Add Doors and Lifts To Levels
HOW TO:
Add Doors and Lifts To Levels
=============================
No level would be complete without some doors (locked or otherwise) and lifts (stuck or
otherwise) for the player to negotiate.
DEFINING A DOOR:
----------------
Select the 'Define door' icon. This is fifth from the left on the bottom row, and depicts
a red door with an arrow pointing upwards beneath it to show it opening.
You will be presented with a bewildering array of options, including:
DOOR NUM: X
You are currently editing door X, which is a letter from A to P (16 doors). Pressing
'<' and '>' with the cursor in the edit area scrolls through these values.
NB: Holding down RSHIFT when pressing '<' or '>' not only moves to the previous or
next door, but also copies all the settings from the current door to it. This is useful
when most of the doors in your level are of the same type.
Stays Open For (50=1 sec)
This value represents the amount of time the door will remain open for after it reaches
its full open height. By experimenting with this value you can create combinations of
doors and switches which require the player to run across the map before the door
closes again! Click on the value to change it.
Opening Speed
Opening and closing speeds can be more or less anything you like, but for example,
an opening speed of 16 is fast, whilst an opening speed of 1 is very, very slow (useful
for very big, heavy doors) Click on the value to change it.
Closing Speed
Same as above, but in the opposite direction.
Opening SFX:
This is the sound effect triggered by the door being opened. Click and type the number
of a sound effect (0=no sound) which you have loaded into the game linker.
Closing SFX:
Same as above but triggered by the door starting to close.
Open SFX:
Similar to above, but triggered by the door REACHING its fully open state.
Closed SFX:
Ditto, but triggered by the door reaching its completely closed state.
RAISE CONDITIONS:
Plr touch+Space
The player must come into contact with the door and press the space bar to trigger
it into opening.
Plr Touch
The player only needs to touch the door to trigger it into opening.
Bullet Touch
NOT IMPLEMENTED IN CURRENT VERSION; DO NOT USE.
Alien Touch
NOT IMPLEMENTED IN CURRENT VERSION; DO NOT USE
On Timeout
As soon as the door becomes unlocked, or finishes closing, it will begin to
open again.
Never
Fairly obvious; the door will never open. Not a lot of use, but included for
completeness.
LOWER CONDITIONS
On Timeout
Once the timer has expired (see above) the door will begin to close once more.
Never
Once open the door will never begin to close again.
PLACING A DOOR ON THE MAP
-------------------------
Note: Place doors between open zones, to save time. Because, the idea of defining
walls to raise and lower with the door (in adjacent zone(s)) is automatically
placed. That is, you don't need o have a wall there, already. If you do, that
first click will erase the wall, then the second click will put a wall to lift
with door, there. The editor makes this simple to see. White are just walls.
Grey, means a separation of Zones, but the zones are connected with no walls
inbetween. (I.E. Connected Zones) Blue means that it is a wall that will lift with
the corresponding Door. This also goes for Lifts.
1. Click on the 'define door' icon as above.
2. Select the zone which you want to act as the door (i.e. its ceiling will rise and fall) with
the RIGHT mouse button.
3. Press 'r'. The letter of the door will appear roughly in the middle of the zone.
4. This bit requires a bit of thought. Remember that the walls of zones face INWARDS, not outwards,
so you will now have to specify which walls in the surrounding zones you want to rise and
fall with the ceiling of the door zone:
1
----------------*-------*-----------------
# #
# #
# #
# #
ZONE X # # ZONE Y
# DA #
# #
# #
# #
# #
----------------*-------*-----------------
2
In this case, where a corridor is interrupted by a door, zones X and Y each have ONE wall
which must appear to rise and fall with the ceiling marked 'DA'.
To select these walls, click in, for example, zone X with the RIGHT mouse button. Then click
with the LEFT mouse button on the point at the LEFT END of the wall you wish to change.
NB: The 'LEFT END' refers to the end of the wall which would be on the left when you looked at
it in the game from within zone X; i.e. point 1 in the diagram.
Notice that the wall selected becomes blue. You can deselect a wall just by clicking on it
again.
Repeat this process for all other zones bordering the door zone, (e.g. zone Y and point 2).
5. You have done it! The door will now rise and fall between the defined floor height and the
defined roof height of the zone in which it was placed. You can now place objects which hold
the door shut until collected, or put in aliens which hold it shut until killed, or anything!
NB: The list of settings for the door in the bottom right of the screen is NOT a clipboard; these
are the ACTUAL settings for the door. You can change the settings at any time before or after
placing the door, and the changes will take effect automatically.
DELETING A DOOR:
----------------
Sometimes it may be necessary to delete a door from the map. The ONLY safe way to do this, boys
and girls, is to follow this procedure:
1. Click on the 'DEFINE DOOR' icon, and use < and > to reach the door you want to delete.
2. Use the technique described above to toggle OFF all the blue walls in zones around the door.
3. Select the door zone itself with the RIGHT mouse button and press 'r'. The door letter should
vanish.
NB: It is not possible to delete a zone which is either a door, or contains a wall bordering a door.
I made this so because every time I deleted a zone containing or bordering a door whilst
programming AB3D, the level corrupted irretrievably. I never did find out why, so I put in a
safety feature which prevents zones being deleted in such a situation. You MUST delete the
door before deleting neighbouring zones or the door zone itself.
DEFINING A LIFT:
----------------
This is very, very similar to the above process, with the following changes:
Additional Note: One of these changes, not in the original text is that, to place the Lift in
a zone, you must type 'f' and NOT 'r', to make a zone into a lift.
LOWER CONDITIONS:
Plr touch+Space
The player must come into contact with the lift and press the space bar to trigger
it into coming down.
Plr Touch
The player only needs to touch the lift to trigger it into descending.
On Timeout
As soon as the lift becomes unlocked, or finishes rising, it will begin to
lower again.
Never
The lift, once raised, will never descend.
There is an additional setting, defining where the lift begins (at the top or the bottom of its
movement) which can be set by pressing 't' or 'b' with the cursor in the edit area.
Once a lift zone has been defined, in the same way as above, there is one extra piece of
information you must give: the maximum height to which the lift rises. Define this by selecting the
lift zone with the right mouse button....
Additional Note: The rest was cut off from the original text. But here's the addition.
After you selected the lift zone, press 'h' and you will be requested for the
height. Type in a number, for where you want the maximum height of the lift.
REMEMBER: Your lifts go up, so you must subtract. Don't make a lift, where the
floor is 0 and the lift max height is 144. That is wrong. It goes UP to -144.
Don't forget your negative Heights. If you test your level, and you see a wierd
crazy hole, where your lift should be, with strange choppy graphics inside,
that means, you mad ethe lift where the maxiumum height was BELOW the floor.
A mistake, on my part, when I was first designing a level. However, you have
been forewarned.
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