ROTT level editing tricks.

[MikeMiller]

When I was into ROTT back when it was popular, I enjoyed making my own levels all the time. Of course it's been almost two decades since then and I've forgotten most of the tricks to editing levels.

I seem to remember one trick where if you could make enemies and other objects appear invisible if they are standing on a different type of floor tile than you are, or something along those lines. Once you stepped into their "plane" (same area of floor tile, or whatever) they became visible. I just tried that and it didn't work. Does anyone remember the details to this?

Hey Joe, are you listening? :-)

I'm using Corey Ellsworth's "Rott Mapper Deluxe" and I'm lost as to what the various meta-data about each tile means, such as "Info Tile (0-17)", etc. My memory has failed me. I've searched high and low for documentation on this, but I can't find anything. Can anyone point me in the right direction?

Long live ROTT !!!

Thanks,

-Mike

[Dopefish7590]

Hey man!

You can probably find documentation in the ROTT Goodies Pack (Free download by 3DRealms).
http://www.fileshack.com/file.x?fid=6322

Or possibly someone from the ROTT editing and modding forums knows http://rott.s4.bizhat.com

[MikeMiller]

Thanks for the reply. I already scoured the rottgoodies and other downloads I could find. No dice. If I don't get anything from here (like from perhaps Joe) I will try the other forum you recommend.

Thanks!

-Mike

[MikeMiller]

Okay, well I kind of figured it out on my own. I still wish I knew *precisely* how it works, but after screwing around with it for a few hours I managed to make it work.

Basically, player is on one color floor tile, and enemies are on another. Until player steps onto "enemy floor", they can't see each other. This works "sometimes". When it doesn't work, they never see each other -- to the player, the enemies are invisible, but they can still be killed. Weird.

-Mike

[MikeMiller]

It doesn't appear that anyone here is interested in this topic, but if so, the discussion has continued at http://rott.s4.bizhat.com/viewtopic....01&mforum=rott where others have chimed in.

-Mike

[Joe Siegler]

Originally Posted by MikeMiller

I seem to remember one trick where if you could make enemies and other objects appear invisible if they are standing on a different type of floor tile than you are, or something along those lines. Once you stepped into their "plane" (same area of floor tile, or whatever) they became visible. I just tried that and it didn't work. Does anyone remember the details to this?

Hey Joe, are you listening?

Go edit my level "The Grand Vomitorium". Once you get past the rather annoying room of "You do not belong here" walls, there's a room that Spray just appears in when you hit the right spot. I use the exact trick you describe.

You should be able to figure it out from that.

As for the other bit.. Dude, you only gave it TWO DAYS before concluding "nobody is interested". I do other things besides live on the forums. I didn't see this until 1:30AM Sunday. Come on - give me a break. You should be trying to bring what's left of the ROTT community together (like here), and not fracture it by sending people elsewhere.

[Player Lin]

Originally Posted by Joe Siegler

Go edit my level "The Grand Vomitorium". Once you get past the rather annoying room of "You do not belong here" walls, there's a room that Spray just appears in when you hit the right spot. I use the exact trick you describe.

You should be able to figure it out from that.

Ah! I totally forgot that "secret" level...
Thank you let me remind about that "HARD like HELL" level...
and this trick always works!

[MikeMiller]

Originally Posted by Joe Siegler

Go edit my level "The Grand Vomitorium". Once you get past the rather annoying room of "You do not belong here" walls, there's a room that Spray just appears in when you hit the right spot. I use the exact trick you describe.

You should be able to figure it out from that.

Joe, your response is much appreciated. I will study The Grand Vomitorium.

Originally Posted by Joe Siegler

As for the other bit.. Dude, you only gave it TWO DAYS before concluding "nobody is interested". I do other things besides live on the forums. I didn't see this until 1:30AM Sunday. Come on - give me a break. You should be trying to bring what's left of the ROTT community together (like here), and not fracture it by sending people elsewhere.

You are exactly right, and I wasn't intending to be inflammatory with my comment. I think I was just excited to get back to level editing and I wanted to figure out this problem quickly. I failed to remember it's a holiday weekend and all that. Even though it had only been two days, it seems like it had been weeks! This is a tribute to ROTT bringing back my childish days. (Long Live ROTT!) As for "fracturing", I can understand where you're coming from. My intent with moving the thread was because it was my [incorrect] assumption that the content of my original post was out of place here was was best suited elsewhere (since I received a quick reply there, and that forum is specific to modding/editing ROTT). I stand corrected.

Long live Joe Siegler, the last man to stand up for ROTT. :-)

-Mike

P.S. I will post my updates here as they come.

[MikeMiller]

Looking at "Vomitorium" it simply appears that the player and enemy are on different color floor tiles.

While attempting to employ this trick in my own maps, it doesn't always work that the enemies appear once the player steps into the enemy's floor area. Sometimes, the player must walk all the way up to the enemies and even bump into them before they appear, and even then sometimes they stay invisible. Furthermore, it appears that other (seemingly unrelated) items in the room can be a factor. For example, I had it working such that when the player walked a good distance onto the enemy's floor, the enemies appeared before the player reached them (heading in their direction). However, with that working setup, I then added a locked door to one of the walls in that roon (and some passages behind it). Testing the level after making this change, the player was then able to walk all the way up to the enemies and bump into them, and it took about 2-3 seconds after that before the enemies became visible.

So, it's not clear exactly how this works. (Being a programmer type, I'm looking for hard-and-fast rules I can count on). But perhaps that's just the way it is when you're exploiting an "undocumented feature" in an engine... :-)

While composing this post, an idea came to me. I noticed that the floor tiles are called "Floor Sound Tiles". I never knew what the "sound" part meant, but perhaps it means that sound from one tile doesn't carry to another tile. So maybe once the player steps onto the enemy's floor, he needs to make some sort of noise to "wake up" the enemies (especially if they're the type of guards who react to sound). Sorry to ramble. I'll give this idea a try tonight. :-)

-Mike

P.S. I really wish there was comprehensive user documentation for all these types of things. (If it exists, I can't find it).

[Joe Siegler]

This is all based on sound zones.

It's also how I lit the level in my "Wolfenstein 3D" map. The lighting system of ROTT isn't set up for "100% max lighting everywhere". In order to keep the enemies from not triggering as soon as you started the level, I had to break it all up into sound zones. They don't move until you trigger a new sound zone. If you look at a rather hidden area of the map, it's made up of sound zones that match the respective zones in the playable areas of the map. IT's got nothing but lights in it, which makes those areas lit.

It's the same way with enemies. Stick an enemy in the middle of a room you're in that is all a (I'm simplifying) brown zone, and have said enemy be an 1x1 red sound zone, he'll be invisible, and won't see you until you run into him. Make the sound zone he's in bigger than 1x1, and if it's different than the sound zone for the rest of the room, he'll still be invisible, but will trigger when you "break the plane". If you stick some "trigger" red zones in the room outside of the 1x1 he'll get woken up, break the plane of the sound zone, and attack you.

There's other tricks - like my "You & Spray" level. it's a gigantic single sound zone room (mostly, except for the initial spawn room) map grid. There are a few Sprays at the far end of the map grid who are active immediately, but they're SO FAR away, you don't realize they're active until the missiles they launched hit you in the face.

At least that's how my memory recalls how that works. It's been quite awhile since I've done that.

[MikeMiller]

Thanks for the info. I hadn't considered the lighting aspect to these "zones". I'll continue messing with it.

Thanks!

-Mike

[MikeMiller]

Originally Posted by Joe Siegler

... I was more fond of the EROTT levels, firstly because I had more of them in that project, and secondly they were technically better, as Tom and I figured out how to trick the engine by that point into doing things the base ROTT game didn't do.

The EROTT levels were by far my favorites as well. I'm sure you had informal notes at the time describing these ways to trick the engine into doing fun things....any chance that after all these years you'd be willing to share them (if you still have them)? It would be a heck of a lot easier than trying to figure it all out by editing the levels... :-)

-Mike

[Joe Siegler]

Originally Posted by MikeMiller

The EROTT levels were by far my favorites as well. I'm sure you had informal notes at the time describing these ways to trick the engine into doing fun things....any chance that after all these years you'd be willing to share them (if you still have them)? It would be a heck of a lot easier than trying to figure it all out by editing the levels... :-)

-Mike

No, no formal notes. EROTT was just me and Tom - nobody else. So when one of us would make the engine do something weird, we'd go "Hey - look what I did!", and then we'd move on to the next thing.

Ask me a question, and I can answer - at least if it's my level (or assuming I can remember). I have found though, that most of the tricks we did were related to the height of objects (generally gads, but not always), or sound zone tricks.

Load my "The Grand Vomitorium" level from EROTT. I did some VERY freaky shit in that one. Basically that level is a 100% replica of the original Vomitorium, but the room where Spray shows up is not the end - it keeps going with a lot more even weirder crap.

[Joe Siegler]

"A Boulder Vision" was one I enjoyed. Mostly because I figured out how to get the boulders to fly.