game_text (Half-Life) Last edited 15 years ago2009-02-26 13:17:37 UTC

Point Entity

This entity is used to display messages on-screen. It is used instead of env_message because it doesn't need to a file full of message strings to be distributed with the map.

Attributes

• Name (targetname) - Property used to identify entities.
• Target (target) - When an entity is activated, it triggers the entity with the name specified by Target.
• Master (master) - The name of a multisource (or game_team_master) entity. A master must usually be active in order for the entity to work. Thus they act almost like an on/off switch, in their simplest form, and like an AND gate in the case of the multisource.
• Message Text (message) - The text to be displayed.
• X (0 - 1.0 = left to right, -1 = center) (x) - X position of text (across screen).
• Y (0 - 1.0 = top to bottom, -1 = center) (y) - Y position of text (up/down screen).
• Text Effect (effect) - Effect to apply to the text (0 = Fade In/Out, 1 = Credits, 2 = Scan Out).
• Color1 (color) - The main colour.
• Color2 (color2) - The highlight colour.
• Fade in Time (or character scan time) (fadein) - Time taken to fade in each character.
• Fade Out Time (fadeout) - Time taken to fade out message.
• Hold Time (holdtime) - Length of time to hold message on screen after fading in.
• Scan time (scan effect only) (fxtime) - The amount of time the highlight lags behind the leading edge of the text.
• Text Channel (channel) - Any of four channels can be used by this entity. If while one channel is being used another entity on the same channel is triggered, the old text will be cleared from the screen.

Flags

• All Players (1) - Show the text to all players. If not set, only the player who activated the game_text will see the message.

Inputs

Outputs

Notes

• You are limited to a maximum message length of 127 characters. Exceeding this can crash HL.

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Line breaks can be added with by inserting a \n after each sentence where you want a new line. (the "newline" symbol should appear as one backslash followed by an n. Something in text formatting is buggering and adding an extra backslash)
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X, y, effect, color, color2, fadein, fadeout and fxtime are the same as those found in titles.txt.
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The easiest way to get a text-based message at the start of your level, like the Black Mesa one from HL, is to add a trigger_auto to the level and set it's target to the name of your game_text. You might have to add a delay to the trigger, depending on wether you fade the screen in or not, but either way when the game starts your text will be displayed.
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For some reason, Valve saw fit to remove this entity from Team Fortress Classic.