Chelsea Bridge writes:

I, unlike some, really enjoy taking my time in Come and Take Your Medicine, even though you can finish this map in just a few moments, really.

Well, this is what I was doing a little while ago, when some drones descended on me, and I bobbed up to smack 'em around a little...When I noticed something _really_ odd.

I looked up, and noticed something really strange on the ceiling. After I dealt some kung-fu out to the drones, I stopped for a second, and bobbed up over and over to look at this strange little thing. I don't remember a texture in Marathon 2 [or any Marathon] that looks like this, and especially not in the Water set.

I wish I could describe it, but the best I can do is attatch screenshots from both sides [you'll see], and a screenshot of the map, to see if you, or anyone else can replicate what I saw.

It could be some odd bug, but I thought I'd pass it on anyway.

Mark Levin <mglevin@uiuc.edu> writes:

I took a look at Chelsea Bridge's location in game and with Forge. The mysterious texture showed up with both M2 and MI textures, and it turned out to be the landscape texture, applied in normal mode. I verified this in Map Viewer, and attached the result (circle added). I was unable to apply such a texture to any other surface with Forge, it would always show up as a proper landscape. The most likely explanation is that Vulcan didn't automatically force landscape mode when the landscape was selected, and this mistextured wall slipped into the final product.

Dan Rudolph <7thFace@bungie.net> writes:

The screenshots sent in by Chelsea Bridge appear to demonstrate the MoirŽ effect. This happens in textures with parallel lines when viewed from a distance. Different parts of different lines are shown because there aren't enough pixels to show it all. This causes the wavy effect. If he moved around, he could probably see the waves moved. this is avoided in modern engines by using mip-mapping, or different textures at different distances.

Chadd Nervig <a7s7t7r7o@hotmail.com> writes:

I think I've figured out a little more info about the CaTYM Textures. Two interesting things are raised by those screenshots sent in earlier today. First of all, the greyish texture seen in the screenshots. It seems to be all over the level, actually. If you look in Forge, it will appear as the other greyish texture, with the circle coving most of it. This 'circuitry' type one seems to replace whatever is placed as that circle greyish one. But Forge will only display the circle one if you have Forge using the Infinity Shapes file. This would lead me to believe it's simply a difference between the shape files. So to test my theory, I had Forge use the Mara2 shapes file. Upon goign to visual mode, it will crash forge with a bug report error. Even still, I think it's safe to say that this one is simply a difference in the shapes file. I just opened them in Anvil, and notice that almost all the textures are different somehow.

Well anyway. The other more interesting point of interest of these screenshots, is the celing texture used there in the little passageway. I happen to know how this is done, actually. And it's not with any different texture. When placing a texture on a wall floor or celing, Forge writes into the map file where the texture goes. It also tells how long the texture is, and how much of it to be used. Like for example, a 1.75 WU long wall, thats 1 WU high, will be listed as being used to fill a space 1.75 x 1, and it should use 100% of the height of the texture to fill the height of this space, and 175% of the texture to fill the width of the space. It's 175% because you need to use an extra 75% of the texture to continue to fill to the end. Still with me? Well if that said that it should be 100% x 100%, it would streach the texture to fill the whole thing. It IS possible, to hex edit the map file, and change these. It's been done on a few 3rd party maps. Until now, I thoguht it was never used/found by Bungie. Looks like I was wrong. That celing texture in the screenshot, is actually just really the landscape texture, but squished to fit into that area. It's actually set perfectly so that it uses the full width of the texture, squished down into that area, and repeated vertically a bunch of times. This technique can also be used to streach textures of long distances. So really the first thing is more intreaging. I wonder why exactly it crashes Forge, and what exactly are the different textures?

Aaron Davies <agd12@columbia.edu> writes:

After investigation in Forge and Anvil, I have determined the cause of the "Come and Take Your Medicine" texture bug: the ceiling of that passage is in fact textured "background." That peculiar orange is part of the background texture of the water set.

James Gurnee <harness@access1.net> writes:

That happens in Pfhorte a lot. It happens when you select a landscape texture and don't set the ceiling type to 'Landscape'. Only does this for ceilings., and this can happen in any texture set. (First time I noticed it was in the Pfhor Ship set.)

Terrence Nowicki <kablam@edmail.com> writes:

On 8/15/99, Chelsea Bridge wrote in about a strange texture on the M2 map Come and Take Your Medicine.

I've known about this for awhile, though the first time I noticed it was on Waterloo Waterpark. If you manage to get out into the big water arena, you can see a spot that has this texture. I myself spent awhile trying to figure out what it was, but after playing around with Forge, I discovered that if you place any of the landscape textures and set it to something other than landscape, you'll see similar results, a sort of bumpy texture that is a combination of all the colors and shapes in the landscape texture.

Whether this was intentional or not is unknown, although, if it happened more than once in M2, I suspect it was done on purpose.

Andrew Malcovsky <wackyslav@hotmail.com> writes:

I saw the submission regarding the wierd texture on the celing of an underpass in Come and Take Your Medicine, and, after seeing for myself that it did indeed look weird, I decided to pop over to see what Forge had to say about the subject. So, after I opened the M2 map, headed over to the spot, and option-clicked on the suspicious spot, the highlighted texture on the palette below was...the landscape texture. Doesn't look anything like it, though...and it doesn't look far away, either--as if it were placed on the "normal" setting--at feat which I have been unable to duplicate.

A little documentation...

The JPG enclosed has a picture from Forge after I entered the M2 level Come and Take Your Medicine, and then entered theTextures:Ceiling View in Draw Mode and option-clicked the polygon (that the cursor is on) The highlighted texture on the right is the Lh'owon day landscape in normal, not landscape mode.