monstermaker Last edited 2 months ago2024-09-27 01:47:09 UTC

monstermaker - Point Entity

This entity allows you to spawn monsters on demand.

Attributes

• Name (targetname) - Property used to identify entities.
• Target on release (target) - Event to trigger when a monster is spawned.
• Monster Type (monstertype) - The entity name of the monster to be spawned. See list further down this page.
• Number of monsters (monstercount) - The maximum number of entities to spawn. 0/-1 = no limit.
• Frequency (delay) - Delay, in seconds, between each monster being spawned. If 0, a new monster will only be spawned after the previous has been killed.
• Max live children (m_imaxlivechildren) - Maximum number of live children allowed at one time. Spawnings will be suspended until a monster dies. A value of 0 means infinite (obviously not recommended if delay is too low and monstercount is infinite).
• Childrens' Name (netname)

Flags

• Start On (1)
• Cyclic (4) - If this is enabled, the entity will activate then deactivate (spawning a single monster) instead of toggling it On/Off when triggered.
• Monsterclip (8) - If this is enabled, spawned monsters will not be able to pass through func_monsterclip brushes.

Notes

• The Flags mechanism for this entity is doped:
  • If targetname is blank, it will spawn the monster, no matter if "Start On" is enabled or not.
  • If targetname is named and "Start On" is enabled, the monster will not spawn as soon as the game starts. However, the best way to manage this entity is to give it a name for targetname and set a trigger to activate it (once if Start On is disabled, twice if enabled). Doing so, the mechanics will normalize.
• Children are spawned facing the direction of the monstermaker's angles.
• The Childrens' Name (netname) basically assigns a name to the monster spawned, that way you can target the monster with a scripted_sequence or scripted_sentence.
• Monstermaker doesn't assign the Target (target) keyvalue of its children, which is needed for entities like Apaches and Ospreys (they need them set to point to the start of a path_corner path). However, you can use trigger_changetarget to do that, either before or after the children's AI kicks in (usually at 1.0s after spawning). The monstermaker's Target on release (target) can be used for this, but there needs to be a trigger_relay between them to set the delay properly. Recommended setup:

  monstermaker ──(target)──► trigger_relay (w/delay) ──(target)──► trigger_changetarget ──(target)──► children

• Spawning will be interrupted if a monster's hitbox collides with another in-game. Tip: you can use a cycler to render a model on your map editor or insert a monster's typical entity and check its bounding box size.
• Monstermaker will not spawn entities if there is someone (player/monster) below it, up to 2048 units down. Tip: you can get around this by creating something solid underneath it before use, like func_wall_toggle. And then after spawning, remove/disable that solid object.
• If the amount of monsters to spawn is higher than one, monsters will have their corpse fade after death.
• Some monsters may not notify their parent monstermaker that they have died, which may cause Frequency and Max Live children to break. [TODO: test]
• It is possible to use monstermaker to spawn some transient entities (e.g. a single hornet, a bullsquid's spit, or a live RPG rocket). However, you might have to manually precache their models/sprites and sounds, and/or surround the monstermaker in trigger_push to impart velocity to them; all the things their parent entity usually does for them.

List of entities

Other entities with the prefix monster_ not listed below may not work [test, confirm, and update]. Notes:
*T trigger_changetarget required to set path/target
*P trigger_push required to set velocity

Related pages

• Vlatitude: Monstermaker Tutorial

Example maps