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Getting xen_plantlight's sprite to appear Created 7 months ago2023-10-01 22:24:58 UTC by Mota Mota

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Created 7 months ago2023-10-01 22:24:58 UTC by Mota Mota

Mota
Mota
Posted 7 months ago2023-10-01 22:24:58 UTC Post #347898
You know that little glow sprite at the end of a xen light stalk? From what I gather, it's supposed to appear when you set its tranparency and color in a xen_plantlight's FX Amount and FX Color render attributes. So I did that, but the sprite didn't show up.
I looked into the map sources for the Xen chapters and couldn't find any difference between valve's plantlights and mine. Then I visited the stalks in-game and found something odd - most of the stalks have their sprites as expected but some do not.
*c4a1* - The nearest one on the ceiling is missing its spritec4a1 - The nearest one on the ceiling is missing its sprite
*c4a1* - Same plants, reverse anglec4a1 - Same plants, reverse angle
*c4a1b* - All stalks in this map have sprites except for the ones near the exit teleporterc4a1b - All stalks in this map have sprites except for the ones near the exit teleporter
I made a test map to see what could cause the sprite to disappear (apart from setting FX amount to 0) but came up empty. Neither rotation nor distance from map origin seem to affect it. What am I missing? Is this a known bug?
Mota Mota
xawari
xawari
Posted 7 months ago2023-10-02 18:44:40 UTC Post #347904
What a coincidence! I was trying to fix this bug in XDM for hours, only to realize it was a HL bug!
You may notice that inside the portal room one of the plant's glow shows up near the butterfly cage and toggles on/off accordingly. I tried lots of tricks, traced the s2c code, tried fixing client code, but nothing worked! Mainly due to lack of time I had to abandon that. So, in conclusion, it's not a trivial fix. IMHO.
xawari xawari
Mota
Mota
Posted 7 months ago2023-10-02 19:36:32 UTC Post #347907
Ah, so it was a bug after all! Maybe it's time I tried using the Updated SDK... I just found out about this issue, if the problem is related to that then Updated should have fixed it. I'll try to finish my map(s) first though.

EDIT: For the record, I revisited the c4a1 portal room, and there they are - I remember now that I did these sprites in game before, I even looked for them in the map source, and thought it was weird when I couldn't find them...
About 5 plantlight sprites crowded in the same spotAbout 5 plantlight sprites crowded in the same spot
And, as it turns out, the spot they appear in is the world origin, or next to it.
scientist/asexpected.wavscientist/asexpected.wav
The oddest thing is how this bug seems to not place the sprites exactly at the origin. In my map the plantlight sprite isn't there (probably at a random out-of-bounds location next to it instead), but random sparks do appear at the exact spot sometimes. Well, at least it's fixed in Updated.
Mota Mota
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