Spiral stairs

[ChrisToth.hu]

Hi guyz.

I've played a lot of UT levels but I hardly ever saw a spiral stair.

Is there something bad with those stairs?
I know this question looks a bit Lamer style but I'm really interested. Any ideas?

They look normal in the editor play ok in the game (no bots yet). Then what's the problem? Have I missed something?

[purice]

i love em. i have one in the map i'm working on now. it winds way way up the inside of a tower(about 6000 units altogether).
i even built an open double helix once. boy did that run like crap on my pentium 166 :)

[chris_nl]

I want one in my map, but i caused all kinds of freaking BSP holes

[ChrisToth.hu]

I love them too. That's why I want to build one.
Are there any botpathing problems with it?

BSP holes?? AARGH!

[purice]

i read an earlier post you wrote about this, Chris. you said you subtracted a cylinder and the added the stairs inside it. then you rebuilt and got those dread bsp issues.
one way around this is to subtract the stairs themselves.
using the curved stair builder: add 512 or 768 or whatever to first step then set the angle to 180 and stair number to something high like 30 or 45. transform that sucker about the z axis and subtract. for taller stairs i just daisy-chain them.
i've added stairs into subtracted cylinders before too. i just made sure the outer radius of the stairs was slightly less than the radius of the cylinder. it's not water tight, but it works.

[Edited by purice on December 25th, 2000 at 03:37 PM]

[ChrisToth.hu]

Thats a standard problem.
It's bad to have a subtracted brush and right inside an additive brush. It causes BSP holes. It's solution is to have only one subtracted brush, by for example intersecting several other brushes (Node counts!) or by simply creating one brush (stair thing by Purice). If you make a terrain you shouldn't add it into a large subtracted box but create a "negative-inverse edition" of your terrain and subtract it. If you are using terraedit then sure you should add but then the big box and the terrain must be intersected and used as a single subtracted brush.

[ChrisToth.hu]

Ah, again back to my original question.

Do you know any problems with the botpathing and geometry of a spiral stair?

[tarquin]

I've used them in my level. The bots are happy with them.
I make them with 8 steps, 16 steps per circle. A pathnode at each end and one in the middle.
I made them like purice said, by reflecting in Z and subtracting and the geometry is fine (makes it difficult working out if the builder needs to be set to clockwise or anti though).

[ChrisToth.hu]

Thats cool.

Thanx guyz. Now I'm sure that I WILL make one in my level.

[Fuzzpilz]

I once tried to put four interlocking spiral stairs into one of my levels. Sadly, they didn't fit into the cylinder properly. This is because of the way both brush builders work. Also, I couldn't simply subtract it because of another reason; try making a spiral stair with large steps and a large enough radius to see what I mean.

[ChrisToth.hu]

Whoops. I made a Spiral stair for subtraction and when I subtracted it I got faces/sheets remaining inside the subtracetd brush between the steps even after rebuilding...AARGH!

I guess it's gonna be the lift version...

[tarquin]

You can't subtract spiral stairs because of the way the brush builder code is written -- those polys don't matter in an additive, but show up in a sub!
I'm currently looking into writing some new brush builders (if I can iron out some crucial problems!), so this is one problem I might try and sort out.

[ChrisToth.hu]

Yeah I figured that one out.

I wish you good luck for the new builders. Some new ones could come in handy sometimes.

[tarquin]

Thanks. I've got the scripting part more or less figured out, but I'm lost on how to compile new builders so they're available in UEd -- I posted a thread about it here.

[ChrisToth.hu]

Sorry I can't help you in that, because I have never tried scripting (yet?).

I'm kinda visual type and I don't like all those texty things :)
I've learned pascal a bit but that was enough for me I don't want to start on C. :)

[Hetemti]

I :mad:HATE :mad: spiral staircases.

Pro: They're round.
Con: They make the screen bounce, they make you easier to shoot, the turning means my mouse leaves it's "home" position! That be BAD, f00!

Why not use a lift? Even a round lift would be tolerable! Death to spiral stairs!

[ChrisToth.hu]

:)

I guess you don't like my idea.

[tarquin]

I have a preliminary version of my new spiral stair builder compiled, and it subtracts just fine.
I'm about to start on the sloped floor and sloped ceiling options.
I plan to release the new builders set in a couple of weeks.
Any ideas for new builders welcome.

[ChrisToth.hu]

Cool. Subtracted spiral stair, donut... you must be somekind of maths genious to do all those stuff.
I couldn't do that... :)

[tarquin]

Thanks. I sort of, er, have a degree in maths ;)
I've so far filled about 20 pages of A4 with notes and diagrams!
The hardest part is making the script flexible to deal with all the user options, without taking the cop-out and putting an if() statement and then complete builder code for each case.
Still, fast execution doesn't really matter for a brush builder.

[ChrisToth.hu]

I couldn't make a cube builder...:D