Window to see the sky

[Sneezy McGlassFace]

Alright, this is super simple but but kinda gimmicky, so I thought I'd share how it's done.

Say you want to have a window to the outside. But you don't have any "outside" in your map. Cool, just make it the sky.

The window need to be three sectors. First is the window border itself, a hole in a wall. Then outside of that another sector of the same height with floor and ceiling set to f_sky1. And around that another sector with both floor and ceiling f_sky1 but 0 headroom.

In this example, sector 1 is the window frame that's visible. 2 is the outside that's the same size as the frame. And 3 is wrapping around sector 2 but with ceiling all the way down.

 

 

Kinda hard to explain, even though it's just three sectors, so here's the wad.

 

Q: Why not just two sectors? What's the point of sector 3?

Well, that one does the magic of showing the sky on walls of sector 2.

 

Hope that helped

window.wad.zip

[NoOne]

You only need 1 sector outside the window frame. Sky on ceiling, anything on floor, no texture on the sectors mids. You made it harder than it actually is ^^

 

 

 

 

Edited January 31, 2022 by NoOne

[Sneezy McGlassFace]

Oh... Well that simplifies things quite a bit, then. :D

But then I get a "missing texture" alert. I don't like those. There you go, that's my excuse.

[gwain]

yeah its a pretty cool effect I usually use it in unfinished areas where I'm going to add an outside later

[NoOne]

20 minutes ago, HrnekBezucha said:

Oh... Well that simplifies things quite a bit, then. :D

But then I get a "missing texture" alert. I don't like those. There you go, that's my excuse.

Ignore it, or make work for yourself. Your choice ^^

[Sneezy McGlassFace]

@NoOne Honestly, I thought untextured walls give you HOM. So I always looked for work-arounds. This was the only thing I figured, and it worked, so I stuck with it. But yeah, it's unnecessary. I'll probably ask some mod to get rid of this post

[NoOne]

3 minutes ago, HrnekBezucha said:

@NoOne Honestly, I thought untextured walls give you HOM. So I always looked for work-arounds. This was the only thing I figured, and it worked, so I stuck with it. But yeah, it's unnecessary. I'll probably ask some mod to get rid of this post

If the linedef is a map border and untextured it doesn't render and shows the sky instead. Happy to help ^^

 

Also, leave this up, it will help others new to mapping !

Edited January 31, 2022 by NoOne

[RHhe82]

On 1/31/2022 at 10:31 PM, NoOne said:

You only need 1 sector outside the window frame. Sky on ceiling, anything on floor, no texture on the sectors mids. You made it harder than it actually is ^^

 

 

 

 

This didn’t work for me either.

 

I have always thought that the trick is done by having a sector behind the window with a height of 0, and ceiling texture set to f_sky1 and upper textures set to none, which produces the effect.

 

Today I learned that at least in DSDA-Doom’s software rendering mode it generates HOMs. So, I’m not sure if even this is the best way of accomplishing skies. I fixed the problem by employing a layout resembling the one in the OP, ie. Put a little dummy sector between the window frame and the one with the sky ceiling and deliberately missing textures. I think even that’s not the best way, there seems to be some barely noticeable graphical glitches even then, but no HOM as far as I can see.

[Hitboi]

@HrnekBezucha I believe the 3rd sector is called a sky hack sector, it's wideness on the screenshot of the OP is a little too big, which is a sector the player isn't supposed to see normally, I think making it very wide is a little unnecessary. Also, do you want to add an addendum that sector 2 should be wider than sector 1 if the player can see the window from 2 sides? Like this:

Spoiler

 

 

 

On 1/31/2022 at 11:31 PM, NoOne said:

You only need 1 sector outside the window frame. Sky on ceiling, anything on floor, no texture on the sectors mids. You made it harder than it actually is

This only works when playing in source ports using OpenGL, Software rendering mode makes a HOM on the walls near the sky's flats, here's a screenshot on Chocolate Doom:

Edited February 24, 2022 by Hitboi

[Sneezy McGlassFace]

47 minutes ago, Hitboi said:

@HrnekBezucha I believe the 3rd sector is called a sky hack sector, it's wideness on the screenshot of the OP is a little too big, which is a sector the player isn't supposed to see normally, I think making it very wide is a little unnecessary. Also, do you want to add an addendum that sector 2 should be wider than sector 1 if the player can see the window from 2 sides? Like this:

  Hide contents

 

 

 

By seeing window from 2 sides you mean "indoors" and "outdoors"? Or left and right? Because the whole idea of this fake sector to outdoors is to not needing to actually have any outdoors. And if you do have outdoor area, you don't need this hack. 

I made the 3rd sector relatively large only because I was working on a grid. 

Also, why does your 3rd sector have the pointy bits and the ends?

[Hitboi]

I misread the thread's name as "how to make a window", which means I didn't think the idea of this is to see the sky, sorry.
 

1 hour ago, HrnekBezucha said:

Also, why does your 3rd sector have the pointy bits and the ends?

If you mean those small linedefs, they are there to exceed sector 2's walls.
 

1 hour ago, HrnekBezucha said:

By seeing window from 2 sides you mean "indoors" and "outdoors"? Or left and right?

I meant indoors & outdoors.

[esselfortium]

On 1/31/2022 at 4:07 PM, NoOne said:

If the linedef is a map border and untextured it doesn't render and shows the sky instead. Happy to help ^^

This is not the case normally. What port are you using?

[maxmanium]

I think it won't show a HOM in the software renderer if you lower the ceiling of the sky sector such that the floor and ceiling heights are equal, and you don't give it an upper texture. But I'm not certain.