The “Outer Limits” Glitch

So I seem to have hit a bit of a snafu with the level. Nothing unsolvable, but deeply irritating. This’ll take a bit of explanation, but so does everything I do.

So Quake‘s levels have this nasty, very subtle hard limit on their dimensions. In short, only the bits between -4,096 and 4,096 on any of the three axes work correctly. More simply, your entire level has to fit in 8192^3. When I say “work correctly”, I don’t mean the map won’t compile or won’t load in-game. In fact, you won’t even notice it! …Until you go visit the part of the level that’s outside the outer limits:

The highly irritating outer limits glitch in Quake

If you’re not sure what you’re looking at, after you pass that limit in-game, the player’s viewpoint wraps to 0,0,0, usually in the void looking out at the rest of the level. The player can still interact with the level past this point, but only just barely. Gets real hard to see what you’re doing out there. The embed below (direct link) is from when I encountered it on stream.

Normally, when you pass this limit, you simply take your level and move it back within the limit. This is what happened on stream. Unfortunately, this is when I made the discovery that my level is now 9088 units in length. Moving it inside the limits means spawn exhibits the bug instead, as it’s directly opposite it.

I don’t really feel like explaining it again, because I already made this visual for the Somnolians, but in short, I don’t have enough space to do what I wanted to do for this area without seriously reworking it.

Explaining why I'd have to rearrange my level, part one

I went back and forth with NewHouse this morning over possible solutions here. He suggested making stuff go vertical, which, aside from working around already existing architecture, would necessitate doing funny things with the way each gauntlet flows, and in my head, I don’t like it. As much as it’d be cool to have a trigger_push to make the player all floaty or water elevators, I’m just not really into doing that here.

So here’s what I’ll be doing instead. I have a whole lot more space on the Y axis than the X axis, so I’ll be rotating the hub (and therefore the gauntlets) to fit another end of the hallway (the one with the dome), being a straight way through it to get to the hub rather than around the corner. Around the corner would then be for the three key doors and the end of the level, where the needed space is a lot less.

Explaining why I'd have to rearrange my level, part two
Thank you, me from earlier today, for this helpful illustration once more.

I would’ve already done this, but Isaias decided to be a little shit and kill my power for a few hours. It wasn’t even a cool storm like Sandy was back in 2011, just this shitty little thing that bit my ankles for a few hours. Utter weaksauce. (I’m not actually complaining about not losing power for a week.) I read Racing the Beam and ate pizza while I waited. Could’ve been worse.

You know when you’re nearing the end of a sprint and you love what you’ve built, but you’re just so ready for it to be over? That’s where I’m at here. Once it’s playable, I’ll be polishing and sending out some beta builds to friends, but I’m probably not gonna release it right away so NewHouse’s Blue Ep playtesters can do their thing with it too. Probably in September if he holds off on that some more.

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