Doors and Power Nodes

McGlaspie

<div class="IPBDescription">How much control do we have?</div>I've recently found myself wanting to get back into mapping and have a few ideas to start with; however, I find myself wanting to do a few things that I don't know if we can/should based on the current Power Grid.

So, how much control do us mappers have over the power grid? Can we have nodes that start destroyed? Should we be able to do that? Are doors going to be effected by the loss of power? Can we force a door to be "locked" until power is restored?

Questions, questions.

Anyone have any insight on these questions?

EDIT: Are there any plans to have "brush based" entities like Source engine (and others) do? It would be really easy for mappers to create new Doors and other contraptions if there was.

SgtBarlow

<b>Power nodes</b>
Would be nice to have the point to start destroyed so I will indeed ask for that option.

<b>Doors</b>
Asking about doors.

<b>BBE's</b>
Unlikely because of the nature of the brush planes and the need to have a sealed area to check inside of. If there is a gap then there is complications...

Feha

I think it is possible, because for example the team joining entity is a scaleable block (that is a brush based entity huh), and uses collision to run its lua code (making the size actually matter).

Might be wrong though.

McGlaspie

Thanks Sgt Barlow!

@Feha: While I kind of agree with you, the thing to keep in mind is Doors or other machines would move based on X rules. The Team join is just a static volume. So, I think brush based entities would be "fighting" the engine.


To explain why I asked the questions, I'd like to make a more dramatic game start for Marines. I basically envisioned a room that had a large door at the other end which wouldn't open until power is restored. This same type of mechanism could be applied in many different ways.

Mr. Epic

Those would be some great features!

Thaldarin

<!--quoteo(post=1814124:date=Dec 7 2010, 02:30 PM:name=SgtBarlow)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (SgtBarlow @ Dec 7 2010, 02:30 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1814124"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--><b>Power nodes</b>
Would be nice to have the point to start destroyed so I will indeed ask for that option.

<b>Doors</b>
Asking about doors.

<b>BBE's</b>
Unlikely because of the nature of the brush planes and the need to have a sealed area to check inside of. If there is a gap then there is complications...<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

Prop based entity, a cube. It's resizable. Problem solved?

McGlaspie

@Thaldarin: A single prop entity wouldn't be enough for some of the things I've been thinking about. Although, if you could create a new entity that would activate/fire other entities when it's in an Open/Closed (think On Open, On Close type events) then you could makes some really interesting environment mechanisms. For a large door (assuming it's hooked into the PG) then yes, a simple prop entity would do the trick.

Btw, a possible complication with hooking doors into the PG would be aliens inadvertently cutting themselves off from sections of the map until power is restored. They would have to have someone keep a door open while a Power Node is destroyed, so the door remains open when it is powered down. I'm sure there are ways around this, but I think you can understand my point. From what I understand DI will be able to break doors down, but who knows when it will make an appearance.

On the note of hooking entities into the PG, I'd like to make/have functional animated machinery that has an on/off state that's toggled by the PG. You could make almost any animated model/entity "power down/up" by slowing the rate at which an animation is played. This way we wouldn't need extra animations (in memory data) to achieve some really cool and dramatic effects.

Long story short, I want to make the environment affected even more by the PG. When DI makes it in, I'd like to do the same for it as well.

Anyways, I could ramble about this for hours. I'm just thinking out loud.

Mr. Epic

While we're at it, how about giving lights and other things (like textured surfaces) an option to be on/off when the power dies or to reverse the state? This would let us use plain old textured geometry to indicate power level, turn "screens" on/off, and for lights it would let us have more control over powered lighting conditions.

Insane

<!--quoteo(post=1814144:date=Dec 7 2010, 03:48 PM:name=Feha)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Feha @ Dec 7 2010, 03:48 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1814144"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I think it is possible, because for example the team joining entity is a scaleable block (that is a brush based entity huh), and uses collision to run its lua code (making the size actually matter).

Might be wrong though.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

Not quite - the Spark engine uses faces rather than brushes, so that entity uses a prop to define its volume. Something like that could be used as a trigger volume for something like an event or door (after all, it's a trigger for a "join team" event), but I don't know how that would tie into being able to manipulate a door made of world geometry.

Loey

<!--quoteo(post=1814232:date=Dec 8 2010, 11:44 AM:name=McGlaspie)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (McGlaspie @ Dec 8 2010, 11:44 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1814232"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->@Thaldarin: A single prop entity wouldn't be enough for some of the things I've been thinking about. Although, if you could create a new entity that would activate/fire other entities when it's in an Open/Closed (think On Open, On Close type events) then you could makes some really interesting environment mechanisms. For a large door (assuming it's hooked into the PG) then yes, a simple prop entity would do the trick.

Btw, a possible complication with hooking doors into the PG would be aliens inadvertently cutting themselves off from sections of the map until power is restored. They would have to have someone keep a door open while a Power Node is destroyed, so the door remains open when it is powered down. I'm sure there are ways around this, but I think you can understand my point. From what I understand DI will be able to break doors down, but who knows when it will make an appearance.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
have vents for them to make their exit

Feha

<!--quoteo(post=1814335:date=Dec 8 2010, 01:21 PM:name=Insane)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Insane @ Dec 8 2010, 01:21 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1814335"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Not quite - the Spark engine uses faces rather than brushes, so that entity uses a prop to define its volume. Something like that could be used as a trigger volume for something like an event or door (after all, it's a trigger for a "join team" event), but I don't know how that would tie into being able to manipulate a door made of world geometry.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

I figured that a brush entity isnt needed to be world geometry, but would work just as well as a cubic entity with a certain model. That is what hammer makes brushes you made into entities, right? Like when i make a brush, texture it invisible and set it to be a trigger_hurt.
Might be wrong though, or maybe misunderstood exactly what some terms mean :P.

Either way, it would get the same result I guess. For example a door would be a moving_prop (or whatver it would be named) that moves between 2 positions when triggered.
Which makes me wonder, can mappers link entitys yet (i assume its planned)? And how to make your custom entities availible in map editor?

SgtBarlow

Half-life and source both work with cubes that can never ever have a hole inside them, they are self contained and don't share cordiantes they can never become welded without user specification.
NS2's world planes flexability makes it difficult to use them as effective and reliable volumes without complications when a volume pr shape is not selaed or formed properly by the mapper.

Thats why Brian made entity based volumes that uses it's own cube that we can scale for our triggers because the cube can never be broken as a result of human error.