Why can't bob climb on clip?

nrby · April 2002

Is there any specific reason for this? Understandably you dont want him walking on sky, but thats autoclipped with ZHLT anyway. Allowing bob to climb on a clipped texture wouldn't break any hulls or cause any problems with visual "reality" as long as its used correctly.

Just curious to know if its a coding restriction or something more specific to the engine limitation.

Flayra · April 2002

I don't think clip textures are included in the predicted tracelines that are used for wallclimbing, simple as that. I'm not sure how hard it would be to make this work, but I don't think it's trivial.

nrby · April 2002

If its possible to implement that for future build that would help the clipnode limits a lot, especially since you could clip things like pipes etc, small 1-4 unit detail that cant be made to entity

Relic25 · April 2002

hmmm.. I'm split on this issue. I know how much clip brushes can help clipnode usage, but I like that you can make surfaces or areas unclimbable to the level 1 if needed. I guess this is pretty rare though. For instance, I have one that prevents players from climbing/flying into the refiner furnace. If wallwalkers could climb on clips, it would look funny to see them walking on an invisible vertical barrier. Ach, that's pretty trivial though in the larger scheme of things.

LPC · April 2002

can't you just make it so that the mapper can choose if the clip brush is <s>walkable</s> climbable or not?

Merkaba · April 2002

if its imperetive that you need a clip which bob can walk on, you can make an invisible func_wall instead.

I wouldn't worry too much about clipping off complex shapes for bob to walk on at the moment though, as I think bob movement will be easier in the near future anyhow, and he won't be falling off all the time.

nrby · April 2002

only problem with that is func_walls add to entity limits and are impractical to form large or complex things

KungFuSquirrel · April 2002

What about adding another clip texture... Perhaps dubbed "bobclip" or something? I'm sure we could get Merl to add support for it in his build of the compile tools... then, theoretically, the bobclip texture could be added to the wallclimbing tracelines (or whatever those are, heh... just quoting Flayra, don't really know exactly what I'm talking about, I'll admit that much)... So then there would be two identically functioning textures, except bob could climb on one and not the other.

All theoretical, of course, but perhaps worth checking on the feasibility?

On that note, I'm going to look at n@rby's new avatar, scream, and run away.

*scream*

(insert squirrelish footsteps scurrying off)

Yamazaki · April 2002

Merl could easily add in a new texture that acts like CLIP, but because it isn't named CLIP it could still be used for wallclimbing. CSG/BSP obviously do checks for the name 'CLIP' when it checks for culling and clipping, so having it check for another texture name ('NSCLIP'?) would be simple enough to add. It would end up like using a NULL worldbrush, except without the culling of the surfaces hidden by the NULL brush.

Tzarcon · April 2002

I agree, we need some way to allow bob to walk on clipbrushes. Only too many times have I seen/created cielings with some nice detail in them, but then bob comes along and tries crawling on the cieling... impossible
SO we need some way to flatten it out, idealy with a 'NSCLIP' or something along those lines

Merl · April 2002

KFS Directed my attention toward this thread.

The trouble with making a custom texture that creates clipnodes and clipnodes only is that it is supposed to be stripped when the compile tools produce the BSP, and hence you dont end up with any CLIP nor BOBCLIP textures when the bsp is handled by Half-Life and the NS code.

In fact, if I were to implement a NSBOB texture that produces clipnodes and strips itself so that no polygons are left, it would be exactly the same as the clip texture to start with. Hence, I cant see how the engine will recognise a difference.

Now, unless Flayra or some other NS coder can tell me that they can pick up what texture produced what clipplane in Half-Life, an extra clip texture wont be of much use. I can certainly give it a go if you want, though. When I get a spare moment, ill whip up an nsbob texture and add functionality in, and ill do some testing myself (out of curiosity than anything).

Black_Wolf · April 2002

hmmm, ive been thinking about this a lot too, considering my clipnodes are climbing fasterthan my planes =/ it would be nice to have a clip brush we could use, but it may not be possible with the half-life engine (and the trace lines that Flayra was talking about).

Why can't bob climb on clip?

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