There's really only one effect used on Endymion that's worthy of special attention. The turret near the entrance that shoots at you is covered by the notes for level 2 (Arrival).

Endymion features a force field made from a liquid, which is documented in Hastur's Workshop. It is composed of a setup similar to the illustration at the left. The wide section of the passageway should have a very high ceiling and a very low floor -- for a reason given in a minute. Also, note that this section is composed of five polys, and there's only liquid in the middle one. Liquids are not textured on the sides, as the Marathon engine assumes the sides will not be seen. So the "field" is completely transparent. The top and bottom, however, will smear when viewed from outside the liquid -- thus the reason for putting the ceiling and floor of this area out of view. Note that if you had the liquid up against any walls, they would also smear, thus the need for a free-standing column of liquid.

The liquid should flow towards the player, and should use a rate of 1 (incredibly fast). When the player tries to walk through, the flow of the liquid will fling him back. The liquid, when turned off (via a light controlling the tide), should be below the floor of the poly containing it, and it should be set so the sound is obstructed by the floor -- otherwise, you'll hear it when you walk through the deactivated field.

In Endymion, I used a poly of 1/8 WU (world unit) to contain the liquid, and the surrounding four polys were made very thin (much less than 1/8 WU). This works for me, though I did manage to fall in once, which sucks. (Don't ask how that works, since the player is supposed to be much wider than that!) Fortunately, you've pretty much got to be trying to fall in to do it. Hastur recommends a poly of 1/4 WU in his Workshop notes. That seemed awfully wide, with increased potential of falling in, but it's also possible mine will let the player through at times and his wouldn't. I guess only time and beta testing will tell!

There's one gotcha for advanced folks. I think Hastur mentions that Lava makes a better force field, since the water-like sounds don't sound quite right for a force field. I didn't really care, but you might be thinking you'll use Chisel to turn the liquid into Lava. But there are tricks you'll need to know, as this will cause a crash when the player shoots some projectile types at the field. There's a detailed discussion of how to deal with this sort of thing for level 4 (CPS Central) -- just be sure you don't read ahead if you haven't already played ahead!

This page copyright 1995-2004 by Thomas Reed.