Working in UDMF? Multiple 3D floors? You really should use Multiple Tags!

At face value, the ability to apply multiple tags to a single sector might sound useful, but once you start to make use of it you’ll soon realise that it is in fact very powerful!

Applying multiple sector tags is probably most useful in the application of multiple 3D floors, as using this allows you to give each 3D floor’s control linedef a unique tag and allows you to pick and choose what 3D floors you want present in your sector by simply assigning multiple tags.

Applying multiple sector tags is very easy in GZDoom Builder – simply right click on a sector when in sectors mode, then at the bottom of the modal window, where there is the identification (tags) section. Click on the green plus and you’ll see that this added a second tag! You can keep adding sector tags as needed; this allows you to do many things, most notable of which is easily creating complex 3D structures! See the screenshot below – Here you can see the aforementioned green plus button, and you can also see across the bottom a horizontal list of all the currently applied tags.

If you want to change a specific tag from this list, click on it – it then becomes the active tag in the white text box above. Similarly, if you want to remove a tag from the list, simply select the tag, then click on the red cross button.

Additional comments

One thing to bear in mind is it can become harder and harder to edit a map once you have a large stack of 3D floors on top of one another. Consider using pen and paper to jot down what each tag means. Simple notes will do, just enough to jog your memory so you can map on the fly a little easier!

Be careful of reassigning tags – if a tag displays [?] that means that the selection of sectors you are currently looking at have different tags, so changing this value may produce unexpected results. If this is the case, unselect your sectors and work on them one at a time if needed.

For an example of what can be achieved with this feature, check out my map in Confinement256 – a GZDoom map set about making the most use of a 256×256 space! You can read more about Confinement 256 here on Dragonfly’s Doomworks.

Thanks for reading, happy mapping!