Janis, this is mainly directed to you:
I have been making a few experiments with floor slopes with the vavoom for hexen.cfg you supplied us, and there are some doubts I would like to clear and something I wanted to suggest:
- By setting a third point inside the sector, I define the new plane for the slope (one (reference) line + a point defines a plane). It seems clear that the engine traces a new axis parallel to the original reference line (the one with the tag), through the third point (which is the slope thing), and thus forcing the plane through that parallel line.
That's why you you must have the reference line and the opposite line always parallel (in case of 4 side sectors), if both vertexes have different distances between each other, the sloped plane will exceed the final height intended.
- I discovered that a safe way to create unregular slopes in this rigorous system is to:
1.Set the base plane that will the higher plateau (in any form).
2.Draw one slope sector for each of the target sector's linedefs, keeping in mind that the opposite line (of the sloped sector) should always have the same size than the linedef it will connect to (they must be parallel) - the sector's length (longitudinal axis) can be any.
3.Connect each of those 4 sided sectors slopes with triangle sectors - the triangle form will match both original sectors's inclination automaticly, because the lateral connecting lines will have the same lenght; since the receiving line of a triangle sector is a single point (vertex), the base line can have any direction (doesn't need to be related to the target sector in any way).
Still, there's the third point rule: it must ALWAYS be place excatly in the center point of each sector, no matter what is it's geometrical form, otherwise the inclination between connected sectors will never be the same, even if they share a line with the same length. And this is the problems I found while trying to create a more complex sloped model - There's no way to tell where the middle point of a sector is. While if you draw the sectors forcing them in a grid size of higher numbers, you can most of the times reduce it's scale to find the multiples, and then by manuallly counting the horizontal and vertical distances, you can place the slope point in the center point of that displacement. BUT since triangles are much difficult to control, specially when they have to connect two very different sectors, they assume very irregular forms, thus making it very difficult to find their exact mid point, because most of the time they are not full (real) numbers (examples: 3.7, 4.3, 5.8,...). Maunally placing them gets nearly impossible, because the grid only goes down to 4, and placing them freely is not an exact method - that little displacement will result in a slight different inclination, thus breaking the whole slope's continuity...
[img:w2t4djgi]http://downloads.orcishweb.com/koraxdev/mago/Doombuilder/Mediatriz.jpg[/img:w2t4djgi]
[img:w2t4djgi]http://downloads.orcishweb.com/koraxdev/mago/Doombuilder/Sevtest2.jpg[/img:w2t4djgi]
What I wanted to suggest was a function that would let the user activate the center point of any given sector (at least with 4 and 3 sides), really like a button "Show sector's mid point", and having it like an active point where I could lock and place the slope thing, even if it doesn't match the grid lines. This would not only make slopes faster, but would make it exact and much easier to construct complex groups. AutoCad has a feature such as this, I don't believe it would be that much hard to code? The problem is that the DB author stated that he doesn't have that much time to code nowadays, and I don't think he would care to implement this feature at all, considering it's mainly for placing slopes things and DB doesn't support them. Could you plase have a look at it?
PS: Another problem I can't see the reason: I'm trying to place this patch with a drawing of a door in the front side of the house. As you can see, I had to break it in 4 connected sectors, because I wanted to give different inclinations for the roof. In DB they look fine, and both the major linedefs were assigend the exact same way (in terms of texture offsets). But when I go to Vavoom, the left right one gets messed up when the slope is created, but the other remains the same. I tried to set them Upper unpegged, but no good... What should I do?
[img:w2t4djgi]http://downloads.orcishweb.com/koraxdev/mago/Doombuilder/Sevtest1.jpg[/img:w2t4djgi]
[img:w2t4djgi]http://downloads.orcishweb.com/koraxdev/mago/Doombuilder/Sevtest3.jpg[/img:w2t4djgi]