The Special Effects Beginners Guide A few tips for the beginner Not all the special effects described here need illegal sector configurations. The "neat" and "sky" pages contain some interesting things you can create without violating any rules in DOOM. These sections can be quite valuable even to the relative new WAD editor, but if you're just starting to get to know your editor, I suggest you start by reading some other pages. A good starting point is the Wadsters Guide, and you can download some good texts from the FTP sites. I can recommend the HandBk, and the DesignFAQ texts as good starting points for beginners. If you have never tried using any special effects before, you may want to ask me this question: I would like to use some of the special effects in my own WADs what should I do? And the answer is: DON'T If you start putting special effects in your WAD, it will be impossible to use a consistency checker on your WAD, because the errors are supposed to be there! All kinds of crazy things will start to happen in your WADs, and you will always be in doubt: is this caused by the editor, the nodebuilder, or is it just me that has made a mistake? If this doesn't scare you off, and you still think you really need to include some special effects in your WAD, I suggest you still take the time to think twice. If you're not too experienced with WAD creation, I don't think you should try to make any special effects. Before you start creating the special effects, you should be able to create all the normal things in a DOOM WAD: doors, lifts, windows, rising stairs, switches, teleporters, etc... You should already have created at least 2 or 3 fully working WADs with more than 100 sectors each (So that you're in practice), and you should master your WAD editor. If you don't meet these demands, I suggest you practice a little more creating normal DOOM WADs without any special effects. What's needed? The first choice you face when you want to create some special effects is the choice of editor. To be able to create the special effects, you need an editor that will let you make illegal configurations. Some editors will not allow that, but most editors can be persuaded to do so. If you're already used to a certain editor (You should be), I suggest you continue to use it. If you suddenly find that your editor of choice will not allow you to make the change you need, it's time to find another editor. Personally I use DEU and WM, but there should be a lot of other (better) editors that will do the job just as well. Try using your editor of choice, and only change to another editor, if you can't get the special effects to work using this editor. The nodebuilder A more important choice is the choice of the nodebuilder. A good advice is this: Do not use the internal nodebuilder in your editor. The crazy sector configurations needed to create some of the special effects will really put your nodebuilder to the test. I've tested a few nodebuilders on the special effects WAD. Here is what I found: Builder: Nodes: Effects: ------------------------------------------------------ BSP12x 100% OK 100% OK WARM14 100% OK 80% OK ZEN093 80% OK 100% OK IDBspWat 50% OK Makes a Mess IDBsp102 ? as IDBspWat DeepBsp701 Really Bad Bad The "nodes" field is set to be 100% correct if everything looks as it should, and the "Effects" field is set to be 100% correct if all the special effects work as they should. Please note that speed has not been considered in the test. The test was performed on the special effects WAD, and BSP12X was used during the development of this WAD. This means that any problems in BSP may have been prevented, because I've changed the WAD until BSP built it correctly. This said, I still recommend BSP as the nodebuilder for the creation of special effects, as the special effects WAD is the living proof that BSP can do the job, while the other nodebuilders failed more or less. Other Tools For some of the special effects, you need to define new textures. For this job I suggest you get WinTex or DeuTex (by Olivier Montagnuy). If you read the manuals coming with these programs, you should be able to learn a lot about creating new textures. Personally I used WinTex and PSP 3.0 to create the textures in my example WAD. If you want to implement any of the special effects mentioned in the DeHackEd grab bag page, you should of course get a copy of DeHackEd. If all else fails, you are of course welcome to ask questions through mail. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- DOOM is a trademark of id Software. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jens Hykkelbjerg / hykkelbj@daimi.aau.dk