a challenge Created 19 years ago2005-01-13 06:29:01 UTC by Guinea Pirate

i have seen my share of tricks in HL maps but one thing i havent seen is a working escalator. im not talking about a func_conveyor with a cheap immitation texture...im talking about the real thing - moving steps and all. it would be cool to see an actual escalator working...if anyones up to it...

Hmm. It could be done.

You know.. i might just give this a go.. seems straight forward.. only entity counts will be big - every step must be a train with paths, plus all the switching (if you want to turn it on /off)

Hmm :

Go Kol!

If you make it, you have my respect

I've seen at least two of these, sorry laddies. Good luck if you try though, kol.

yeah, i helped with one in the problem vault. sorry.

either make one or find one. ill be happy either way

There was one in Sweet Half-Life I think. Looked good too.

Yep,
Working escalator...
I remember someone doing that ages ago.. possibly before the Map Vault change, so at least 2 years..

It was Ok, but problematic and at the end of the day the overiding question was 'Why?'

it seems simple.

You need like 4 path_tracks and a hell Of a lot of track_trains.

ya i was going to say the same thing It would be that hard to accomplish!?--- just make steps.. and thats pretty much it..

either make one or find one. ill be happy either way

how's this, YOU find one.

well think about it...yes you add all the steps as track_trains but each track_train needs its own path_track to start at or else theyll all begin at the same one and they will all overlap and appear as one step...not much to look at let alone use. lol ill just try to make although it will probly take ages. ill be sure to submit it if it works.

you can fake it by making each step travel up to the position of the next, and "teleport" literally back to where it came - this gives the illusion and movement of the proper thing.

It's actually not that simple, since you need a track for every single step. I stumbled into this problem when I made a garage door for the help forums. Otherwise your escalator will be like all the steps overlaping each other. One way to avoid this will be make a multi_manager and make it start them all in sequence, but this way it has to be invisible at the beginning of the level until all the teps are started and moving.

Map based isn't the only way it could be done. You can make a looping model and still use func_convoyers. It will look like the ones from VIce City.

And here's a try for you:
Since the steps are all the same and they are escalating just one at a time the loop will be really short - just a single step. Here a schematics of what I have in mind:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v210/phutech3000/escalator1.jpg

These BMW-like circles are origin brushes. The black line is the solid ground. The red steps are passable func_trains. The black boxes on each end indicate where the floor is an ubder this spot the trains wont be visible anymore. The character market spots are trajectory points, NOT path_corners. I mean the trains don't go trough these points, they just follow their direction.

My idea is you have the func_convoyer moving the player up. The trains will be passable, so there sould be no problem in making them. They all go one step forward (just as the points indicate) and when they reach the end they are turned invisible and in turn another set of func_trains at staring position are made visible. While the second set moves up, the first one is back to it original place and their visibilty swaps again. It uses much less entities and is much less head spinning. I'm pretty sure it will work.

Anyone else to come with a better idea?

PS: ANd shit, it happened again! Crafing these long posts is a nasty business. I even see some of my words already posted. Anyway, my idea is new.

Heh - with all this talk - i thought to my self "where's the mapping"

Then i sat down to map, and went off to get some food - and here i am.

Damn that lazyness

And long posts are great! as long as you use proper grammar

well i tried the track_train method and i guess that wont work. the steps move fine until u get on them and then it has that dumb thing where the object stops when u get in the way. so all the steps get bunched up and it drags me to the top and kills me even though i had the "damage on crush" set to "0".

i guess the only way it will work is to have the moving steps as a visual display but use a func_conveyor to move the player.

We need more threads like this. Where people discuss how to make things in hammer. Some great ideas could spawn from that

yah...

This is a mapping site...

ok rule out the individual moving steps. they get out of sinc way easily and bunch up and form gaps in other spots...unless there is a way to use the multi_manager or something like that to keep them syncronized.

if you do it right, it works...

I haven't said anything against long posts, it's just that that it took me so long to write all these stuff and draw the scheme that my post got rejected! I guess it's because someone else posted in this time and all gets screwed. It sometimes happens when you click a thread without refreshing.

Has anyon tried my idea? I'm too lazy to install and reconfigure Hammer so I leave it up to you.