Newbie DarkRadiant Questions

[SteveL]

Well, normally there should also be an arrow from the trigger to the speaker in this case, right? In one map, there is no arrow, in the other the arrow points from the speaker to somewhere in infinity. I tried with various sounds, none of which works.

Setting these cvars might help you work it out:

g_debugTriggers 1

s_drawSounds 1

con_noprint 0

 

The last one makes console text appear on your screen without you having to open the console, so you can see the text when a trigger fires

 

EDIT: ninja'd

Edited January 14, 2016 by SteveL

[Nico A.]

Is there an easy way to not immediately start damaging the player when he touches a trigger, but to wait for a few seconds?

[SteveL]

trigger_hurt has spawnargs "on" and "delay", but it doesn't look like they'll let you do this.

 

You could use a pair of triggers: give the trigger_hurt "on" "0" and then target it from a trigger_entityName set to activate by player1 only, and with "delay" "5" for a 5-second delay, for example. You'd also need to set "wait" "0" on the trigger_entityName so that it removes itself from the game the first time it's fired.

[Nico A.]

Seems to work quite nicely, thanks. I did however set the trigger_hurt's delay to an incredibly high number, otherwise the player would just get hurt over and over, but I only wanted a one time hurt event.

[Nico A.]

Is there an easy way to make cylindrical brushes? I want to make a cylindrical swimmable water entity, but that doesn't seem to work with patches.

[demagogue]

I'd use the clip tool for that job. Take a regular brush and cut off chunks to get a many-equal-sided polygon cylinder.

[Nico A.]

Okay, thanks. I figured that but hoped there was a simpler, one-click way.

[demagogue]

I haven't tested it, but I recall, and just reconfirmed on the shortcut key sheet, that cntl+n (n being a number) when you make a brush makes an n-sided brush. Try that and see what happens.

[Nico A.]

Whoa, this works great!!

[Springheel]

just reconfirmed on the shortcut key sheet, that cntl+n (n being a number) when you make a brush makes an n-sided brush.

 

 

Wow, I never knew about that.

 

did however set the trigger_hurt's delay to an incredibly high number, otherwise the player would just get hurt over and over, but I only wanted a one time hurt event.

 

 

Is it still not possible to just have a single-fire hurt event? I remember wanting something like that in A Score to Settle years ago.

[Moonbo]

Trigger once linked to the trigger hurt.

[VanishedOne]

Brush->prism gets you a cylinder dialogue through the menus; there are also cone and sphere dialogues. The ctrl+num method is faster, though.

 

If Springheel's talking about http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/12438-damaging-traps/ then the idea is that a damage trap is triggerable multiple times and hurts the player once when triggered, or at least not continuously. (http://bugs.thedarkmod.com/view.php?id=2689 is still open.) Presumably that's not a problem for Nico A.'s case, though.

Edited January 15, 2016 by VanishedOne

[Nico A.]

Another problem... if something grabable, i.e. a key, lies high on a brush functioning as a shelf, I can grab it when I'm far away. So it seems I'm reaching through that shelf brush.

 

How can the brush actually block my grabbing?

Edited January 15, 2016 by Nico A.

[Destined]

Usually brushes and func_statics should block frobbing. I believe, that in the case of keys the frobbox (i.e. the radius in which they can be frobbed) is very high. If I remember correctly, this is to make pickpocketing easier. Look for the spawnarg "frobbox_size" and use a lower value. Apart from that, you could use a "clip" or "player_clip" brush to block the player.

[Melan]

I haven't tested it, but I recall, and just reconfirmed on the shortcut key sheet, that cntl+n (n being a number) when you make a brush makes an n-sided brush. Try that and see what happens.

That's amazing! Wow, that will come in handy.

[Nico A.]

Look for the spawnarg "frobbox_size" and use a lower value.

Frobbox size is now 0.2 (before it was 1 with no noticable difference), but still I can grab the key from below.

The picture illustrates the problem, with an AI to scale; it just doesn't seem right that you can grab the key from all the way down.

 

...at this point I'd really like to show a picture, but I just keep getting

 

You are not allowed to use that image extension on this community.

It would be nice to know which image extensions are allowed. I tried several.

 

The playerclip didn't change anything also.

Edited January 15, 2016 by Nico A.

[VanishedOne]

http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/15740-need-help-with-light-switches/?p=330051 is what's used to stop players frobbing light switches through solid walls.

[demagogue]

I recommend anybody that builds should at some point browse the DR Command sheet just to see what sorts of hidden shortcuts it has. http://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Dark_Radiant_Controls,_Keys_%26_Mouse

[Obsttorte]

The easiest way to prevent player frobbing through surfaces is to create a nodraw brush and make it frobable. I've used it in the Builder Roads FM in the tavern to preven the player from frobbing loot through some gaps (The gaps were there so the player could see the loot).

[VanishedOne]

The post I linked above says it needs to be nodrawsolid; if you had plain nodraw working in the gaps then we have inconsistent results emerging somehow.

 

Now, the odd thing is that if you use a "nodraw" texture on the frob blocker, the trace doesn't see it, and the switch is frobable. If you use a "nodraw_solid" texture, the trace sees it, and the blocker is frobbed. The code says that if the trace hits something that's frobable, the trace should see it, but apparently that doesn't work if the thing is non-solid.

This doesn't jive with the "nodraw" frob blockers you see on the sides and surfaces of the prefab writing cabinet. I wouldn't expect them to work. But since I've got a solution to my problem, I'll leave that for another day.

Since the frob_blocker is now solid to the player, it's best to make it thin. The sample map shows I gave it a thickness of 1 unit, so when the player presses up against the wall, it's not noticeable. And using a nodraw that matches the wall material, I can have consistent results if I fire a broadhead at it.

[Nico A.]

Thanks for your answers on this grab-from-far-away-problem. I didn't check it out thoroughly yet, but hopefully it works.

 

Another (hopefully simple) question: You can I make a switch starting in an off position instead of on?

 

The easiest way to prevent player frobbing through surfaces is to create a nodraw brush and make it frobable. I've used it in the Builder Roads FM in the tavern to preven the player from frobbing loot through some gaps (The gaps were there so the player could see the loot).

Well that didn't work. Would have been to easy I presume

Edited January 20, 2016 by Nico A.

[VanishedOne]

Levers work somewhat like doors, so I imagine http://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Doors#Open.2C_Partially_Open.2C_or_Closed_Door_at_Game_Start might work on them.

 

If you're just toggling a target (e.g. a light) then moving the switch in DR and changing its rotate/translate spawnargs would work, since the on/off state will be handled by the target.

Edited January 20, 2016 by VanishedOne

[Springheel]

 

So I have this gigantic scorpion, it is made out of pendulums bound together. I had an idea about dragging whole thing through a piled up crates (pretending to be stone blocks in a wall), but it looks like movable crate physics override pendulum/bobbing impulses, and animation is interrupted at impact. Any ideas how to make it smash through wall, using realtime physics?

 

 

Any chance this is available for download somewhere?

[Goldwell]

.

Edited January 23, 2016 by Goldwell

[stumpy]

for the frobbing certain objects you can change the frob_distance to a lower amount I think the default is 50. I've only used it when an object is too far away to be frobbed normally so I've incresed the frob_distance to 100