Fast texture scrolling in Plutonia Map05

[peach freak]

There are some areas in Map05 of Plutonia where the scrolling textures scroll pretty fast. One is in the area with the Spider Mastermind, up on the platforms where the second round of Chaingunners are released. In the little rooms they pop out of are scrolling textures, but in Vanilla Doom, they scroll really fast. You can also find this near the exit, I believe it's at the switch that opens up the exit room, it has really fast scrolling blue lights.

 

Was this a bug or something specific to Final Doom?

 

Never really gave it any thought until now.

 

Thanks.

[scifista42]

Not a bug, but actually a mapping trick: Multiple linedefs with a scrolling action are hacked to reference the same sidedef, so their effects add to each other and make the texture scrolling multiple times faster.

[Memfis]

Modern map editors and some source ports don't support this trick, so depending on your target audience you might want to avoid it.

 

How to use it:

 

- Draw some dummy lines that have the texture you want to scroll fast on the same part (upper, middle, or lower) as the original line: http://i.imgur.com/SbUWHFn.png

 

- Write down the numbers of the visible sidedef (in this case 3) and the dummy linedefs (in this case 12, 13, 14, and 15).

 

- Open your wad in Slade. Go to the LINEDEFS lump.

 

- Find the dummy linedefs and change their "Front Side" (or Back depending on circumstances) value to the very first number you wrote down: http://i.imgur.com/7lWNJWW.png

 

* The more dummy lines you draw the faster it will scroll. With enough lines you can even get it to scroll backwards (for a 128 long texture you would need 127 (126?) dummy lines because scrolling it left by 127 is essentialy the same as scrolling it right by 1).

 

* Keep in mind that if you later resave your map in a modern editor, the effect will most likely be lost and you will have to redo the whole thing.

 

example wad:

fastscrl.zip

Edited August 15, 2017 by Memfis

[Gez]

Also keep in mind that vanilla Doom has a static limit of 64 scrollers. So you could make something like you have two 64-wide textures flanking a doorway that would scroll in opposite directions, using 1 normal scroller for one and the remaining 63 scrollers for the other.

[peach freak]

15 hours ago, scifista42 said:

Not a bug, but actually a mapping trick: Multiple linedefs with a scrolling action are hacked to reference the same sidedef, so their effects add to each other and make the texture scrolling multiple times faster.

So how would this be done in a map editor? I don't see anything glaring in Doom Builder. I checked with ZDoom and Doomsday and the textures scrolled at normal speeds.

[Xyzzу]

You change the index of the linedefs to all be the same I think. I've never done this myself since this is a purely vanilla-only trick.