fyi, figured out how to do what I wanted... MOVETYPE_PUSH is required for a train... but you can bypass the crash if you killtarget the train the moment the enemy you telefrag dies (shub removes the train as well as part of her death functions) 

Here's a map hack article that's been sitting half-finished for months. It's a general article on how to build a trigger_ type entity with very little restriction on the keys you can set.

http://tomeofpreach.wordpress.com/2013/05/13/build-your-own-trigger/

I think most of the regulars who read this thread will know this trick, but hopefully it's a good reference for newer mappers - and there might be some new ideas in the concrete examples of the trick. 

I didn't know that trick, cool! 

 

Could you clarify, are you looking for a hack which fills all the player's ammunition type (easy to accomplish with backpack_touch), or are you trying to increase the maximum ammo the player can carry (almost certainly impossible)? 

 

You'll want to write a short mod to do that then, it's outside what hacks will do for you. Also, be warned that not all engines can display ammo counts above 255 properly, which means the scope for expanding nail ammo is limited. 

can you dynamically change the gravity values?
or set a trigger to change a mobs .target value? 

I think one of the expansion packs has a way to do this but it doesn't work in coop 

You pretty much can't change the gravity with stock quake - there's a way to change it exactly once with a hack if you don't mind that you can't have an exit in your map. It's very common in mods though.

Not sure exactly what you're asking in that second question - you literally want to change the string stored in the target field? It might be better to do what you want with logic gates triggered by the monster instead. 

global sv_gravity cvar, if you have a trigger or some such to issue localcmds.
or .gravity field, if you have a trigger to apply that field to entities within its boundaries.

I've no idea how to utilise either of those without a mod to do it for you.

in some engines (ie: ones that always register custom fields, ie: fte+dp), you can override .gravity on a per-entity basis by just setting the gravity field. Of course, as this doesn't apply to players, projectiles, or movetype_step (unless you somehow manage to get them airborne), all it can really be used for is to confuse the fiend+dog+spawn attack code. Which might be amusing. 

 

the article text won't show up. 

stupid mediawiki can't handle the latest version of some library which I forgot to pin when I updated earlier. will be fixed tomorrow. 

Don't screw it up again... 

Earlier this morning, onetruepurple mentioned an idea for monsters following the player while he had the Ring of Invisibility. I didn't think it possible, but he mentioned that it was done in E4M1.

So I decompiled the map and discovered a trick that I didn't know about and think it's cool enough to share.

It's very simple, if you make a monster target a path_corner, and that path_corner has no further targets, Quake decides that that monster's next movetarget should be entity 1... which just happens to be player 1.

Here's a .bsp and .map showing this effect... don't shoot!
http://quaketastic.com/files/misc/followtest.zip 

I have no idea WHY that works.

self.goalentity = self.movetarget = find (world, targetname, other.target);

Is the relevant bit here, where self is the monster, and other is the path_corner... but why it decides on entity 1 when other.target is empty... it is a mystery? 

Find() must just return 1 if some of the values it's passed aren't valid? 

I wanted monsters to reach the end of their path and just stay there, and so left the target field blank.

But the same happened - they turned and followed the player, ruining the gameplay I was going for.

This is because their movetogoal becomes "" and the player is the last entity added to the server, with that exact name, aka string_null.

I fixed it by giving the path_corners where I wanted monsters to stop a broken target.

Props to Preach for pointing this out. 

wait is set to -1 on path_corners?
Doesn�t this stop the pathing? 

It does odd things instead, depending if its func_train or a monster_whatever.

Just for RRP guys;

The path code in RRP is more advanced as well; I ported the advanced pathing from extras r4 so there are more control entities for trains, they can be reversed, paused and so on. Wait -1 will teleport a train from one point to another and can be set per path_corner. Additionally, giving a path_corner an event key will trigger whatever targetname it's pointed at, when the train reaches that path_corner.  

11:11:00 | <+Daz> gomap scampsp2! But not idbase kthx
11:11:20 | <+Daz> ikbase!
11:11:25 | <@onetruepurple> and not fucking dapakbase

5/5 bretty good, could use more Tarbabies though 

The reason is because other.target = "".

Find() always starts at the first entity in the list (1, the player).

It checks if the entity's targetname == "" which it does (because players don't use targetnames), so it returns the player. 

if you gave the player a non-empty targetname then the monster would find a different entity to walk towards... 

Thanks for clarifying the reason