S.B.H.'s Supplement FAQ
chend@auracom.com
http://www.geocities.com/Area51/1942



I decided to make this little FAQ to try to explain some things I learned 
about build.

                            
                            
                            S.B.H.'s Supplement FAQ

Version 0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000002

Yes, 2.


New stuff, and a table of contents.

Section 1, Random stuff


Contents of Table:

 1.  Sector's inside sectors.  
     - The fun of making sectors
 
 2.  Reactors.
     - Reactors gone wrong

 3.  Deleting sectors.
     - How to delete a sector
 
 4.  Blocking.
     - The importance of Pink and Blue
 
 5.  Copying sectors. or anything.
     - New information
 
 6.  Duke3d game crashes in Parallax.
     - A little problem
 
 7.  PAGE-GRANULAR LIMIT
     - A big problem

 8.  Walls maintaining stuff.
     - Walls sheading tears

 9.  Silent teleporters.
     - How to make a teleport shut up

10.  Broken teleporters.
     - Purposely screw up the teleport

11.  Damn Parallax again
     - A reprisal

12.  Crashes with "."
     - period problems

13.  Make a new mini-boss.
     - Fun little deadly guys

14.  Really screwed up circles.
     - make a cylindrical sector.

15.  Inside BUILD.EXE
     - Ken Silverman's Build burglar alarm




I hope you find this Faq useful.  Don't hesitate to Mail me about anything
in this FAQ, about corrections, problems or clarifications.

- S.B.H   (chend@flexnet.com)




1.  Sector's inside sectors.  

If your making sectors within sector's withing sectors, just make sure that 
when you make the sectors, you do it from the outside in, or else some 
strange graphical glitches will occur.

ie.  Sorry for the bad ASCII 'phics

1 = first box made
2 = second box made

GOOD:  ------------                        BAD ------------
      |   ------   |                          |   ------   | 
      |  |      |  |                          |  |      |  |
      |   ------2  |                          |   ------1  |
       -----------  1                           -----------  2  


2.  Reactors.

If you have a reactor in a level, make sure you give it tags as if it would 
detonate C-9's or it will just explode every remote C-9 in the level, making 
planned explosions non-functional.


3.  Deleting sectors.

To delete red-walled sectors, just join it will the sector around it.  And a 
note to note, the second sector you chose to join with always takes the 
attributes to the first.

To delete rogue white-walled sector's, try separating them from the rest of 
the level, dragging them off somewhere and deleting them with the standard 
CTRL-DEL.  This works sometimes; and doesn't others.

If a sector won't delete the first time, try several times at different zooms.  
Check your level throughly after doing this, I've had sector tags just 
disappear, or even change.  

Or you can just make your initials out of sectors, and just attach other 
sectors to it.

If it starts working for a while, use it all you can until it stops working.


4.  Blocking.

Make ABSOLUTELY sure you unblock invisible things like "S" and "L+"'s.



5.  Copying sectors. or anything.

Sprites within same map:

goto the sprite
hold right-shift key
drag box around sprite
click and hold on sprite with left-mouse button
press insert.

Sectors within same map:

Goto the sprite
hold right-alt key
drag around sector
click and hold on sprite with left-mouse button
press insert
(you can rotate the sector with the "<" and ">" keys

Note: you can place them in existing sectors, you can only connect sectors
      to it.


Sectors in other maps:

Lots of people have trouble with this one.

Goto the sector
hold right-alt key
drag around sector
Immediately load other map (no clicking with left mouse button)
it should appear in the same spot it was in on the other grid.
(you can move it and rotate it the same way as above)


6.  Duke3d game crashes in Parallax.

Try making a totally parallaxed room, with the wall on the outside raised 
deal.  If you run Duke3d and run to the wall you will go on top like in 
build.  And if you do that repeatedly the game will slow down.  One time 
I turned on my DNRATE.  15, 10, 7, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.... 0..   the game was dead.
So block those walls.


7.  PAGE-GRANULAR LIMIT

I got a ton of these things, most of them when I had C-9 explosions near 
breakable objects.  Just try to keep the glass down to a minimum.


8.  Walls maintaining stuff.

Once I made an entire room's walls breakable lights.  Then I changed it to 
slime, yet, when shot the slime still spawned glass shards???.


9.  Silent teleporters.

If you want silent teleporters to work, you must raise them off the ground, 
to the hight of your face.  Then the other should be a little higher, or 
else you'll keep flipping back and forth and back....

10.  Broken teleporters.

A little trick, is to make a bunch of teleporters without same hightags.  
They will kill you when you enter them, but if you shoot in a rocket they 
will shoot it out in the same direction the "S" is facing, could be used 
for chain reactions.


11.  Damn Parallax again

Well, I only have 2 examples of this, but here's the deal.
If you have made a fully parallaxed room, like space, (with the sector inside 
walls pulled down), and you make another fully parallaxed sky, with the tiles 
LA or the moonscape, and save the level, when you re-enter, the parallaxes 
will completely screw up.  

Solution:  Just get rid of the parallax that caused it, save and re-enter.


12.  Crashes with "."

When I use the auto-align feature on circles with tiles that I made myself, 
build hangs.  oh well.


13. Make a new mini-boss.

Here's how you can make a new (but not very useful) mini-boss.

Chose one of the other two bosses that aren't used for mini-bosses, and give 
it a palette of 21, It will die instantly after it is hurt, as in the Con 
files, it has no hit-points, but I just might scare the player enough to 
run away.  And with the 3rd boss, he's sure to land a few hits on the 
player before he dies.

14.  Really screwed up circles.

Here's my way to make a circular sector.

a)  make a small box, Alt-S it if it's in another sector.
b) move to one of the walls.
c) press "C"
d) move the mouse around to change shape, press "+" "-" to change number 
   of vertices.

Now for the screwed up part, make sure you pick the right wall, because if 
you pick the wrong wall, (wrong wall: the wall what would make the circle 
overlap on itself) .  If it is a white sector, you can't enter it, and if 
it is a red sector, and you raise it, it looks like you're looking into 
half a cylinder, and if you move into it, the screen flashes.
   
  
15.  Inside BUILD.EXE

I decided, one day, to use my Norton editor and look into BUILD.EXE, just to 
see what it was programmed in.  

Well, all the usual coding was there, and words and crap, but I ran across a 
cluster of "*** you mother is a whore***" and "*** you f--king pissant ***"  
Obviously it's more fun to program that it is to use it.

And, out of fun I tried changing the words "Build by Ken Silverman." to 
"Build by S.B.H.", just to see if it would work.  When I did that, and 
ran build, it kicked me out with the words: 

"Don't screw with my name"

Then I changed every occurrence of Ken Silverman to S.B.H., and all I got when
I ran the program was:

"Nice try"


Bloody programmers.

(Note:  It was programmed in some form of a Watcom Programming Lang.)



16.  Really messed up sectors.

If you have a sector that's misbehaving, there are a few things you can do.

a) save under a different name and re-load.
b) attempt to delete the sector.
c) if the lines attach to a sector half-a-map away, just connect and re-draw.

17.  Normal teleports in abnormally shaped sectors.

Normal teleports must be in the exact middle of a sector, that's why one
would usually make a box sector.  But if you need to make a strange sector,
just give it a lo-tag. the tag will appear in the middle of the sector, so
you can place the SE7 on it, and then remove the tag.

18.  Blocked walls

Sometimes, if you make a sector within a sector with blocked walls, the 
line will appear red, but still block you,

Solution:  Turn the blocking on 'till the line turns purple, then off again.

19.  Make a Boss stop ending the level.

Not really in build, but if you want a boss to be a full strength, and now be
short, like the boss1 Pal, then go into your game.con file, and look for 
three lines with the text "endofgame 52" and change it to "endofgame 0", if
you do it to all three lines, then you can kill the full bosses, without the
epilogue of the episode playing and level ending until you hit the button.

20.  Copying sectors.

To copy a sector to another spot within the same level, use right-Alt, and 
drag the box around the sectors wanted to be copied, then hold down the left
mouse button over the sector and press insert.



21.  File names not to use.

This will be a continuing list of file names not to use when naming maps,

Don't use the names:

CON.MAP


This will be updated as more names become apparent.


22.  Problem with copying sectors to other maps.

If you have too many maps in you Duke3d directory, the Copying sectors
in different levels suddenly doesn't work, on one occasion it restarted
my computer.


23.  Subway teleports.

I decided to make a small subway train into a teleporter.  it worked well 
enough when I steped on the train, but when I steped onto it to take me
back to the train, it had moved, and I was at my previous co-ords, but was
still being draged by the train, out of the sector wall if nessesary.






Th'end

S.B.H
