13/06/2005 @23:12:23 ^01:00:29

"I travelled half the length of England and all I got was shat on by a pigeon"

hahaha that should be on a t-shirt

HOW TO DO AN EXIT DOOR PROPERLY

Last year I wrote an article about how to use the computer console flats in Doom properly. Recently in the construction of my as-yet-unnamed megawad I found another similarly pointless dilemma that needs answers.

It is to do with exit doors. If you've played Doom you'll know the usual convention for an exit is to mark it some way, usually with a sign that says "EXIT" and often to have it in a small room behind this particular type of door called EXITDOOR that looks a bit like a jetpack with a big golden button in the centre. However these doors are only 64 units wide. The EXITDOOR texture itself is 128x72.

The remaining 64 columns are split into three strips. Firstly, there are two "sides" each of width 24, decorated with extra columns and in particular a pair of red lights in the middle. The two sides are mirror images of each other. The final 16 columns of the EXITDOOR texture are simply a strip of lighting and not relevant here.

The point is, the two 24-wide "sides" at x-offsets 64 and 88 respectively are meant to be used adjacent to the door itself in much the same way DOORSTOP or DOORRED/YEL/BLU are used around other doors in a map. The problem is, which is the left and which is the right? The strip at 64 has its pair of red lights on the right-hand side; the strip at 88, which is a mirror image of the other, has its on the left. Therefore we can talk about having the pair of red lights adjacent to the exit door or opposite it. Now you'd think there would be one convention but as usual the game can't stick to one way of doing it which leaves the dilemma: opposite or adjacent?

(If you need to see this in action to be able to visualise what I'm going on about just go and look at the end of E1M1 or MAP01, both of which are "red adjacent")

So what I did was to go through each Doom map and note down what it did, in the hope that I'd get some answers on how to do it the right way. Here it is:

Conclusions: There are two exits that have sides which are red opposite. Compare this with more than a dozen which are red adjacent (ignore the ones that aren't either, because they're irrelevant) I think it's pretty clear which way round they're meant to go, with the 64 side on the left and the 88 side on the right, just like in the texture - but if you like you can swap them round if you like, it doesn't look too crap. In fact, well... nobody will notice, probably...

PS I didn't go through Doom 2. It's not canonical when determining how to use textures that exist in Doom, anyway.