Elevators

Things to Keep in Mind About Elevators

• An elevator might cause problems if there are many elevators or if multiple players try to use the same elevator at once
• With a slow connection (e.g., 56k), players might fall through your elevator and pop up at the top after a few seconds
• Elevators cannot transport vehicles. Ensure the Transition Zones (explained later) are not reachable for vehicles or they will get stuck.
• Elevators may cause issues with beacons if you try to deploy them on the elevator platform.

1. Create Your Elevator

Here is a very quick example elevator:

An elevator consists of:

• Platform (red)
• Door (blue)

You may include as many details as you want, but for this tutorial we keep things simple.

Always create your elevator centered in RenX/Gmax.

To help estimate size, Single Player elevators are approximately:

• Length: 6m
• Width: 6m
• Height: 12m

You can create a reference box to compare:

(My elevator is slightly oversized here, but this is only to get a general idea.)

2. Create the Collision “Cages”

Because the Renegade engine does not like textured objects that move, we create collision-only cages.

These are just untextured meshes that define where players collide.

Enable W3D Hide and collision settings for:

• Vehicle
• Camera
• Projectile

Do NOT enable collision on the textured meshes.

3. Animation Setup

An elevator has 3 animation stages.

Stage 1 — Base Frame

Move all your parts of the elevator so it is on the Top-Part, with the door open for entry at the Top:

As you can see I just moved the whole platform up, and lowered the ring so that the player can enter the elevator at the top.

Stage 2 — Moving Animation

Click the Animate button:

• Go to Frame 1, move your door so it is closed (you can use more than one frame if needed, just note this frame somewhere)
• Go to Frame 10, move elevator to bottom with the door closed (same comment as before for the close door)

Write down this bottom frame — you will need it later.

Stage 3 — Final Animation

Animate the bottom door opening.

My example ends at Frame 11, but your animation can use more frames.

Once you are finished, deactivate animation mode and feel good that the work is nearly done.

4. Export the Elevator

Export the elevator to your Modpacket as:

• Hierarchy Animated Model
• Frame 0 through final frame (e.g., 11)

5. Add It in LevelEdit

Open LevelEdit (Commando), go to Tiles, click Add.

Now enter a name, e.g. my_elevator, and switch to the Settings Tab. Set:

• Type: ElevatorPhys

Select your W3D and change

• Collision Mode: STOP
• Animation Mode: Manual

Frame Values to Set

Scroll a bit down and set

Set CloseDelay to how long the elevator should take to go up/down and press OK.

6. Setup the Elevator Zones

Select your elevator again → Mod → Zones tab.

You will find 4 zones:

• LowerCallZone — Player stands here to call elevator down
• LowerInsideZone — Player inside → elevator starts going up
• UpperCallZone — Same as lower, but at top
• UpperInsideZone — Inside at top → elevator moves down

Double-click any zone to edit its size / position as needed:

You can toggle between the first/last frame to align zones properly. Adjust now all zones like it is explained above.

Example Zones

Here are mine

Zone	Image	Zone	Image
LowerCallZone		LowerInsideZone
UpperCallZone		UpperInsideZone

Press OK when zones are correct.

7. Place the Elevator in Your Level

Load your level → select the elevator → click Add and it will appear on the map.

Export your map and test the elevator.

8. Done!

Congratulation! You can now go up and down with your elevator as long as you want.