Forum posts

Thought I'd let you fellows know...http://www.moddb.com/mods/half-rats-parasomnia

That's happening.

Agh, what happened to the creating your own skybox tutorial?

How do you submit a mod to RTSL?

Damn it! Missed this one. I sat with wine next to me, with my fingers poised, waiting to answer installation and bug queries. I usually stay in on Halloween.

Yeah, at first the final boss was so ungodly powerful and the train was so cramped, it was pretty much impossible without cheats. I remember thinking, "Wow, this is worse than the Senator from Revengeance...this won't do" I nerfed the health and the fire rate of the rockets, and made it so that the rations crates broke, giving the player goodies, as well as more room. Even then, you need to find a pattern in order to beat the Hellmouth, but once you find the pattern, he's toast. I wrote a Bestiary for HRAFD, too.

Makes for good toilet reading when you're havin' a shit.

http://www.moddb.com/mods/half-rats-a-fever-dream/downloads/half-rats-a-bestiary

It is out! Thank you for your help, everyone. I now feel that I can make my next one without moaning too badly! And, Urby...go easy on me...

Itz my furst mod and mods r hard! QQ. I am only in middle school but I have good idea.

I'm glad Fallout 4 decided to come in November...because if it had been released sooner, HRAFD would have missed its deadline.

It's going to be set to release at midnight on October 31st.

Fixed just about all of my problems. It won't be long until this releases. I had a guy test it, each time returning a detailed word document full of problems, along with helpful screenshots and suggestions.

This is something I should have known...But I'm a big idiot.

Sound engineering 101: When you stack waves on top of one another, they amplify...

4 sounds set to "play everywhere", and with the volume of 1...create the volume of 4. Gee golly...

I have no HTML documents....

Righteo!

Cool! Alright, thanks for clearing that up, guys! Works nicely! So, I seem to now have a problem getting the env_fade to hold long enough for the credits to roll...

Also, are there any game_end tutorials? Because I can't seem to get game_end to work.

Real quick, CTRL+M is what I should use to rotate objects, correct?

I keep getting invalid solids for anything that is rotated, the geometry gets skewed/warped/generally fucked, even when it doesn't appear that way in Hammer. Should I use the VM tool to give the illusion of rotation?

And what's the maximum time a scripted_sentence can be? 3 minutes?

What you guys are thinking about is relative to the player, but I'm speaking in a literal sense. A 128X128 pixel image is half an inch wide, and a half-inch tall. In Half-Life, that is standard wall height - since when you put an image that is 128 pixels high, it fits perfectly on a 128 unit high wall. Leading me to believe that a unit is a pixel. From Gordon's perspective, it appears that the wall is a standard 8 or 9 feet. But...

The wall is literally half an inch high in real life.

Gordon could run around on your thumb nail.

BMRF could fit easily in a small backyard.

Hot Wheels cars seriously outsize any tanks you come across.

1. He rises up to the player's level in this case - before he is supposed to - even if the "WaitforScript" flag is marked - I thought I could render him invisible with an env_render to fix that...how does one go about that?

2. Sometimes he attacks, sometimes he doesn't.

3. When he dies, the game does not seem to register that he has died and the entities I have set to be triggered upon his death do not fire off.

UPDATE:

To Hell with Nihilanth...I'm going to make a brush-based final boss.

AND...I took a 64X64 block, and put a 64X64 texture on it, and it fit perfectly with no resizing.

Alright, everything's running smoothly, except for that Nihilanth. Anyone know how I can get him to behave properly?

Ohhh! From my experience, monsters don't seem to go through clip brushes, though...Gonna' run some tests.

Next problems...Heh...

Nihilanth doesn't know how to stay put when he is told to, and his AI behaves erratically, what can I do to make him stop acting a fool?

Biggest issue:

trigger_teleports DO NOT want to shut shut off...they are constantly active, even with a master to seemingly control them.

Update: Monsters do not go through clip brushes.

Update 2: Monsters can trigger_once without having to touch the trigger area. The scientist is triggering the door from literally ten feet away...DAMN!

I have one last trick up my sleeve...I'm going to test the theory soon...but first:

Since level units are basically a pixel, wouldn't that make Half-Life maps tiny in real life?

Alright, ran some tests...EASIEST FIX:

Didn't bother with the doors, just decided to make a trigger_changelevel that was floating in the air, that was triggered by a trigger_once, which had a multisource that was only fired AFTER the mini boss was dead.

This just leaves me wondering why Valve didn't have a master field for the trigger_changelevel itself. Problem solved. Just one more big one to go. Nihilanth.

Yep! That's what I'm trying to avoid with this. I have it so that even if the player follows, by the time the scientist hits the other side of the door, it is triggered to close. If someone CAN make it through, then kudos!

Enjoy your life of cheating and exploiting, you creep!

By the way, does anyone know how to properly operate a Nihilanth?

Well, I hid him behind an exploding wall and it works finally. I have yet more to test out now - and I have a rather tricky door. And unfortunately, the instantaneous thing doesn't work...QQ

There's a part where I want a door to be triggered to be opened by a scientist, and then have it close behind him quickly, and then have that area not accessible to the player until after you have defeated the mini boss. The reason? There's a trigger_changelevel there, haha. I have that set up...I plan to have the initial door set to hold open only long enough for him to get through - and it can only be triggered to open by the scientist running up the ramp. I have a trigger_once set to "monsters" and "no clients"...so that should do the trick.

Next, I plan to make the door kill itself somehow and then make a new door that will be triggered after the mini boss is dead to open, and then stay open.

Testing it out now...I used a trigger_relay...The setup:

Scientist, is set to quickly run into trigger_once set to "Monsters", "No Clients". This triggers the door to open - the door is set to hold open "-1", until the scientist reaches a new trigger just beyond the threshold of the door, which closes it. When the door closes, it is set to fire a trigger_relay, which is set to kill the original door, and puts a func_wall_toggle in its place, which is sized and textured to look exactly like the func_door. When the boss is killed, the func_wall_toggle is then targeted by a multi_manager, rendering it passable and invisible, making the area accessible for the player to enter the trigger_changelevel finally. If this works, it should make it pretty tough for the player to follow the scientist and gain access to the trigger_changelevel before the proper time.

If trigger_changelevels had master fields, that would have made this 100X easier.

If this works, it might make a nice little tutorial.

Wouldn't it just refuse to compile? I know that's not the case, however, since I've added entities after that and they worked just fine. Just this teleport master is giving me grief. Well, anyway, no matter what I did, it wouldn't work.

So, is there a way I can trigger events to take place after a monster's death if it is spawned from a monstermaker?

UPDATE: After trying everything, I decided to make the monster bust through a wall after having been spawned at the beginning of the map, and the wall busting is supposed to then trigger an aiscripted sequence that makes the creature walk up to the location and beat barney, the sequence is set to then kill target barney and trigger large amounts of env_blood (Which is white, despite having been set to red), thus removing him from the game. All of that works except the sequence, because the monster refuses to follow that sequence, once again, standing there like a jackass, doing nothing. Is it normal for scripteds and aiscripteds to be buggy and never work?

In fact, the scripted sequences NEVER seem to work if they are set to be triggered...except for the ones that barney and the scientists are assigned, A lot of times, the sequences work only when they are not named, and I merely fill the target monster field. As soon as try to trigger them, they just refuse to work.

Also, could anyone explain in better detail what the:

WaitTillSeen, WaitForScript flags? It's treated like some dirty secret. Neither seem to do fuck all.

Maybe I remembered wrong!

All of these things have master fields and masters respectively. And each of these masters have unique names, and they are tied properly with their subjects. I have everything set up properly...it's just refusing to do what it's supposed to do. It seems like nothing is doing what it ought to in this map. Mind you, I've done locked doors and keys, working steam engines that require you to light the firebox before turning the wheel in order to start - I've been there and done that as far as multisources go.

My main gripe is that the wheel isn't locked in the first place.

My other main gripe is the fact that the trigger_teleport locks up indefinitely, despite its master being triggered.

So, I guess...is there something really fucked up here? Did I overtax the system somehow?

Current problems. Have a master that is supposed to be fired by a multimanager - this master keeps the monster from teleport too soon. I put the master in, it doesn't teleport at all...ever. I take it out, put a delay on the trigger...teleports when the map loads...

The setup:

At 150 seconds, a multimanager triggers the multisource, which is the master of the teleporter.

Does not happen ^

Why couldn't valve give the trigger_teleport a "Starts off" or "Starts on" flag?

UPDATE: My other multisource doesn't seem to be working correctly, either...It's supposed to be there to keep the player from turning a wheel before a certain point...and you can pretty much turn the wheel any time you choose. It's not working...despite all the names and fields being filled out properly...what the hell is going on here? I'm at wit's end.

They worked perfectly for what I was doing, but I needed a whole new multimanager to be triggered upon the monster's death that let the player advance to the next level. And, well - when the monsters are spawned in later, you don't have the same type of trigger conditions that you'd get with them being placed manually. If this doesn't work, maybe I could go with a global of some sort...

Ah, so trigger_teleport works on monster as well as players? Good deal!

Real quick, what's an effective way of teleporting monsters into a certain spot at a certain time and then having them walk to a location?

Decompilers basically just recreate the brushwork - they won't get you very far as far as entities are concerned. DiscoStu has the answer right there. It is simplicity itself!

Also, multi_managers are your best friend.

Okay, it works...but only halfway...The monstermaker never spawns another monster after the first is killed - when it is clearly set up to spawn infinitely.

UPDATE:

Working again, but only the first monsters spawned from the monstermaker run to position, the others just stay in one spot...uggh.

A possible fix would be:

Making what the monsters are hiding behind a func_illusionary with a clip brush around it...wouldn't the monsters be able to see through all of that? Please tell me yes...please god! Haha!

UPDATE 2:

It works! Now the monsters will simply just see the player upon spawning and attack, but the player will not see them in the act of spawning - such things are shameful to do in plain view of the public anyway.

Alright! I'm going to try it out!

Well, the way the architecture is set up, you push a table in front of the doorway and hide behind it. The table keeps the horde at bay, and your weapon can one hit all of them, plus you have a guy handing you armor and ammo from behind a counter. So, an infinite horde is necessary here. In They Hunger, there was a part where zombies spawned and walked immediately to a predestined point, I believe. Unless I remember incorrectly. It's in the third episode at a farm house near a lake.

Oh, I have an unlimited supply of monsters that come out. I'm trying to simulate waves encroaching upon a single building that you have to hold out in, until you can board up the doors and windows. It worked, but the monsters all had to be within view of the player...but that looked silly, so I had them spawning behind debris/wreckage in the street. I want the monsters to begin walking to the building as soon as they spawn.

I've since fixed the issue! I just made the wall explode and a func_push that pushes everyone right out the exploded hole...it's very frightening. I'm pretty much on the home stretch as far as the mod is concerned. I have a few little problems in the way at the moment.

1. Trying to get the monster that come from the monstermakers to walk to a scripted_sequence as soon as they've spawned. Kind of like a waypoint. Only the first monster to spawn does it - the rest sit there with their thumbs in their asses. Is there a better way to get monsters to automatically go to a certain point in the map after they spawn from a monstermaker?

2. env_beam won't appear, even though I've followed the env_beam tutorial to the letter.

3. Monsters absolutely refuse to shut up, even whan "gagged".

It wasn't the hole, it was the incline. He was afraid of tripping apparently! Clumsy demonic fucker. And yeah, it is dependent mostly on the nodes. He even goes through when the wall isn't busted!

Once again, thanks to TWHL, I have these level changes down finally. In unrelated news, I have a gargantua who is self-conscious regarding his weight. He blows a huge hole in the wall of a church, and then doesn't feel as though he can fit through. I'll be fiddling around with this for a while. probably just need to adjust the grade of the ramp in front of the church.

Hell yeah! It finally works! I realized that at the same time the camera is to return to the player view, the map change occurred. I thought that there MAY be a glitch where the player was still frozen. I did some adjusting, put a fade out in the map and viola. It worked.

Thank you, I understand what's going on better now. But the character is not moving still - the chapter title is also not working, and none of the triggers that are to be fired as soon as the player hits the map are working, either. Just stuck there. I'm thinking about uploading these two maps to the problem vault if that's okay. They refer to models, sounds and textures that are new, however. So those will be missing.

By the way, the map change was triggered by a multi_manager in the previous map. There is a camera that moves through the city streets and when it's done, a trigger_changelevel is triggered by the multi_manager. Anyway, here's what I've been running into:

Well, I seem to be starting in the same location where the trigger_changelevel was in the last map. It's weird, but it's true. What I thought was the origin, was not the origin at all. Thank you for clearing up that landmark quandary up for me, though! The transitions are working, but the player cannot move at all in the next map.

Update: Put in a trigger_changelevel into the second map and stuck it out of reach for the player, to do a one-way change. Now, the player is stuck inside a bed for no conceivable reason. How lovely.

Update 2: Now I'm facing the wrong direction and stuck floating in the air...lord help me. The landmarks are named appropriately and they are in the same spot relative to the player in both maps.

Oooo...also, I noticed that many of the brushes aren't fitting on the grid in one of the maps. something got messed up. Could that have any effect?

Update 3: I ppear to be coming into the second map in the same place as the info_player_start was in the previous map. Still, unable to move.

Hmmm, player seems to actually be spawning at the trigger_changelevel, rather than the landmark. Which I had to place outside of the area where the player can go so they wouldn't back into it.

Re-re-re-did everything and it works for some reason now. Sometimes you just gotta' tear everything out and do it all over again, I guess. And yep, there was definitely an origin brush stuck at the origin of the train. Now, to get those horses coupled with the carriages and those pedestrians moving...and the changelevel to trigger when it's all done. What's a good way to accomplish the changelevel? I was thinking having the multi_manager handle when that occurs, and then putting a landmark right where the player spawns in the next level.

Alright, yeah, it just doesn't work. I'm going to try adjusting the speed of the train and camera. perhaps the camera and train are going at the same speed and the camera is looking to the side because it's running neck and neck. Alright...tests have revealed that the train isn't moving at all for some reason.

Update: Re-did everything...and now the CAMERA isn't moving.

It's a cube, so the direction is a bit ambiguous. BUT, I do have it set to 0 as far as the angle is concerned. Basically, EVERYTHING is set up EXACTLY the way it is in the Trigger_camera tutorial. The only difference is the naming and the number of path corners.

Well, it now insists on looking at the side of the street...It STARTS in the direction it is supposed to, but turns anywhere but where it is supposed to.

Yeah, I have the target as a func_tracktrain. Which travels on a path.

I followed the trigger_camera tutorial here on TWHL.

Well, thanks, guys. I had planned on it...but my trigger_camera is still misbehaving. Any reason why it insists on turning around and going in reverse, even after I've tried turning it in every direction? I used a func_tracktrain so it would pivot properly.

The camera is facing in the wrong direction. It insists on it. I want it to face forward, it decides it wants to face backwards as it moves along. All of the directions have been set properly, but it still wants to look backwards and zoom out, rather than IN like I wish it to. Is that because it wants to face the player start?

I checked. no movement parameters, but I think I'll try that out. Yeah, disregard that huge block of text up there, everyone...nothing to see there...Phew. For the scripting, I decided to break everything up into unrelated chunks that give the illusion that they are related. Just a few odds and ends and I should have this sewed up.

Main question. How do I get Mr. Trask to run to a certain location or multiple locations and begin speaking?

Wait...i didn't think I'd be saying this, but...it's actually going much easier than I thought...

Yeah, let me retract that...I meant to say 99% satisfaction with the transitions. On a somewhat related note; I would like to know more about what the trigger_transitions really are, though...Moving on...

Alright, well, morale certainly got a boost in my camp lately. My one-person, first-ever-mod camp...My demo being featured on Moddb came out of nowhere and was a pleasant surprise, and it was also good to see Military Duty on there as well...

Now, the downside - I've got some big shoes to fill in order to live up to expectations. My mapping is almost complete and I'm not too worried about the scripting for later, but the first level is heavily scripted and is basically my roadblock to ultimately finishing this. I mentioned it in a fragmented way in previous posts...but I think I have to go into more depth with what I wish to do, and want to know if it's even entirely possible.

I've learned quite a bit since starting this project and I can't think you enough, guys and gals (Even though I've thanked you everywhere possible so far, haha.) I have been able to take what you've taught me and utilize it on my own many times, and have been able to overcome many challenges thus far. So here goes:(Super spoiler alert! Contains a synopsis of...a lot of the game.)

1st level:

Streets outside of "Trask dry goods and sundries". There's a camera that's slowly closing in on the window of Half-Rats bedroom while there's a narration by yours truly and the theme playing in the background. Everything is fine, there's some folks walking down the sidewalk, some cabs and coaches in the street...Then, once it's done, a level change is triggered.

2nd level:

A copy of the first level, only you are now controlling Half-Rats in his bedroom atop the general store. The level has faded in while you hear the shop owner's voice echoing in your head. You are told to get your revolver. You wake up, an ambient generic is triggered that is basically Half-Rats grumbling to alertness and questioning what the hell is going on. You're not sure what's up, but it sounds bad outside. (Optional) You steal a glance out the window and realize the streets are chaos.

You run and get your gun, and head downstairs to meet the shopkeep, Mr. Trask. (Who sounds a bit like Daniel Day-Lewis in "There will be Blood".)

You meet him at the foot of the stairs and he begins to tell you something's very wrong. Half-Rats replies by telling the shopkeep to run behind the counter and hand him ammunition. Once the shopkeep gets behind the counter, ammunition, armor and food (Health) will begin to spawn on top of the counter. Monsters of different types will begin to spawn in and get inside the general store from the street. Ammunition, health and armor will respawn after each pickup. A short while later, the shopkeep and half-rats will comment on the situation & monsters. Fast forward to a bit later: half-Rats will be instructed to go outside and grab timbers to cover the doors and windows.

For that part, I thought to have a func_wall toggle, and some timbers that disappear in the shed behind the store when you "pick them up". Kind of like that key issue I had. When you have the timbers and press the use key at the windows and door, the walls will toggle on in the form of boarded windows/door. Then, the shopkeep will instruct you to follow him. He will run into the storage room and tell you to break the floorboards and gain access to a tunnel. You reply and oblige.

END.

Now, you can see why I'm shaking in my boots...It sounds like a scripting nightmare when it's all written down. Is all of that even possible? I have a strong feeling that if it is, it's still something that would test the mettle of even the most experienced GS modders...