Half-Life Timer - Concept and Functional Created 7 years ago2017-06-18 06:45:22 UTC by Zerotech

Ok I have worked on building a new timer that allows players to run speedrun maps competitively. So far its close to being complete.

All of the singleplayer functionality of my timer works, the only thing I really need to do is to add individual timers to work under multiplayer from either a listenserver or a dedicated server.

So far here is the progress I have done so far.

Release Candidate 6
Youtube Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzs_mj6Idig

Information

• Zone Based Activator
• .00 MS Display included with the MM:SS
• Reset Feature Included
• Clean Digital Display
• Low Entity Count

To be added - Individual player timers for each connected player, where a player activating the timer has no influence towards the other players connected in a server.

There are 226 Point Entities and 50 Texture Entities which is less than 300 therefore map making for speedruns is more enjoyable due to the low entity count and low memory usage with the triggers.

Release Candidate 6 Changelog

• Changed the display timer that t spawn it will display all zero's
• Fixed : Timing issue while running on a dedicated server
• Marked the Reset marker with a border so you know exactly where the reset zone is and the start zones are
• Gap between trigger_multiples for start/reset zones have widened to ensure that the triggers do not overlap or override the start/reset sequence

Changelog (18/07/2017)

• at spawn the timer will display all zero's
• timer now recycles and repeats indefinitely back to zero and recycles again once 59:59:99 has passed
• changed the spawn area to include a border to help distinguish the start/spawn areas
• timer issues fixed on a dedicated server

Changelog (23/11/2016)

• Cleaned up a few unwanted entities
• Renamed a few variable triggers (the timer is no longer compatible with button activated timers from kreedz)
• Included a custom amxmodx timer with both the source code and a working plugin. However there is an issue with amxmodx with the delays starting the timer.
• See this link for the problem - http://www.bailopan.net/blog/?p=27
• All it needs from the devs from amxmodx is to change the value of the timer delay which you will require the source code of amxmodx and alter it to run the timer 100% accurate.

Issues

• If you play the map running other than 100fps the timer will desync and will cause the timer to tick faster/slower if any fps changes are done manually during playing the map.

It is recommended that the timer should be played at 100fps for the best results and to ensure 100% accuracy.

A workaround is on it's way to resolve timing issues in regards to speedruns for maps that are NOT designed for 100fps gameplay which is an issue that I am attempting to resolve.

• Mainly designed for singleplayer speedruns, work on getting multiplayer timers to work will take time, if its possible to achieve.

Download Link:
http://gamebanana.com/maps/192990

I wonder, though, why 100fps? I know that physics in Quake-engine derivatives are framerate-dependent, but this (probably) doesn't use that. I'm confused. (my laptop can't even get to 70fps on standard HL maps. Of course, speedrunning isn't something I'll ever do, so I'm not worried xD)

Edit:
*facepalm
I didn't read it slowly enough, but I could've assumed that the timer desyncs.

That is correct, since the Half-Life 1 Engine's behaviour is more or less like a clock, any value other than 100 fps will cause the timer to tick faster or slower depending on the fps used in game.

On the flip side, it does however act as a way to prevent cheating.

I'm assuming that the usual speedrun rule of only playing the vanilla version of the game applies? Otherwise you can use a mod to implement a timer.

It can also work with all half-life mods, not just half-life itself.

So any mod will work fine, it's deemed to be a universal timer.

But if one decides to put this into a mod, one could easily code some timer entities etc. (trigger_timer, I'm looking at you xD)
But then, there are people who don't know how to code (like me, although I have the potential of learning it), so it's a nice thing that it's a universal timer.