Section 4 - 'Stacking' Rooms to Achieve Greater Heights!

Time to learn how to create more diverse features by combining or “stacking” rooms. To make extremely tall spaces, cantilevered ledges and/or water, you must use stacked rooms. You will learn these skills by constructing a tall vertical space using 4 stacked rooms, some ledges and a pool of water. Afterwards, you can connect your sloped hallway to this large room.

Room 1 – The Room at the Top

Rooms taller than 20 clicks begin to stretch the texture panels so it is better to stack several rooms one on top of the other to maintain control over the wall panel size. Begin by building the uppermost portion:

1. Create a new room 8x6 squares with a height of 6 clicks. Name it “Stack Top X” and move it down somewhere next to your ramped hallway.

2. To make the ceiling slightly domed, select the center 6x4 squares. Hold down the Control Key and click the Ceiling + button once.

3. Check the floor elevation - it should be 0 and the ceiling elevation should be 7.

4. Now raise the elevation of the entire room using the “ROOM +” button. Because you are raising the entire room (not just the floor or the ceiling) the distance between the floor and ceiling will remain the same. Select your “Stack Top X” room in the EDITOR WINDOW and press the ROOM + button until the ceiling elevation reads 35 (the floor should be at 28). Check the illustration for a
clearer picture!

Elevations of the Stacked Rooms

Below is a side view illustration of the “Stacked Rooms” and the rooms connected to them. The elevations of the ceilings and floors of the rooms have been displayed to help you better visualize their construction.

Room 2 – Building a Cantilevered Ledge

The Building Blocks in the Tomb Editor are designed to be raised up from the floor or dropped down from the ceiling, not pulled out from the sides. If you want to make a cantilevered ledge, you will have to create another room above or below it. This will make more sense once you have completed the next few steps.

1. Build a second room 8x6 squares, 8 clicks in height. Name it “Stack2X” and move it next to “Stack Top X” for the time being.

2. Raise the room using the ROOM + button to a ceiling elevation of 28. Note that this elevation corresponds to the floor elevation of the room that will be above it. This is key to understanding how to stack rooms. The Floor elevation of the room above must be the same as the ceiling elevation of the room below.

NOTE: If the elevations of the floor from the “above” room and the ceiling from the “below” room are not equal when you connect the rooms, the editor will add a wall panel to make up the elevation difference. This might work in some cases, but it doesn’t allow you to adjust the wall panels, and besides, it is sloppy modeling!

3. Now look at “Stack Top” in the demo model to find the location of the ledge squares. Go back to your “Stack Top X”, select these squares and raise them by one click.

4. Move “Stack Top X” directly over “Stack2X” and select the entire floor in the PLAN VIEW grid.

5. Click on the DOOR button, and presto, the two rooms are connected and you have a cantilevered ledge! Check it out in the EDITOR WINDOW. (Don’t forget you may have to re-click DRAW DOORS to refresh the view).

6. Now move the room(s) next to the sloped hallway again. Once connected by a “door”, they act as one unit.

CAUTION: Even though a “door” connects the rooms, they are not really one room. If you raise the bottom room using the ROOM + button, you’ll push it up into the room above. This causes problems and can be a headache to fix, so be warned!

Room 3 – Another Way to Make a Ledge

You just made a ledge by raising the floor squares of the room above. Another way to make a ledge is by lowering the ceiling of the room below.

1. Make a third room 8x6 squares and leave it 20 clicks in height. Call it “Stack3X” and move it near the others. Select the row of squares running along the west, or left side of the room. Click the “CEILING -” button once to create the ledge area.

2. “Stack3X” has a ceiling elevation of 20. The floor of “Stack2X” should be 20. Move “Stack3X” under the two rooms you connected earlier (“Stack Top X” and “Stack2X”).

3. Now to connect these rooms, you need to select the floor of “Stack2X”, but how do you get to it? It is directly below “Stack Top X” so you can’t click on it in the EDITOR WINDOW as usual. Remember the neat trick you can do in the PLAN VIEW window where you left click a portal once, then right click to go to the adjoining room? That’s one way to get to the other room. Another way is to click off 2DMAP and use your “ALT + Z” command to bring up the target cursor, then click on the “Stack2X” room in the EDITOR WINDOW.

4. Now you can select the entire floor of “Stack2X” and hit the DOOR button to connect it with “Stack3X”, thus creating your ledge along the west side.

Getting Ready for the Water Room

There is a pool of water at the very bottom of the stacked rooms so Lara can make a big dive from the platforms you created earlier. To avoid a wafer thin floor and to give Lara a nice ledge to help her climb out of the water, do the following:

1. Select the entire floor of “Stack3X” and raise it by one click.

2. Select the center 6x4 squares and lower them by one click. This should leave you with a raised ledge along the perimeter of your room. If you want, raise up the center two squares of the ledge on each side of the room as per demo model.

3. Now click on the “R” button (of the Room Edit Buttons) to the right of the “W” button to set the reflective value of the water for the ledge and walls above. The higher the number, the brighter the reflection. Left click in the box next to the “R” button to raise the number, right click to lower it.

Room 4 – The Water Room

1. Make a 4th room 8x6 squares, 12 clicks in height. Call it “Stack Pool X”.

2. Under the PLAN VIEW grid, find the button with a “W” on it. Click it to the number 2. This designates a water room and the amount of movement in the water. Without this button and value, Lara wouldn’t kick into her swimming animation.

3. Using the “ROOM –” button, lower “Stack Pool X” until the ceiling elevation reads 0 and place it under all of the other stacked rooms.

4. Again, using the method of your preference, get back into”Stack3X.” Select the floor and click on the DOOR button to connect the rooms and create the portal that will soon be the surface of your water.

5. Check the demo model for guidance and lower the ceiling one click beneath the ledge around the top of the pool to give more thickness to the ledge, then raise the supporting columns up on each side.