Exercise 5 - Doors and Platforms

In this exercise we'll learn how to set polygon parameters and create doors and platforms.

Polygon Parameters

You may have noticed a slight problem with the last example. While you're dealing with the Pfhor in the corridor, all his friends from the upstairs room come running down to mob you as well. This makes it hard to get to the ammo until you're past needing it, one way or another.

There are two reasons for this. If you have placed any Pfhor where they can see you down the staircase, you may need to move them over to the far side of the room.



The other reason is that, as soon as the downstairs Pfhor spots you, he alerts all the others. To prevent this, we need to create a zone border polygon. We don't have a convenient one to use yet, so we'll chop off a piece of the upstairs room. Use the pencil tool to divide the floor and ceiling of the upstairs room like this:


Make sure you divide the floor and ceiling in the same way, and remember to delete the interior face that appears.

Now select the floor of the narrow polygon you just created and use the Plugins>Marathon>Polygon Parameters command. You will get a dialog window like this:



Set the Type to "Zone border" and click the Accept button.

Now export and play the map, and you should be able to dispatch the armoury guard and have plenty of time to stock up on ammo before going upstairs to tackle the main force.

Creating a Door

Let's put a door at the entrance to the armoury.

First, move the downstairs Pfhor inside the armoury to get him out of the way. Then select the four edges shown below and use the Move tool with the Option key to duplicate them 1/4" down the corridor. Some of the ceiling faces may reappear, so just hide them again.

We're going to turn the small polygon we just created into a door. The easiest way is to model it partly closed, because then we'll have places to put all the necessary textures.



Use the push-pull tool to move the floor of the door polygon up about 1/2", and apply appropriate textures to the faces and top of the door.



Whoops, that texture isn't positioned too well. To fix it, control-click on the face of the door to bring up a contextual menu, and choose Texture>Position. You should see something like the following, with four pins of different colours. (If you see four yellow pins instead, control-click again and turn on Fixed Pins.)



Drag the texture around until you can see the red pin. Then drag that pin until it snaps to the top left corner of the door. The texture should now be aligned on the door correctly. (You need to click and drag to do this, not click and release. Also, you must drag the red pin, not one of the others. If the pin moves but the texture doesn't, or the texture becomes distorted, Undo and try again.)


When you've got the texture where you want it, control-click again and choose Done.

Select the floor of the door polygon -- which is actually the top of the door, as shown in the last picture above -- and use Plugins>Marathon>Polygon Properties to set the polygon type to "Platform".



Now choose Plugins>Marathon>Platform Properties and apply the settings shown below.



Export and play the level. You should now have a functioning door.

Creating a Platform

Let's make a lift platform going up to the back of the upstairs room. Start by cutting a hole and using the Push-Pull tool to extrude a shaft going down to the floor level of the downstairs area. Use the Push-Pull tool with the Option key so you won't have so many lines to pencil in afterwards.

To snap it to the right height, while extruding, move the cursor over and point at something you want to line it up with.

Cut a hole and pull out a small exension.Pull the shaft down to ground level.

Now extrude some corridors leading around to join up with the corridor just outside the armoury.

Go about 3 inches south.

Go east to the end of the corridor leading to the armoury.

Go north and join up with the armoury corridor,

Open things up, delete any unwanted interior faces, and apply textures. Then select the floor of the lift shaft, set its Polygon Type to "Platform", and set its Platform Parameters as shown below.

Texture the insides of the corridors.Set the Polygon and Platform Properties of this floor.



We also need to texture the front surface of the lift that will be seen as it moves up. Use the Push-Pull tool to raise the floor of the lift up about 1/2" and put an appropriate texture on the front. You may also want to change the textures on the walls of the shaft to make it look more like a lift area.

Raise the floor of the lift.Apply texures.

Export the map again and try it out. Now you should be able to sneak up on those guys upstairs!

In Exercise 6 we'll create some control panels.

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