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Mapping Art - High Detail - The Flat Sectoring

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This is a method to add detail to your maps, I developed some months ago, when I was working on some Stronghold maps, and I called it "Flat Sectoring". So, what's meant with this? Flats are normally supposed to show off a certain structure, surface and roughness. Yeas ago, Doom & computers weren't able to show this via sectors. But in the days of high end machines, we can do this. So, "Flat Sectoring" is a method to accent the special structure of a flat or we just build our sectors as we have to use the flats itself as base, tile by tile. But screenshots often say more then words ;)

In shot 1 you can see a simple usage of the method, when the marble tiles merge into the dirty floor. As border I used the exact sizes of the tiles, which are also aout 4-5 units higher then the normal floor. This effect can be done to almost every flat, whose single parts (in this case the different marble tiles) can be differed from the rest of the flat. The effect is mostly very easy to achieve but it looks amazing ingame. (buildtime 7-8 minutes extra time)

Shot two shows another way and possibility to add some detail with "Flat Sectoring". The brick floor really suits great for this although the effect isn't that clear in this example but you will get to know how it works. So, what have I done here? I "broke out" several parts of the floor, but just as the floor shape makes it possible for me (size of the bricks are around 32x16 pixels = 32x16 map units). I just drawed my sector in this simple shape on the bridge, moved i about 4 units down, changed the flat to something more natural and added the lower textures, and that's it. (buildtime 4-6 minutes)

Well, in my eyes, shot three shows the best example of this method, because the achieved detail r0x0rs my b0x0rs, so here we go: In front of the door, you can see several tiles of this METAL1 texture thingie, used often in different UAC installations. This time, I also "cut the floor pieces out", gave them a new height (+2), added the lower texture and that's it.
The only problem is, the more complex your flats are (diagonal contures, etc) the harder it gets to "flat-sectorize" them but also the more amazing the result will look (as you can see in this shot!)

Oh and by the way, you are not forced to just use this method on flats, it also possible to do the same if you are working on walls and complex sectors, just take a look at screenshot number 4 to find out what I mean. Here, I was creating a computer panel thingie with a COMPBLUE variant texture. I added to this normal recangular sector some other sectors for much more depth concerning this object!

Summary: You can see, it is a very simple but powerful method to create new and interesting effects in your maps, so if you have some space and need a smooth passage from (example) a hellish world into a UAC base, try this! 
Extra-Buildtime: "7-20 minutes" (depending on the complexity of the flat)
Build-Difficulty: "Medium"

flat_sectoring.jpgflat_sectoring_n_structure.jpgsimple_detail.jpgadvanced_textureflat_sectoring.jpg

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