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Advanced Effects - Walls - B2 : Mirrors

Mirrors

Mirrors are easy to construct. But if it's made improperly, it will look very ugly.


Create a room. Attach a small sector to the side of the room. This sector will be the 'behind the mirror' sector. The two-sided (red) wall will be the actual mirror. The size of the 'behind the mirror' sector is irrelevant, but it's necessary that you at least have a 'behind the mirror' sector.

Make the red line of the 'behind the mirror' sector a one-sided wall (with the 1 key) and give it the MIRROR texture (#560). Make the mirror blocked and hittable with the B and H keys (B and Ctrl + H in 2D mode). Optionally, you could tag the mirror texture [0,SoundToPlay]. If you want Duke to say "Damn, I'm lookin' good" when you press on the mirror, give SoundToPlay a value of 252. In the game, mirrors reflect shrink rays, and can be blown up with explosives. When a mirror is destroyed, it displays the texture MIRRORBROKE. You may notice that the broken mirror texture is not properly aligned. To fix this, temporarily swap the MIRROR texture with MIRRORBROKE (#70), align it however you want, then swap it back for the MIRROR texture.

Note: If two mirrors can see each other it will cause problems, and mirrors can often see each other through just about anything (walls, rooms, etc). If two washrooms are close together (and by logic most non-unisex types would be, unless the owner of the institution really has it in for the opposite sex and stowed their washroom somewhere well hidden and then giggled incessantly), often one of the two mirrors will have troubles. If you check E4L2.MAP, you'll discover that one of the two mirrors is MIA. You may also notice that the 'behind the mirror' sectors in the official maps are bloody enormous. This is because mirrors were believed to work only if the 'behind the mirror' sector was at least as large as the room to display. That may have actually been true, and I'm unsure of what exactly happened that suddenly caused mirrors to work under different circumstances. If I had to guess, I would say the error only existed in v1.3d of the game.


One-Way Mirrors

One-Way Mirrors are those classic interrogation room mirrors which only reflect on one side (check the mirror in TUTORIAL.MAP for an example). Simply construct a hallway looping around to a room behind your mirror, and connect that room to the 'behind the mirror' sector. Mask unbreakable transparent glass (#504) on the other side of the 'behind the mirror' sector, and make it blocked and hittable. To hide the HOM effect, turn grid locking off (with L), and make the 'behind the mirror' sector as thin as possible. The only downside to this effect is that the mirror can be broken with explosives (which ruins the realism entirely, once the player realizes they can see through wooden panels from the back side).


Shrink Ray Sensitive Walls

This is a neat little trick I accidentally discovered while having problems with a mirror. First construct a regular mirror, then press 1 on the mirror texture to make it disappear. Now connect the 'behind the mirror' sector back to the wall it stems from (essentially collapsing it). Technically, the mirror texture is still active, meaning that the wall where the mirror used to be will still reflect shrink rays! You can texture it however you like. Note that if you press 1 below the texture, the mirror texture will reappear and it will still work in the game!




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