SoHL func_water and sparks at world orig Created 9 years ago2015-03-18 07:48:25 UTC by usbpetrock

I'm making a Half-Life mod using SoHL and I've set up a valve that drains some toxic goo which, obviously, needs a func_water. There are barrels floating in the goo, which are set to MoveWith it. When I turn the valve, the goo drains as expected and the barrels go along with it, but the world origin suddenly starts emitting sparks, complete with sound effects. Turning the valve again makes the water rise back up along with the barrels, but does not stop the sparks. I am very confused, and Googling yields nothing. How can I stop the sparks?!

I decided to finish the rest of the map and ignore the problem, and it went away just as mysteriously as it arrived. I'm afraid I can't provide a solution, but there is no longer a problem for me.

I'm glad it's fixed. Spirit can be a tricky beast at times.

I think the SoHL dev(s) use sparks to indicate a problem with an entity. In my TWHL Tower map I have a path laid out of scripted_sequences for a scientist to follow, but during testing the scientist couldn't make it to the second scripted_sequence, and then a spark appeared above it, even though I never placed an env_spark entity at that location.

So yeah, it's a debug feature it looks like.

Oh, yeah. I also had that. A scientist was unable to say a scripted sequence for reasons unknown, and a spark appeared over his head.

Thanks for your responses. If sparks are a problem indicator in SoHL (just like real life, I guess), then great, but I would prefer if there was some form of console message telling me what the problem actually is

Anyway, the problem is still there - I didn't test it very thoroughly, but I have now and it now only sparks when I lower the liquid then raise it again. I don't want to stop the player from being able to raise the liquid, as even though it is completely useless for the player's purposes, without this ability, the room would have made no sense before the Black Mesa Incident. I shall carry on fixing and improving random, unrelated things in the map until the problem decides to disappear entirely, or get worse.

If there are barrels in the liquid, do they need movewith? Could they not be made pushables, which float anyway?

I tried that. There's a bullsquid in my map, and its projectiles pushed the barrels away, making the map impossible in a very short space of time. (I probably should have mentioned that the barrels were meant to be used as platforms.) I noclipped to the valve and the sparks still appeared, so this doesn't fix the problem.

There is another thing you could try. Make the barrels momentary_doors and give them the same name as the water.

I haven't tried that yet - I'll get back to you once I do, but I have a feeling it won't work as the valve is just a rotating button, not a momentary.

Func_water works mostly the same as a func_door, but with water. If the valve can toggle the water, it can toggle the barrels.

Well, I did exactly what you said and the sparks didn't stop, yet the barrels no longer moved with the water. Based on these two pieces of information, I am at this point fairly certain that the barrels are unrelated to the sparks. I'll keep fiddling as usual.

If it's working the way you want, I'm pretty sure you can ignore the sparks. Somewhere in the code you should be able to find the code that generates the sparks - it'll probably be wrapped in a "#IFDEF __DEBUG__" macro (or something similar). When you build the final version of your mod, make sure you unset the debug variable so the sparks go away.

I believe that the sparks also happen on NPCs when the current AI sequence (or whatever it is) is not valid. Sometimes it's an AI programming error, but sometimes the current plan invalidates and it thinks for a second before finding a new plan.