Hastur's Workshop: Acme Station

Gary L. Simmons

rev 10/16/03

http://webwonks.org/Marathon/Forge/hastursworkshop/aesthetics.acme.views.html



		View juggling on Acme Station entails two rather important aspects. The first one is avoiding views that are too long, and the second is avoiding too many points in a line that you can see directly down. This second aspect is something that can potentially create problems on your maps causing type 11 errors. (if you're having trouble with type 11 errors, check out the Busted section.)

Acme has some of the most heinous long view problems ever. To keep the player from seeing too far, Hastur made the map geometry such that it would obscure views from certain positions and not from others. You can see in the map shot (below) that some of this is rather tricky.

Basically, there are two ways to fix long views. You can move the whole space closer together, or you can break up the space into smaller pieces. On Acme, most of the problems were solved by breaking up the spaces with walls.

The red arrows mark points that are all in the same line. It's common to make a map that has many points in a line like this. It's only a problem if the player can position himself so he can see down the line, having all the points line up so that he is exactly in the same (extended geometric) line in question. Having too many points in a line is a dangerous thing, and neither forge nor Marathon will be nice to you about it. (They'll both crash.)

So what can you do about it?

You'll notice in the above picture that the number of points in a row that you'll ever be able to see is never more than seven. (The exact number you can have in a row depends upon the geometry, and the number is more like 12 or 16.) The whole set of outlined points was split in the middle by the triangular column.

Notice the doors on the left part of the picture. These doors originally fell on the same line as the marked points, but were moved back into the walls.

Sometimes, you can also simply move a middle point a very small amount. To do this, turn off the grid, select the point with the arrow tool, and use the arrow keys to move the point so that it will obstruct the other points if you're looking directly down the line.

Closing notes:

Use columns and walls to break up long views.
Avoid having more than 12-16 points in a line
If you think that you've gone over the limit, save, go into visual mode, and try looking down the problematic wall.