![]() BSP Headquarters Logo by Chainsaw ![]() ![]() Lesson 18 - Jump LiftsHi everybody! Over the last few months, I've had a lot of requests from readers on how to make various items of architecture. One of the more requested items has been how to do a Jump Lift. If you don't know what a Jump Lift is, I'll tell you briefly. I first saw these in Jim Lowell's Critters level. I don't think they appear in any of the Quake levels, but there are a couple I haven't played, so I could be wrong. Basically, it's a vertical wind tunnel with a platform that covers the top opening after the player passes through it, allowing him to land on the platform rather than fall back through the tunnel again. It's a pretty cool way to make a lift without using the same old elevator you see all the time. They're really not that hard to make, so let's dig in, shall we? Once again, in the interest of saving time, I've prepared a map for us to start out with. Download it here. Remember, if you use a different texture wad than me or have a different directory structure than the default, you'll need to edit this map file and change the "wad" key/value line. You can do this in WordPad or in the Entity Window in BSP, whichever you prefer. However you do it, once you're done, load the level into BSP and we'll get started. Okay, the first thing we need to make is the vertical wind tunnel. I'll rush through this pretty quick. If you feel lost trying to follow what I'm doing, you might want to review lesson 9 to refresh your memory. I'll do my tunnel a little differently than we did then, but the concept is the same. Let's start out by drawing an 80x80 brush in the Top View. Center this brush at (-152, -32), which will put it in the middle of the room. In the Side View drag the top to 304 and the bottom to 80, then give it a texture you want to use. I chose COP1_1, but anything you want to use will work fine. Now with that brush still selected, click on the N-Sided button and enter 8 for the number of sides and 40 for the radius. Click OK to complete it and you will now have an octagonal brush. Let's copy this brush and paste a new one, dragging the new brush so that it sits directly in the same place as the first one. Now with the second brush still selected, click on the Scale button and enter 1.2 for the X setting, 1.2 for the Y setting and leave the Z setting at 1.0. Click OK. This makes our second brush bigger than the first so that it fits around the outside of the original brush. We're ready to hollow out our tunnel now, so go back and select the inner brush (the one we drew first). In a side view, drag the top and bottom of this brush so that it sticks out above and below the outer brush. Click on the Subtract button and then return the top and bottom edges of the brush to their original position. That will hollow out the outer brush so we have a tunnel now. Okay, with the inner brush still selected, let's use it to make a trigger_push entity. Assign it an 'Up' angle, but leave all the other settings at the default. They will be fine the way they are. Now if you want, you can run your map in Quake and try it out. You will have a vertical wind tunnel. You can jump up the tunnel, but you may get trapped at the top. Everytime you start to fall, the trigger_push will throw you back up to the ceiling. That's not really what we want, but I thought it was a good idea to test our wind tunnel to make sure it was working properly before we went on. If everything is working properly, return to BSP and now we'll make a door that will sit on top of the wind tunnel and close under the player, giving him a place to stand. Go to the top view and draw a brush from (-152, 16) to (-104, -80). In a side view, set the bottom edge of this brush at 304 and the top at 312. I chose a texture of METAL2_4 for my door, but again, use whatever you want. Copy this new brush and paste a copy. Drag this pasted copy over so that it lines up over the left half of your tunnel opening (in the Top View). With both brushes together, the tunnel should be closed off. Make sure the left hand brush (the one we just pasted) is still selected and switch over to the Entity Window. Make this brush into a 'func_door' entity. Give it an angle of 180 and set the following key/value pairs: "speed" "1000", "lip" "0", "wait" "1". Also click the 'START_OPEN' checkbox (I'll explain why in a moment). Once you get all these set, switch back to the brush that makes up the other half of our door and do the same thing to it, only make the angle 0 rather than 180. If all that is done correctly, you should be ready to run your map. Compile it and load it into Quake. Now when you jump up the tunnel, the door slams shut under you and you have a place to land. As long as you're standing on the platform, it won't re-open, so it makes a pretty good place to stand. Cool, huh? Here are some screenshots to show you what you should see. The first one shows what the player sees from the floor. Notice the 'door' is open. Of course, if there were a floor there, you wouldn't see the door, but for the interests of clarity, I left out the second floor: ![]() Now, this is what you will see when you're standing on top of the platform. See, there's no way to go back down the tunnel from here: ![]() Here's a shot from the ceiling, just to show you what it looks like from above when the door is open: ![]() Now there are a couple of other things you could do here if you wanted. I merely showed the simplest method to implement the Jump Lift. I chose 'START_OPEN' for my door so that the player could look up the tube and see it open. Ideally, there would be a second floor here that the player could run around on after he jumped up the lift and you would want the player to maybe get a glimpse of it by looking through the tube. Of course, if you wanted to, you could have the door start out closed and attach it to a 'trigger_multiple' entity inside the bottom edge of the tunnel. That way the door would open as the player jumped into the tunnel. You might have to adjust the 'wait' value depending on the length of your tunnel. It's really up to you. Just remember that the door has to move quick (that's why I gave it a 1000 speed setting) or the player will hit up against it. You also want it to shut before the player lands back on it (hence, the wait value of 1 in our map). Well, like I said, this is a pretty easy piece of architecture to make, but it breaks up the monotony of having the same old platforms all over your level, don't you think? Well, that does it for lesson 18. I know it's not very long, but you guys are getting so good at this that I can really move through these lessons now. See you soon! ![]() ![]() BSP is the sole creation of
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So there :-P
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