making grunts engage from distance? Created 8 years ago2016-01-18 14:28:14 UTC by Dallas

In standard steam half life 1, it seems to me that grunts will not engage you or shoot at you until you are within a certain distance of them. Even if they are looking right at you, if you are far enough away they don't appear to do anything for me.

Is this normal behaviour? Is there any way to make them engage you at a longer distance with the default tools and entities?

It seems like in the Dam level in HL 1, there is a grunt on the bridge that will engage you from much farther away that I seem to be experiencing in my custom maps.

Thoughts?

I've never heard of any way to modify this in Hammer, although I may be wrong. Could it be possible that they've faked it with an invisible func_tank?

Yeah there is a func_tank over there, but there is also a grunt at the far side of the bridge who will engage the player on his own... which seems much further away than I feel like I have experienced before.

I've never encountered this before... I guess I've never made a map with a space that big.

Could it be that the grunt manning the turret is in the same squad as the lone soldier, and because tanks don't seem to have the distance limit it's informing the other soldier to attack?

Best check he's not just triggered to run along the dam.

Edit, found a discussion here:
http://twhl.info/forums.php?thread=18715

How does the squad functionality work? How do you set it up and what is it normally used for?

Is there a tutorial somewhere?

Thanks

Did you try reading the thread? Archie explained it all in the second post...

Squad functionality is pretty simple. Use the squad field to set a name. Any grunts who share a squad name will be alerted if one of them spots the player. You can also set a flag for a squad leader (the guy with the beret) but I'm not sure if this alters their behaviour at all.

Houndeyes also use the squad system and it makes a huge difference to their effectiveness

Yes I did, sorry. I didn't realize the forum here does not show/highlight post edits the way I expected.

I had made the post where I asked the questions, then I found the thread I linked, and then edited my post to show I had found the answers I needed.

regardless, thank you for your reply and clarifying what the other thread had shown.

I think I can now get grunts to behave the way I desire.

Well, alrighty then. Good luck with it

@Strider : "func_tank" doesn't "speak" to it's owner nor reference if it's designed to be not controllable by the player.