Mystery sector in E1M2

[Captain red pants]

So this is something I've wondered about for years: E1M2 Nuclear Plant, in the tech maze with the strobe lights, opposite the secrete wall that leads to the chainsaw, there is a completely inaccessible 128 X 64 sector with 0 lighting.

Here's it is in ultimate doom builder:

 

Other then a light glow effect, it's not tagged with anything :/

It shows up if you have the computer map powerup as well.

Now I doubt I'm the first person to notice this, anyone ask John Romero about it? Was there an earlier build where it served a purpose?

[Gothic]

It's a dummy sector. The glowing sector with the green armor needed a neighbor sector with pitch black lighting so it oscillates between the sector with the lowest light amount (0 in this case) and whatever light amount the sector with the glow effect has.

Edited March 9, 2024 by Gothic

[Captain red pants]

I guess that makes sense. I wonder why it was never hidden from the automap?

[Dark Pulse]

Because it was one of the earlier maps during the game's dev (there's versions of it as far back as 0.3), so for all we know, that capability might not have even been in at that time, or it could've simply slipped Romero's mind - they were focused on getting the game made, not silly things like "You can see this on the automap!" This is especially likely as there's no computer area map in the level, which means the only way you'd even know there's a sector there would be via level editors or cheating.

 

Somebody could ask Romero, I suppose?

Edited March 9, 2024 by Dark Pulse

[drygnfyre]

Most likely just an error. A lot of the maps have errors like things not appearing when they should, or some things only appearing in deathmatch even though they aren't supposed to.

 

Should be noted that Romero also said that one of his "rules" for level design was if you see the outdoors, there should be a way to get there. And yet some of his maps do this with no way to get outside. So like the other poster said, most likely the focus was to just get the levels done, and if there are slight errors here and there, so be it. Theoretically, you could edit the maps yourself with a modern editor and fix them.

[Dark Pulse]

3 hours ago, drygnfyre said:

Most likely just an error. A lot of the maps have errors like things not appearing when they should, or some things only appearing in deathmatch even though they aren't supposed to.

 

Should be noted that Romero also said that one of his "rules" for level design was if you see the outdoors, there should be a way to get there. And yet some of his maps do this with no way to get outside. So like the other poster said, most likely the focus was to just get the levels done, and if there are slight errors here and there, so be it. Theoretically, you could edit the maps yourself with a modern editor and fix them.

I mean, it being there is not an error - Gothic said exactly why it's there. It's needed to make the sector special work right.

 

The "error" is in that it's not hidden on the automap (and that you don't remotely need a sector that big to do the effect). But again, the only way it'd ever even show on the automap is if you cheated in the first place whether by noclipping, giving yourself the area map, or using the map-all cheat, so I don't really count that as a "bug" per se.

Edited March 10, 2024 by Dark Pulse

[Captain red pants]

3 minutes ago, Dark Pulse said:

But again, the only way it'd ever even show on the automap is if you cheated in the first place whether by noclipping, giving yourself the area map, or using the map-all cheat, so I don't really count that as a "bug" per se.

It's been a long time since I've played that map in vanilla, but I vaguely remember becoming aware of it for the first time by seeing little unconnected lines in the automap before anything else (I mean sure I went on to conform it with 'idbehold a').

 
Like you said, the size of it was what confounded me.

[Dark Pulse]

4 minutes ago, Captain red pants said:

It's been a long time since I've played that map in vanilla, but I vaguely remember becoming aware of it for the first time by seeing little unconnected lines in the automap before anything else (I mean sure I went on to conform it with 'idbehold a').

 
Like you said, the size of it was what confounded me.

Keep in mind DoomEd (which they used to make it) operated as a bit of a different beast, and was itself in a constant state of rework all throughout Doom's development. It could be that it was simply done and never touched. It could be the editor itself would wig out with sectors that were too small. It could be... well, almost anything, really. :P

 

Oh, if you'd like to look at DoomEd, someone did port it to Linux and Mac once Romero put up the source.

 

https://twilightedge.com/mac/redoomed/

Edited March 10, 2024 by Dark Pulse

[Maximum Matt]

Let's not forget there's an unaligned/misplaced texture in front of it, actually quite noticeable when you come back to it exiting the secret area.