How you can improve certain push secrets.

[Memfis]

Let's say you have a secret where the player presses a computer panel to open a nearby wall. What you can do is add a switch texture to that panel's upper or lower part (choose the one that won't be visible). Now an activation sound will play when that panel is pressed, which is more satisfying I believe (you get some audio feedback). Noticed this in several wads and started doing it as well.

[plums]

Good tip, I noticed you did this in Ultrawad and I thought it was a nice touch.

[40oz]

I've thought about this too, although I haven't yet used it. My rationale was to use it for secrets. Like instead of using a misaligned texture as a door, it could be a switch that opens up a door nearby (in case there isn't enough space to make an entire secret room off the chosen misaligned wall texture)

makes you wonder, if your switch raises or lowers a floor, you could use instantly raising or lowering floors to simulate the texture animation of a normal switch, so you could add new switch textures without replacing existing ones.

I'm not really sure that would ever be necessary though, as making a giant switch texture out of multiple patches and just offsetting the texture to the one you want seems less complicated and more versatile.

[Memfis]

Well, instant moving floors can be used for making floor\flat switches. :) (see Epic 2 map01)

[scifista42]

Good trick.

By the way, be careful about this when using switches: If both upper and lower texture of a linedef has a switch texture, only the upper one will animate. I've only learnt it recently (third post in this thread, post by Memfis). I didn't know it when I've started mapping, so I was really wondering and enraged because of one switch in my map that didn't animate, while all other switches did, and I wasn't able to fix it no matter what I've tried.

[Genki]

That reminds me of this wad: "1monster " in level 15, if you want to go to the secret level, you have to activate 2 computers' panels.

[Egregor]

Thanks, good tip. This is a great idea, especially for vanilla mapping.

I've made switches using slade3 and several (switch) textures. I like to see Doom 3's red and green screens incorporated into Doom MODs. There could be black and green DOS screens for unactivated switches and red screens for activated screens (like they were hacked or dangerous).

EDIT: I'm sure I've seen new computer screen switches, probably dozens of times really. You're idea is quicker, easier, sneaky, and vanilla.

[clamgor]

Well, I never thought of doing this.

This is a great tip.

Thanks.

[mouldy]

40oz said:

makes you wonder, if your switch raises or lowers a floor, you could use instantly raising or lowering floors to simulate the texture animation of a normal switch, so you could add new switch textures without replacing existing ones.

This inspired me to see if any of the stock doom 2 textures could be turned into switches using this method. Here is the result:
http://www.mediafire.com/download/dcct7499johuob7/altswitches.wad

[Melon]

mouldy said:

This inspired me to see if any of the stock doom 2 textures could be turned into switches using this method. Here is the result:
http://www.mediafire.com/download/xnsdrca7ur38m2f/altswitches.wad

Oh my god that SP_FACE1 switch is hilarious.

[mouldy]

You could even use 2 different textures if you used one as a midtexture, though then it might crash vanilla doom