We know its possible to make any item respawn, but is it possible to make power-ups last longer or shorter than the usual 30 seconds? For example a biosuit that lasts a minute, or a quad damage that's only 20 seconds. Can this be accomplished? 

Finally got it to work. Apparently the "mdl" field is crucial whereas "model" doesn't have to be specified in this case. This is different than with point-based cloning which got me confused. In game, whatever is referenced in "mdl" is copied over to "model" as well, so I set it to "*1" (or rather the respective number of the model) instead of player.mdl; either seems to work as long as the modelindex is correct. However, the hack also required me to set "mins" and "maxs" for the entity to be drawn. The "think" function, on the other hand, seems only necessary if the entity is supposed to be used further, e.g. for a touch action.

Playing around with mins/max/size/origin made me curious as to whether it's possible to customizable trigger sizes from point entities like in Quoth...


Orl: I briefly tried it a couple of years ago. If it is possible, then at least it has to be more complicated than simply calling "powerup_touch". You can replicate the visual effects like that, but not the actual powers. 

@orl, yes increase the nextthink to respawn,
```
if ((self.classname == "item_artifact_invulnerability") ||
(self.classname == "item_artifact_invisibility"))
self.nextthink = time + 60*5;
else
self.nextthink = time + 60;

```
and for each pwoer up theres a *_finished timer

this is in items.qc 

Thread title "Teaching Old Progs.Dat New Tricks" means needs to work with original progs.dat, typically via entity/think/field abuse.

It's a shame you don't play single player maps, some like negke manage to do seemingly impossible things in maps that work in original Quake. 

Is there a way to place a static corpse in vanilla quake? Like a 3D model of a killed grunt or something? Is there a way to add custom entities? if so is there a place that has models of dead grunts or enemies?

Thanks 

You can do a corpse in a map. Do a func_illusionary and set the model (like progs/player.mdl")and frame number (like 169).

In vanilla quake there is no way to add custom entities. 

Interesting, thanks. I'll have a play around :) 

So i create a brush entity, set it as func_illusionary, and then add the keys "model" and "frame" ?

Like this?
http://imgur.com/7bNARAr 

Create a point entity, set the type to func_illusionary and yes change the "model" and "frame" (it *may* be "mdl" if "model" doesn't work).

Like if you were creating a monster. 

(There are differences between TrenchBroom and Jackhammer. In Jackhammer, you create a point entity and change the entity type. I would assume you can do that in TrenchBroom, but couldn't swear to it.) 

Ah yep it works! great. Is there a place that shows the various model names? like gibs for example? 

Open up pak1.pak in Pakscape 0.11 and look in the progs folder. To find out frames, you would have use QME to look at the different model frames.

https://www.quaddicted.com/files/tools/qme31.zip

Without opening a model in QME, it's gonna be hard to pick the frames for most models as all the monsters have dozens of frames.

You also may want to set "angle". 

amazing thanks, that should give me everything I need to make some nice corpses...

I tried setting angle as -1 and rotating the entity but it doesn't seem to change the angle it appears at. Say I want the player model to appear lying on its back facing upwards - shouldn't angle -1 do this? 

Also it seems like some models work and others dont. The soldier.mdl doesn't seem to work at all and the map wont compile.

Could this be something to do with quakespasm having less models in its pak0.pak and having them in a pak1.pak instead?

It seems to have the paks reversed compared the original quake paks 

Include at least one monster_army in your map.

Set yaw like normal to rotate the corpse.

-1 won't do anything since that is a special case for doors. Set the frame correctly and the model will be in one of its lying poses. You may want to check out the qc files to see which frames are death poses. 

ok cool, thanks. I tried adding a monster_army but now I seem to be having a problem of the entities disappearing when I select something else. Using TB2. None of the entities I've created are visible (I tried show all in the view) and the map is still failing to compile and citing lack of precache)

Here's the map file:
http://www.mediafire.com/file/hqd3m3bwq3qe61n/Outpost17.map

as soon as I deselect the func_illusionary entities they seem to disappear... 

"angle" is typically 0-359 like degrees for non-door/non-platform entities and operates as yaw (like pitch/yaw/roll, the 3 different x-y-z axis in Quake). 

func_illusionary was only really expected to work on inline models (ie: those submodels baked into the map). As a result it doesn't bother to precache the model (these are implicitly precached by the server).

The exact set of models that are already precached depends on the order that entities are loaded. So for instance you can use progs/soldier.mdl ONLY if there was a monster_army entity preceding it. the player's various models (player.mdl, eyes, backpacks, projectiles, gibs, etc) are precached inside the worldspawn entity's spawnfunction which is normally guaranteed to come first.

while there are engines that will automatically precache stuff on demand (ie: dp+fte+qss), these engines will generally warn, so its not something you want to do other than as a last resort, plus people hate engine dependencies.

func_illusionary forces angles to '0 0 0'. You cannot change the angles without qc.
If you want that then there's a more complex way using info_notnull, but figuring out the correct value for the modelindex field is a nightmare. 

ah ok cool. That should solve the caching problem. Not sure why the entities are disappearing though... 

Also how do I work out which frame to use from QME? QME gives me frame names like "deathc11", but the frame key needs a number. Is there a good way to work out what the frame number will be - I tried counting down from the top but it didn't give me the frame I was looking for. Say I want to use frame "deathc11" from the soldier.mdl - which number would I enter in the frame key? 

QME: Bottom Left corner when you select a frame, it says "Frame: 005 walk1". You have to click on the frame otherwise it doesn't say, haha. 

Ah yep, perfect. thanks! it works.

Now I just need to work out why the entities disappear after I select something else... seems very strange 

Maybe TB2 doesn't see func_illusionary in its fgd file as a point entity since ot is only defined as a brush entity...and deletes it! Protect you sillt users from yourself. Ha, no its probly just a bug...ask about it on the TB thread. 

as soon as I deselect the func_illusionary entities they seem to disappear...

Check the View menu upper left side of 3d window. Make sure you somehow didn't accidentally uncheck func_liiusiionary. 

So here's a conundrum: there's two map hacks I'd like to combine, namely the one for delayed/dynamic entity spawning (https://tomeofpreach.wordpress.com/2012/11/18/mid-map-entity-spawning/) and the one for rotating brush models in stock id1 (http://www.celephais.net/board/view_thread.php?id=37116&start=330&end=339). Both of them work properly on their own, but combining doesn't quite work as it means trying to turn an info_notnull into another info_notnull (to expand, the entity doesn't stay hidden until triggered like it should because it's already an info_notnull with the proper fields to act as a rotating, visible brush).

I even tried a number of hackier methods, like making a specific texture for the brush entity with the starting texture completely transparent and the secondary (+a) texture, then triggering the func_wall so it would change texture- no go. The original model will change but the 'cloned' rotating one doesn't copy it, and triggering the rotating model does nothing. Am I totally out of luck here?