Thanks. Will check it out. 

Hey Preach, I'm a really good friend of Shamblernaut and a lot of the guys at the Quake speedrunning scene/Discord. I've been making Kaizo (insanely hard and novel) maps for an episode. I'm starting the 6th map and wanted it's theme to be, stealth. Now sure invis rings are great for this, but I want parts of the map to require you to dodge pathcorner monsters without invisibility using swift movement and other tricks. However, I want it so that if 1 monster is aggro'd (by seeing you, you shooting them, etc.) that ALL specified monsters in a group/unit are aggro'd as well immediately. Not just upon said monster's death. I've tried all manner of map hacks and the closest I got was using the touch function in conjunction with SUB_UseTargets. But obviously that won't suffice. I want a group of monsters to aggro as one unit, REGARDLESS Of line of sight if any of them are aggro'd. Is this at all possible? Thank you so much in advance. <3 

Hm well it could be doable but you might need to design your map in a specific way. My first instinct would be to have the monster set up to where its path comes near several triggers or maybe is even completely bordered by triggers, said triggers would be what aggros the other monsters if one spots you and deviates from its path, now the obvious problem with that is that the player could trigger it too, im not sure if setting the owner to 1 (the entity number of the player in SP games) would help prevent the player from triggering it or not since I haven't tried that before but I guess its worth a try? 

Just noticed in the id QC, if you "use" a func_wall it toggles its animated texture sequence.

I can't recall ever seeing this in action in the original maps - was it ever used? 

I don't think so, but it's relatively well-known and is listed in most documentation you can find online. Sort of the opposite scenario of something like directional trigger volumes, which are used in the start map but rarely mentioned anywhere when looking for information. 

directional trigger volumes

Holy shit i'd forgotten about those.

Seems we need some kind of resource of "things quake is designed to do but no-one knows about". Sort of the slightly more straight-edge, but still cool, cousin of this thread. 

Kinn said:
Just noticed in the id QC, if you "use" a func_wall it toggles its animated texture sequence.

This is actually surprisingly annoying from the point of view of hacks, because it means you can't set the use function on a func_wall in a hack - in fact it's nearly impossible to set a custom use function on any solid brush entity. It is used in the high framerate animation hack though, so not a complete loss.

FODDER said:
...However, I want it so that if 1 monster is aggro'd (by seeing you, you shooting them, etc.) that ALL specified monsters in a group/unit are aggro'd as well immediately...

I've come up with a new hack, that's pretty interesting, but doesn't quite do what you want yet. I think it would suffice for static monsters, but would be nearly impossible to use for patrolling monsters without some false positives (which is of course the worst possible thing imaginable for stealth gameplay).

I'll keep playing with it a while to see if I can work around that somehow. If not, I'll write up what I found and share it anyway. I think the functions which the hack uses are the ones you'd need to modify the QC to get the desired effect - so it might prove useful in a roundabout manner anyway. 

Here's the idea I came up with over the weekend - Security Cameras!

https://tomeofpreach.wordpress.com/2019/01/01/security-cameras/

You can train a security camera on a static monster and it'll always notice if that monster has been alerted (with a bit of fiddling you can also ensure that it never sets off by itself, even if the monster is killed under its nose). The problem is that this doesn't generalise to a moving monster, so it doesn't quite do what FODDER was after. Still, I think it's a pretty cool idea in its own right. 

I'm trying to change some things about a the swinging hook mod that require it to be recompiled. I can get the code to compile and have no problems when changing the game over to the mod. When I try to load a map or start a new game VkQuake gives the error:

Host_Error: progs.dat system vars have been modified, progdefs.h is out of date

I'm new to Quake C so any help would be nice.
If its helpful this is the progs.src

./progs.dat

defs.qc
subs.qc
combat.qc
items.qc
hook.qc
weapons.qc
world.qc
client.qc
spectate.qc
player.qc
doors.qc
buttons.qc
triggers.qc
plats.qc
misc.qc
server.qc 

I am pretty new to this myself but it's very important to not change certain things in defs.qc.

If you change anything above line 220 (give or take) you are asking for trouble. The rule of thumb is don't change anything above

//================================================
void end_sys_fields; // flag for structure dumping
//================================================

Not sure if this is your issue but good info nevertheless. 

new to QuakeC, and yet your progs.src is lacking monsters?
Sounds like you're trying to compile a QuakeWorld mod instead of a (Net)Quake one.
The two are similar but mutually incompatible (primarily but not exclusively due to changes above end_sys_fields).

If you truely want to run a QuakeWorld mod then use a QuakeWorld engine (eg: FTE, ezQuake, or MVDSV). (Net)Quake engines like VkQuake, QuakeSpasm, or even DarkPlaces cannot run QuakeWorld gamecode. 

Its probably the quakeworld thing since I have not touched defs.qc. I'll try that, thanks. 

Thanks for the help. It works now. 

I appreciate that new map hack idea a lot Preach <3 even if it isn't exactly/fully what I needed (since I had ideas for patrolling monsters) I still will definitely look into it. I'm putting off my Metal Gear Solid map for now until my 2nd Kaizo Quake episode now since, as you can imagine after making this hack, getting what I want is virtually impossible in vanilla Quake sadly. :[ 

I'm needing a way to control a mdl with an entity. So when I target it it will start frame group 2 and it's series of animation. I tried using an info_notnull, and I must have gotten close but the server shutdown with non bsp model error. 

Hi Aberrant. I think there's little chance of that being possible with a map hack. I'm unaware of any hack in vanilla quake that allows inclusion of a custom model the way that misc_model entities allow in some mods.

Quoth's equivalent does come with the ability to toggle between two framegroups, but you need to set the model up so that those two framegroups are frame 0 and frame 1. See full details at
https://tomeofpreach.wordpress.com/quoth/tutorial/mapobject_custom/ 

If my guess is correct, Aberrant isn't looking to load totally custom models, but to use existing ingame models and animate them when activated; e.g. using an info_notnull to display a monster's model, and then make the 'fake monster' display one of its animations (run, shoot, die, etc) when the notnull is triggered by something else. 

Does QuakeSpasm, QSS, FTEQW or Darkplaces support custom (QC-defined) interpolation timing for MDL frame animations?

Makaqu supports this through self.frame_interval, but I'm not aware of any hardware-accelerated engine that does. 

Fitzquake variants have it in the protocol but it’s not directly controllable from qc — it uses the nextthink field to decide how to set it and caps it at 1 second 

Ok, thanks.

By the way, what are the known engine-independent methods for fixing the problem of the player sliding over the heads of the monsters when he jumps on them?

I've tried setting a .touch function on the player, to detect when the player touches a monster, but it's not working. 

Good question ... I fixed it in-engine in early builds of fitzquake but then removed the fix later once i realized it's a bad idea to make bug fixes that change gameplay. In my readme I said "this bug can be fixed in quakec also" but I have no memory of how. Maybe setting the .solid of monsters to a different value? SOLID_BSP? 

Needs to be a monster touch function
Also works if you set it on exploboxes

void() monster_touch =
{
if (other.classname != "player")
return;
if (other.health <= 0)
return;

if ((!other.flags & FL_ONGROUND) && (other.absmin_z >= self.absmax_z - 2))
other.flags = other.flags + FL_ONGROUND;
}; 

That worked, thanks c0burn. 

also this stuff should be in Coding Help thread. 

I had forgotten about Coding Help; can that thread go to the Permanent Threads section?