How to put jumpscares? Created 8 years ago2015-05-29 15:53:18 UTC by Mmoonyy

I am currently making a Half-Life 1 mod and it's suppose to be a horror mod. Although one of my friends maps for me, I would like to put in my jump scares. Like a zombie appearing out of nowhere and just vanishes, like "Afraid of Monsters".

Btw, here is a link to the mod

http://www.moddb.com/mods/full-death

Alright, here's what to do to get the PROPER scare factor from a nice and good jump scare.

Step 1. You need to have a very quiet environment. Keep it mostly ambient, like the quiet humming of building electronics or the buzzing of lights. Try and give as little forewarning as you can for the maximum effect.

Step 2. Occasionally, as the player walks, set up triggers to an ambient_generic which will play some sound in the distance. It'll probably scare the shit out of the player and keep them more and more tense for when the jumpscare is going to happen. I would recommend using the sound of a train whistle for maximum horror factor.

Step 3. Make a tunnel or hallway that the player has to walk through. Try to establish that the hallway is located deep within some building, in some underground tunnel, or anywhere, really, as long as it's somewhere you wouldn't expect a train to appear.

Step 4. Set up a trigger_once which will cause every wall at one point in the hallway to suddenly explode, and have an ambient_generic blast this song at maximum volume to the point that it's nearly deafening. Then make a func_tracktrain which will blare past the player and blow up everything.

But in all seriousness, all that making jumpscares would take is some crafty enemy placement and some forethought on where your player is. And sudden loud noises will always make a player jump. Jumpscares are fun.

Jump scares are horror mod cancer.

Dark room with a light in a certain area to draw the players eye / distract them.
Then put a headcrab behind a crate or something.
OR just spawn something in front of the player with a loud bang.
Then de-spawn it.
Works everytime but it's super annoying if overused.

Jump scares are horror mod cancer.

Jump scares are cheap, but that's not a bad thing. When you go on spooky haunted Hallowwen rides that pop out and scare you, do you do it before you want to be HORRIFIED or just for the horror cheap thrills?

There's nothing wrong with cheap thrills. The more unpredictable they are, the more fun they are. A jumpscare is only bad if it falls flat, or if the mod tries to be MORE than just a string of jumpscares.

Horror is horror mod cancer.

[quote]spawn something in front of the player with a loud bang.
Then de-spawn it.

Kinds took a while to respond....but...how do you spawn and de-spawn enemies? I would really like to know.

ther ar ways to decompile maps so u can see how its done!

You could also just make the floor open up and then the player falls 50 feet into a nasty pit of sewer water infested with leeches.
place a single spotlight over the only ladder in view.
When the player is 15 feet from the ladder, shut off the light and play super loud metal groaning sounds.
Then instantly teleport the player into a re-creation of the teletubbies playhouse.

You could also just make the floor open up and then the player falls 50 feet into a nasty pit of sewer water infested with leeches.
place a single spotlight over the only ladder in view.
When the player is 15 feet from the ladder, shut off the light and play super loud metal groaning sounds.
Then instantly teleport the player into a re-creation of the teletubbies playhouse.

The teletubbie's playhouse ensures that you won't avoid this one ^

But can someone tell me exactly how to spawn and despawn enemies? If you can I would really appreciate it, I've tried to decompile maps but "BSP to MAP" isn't working very well.

Try a monster maker and a trigger_relay that kills the first entity.

Decompilers basically just recreate the brushwork - they won't get you very far as far as entities are concerned. DiscoStu has the answer right there. It is simplicity itself!

Also, multi_managers are your best friend.

That seems incorrect, as far as I know the entity data can easily be perfectly extracted from a BSP, whereas the brushwork will be absolute trash because reversing the CSG process isn't really possible. The ripent tool that ships with VHLT builds can be used to pull entity data from a BSP. I doubt that a decompiler would ignore entities when they're so easy to extract from a BSP.

Going off of my last attempt to decompile anything, isn't it more a problem with brush entities? I think they get moved to the origin of the map or something.

Yeah, that make sense. I don't know how brush-based entities translate into BSP geometry. Point entities should be ok though.

Maybe I remembered wrong!