Sliding Doors

This tutorial assumes that you are somewhat familiar with the version of Radiant that came with SOF2. A sample map file is available at the end of this tutorial for further review. Thanks to brutus for the work put into this tutorial.

1. Ok, Lets start off with a simple map, ground level will be a 1024x1024 area, with a building 512x512x128 located in the middle. I have used asphalt for the ground and a 3_brick for the building, as well as the pra_6 sky to seal against leaks. Added a few lights to see by as well.

The hole you cut for the door is important. The door must have room to slide. Therefore, if you have a door 64 units wide, you must leave 64 units for it to slide. The engine does not block doors, thus if you o­nly left the door 32 units to slide, it will still slide 64 units, possibly right out of your building!

The Door should be a contrasting image to easily identify where the door is. I have chosen floor_woodplanks128. Draw out the door where you want it to be in it's 'rest' state.

2. While the door is still highlighted, right-click in the grid area and choose func_door.

3. Then while the door is still Highlighted, Hit 'N' to bring up the entities window. Here you must enter the angle the door is to travel in, the speed at which the door moves, how much of a lip the door leaves, how long the door stays open, and damage to the player if he blocks the door apon closing. You must also specify a targetname for the door.

I have chosen an angle of 270, Speed I left at default, No Lip, No Damage to player, and stay open for 5 seconds. I have assigned a targetname of doortut1.

Since these options will not all show in o­ne screenshot, I have left out a screenshot of this step.. I'll assume everyone knows radiant enough to know how to do this.

4. Next we setup a trigger field. This works much like those automatic door openers at your local Safeway's or Target stores. You setup a field that o­nce the player walks into it, the door will be activated.

Select Textures -> Tools and pick the green trigger tool.

5. Draw out the field, making sure it goes past the door to both sides. Otherwise your player will o­nly be able to open the door from o­ne side.

6. While the brush is still selected, right click in the grid area and choose trigger->trigger_multiple.

7. While the brush is still selected, hit the 'N' key to bring up the entities window. Add a wait time of slightly less time then it takes the door to open, wait, and return. If you do not do this step, the door will have unpredictable results. I usally add 1 second to the wait time I specified for the door, and then tweak it from there. You want to make sure its not longer than the total door travel time, or there will be a period that the player will not be able to activate your door.

Also make sure you add the key target, and assign it a value of doortut1 (in this example) so that the trigger field knows what to activate.

8. At this point if you compile and run, you will have a working door. I like some sound to my doors. Sounds by default were hard-coded into the engine, so you must use a little cheat in order get door sounds.

* At this point just tweak any settings you do not like.

If you have a door set like the above, and a player sits in the doorway, the door automatically reverses itself when it touches the player, however the trigger field may not have timed out yet, but if the player still sits there, the door will reverse and then a second later it will play the door sound. You must either lower the wait time of the trigger or use the door crusher feature to work around this. Or just live with it.. whatever you prefer!