see through/transparent walls

[reefer]

Is there any way to create see through walls in vanilla/zdoom? like, walls that you can see through but can't shoot through, are impassible, & block sound?

in a similar way I am also curious about how mappers make it so that rail textures are fixed to floors instead of ceilings, and how see through floors like in map 2 of violetshift

sorry if I'm shit at explaining this, idrk how to get this across lol

[Stabbey]

Yes, using sectors with their floor raised to almost their ceiling, but without textures on their lower sides, you can make a transparent window effect which blocks shots. It won't stop sound from crossing, but if you put it inside another sector and make the lines of that sector block sound, it'll act soundproof as well. Look up self-referencing sectors for more on that topic.

 

The railing textures being fixed to floors instead of ceilings is done by setting the Upper Unpegged flag, possibly in conjunction with a Y-coordinate offset of the texture to align it where you want it.

 

I'm not sure about the transparent floor trick, someone else will have to answer that part.

[URROVA]

the transparent floor is made using transfer heights (242: create fake floor and ceiling on UDB), basically changes the visible height of a sector's floor/ceiling without altering the physical height.

 

[SMG_Man]

An alternate way of making invisible floors (such as the invisible bridge in Plutonia map 2) is by utilizing "self-referencing" sectors. It's a slightly more advanced concept and you need to be careful lest you accidentally break the effect while working on your level, but it's a completely vanilla way of having raised floors/platforms that are 100% invisible.

[reefer]

thanks guys, real interesting stuff. I'm surprised I've never heard of self referencing sectors, I'm always looking into doom's design quirks like that, lol