE1, NUKAGE2, and NUKAGE3.  Okay, our 
"Nuke Waste Pit" is done.  Try it out.  But don't stay in the pit too long!

Okay, let's add a staircase to our southern room (Sector #0).  Hit "V" to
get into Vertex mode, and insert a series of 10 Vertices to the east of
Sector 0.  Look at Figure 5 of DEUGP4A.PCX to see how these Vertices are
placed.  Fig. 5 also shows how each set of 4 Vertices is made into a new Sector.
For each new "stairstep" Sector, mark the 4 Vertices (in a clockwise manner),
hit Insert to add the Lines, make sure ALL 4 of the Lines are marked, and
hit Insert again to make the new Sector.  When you have done this 5 times,
you should have something similar to Fig. 5.  Starting with the Sector that
leads from the room, select each Sector and make the floor height 8 units
higher than the previous Sector.  (Fig. 5 also shows these floor heights).
Give each Sector a ceiling height of 128.

Get into Line mode and select each Line that connects a stair Sector to another
Sector (should be 5 of them).  All of the Normal Vectors should be facing
back "down" the stairway towards the Sector #0 room.  If so, good!  If not,
you should select each Line that faces "up" the stairway & use the F10 key to
flip the LineDef around so that the Normal Vector points back down the 
stairway.  Give each of these connecting Lines a 1st SideDef lower texture 
of STEP2.  They don't need upper textures (above the ceiling) or normal
textures (where you walk through).  That should be it for the stairway!
I've made this stairway several times, sometimes it works fine, sometimes
I have to run BSP on it to avoid the "Hall of Mirrors" effect.  I ALWAYS
run BSP on every map I make, and I ALWAYS save the old file as a backup.

So where does this stairway lead to?  Why, to a window that looks out over
the mysterious surface of Phobos, of course!  So let's add a window to the
wall at very end of the staircase.  In Line mode, select the Line at the
south end of the staircase and (using the F10 key) split the LineDef
twice, so we have three sections in that wall.  Then, in Vertex mode,
add two Vertices just to the south of the wall, lined up with the two
Vertices we just added to the wall.  Connect these four Vertices with
three new Lines, mark all four lines and make them a new Sector.  The
result should be something like Figure 6 of DEUGP4B.PCX.

Now let's work on the walls of our tiny little window Sector.  The east and
west walls are Impassable, with normal textures of STARTAN3.  This is fine.
The south wall also has a normal texture of STARTAN3.  We won't be able to
see through the window like that, so change the normal texture of the wall's
1st SideDef to "-".  This means no texture, and is the first texture on
the list (hit the Home key to go right to it).  Change the LineDef flag to
2S (so we can see through it).  The north wall of our little window Sector 
is 2S, which means we could walk right through the wall!  Keep the 2S, but 
change the LineDef flags of the this wall to add Im (impassable), and unpeg
both the lower and upper texture.  Then give the 1st SideDef an upper and
lower texture of STARTAN3.  Leave the normal texture blank, so we can see
through the wall.  Go into Sector mode, and give the Sector a floor height 
of 70 and a ceiling height of 100.  This completes our window.  Of course,
if you were to play the game using this map, and happened to look OUT our
window, you would turn to stone and be damned forever.










                                                           Part 4 Page 3

Just kidding. <g>  What would actually happen is that you would see the
infamous "Hall of Mirrors" again.  We need to add a Sector outside of our
window, a "courtyard" Sector, so that there is something to see outside.
In Vertex mode, insert four new Vertices to form a box-like Sector butting
up against the south edge of our window (See Figure 7 of DEUGP4B.PCX).
Add Lines, and make this a Sector with all the walls pointing in, and give
the Sector a floor height of 40, a ceiling height of 75, and a ceiling 
texture of F_SKY1.  Plop a couple of Demons down in the courtyard, and
presto, instant target practice!

TROUBLESHOOTING:
A few words on preventing those nasty crashes and lockups: something
you REALLY want to avoid is having two Lines in the exact same place.
Let's say you're building a new Sector, and you've got a set of four
Vertices with one Line already in place, like this:

0 XÄÄÄÂÄÄÄX 1


3 X       X 2 

(I've numbered the Vertices, and placed a Line between 0 and 1)
You're trying to add three more Lines, all with the 1st SideDefs facing
inward.  If you mark the Vertices in this order; 0-1-2-3, you will
add two new Lines, but you will ALSO add a new Line between Vertices
0 and 1.  This will crash your map, big time.  DEU remembers the
order in which you mark stuff.  The correct order would be 1-2-3-0.
If you mark in order 0-3-2-1, three new Lines will be drawn, but the
normal vectors will point OUTSIDE the new room.  If you are having
trouble with this, you might want to try adding in new Lines one at a time.

How can you tell if you have two Lines in the same place?  In Line mode,
if you see a Line that stays red when it's NOT selected or marked, that's
a good clue that something is wrong with a Line (no Sector refs, etc.).
You can use the N (next) and P (previous) keys to step through your
Lines and find the duplicated LineDef.  I've never seen it happen,
but you probably want to make sure you don't have two Vertices in the
same exact place, and that you don't have two Sectors in the same place.

Sometimes I'll make a new Sector, and I won't be able to select it with
the mouse, or I'll have to move the mouse in some bizarre way to select
the Sector.  I have no idea what causes this, but if you Quit back to the 
main menu, and then edit the level again, the Sector will then be selectable.
You also want to be sure that you don't have Lines or Sectors that overlap.
This might happen when you are shifting stuff around by dragging with the
right mouse button.  

Coming up in Part 5 - There IS no Part 5! <g> Part 4 is the last part of
the Beginner's Guide.  DEU has many more features to use in creating
PWAD files for DOOM, but I'll leave those for "An Intermediate Guide
To DEU", and hope that lots of clever folks are exploring, hacking, &
experimenting to learn all about those features (ya hear that Wraith?).
As for me, I'm going to finish up a couple of levels I've been working
on, and then try writing a utility that keeps track of all the PWAD
files I've collected, and also lets me pick which ones to load into DOOM.
The program will be called "WAD Runner", look for it sometime soon.

Blackfist (a.k.a. Rich Dersheimer)
CIS 72123,1521

DOOM is a trademark of, and is copyright (c) 1993 by id Software, Inc.





 

