Extra on sloped lighting
It is the little extra that you add to your already excellent design that really pushes the map from the everyday sort to "way cool". Some of the extras that you may want to consider are things that most wouldn't even consciously notice. However, by doing these little extras, it is noticed in the overall submersion of the player. For instance, we just finished talking about making sloped lighting effects on sloped surfaces. Even though you know how to make a continuous even slope from one end to the other, there is usually a small bit of the surface where you can see where the sectors are joined.
You can see this in the screen capture to the right. It is kind of difficult to get the same effect in a still shot but if you were to run up and down this slope in the game (or in Build) you would notice the joint in the sector kind of flickering. Anyway, look at the three screen shots at the very top of this page and you will notice that in the first screen capture the ceiling is pushed up a couple of units and the floor is pushed down. You can then give the side of this sector the same texture as the ceiling, shade it the same and then put the sector back to the original height. |
 |
Most times you have to do no more than shade the side of the sector a bit darker to stop the flickering. You could go as far as splitting the top and bottom and giving the ceiling texture to the top half and the floor texture to the bottom half. Either way, it's just where the sectors join. If the slight flicker doesn't bother you as you run over the spot where the split sectors meet, then don't worry about. This tip is just for those really picky Builders.
If you need more to investigate this split sector stuff, download this tutorial map:
litslope.zip This tutorial is actually two in one: making a split sloped sector and also making a sloped light effect.
|