Tutorial: Ladders Last edited 3 months ago2024-09-03 17:49:13 UTC

Download attachment

Two entities are needed to make a ladder. A func_wall and a func_ladder.

First build a brush the size and shape of the ladder you want. When building anything, always take into account the dimensions of the textures you are going to use for the brush. The standard ladder texture, {LADDER1, is a 32x32 texture. That means that if you apply it to a brush that is 32 units wide, then the texture will be represented correctly when you view it (it will be tiled for the length). You shouldn't have to play with the scale of the texture, although you might have to change the shift values to get it where you want it.

Once you have the brush correctly sized, create it (by pressing Enter). You'll want to texture it with whatever ladder texture you've chosen. Press Shift+A to go into Texture Application Mode. Use the set of Justify buttons to align the texture correctly, and remember to do the sides as well. Then make a copy of the brush by selecting it with the Shift key depressed and dragging the brush out to make another one.

Place one brush exactly in front of the other. Select the rear brush and click To Entity. This will make it a brush-based entity. Now you need to select which entity you want - func_wall in our case. The reason the rear one is a func_wall is because it will be the one you see, and you want it to have special render properties to make the transparent (blue) bits actually transparent. Set the func_wall's Render Mode to Solid and FX Amount to 255.

Now with the front brush. Click To Entity and select func_ladder. The only property the is with func_ladder is Name. It's not necessary to name your ladder for it to work, but you might want to killtarget it later on to stop it working (if you want your ladder to break or fall over or something). The texture on this brush doesn't matter, because it'll be invisible in the game. You may want to texture it in AAATrigger, just so you can identify it as an invisible brush. The best way to remember all this is to think of how it all works, The brush at the back will be the textured brush that you see (func_wall). The brush at the front will be the one you can climb but not see (func_ladder). As you can see from the example map, there are heaps of uses for the func_ladder entity. Dont be limited to ladders. I have used a func_ladder to make it possible to climb a ramp. Try the one on the left, then the one on the right. The hardest thing about getting this to work is getting the brush that you want as the ladder to be the right shape. A bit of vertex manipulation works wonders here. Check out the two tutorials on vertex manipulation here at TWHL. Also in the map is a ladder that is placed horizontally. You will find that it behaves like a normal ladder, but also allows you to climb left and right.

Toggleable ladders

Originally by UbOh

You can create toggleable ladders by changing func_door's content type (empty, water, lava, etc... func_water is basically a func_door with water contents). Adding the key skin with the value of -16 by turning smart edit off, you change the door's content to ladder. This makes a moving ladder (like how a rising water level works), but since doors weren't supposed to be used like that, the ladder behaves strangely in it's open position. You can create two very fast func_doors at where the open and closed positions of the ladder is supposed to be and make them open to the inside of a wall (or anywhere the player can't reach), then create a fake ladder by creating another func_door without the skin key to circumvent this problem.

You can also try changing the contents of a func_illusionary.
An example map for a toggleable ladder can be found here