The latest news in the long-running saga of my attempt to rebuild my original level: so far I've maxed out on faces, clipnodes, and leaves. Bringing my leaves back under the limit of 8192 was particularly tricky; keeping it there as I continue to add the finishing touches to the level is ... well, even trickier!
I've also been playing with the SDK recently. So far I've made a couple of minor tweaks, stuff that I've found online, but today I decided that fiddling with the code was the only way I was going to solve the problem of players being able to activate buttons, rechargers, etc, through solid walls. I tried a couple of in-game fixes (putting a FUNC_BUTTON object behind the recgarger, for instance) but nothing worked.
When I delved into the code I discovered the following line:
//!!!UNDONE: traceline here to prevent USEing buttons through walls
Obviously they had code there to fix the problem at some point, but they took it out again. I don't know why
- no doubt I'll find out at some point! - but I added my own code to determine whether the player had direct line-of-sight to the entity he/she was attempting to USE, without anything else being in the way. I had a couple of false starts, but I figured it out, and it seems to be working; no doubt we'll find out for sure when we play-test it next week!
Which means I can get back to working on LAB11_LavaLab without that weighing on my mind! (Of course, people playing the level without my DM minimod will still be able to recharge their health through walls; there's only so much I can do about that!)
I estimate another week will see it finished!