Problem with making ladders Created 9 years ago2015-03-28 19:31:49 UTC by hardcore_gamer

So I looked at the tutorial and I was able to create a working ladder. But for some reason I can't make the ladder look transparent, so the black parts still continue to exist. It looks ugly. What exactly do I need to do in order to fix this?

I am mapping for the original half-life by the way.

You need to use a special texture and a special brush entity parameter.

The texture's name must start with "{" and have blue parts in it. The blue parts will be transparent in game.
Then, the brush must be made into a func_wall, have it's rendermode keyvalue set to solid, and it's render ammount set to 255.

The above is only partially correct. It doesn't matter what colour the transparent parts are, only that the colour is the 255th in the colour table. Pure blue just happens to be used the most, but its RGB values don't matter.

The rest is good. The texture's name must start with { and the brush must be set to an entity whose render mode is solid and render amount is 255. Any entity will do, not just func_walls (any entity that has render mode/render amount values, to be precise). Func_wall tends to be the entity of choice for ladders, though.

You collide with the func_ladder entity though so I recommend making the ladder detail a func_illusionary to save clipnodes.

but its RGB values don't matter

stu is correct, but to expand on his note, RGB values of 255, 0, 0 are the most common.

Open the palette in WALLY and make sure the last color index is your transparent color.

You collide with the func_ladder entity

I never really understood this. You collide with it yet it's invisible. It would make more sense to me if:
1) If solid, but visible, you could make the ladder-textured brush a func_ladder and be done with it.
2) Invisible and not solid, it could be like an area trigger where if you're in it, you climb up any vertical surfaces, like the ladder-textured brush you're standing in front of.

When I was just getting started in the world of mapping, I first assumed (1). Noticing it was invisible after compiling, I assumed (2), and immediately imagined all sorts of dynamic ladder contraptions involving func_doors moving into the right place.

Turns out it was neither. It would have been awesome to have movable ladders, though.

Spirit?

@DiscoStu Actually, you're both right and wrong. The color must be the 255th (last) color in the palette and pure blue. I tried making a tree texture before, and then I filled up with blue color (rgb value: 0 0 255). But that didn't work. Then I looked at some of the official texures, and found that the blue color was allways last. I moved it lastly, and it didn't work. Then I had a look at the color I used, and it seemed like the hexadecimal value was incorrect. The RGB values was still 0 0 255, but the hexadecimal value was something like 0000fe. So, it's important that the last color in the palette is pure blue with a hexadecimal value of 0000ff.

I really wish you wouldn't start posts that are entirely wrong with the word "actually".

Made quick test texture, and a quick test map to showcase. Texture used Wally's red palette, so no blue colours in there. It's simply the 255th colour is the transparent one, it doesn't matter what it is.Stop spreading misinformation.

Oh, then excuse me, but tell me why it didn't work when I wasn't using pure blue?

Prehaps you made some other error.

I would test further, but I'm in no rush. I don't make textures, generally.

I truly don't understand how at least half of your posts on this site are stubbornly telling people they're wrong about something you are even more wrong.

I however have much fun watching Jessie prove you are wrong every single time.

Everyone is different, aren't they? That's just how I am. Or am I wrong about it?

It's not about you. I see it as protecting the likes of hardcore_gamer from ignorance. Novice (and adept) mappers find their information in places like this; we, as the experienced and/or informed, have a responsibility to make sure they get the right information.
Don't get me wrong, it's great that you're willing to help people out when they come asking questions. It's just that giving out misinformation is more damaging than not answering at all.

Relax guys, we're here to help, not argue. I just tested a new texture and found the last color doesn't HAVE to be blue.

Steps i took:
1- Make texture
2- Open in wally
3- Change last color index to pink
4- Paint bucket the transparent areas with pink
5- Re Mip
6- SaveLet me point out however, that when i made the texture in paint.net, i used a single orange color initially.
When imported to wally, there were 5 different shades of orange. Only one of them was the last color index, and there were 4 shades hInging around the middle of the pallette (which i then removed). When i paint-bucketed over the orange spots with pink, i found some rouge orange pixels faffing about that i then penciled over. I would recommend this method to ENSURE you have the actual last index.

Hmm... But when I tried, it didn't work when I wasn't using perfect blue... Any reasons for that?

Not sure if this is was your problem, but for it to work I'm fairly certain it also has to be prefixed with { - I assumed it was just a convention when I was making my tower map (blame poor memory on that) and it didn't work, until I renamed it.

I can also confirm any colour will work, since I've seen and worked with plenty of custom texture sets that used pink, green, etc as a marker for 255.

@Dr. 'Range: Are you certain that what you originally had coloring the texture was the 255th color? Like, absolutely certain? Because as we've established, either it wasn't, or you didn't have a {, or you didn't set up the entity right. Them's all that could stop it short of some unknown variable none of us are aware of, and if that's the case, unless you can replicate the problem, there's not much to work off of.
It'd be a lot easier if you'd just try again, knowing what you know now.

we're here to help, not argue

We can do both.

Yeah but arguing without making any progress is a waste of time
Video tutorial coming soon HERE - CLICKY because I'm bored.