Vlatitude Archive: Onscreen Messages Last edited 5 years ago2019-04-25 09:11:55 UTC

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Making a message appear onscreen is an easy task. With Half-Life version 1.0.0.9 and above, there are two ways of going about this task. The first is using the old standby entity, env_message. The second is to use the new game_text entity. We'll start with the env_message first.

Env_Message

The env_message entity is a point based entity that displays a specified message when triggered. The trigger can be a trigger_once, trigger_auto, a button, etc. In the message attribute you put the name of a message from the titles.txt file that's located in the .pak file. There is also a list of these messages in the Resources section. These are the only two attributes needed to use an env_message, Name and Message.

One of the questions frequently asked is: "How do I make my own custom messages appear?". For that we have to add to the titles.txt file. Following is an excerpt from that file.

//TITLES FOR HALF-LIFE
// Position command $position x y
// x & y are from 0 to 1 to be screen resolution independent
// -1 means center in each dimension
// Effect command $effect <effect number>
// effect 0 is fade in/fade out
// effect 1 is flickery credits
// effect 2 is write out (training room)
// Text color r g b command $color
// fadein time fadeout time / hold time
// $fadein (message fade in time - per character in effect 2)
// $fadeout (message fade out time)
// $holdtime (stay on the screen for this long)

//INTRO TITLES
// All centered for now
$position -1 -1
$effect 2
// This is the final color
$color 100 100 100
// This is the highlight color
$color2 240 110 0
// This is the time it takes to fade each character
$fadein 0.01
// This is the amount of time the highlight lags behind the leading edge of the text
$fxtime 0.25
// How long to hold the message on the screen (after it scans out)
$holdtime 3.5
// How long it takes to fade out the message after holding
$fadeout 1.5

CR27
{
Black Mesa Research Facility
Black Mesa, New Mexico
}

Right now this may all seem like gibberish to you, but we're going to take a walk though each part of this. (NOTE: Text in Italics is code for the titles.txt file)

• // denotes a comment, so this would be a comment:

//This is a comment

(NOTE: this only comments out one line)

• The variables described above are set by typing the variable name and then it's value after it. So to set the effect to fade in/fade out we'd type:

$effect 0

• Once the variables have been defined, any defined text after them will have that formatting. So if we type:

$effect 0
TEST1
{
Sample Text 1
}

$effect 1
TEST2
{
Sample Text 2
}

Then each of the two defined messages would have different effects.

• To define a message you first type it in like so:

MESSAGE NAME
{
Message Text
}

• The titles.txt file has some pretty good documentation in it so most of it is all self-explanatory.

There is also another, easier way to display custom messages.

Game_Text

The game_text entity was added to Half-Life with the release of version 1.0.0.9 along with some other useful entities. Like the env_message, the game_text entity needs to be triggered in order to display the text. There are many more attributes to fill in, but most of them are self-explanatory. The text you want displayed goes in the Message Text attribute. To make multi-line text you need to use the multi-line character: "\n". Here's an example: "This would be line 1\nThis would be line 2". Note that entering text longer than 127 characters can cause WorldCraft to crash. The game_text entity has made it easier for map builders to add their own text. Soon there will be a page in the Entity Barn for the game_text entity describing all of it's flags and attributes.

More on Onscreen Messages

When doing a mod it might be better to use the env_message and a custom title.txt file. Use the game_text entity for custom messages in a single map level as this saves you from having to include a new titles.txt file with your map.