Favourite map editing tricks?

[Arclite]

I really enjoyed utilizing the Player Start "conveyor belt" trick when I just mapped for DiD format. The downside though is that it wouldn't work for co-op because it deletes the additional Player Starts that aren't being used.

[geekmarine]

I, too, am a fan of using disconnected sectors in place of a sound tunnel for monster ambushes. Honestly, it's rather mundane as far as map editing tricks go, but it's one of my favorites because it's something I managed to figure out all on my own. I don't even remember if I had seen the trick used before, it just suddenly had occurred to me that sound is carried by sectors, so a room with the same sector reference, even if not physically connected, would carry sound to a monster trap. Self-referencing sectors to create invisible stairs is probably the coolest, though, in my opinion, even though I never use it.

Oh, and this isn't exactly a map editing trick, but I really had a blast the time I used Dehacked to cause the plasma rifle to do negative damage, then created a level with a voodoo doll and found that the palette would freak out if you shot the voodoo doll with a negative-damage weapon.

[Lycaon]

mrthejoshmon said:

Chaingunners up high to piss people off :3

Revenants in "W1 Door Open Stay (Fast)" traps to also piss people off.

You are exactly the kind of people that makes me wanna kill people :P

[MathsDevil]

Yes, chaingunners in high positions become very annoying sometimes. Although I do play with looking up and down in JDoom, I don't like the idea of a level that forces you to look up/down.

Design trick: Temporary Sound-blocking lines effect.

If you want room A and room B to sometimes have a sound-block between them and sometimes not, in a hidden way, here's how to do it:

Have normal sound-blocking lines between rooms A and B in the map.

Choose two parts of rooms A and B and create dummy sectors 'in the distance' which are both effectively parts of rooms A and B because they are joined to sectors in those rooms. Then put a door between the dummy sectors. When the player flicks a switch or walks over a line in the level etc.. the door can open, creating a way for sound to bypass the sound-blocking line in the level. The door can, of course, close again, making the sound blocked once more.

[MathsDevil]

geekmarine said:

Self-referencing sectors to create invisible stairs is probably the coolest, though, in my opinion, even though I never use it.

Ugh! Whenever I keep falling off invisible stairs in a level, I am usually annoyed by the puzzle the level editor thinks is fun. :-(

[BaronOfStuff]

Boring stuff for me; merging sectors. Multiple reasons for doing this, mainly related to dummy sectors controlling floor/ceiling changes and simplified sound-pathing though.

I hate using renderer hacks/exploits though. What works in the software renderer doesn't always work in hardware renderers, and vice-versa. I also can't stand insta-raise/lower sectors for '3D' effects, particularly the over-use of them (such as in HRII MAP19). This can turn co-op games into a fuckfest of time-wasting, resulting in stuck players, broken triggers and just general anti-fun.

[zrrion the insect]

the coolest trick I've seen in vanilla is using a crusher to crush an exploding barrel. The barrel's explosion then pushed a voodoo doll into a teleporter and made the voodoo telefrag a cyberdemon.

[Dragonsbrethren]

Kappes Buur said:

Where maps usually have a sector, as a window for example, with a large brightness value,
I don't see many which have a bright patch on the wall itself.

I guess it's technically still a window, but I love when this is done with a midtexture covering a thin bright sector behind the wall. It makes for amazing contrast.