This lesson, as all the lessons on this web site, was made to show some of the finer construction techniques that can be achived with Build, a little imagination and a lot of patience and determination. The prize feature in the level is the unique sliding doors. If you haven't played the micro-level then do so now, there's nothing like ruining an effect and a hard built game level than to see it's secrets before you play it. The key card might be a pain to find, just remember to kneel down!

The teaser screenshot for this lesson was chosen deliberately for the many subtle yet powerful psychological effects it has on the gamer when in the room. Many level builders know where to find the lamp sprites, and of these many know that some sectors have to be shaded to give the impression that those lights are throwing light at the area of the room with the chair. But to make the effect truly convincing, throw some of that light on the adjacent walls in a curved pattern that you would see if a real lamp was standing there next to the wall.

So how do you get the walls lit in any way other than to simply have bands of light running vertically up the wall? If you think about it you can make little sectors that have sloped ceilings in the shape you want the curved light to shine on the wall. The back walls of these sectors are the ones that will become the lighted part of the wall. The real trick to doing this is in the order that you work it so that you don't get messed up and the whole project goes smoothly and without frustration. Also, taking the time to reduce the depth of the sectors as thinly as possible AFTER all the shading is done will make even the most seasoned gamer think that it is all on the same wall. Let me show you:

Those three little sectors that I pointed out are the three sectors that I started out with to shade for the light splashing on the back wall. If you look closely to the room edge on the right you will see that it appears not to be bounded by a white wall, but you know that it has to be. What happened here is that there are sectors the same as I pointed to on the back wall, but they were pulled as shallow as I dare without actually putting point over point and losing them. You have to do that maneuver with the grid lock off and zoomed in as close as you can to get it that fine. Take a look in 3D:

I outlined the areas of the sectors in red so you can make them out better. All the shades for the ceilings and floors should be chosen at this time because they are easily selectable, after you skinny them up trying to change the shades or anything else on them is nearly impossible, frustrating at the least! But you don't need to worry if you forgot to darken them or whatever, you can always pull them out again, just make sure that the grid lock is off to do it!

And we all know that those darn lamps break when Duke kicks 'em, but how stupid would that look if he broke them in that dark room and the light stayed on the floor and walls after they're gone? That's why I searched for a sprite that I could put in front of them and could make TOTALLY invisible. I placed them such that you look like you're kicking the lights but you are really kicking the Locators. I chose them because the game really doesn't seem to care that there isn't any car or pigmobile to follow them, so they can just exsist and block your way!

One other thing about the lamps that may seem mysterious. You know that sprites will take on the shade of the sector they are placed in and those lamps seem to be placed in darkened sectors, but, NOT! If you look carefully, they are situated in little tiny triangle sectors that are shaded a zero (0) shade, so even though they are in the dark they will still be lit up bright! Make the triangles large enough to select and shade them, then turn grid lock off and make them very small. Just watch in 3D that they aren't too small or the lamps will seem to dissappear when you move around them. Make them as small as you can without getting this effect (unless, of course, that's what you want!)

Now for the next neat trick. Who can guess how the power ring around the force field is made to shut down after you finally find the key card and turn it off? We all know that there is a sectoreffector 8 that lights a sector when a door opens with an SE8 in it that has the same high tag. But the key card switch doesn't seem to be in agreement with this little trick. No matter how I tried to set it up, the power ring was either always lit or it was off (dimmed). That stunk! I tried the SE 9 and the SE 12, but these all had the same problem. I knew that this should work in theory, but what to do. I realized that I had to make the thing light up with a touchplate at the very start of the game so that the key card can turn it off, which is what it seemed to want to do.

So I made two little sectors, one a Doom door (ST 20) in a place where Duke can't go during game play and connected the action of the door to the touchplate and the key lock by two separate Activators and high tags. Oddly enough the same door can be operated this way and have two different SE8's in it, so I was able to use only one door to light the power ring by opening the door with the touchplate and then turn off the power ring by closing the door with the key card. Tear it apart, see how it works! By the way, does anybody know what that sprite is right on the start position? And how does Duke start out without a gun, and where IS the key card anyway?

But now for the REAL gem of the special effects in this lesson, The door that is split top and bottom but moves sideways, the top moving one way and the bottom the other! Any of the literature that I have read say nothing about how to build a door such as this. In fact, in theory, the sector construct shouldn't even work! But it does, and here's how I made it.

Here is an illustration of the door sectors with the threshold sectors both in front and behind the door. Look closely and you can see that although the door sectors are made like a typical sliding door (not a Star Trek door but the other one), instead of them meeting in the middle, these sectors cross right over each other. Faq files say that these sectors will interfere with each other but I found that the only time you get those crazy artifacts of seeing floors through ceilings is when you can see a ceiling or floor that belongs to one sector but crosses over itself. I will experiment with this idea in another lesson.

Check out where the green arrows that I drew in are pointing, pull them apart in Build (with the grid lock off!) and distort the door sectors until you can understand how I made them, looking at them in 3D and in 2D. You may get a surprise that this kind of sector-over-sector can actually work.

Here I was able to capture a 3D image of the door as it was opening while I played the level (you do know that F12 does screen captures in all three executables, Build, Editart and of course Duke3d). The arrows are drawn in, of course, and indicate which way the bottom and top of the door is moving. You can stand right inside this door and look at it every which way and there is almost no chance that you will see anything strange with it. Another neat aspect of it is that Duke can close it on himself and get squashed!

Now stand outside the door and notice the light shining on the wall and floor. The door shadows move with the door sectors, top moving with the top door sector and bottom and floor shadow moving with the bottom door sector. These are door sectors also, high tagged the same as the door and made pretty much the same as the door, except the shadow on the floor isn't raised any.

Here is another shot as the door is about halfway closed and you can clearly see that the shadows are moving with the opening and closing of the door. I also thought that I had to use the "Bridge" sector and SE to get the floor shadow effect but it seems that this method is far superior. You can see a use of the Bridge in the final scene of "The Adder Base" where the alien space ship comes to pieces after you blow it up.

This shot is just to give you an idea of how I distort the sectors so I can do work on them. These are the moving shadows on the wall that you are looking at in the previous shots. If you examine the actual level in Build you will see that their final positioning is about as thin as I could make them. A lesson about keeping yourself sane while doing these special effects can be learned here, nothing says that you can't stretch and distort things all out of proportion just so you can get the shading, color or anything else just right. Reposition the nodes of the sectors after all is right but make it so that you get in behind that wall if you need to color something that will be hidden in the final position but will ultimately show in game play.

I also made a very curious discovery while I was making these moving shadows. I found out that they worked even though I forgot to tag the sectors! So although the slide door effect's documentation claims that you need to tag the sectors a low tag of 25, just putting the SE 15's in them made them work. Try it, see if I'm right. This tells me one thing, try anything and see what happens! You might discover a previously unhearded-of effect!

You can see in this final image how I distorted the doors so I can see inside and align and shade the cavity walls, and the shadow on the floor so I can shade the lighted part which will be pulled very thin, how it has to be while the doors are closed at the beginning of the game. After the work is done then I put the sectors back to the shape they need to be. I outlined the areas in red for clarity. You can also see the Activator and Music and Sound Effects sprites insite the door in this view.

Now use your imagination and come up with a mini-theme, a "motif" as we say in the arts, and do some building. But when you build be patient with more then just trying to get the level's effects to work. Try to look at the size of things, does Duke feel like he's only 3 feet tall when he's in a room? How about the lighting? You know that you can always look around you in real life to see how these things really look. That's how artists do it and there's nothing unimaginative about that!

I'll be hoping to see some of your work on the web some day, so get busy and give all us Dukes something to holler about!