trigger_camera Last edited 3 months ago2024-08-24 13:28:48 UTC

trigger_camera - Point Entity

Attributes

• Target (target) - The entity that this camera will be looking at.
• Delay before trigger (delay) - Usually the time in seconds before an entity should trigger its target (after being triggered itself). Under other SmartEdit names, delay might also be the time to wait before performing some other action.
• KillTarget (killtarget) - When an entity is triggered, it will remove from the game the entity specified by this property.
• Name (targetname) - Property used to identify entities.
• Hold time (wait) - Time to keep the camera going.
• Path Corner (moveto) - The first path_corner to aim for.
• Initial Speed (speed) - The speed to start at.
• Acceleration units/sec^2 (acceleration)
• Stop Deceleration units/sec^2 (deceleration)

Flags

• Start At Player (1) - Begin with the player's view.
• Follow Player (2) - Use the player as the focal point.
• Freeze Player (4) - Stop the player from moving while camera is in action.

Notes

• The camera can be set up to work in any of several ways - fixed position, with a fixed or moving target (e.g. a security camera), or moving, with a fixed or moving target. Camera sequences can get very complicated.
• A player must be the activator of the camera. It cannot be activated by any entity that doesn't pass a player reference as activator, such as trigger_auto or a trigger_relay. A simple way to do this for cutscenes is to teleport the players around in small black boxes containing a trigger_once that targets the camera.
• The player must be near the area that the camera is to move in. If not, the game engine will not draw the area properly. You may need to teleport the player into and out of each area.
• In Counter-Strike, trigger_camera is also used for the "intro view" aka what you see in the background when you join a server and are choosing a team. Note that this is the outlier as both Half-Life and Deathmatch Classic use info_intermission.
• In Deathmatch Classic and Half-Life, this entity can act as the (re)spawning location in "free look spectating" mode.
• A camera must have something to look at, otherwise triggering it won't have any effect. So either the 'target' attribute must be set, or the 'follow player' flag must be enabled.
• Cameras will often start pointing at the direction of angles (which defaults to facing due East), then quickly panning towards the target. You may want to do some trigonometry to work out the exact angles and enter the value directly to prevent this, or eyeball it for less dramatic but acceptable panning effect. In J.A.C.K., you can press the [O] key to display some debug info in the 3D view which includes the 3D view's PYR.
• The 'freeze player' flag may appear to completely freeze the player, but in reality it only prevents player movement. The player can still look around, so they may end up facing a different direction when the camera stops. If you want the player to look in a specific direction after a camera stops, consider using a trigger_teleport (the pitch/yaw/roll of the teleport destination entity will be applied to the teleported player).
• An active camera can be stopped by triggering it again (or by using a trigger_relay to explicitly turn it off).
• When the player's view is released, trigger_camera fires its Target. It's usually not a problem if the target is something like info_target, but it might affect the map logic in other cases, e.g. if camera was looking at the func_train, it will be toggled after the hold time is expired. It's unknown why it's coded this way, but it's something you should keep in mind.