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Teaching Old Progs.dat New Tricks.
You know about the info_notnull explosion hack. You know about making monsters drop weapons or alternate ammo using the .weapon and .ammo_whatever hacks. You know about making items float in the air by spawning them on a temporary platform. Let's have a thread where we talk about new ways to use existing behavior and get novel gameplay. If you're a "retired" mapper, this is a great time to do some armchair level design and suggest ideas you'll never have a chance to use yourself.
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Bprint? 
I want to do a coop map. It would be nice if there was a way to broadcast a message to all players (like "the gate is open"). The closest thing I could find is ClientDisconnect(), but that still bprints "left the game." after the message that I put in .netname. Is there some way to hide that 2nd message? I tried flooding it off the screen but it didn't work. It just moves my message up on the console. 
Sorry. I Meant ClientConnect() 
 
 
sprint() ? 
 
Umm... bprint(), sorry 
Not Sure What You're Asking, Lardarse 
Bprint is broadcast print, no? 
Not An Easy One 
I don't know that this one is possible. What you'd really want is a function that has the .netname bit printed *after* the rest of the text, so then you can newline all the previous lines away. However, assuming there are none in the monster files, the only such examples are in the clientobituaries, and only in the messages for client vs client deaths(for example: telefragging). So I don't think there's a way to hack those in. 
Thanks, Preach 
That's about what I figured. Just wanted to check with an expert. 
Progref 
Map is a group of some of the tricks found here and other places. I use it as a way to remember those info_notnull tricks. Please give it a look
and email if I missed something good.

http://www.mediamax.com/mechtech1001/Hosted/maps/progref.rar 
Sounds Cool - Will Check Out L8R 
:D 
Mechtech 
Maybe it is my winrar, but I get a corrupted file. 
Zip Format 
Mechtech 
That download seems unbelievably slow, can you put it on shub-hub or something? It stalls at 1% here repeatedly. 
Last Try 
Thats Mad!! 
I dont know how usefull it will be, the toggleble trigger_multiple could be a usefull reference. Also the pentegram of lightning - I had a look at the map file in notepad, and it didnt really make sense to me how you managed to get all of the correct angles for each lightning bolt, but I'll have a look at it later again!!

Cheers 
Mechtech 
Good idea. Comments:

- can you make all doors wait -1 or remove them?
- can you use a uniform texture theme?
- func_train message is misplaced
- could you make the messages more descriptive?
- perhaps use floor switches, those posts are a bit in the way.
- perhaps add breakables?
- add Than's moving floor gun turrets?
- add glass?
- make trigger_multiple and triggered lights more obvious?
- add monsters dropping guns, or alternate ammo

Quoth demystifies many of those things, luckily, like respawning items, custom traps, and hordespawn. Plus more nice things. No moving water or statues though. 
Fiends And Low Ceilings 
I've just thought of a trick that might not work, as I haven't been able to test it. It also requires Quake 1.07 (I think all custom engines these days are derived from 1.08)

If you set the "gravity" field on an entity, the effects of gravity on it change. 1 means normal, 2 means doubled, etc... 0 is taken to mean 1, otherwise everything would not be affected by gravity by default.

So what can be done with this? Well, in theory, any monster that jumps can be made to jump further (or not as far). Unless you're using trigger_monsterjump, which is configureable by the mapper already, then the use is really limited to fiends. Giving them a gravity setting of about 1.2 may help to make them more effective in indoor areas, by making them hit the ceiling less.

I'd be interested to know if this actually works... 
Semi-random Monster Placement 
You can set multiple teleport triggers on each monster entity, and randomize by using Fitzgibbon's patented shooter trigger randomizer, or make the teleporters trigger at different locations depending upon the route the player decides to take. (HeadThump replying to Ankh in another thread)

Can anyone explain this one for me? 
Hey Lardarse 
Give me a few minutes and I'll construct a simple map that illustrates
the second method, the first method with the logic gates is a bit more complicated and I wanted to make a fairly playable map to illustrate it. 
Here You Go, 
http://mortisville.quakedev.com/tele.zip

This example shows how to place teleporters for a creature to have alternative routes depending on the route a player takes. The creature here is hidden inside the center block, and all the relevant entities are close by that area. 
Oh, And Here Is The Second Version 
http://mortisville.quakedev.com/tele2.zip

I added a crude logic gate to the original map that will give one of four results, two telefraged creatures, one telefrag and one creature, or two more creatures in addition to mr tough stuff from the first demonstration.

It isn't difficult to refine this technique to suit your needs. Look in the extra box room to see how it is done. 
Re: #11 And Monster Triggers 
Is this safe to use as a door opening trigger? I know that doors will create their own triggers, but it's too large for my purposes... 
Re: #148 And Fiends In Low Ceilings 
While this trick does work, it's not really that necessary. Using one of the equations of motion:

v*v = u*u + 2*a*s

and rearranging for s (distance)

s = (v*v - u*u) / (2*a)

then plugging in the relevant numbers: u (start velocity) = 250 (we are only concerned with the vertical here); v (end velocity) = 0 (when you reach the peak of the jump); a (acceleration) = 800 (due to gravity); and you get

s = -39.0625

Now add the height of a fiend (88), and see that it will miss a 128-high ceiling by just less than 1 unit. Except for 2 small problems. Firstly, the qc adds 1 to the z component of the fiend's origin juszt before it jumps (so it will brush the ceiling very slightly), and secondly, it's possible for v_forward (the direction that fiend will jump in) to have a z component (if the player jumps at the right moment).

Still, it's something more to play wih... 
Monster Triggers 
It should work as long as you don't want a message for the player on that trigger. Just remember that firing nails through the trigger will also op - not just monsters. 
Good To Know 
But I decided that it's not worth spending the brushes on in this map, so I'll save it for next time... 
Mind The Gap 
Probably obvious from Preach's post but just as a reminder:
Monsters don't cross gaps in the floor and more often than not this is a disadvantage. Apart from monsterjump triggers, this can be fixed by filling the gaps with skip-textured func_walls which have their "owner" fields set to "1" (player), so they're invisible and don't block the player's projectiles but allow monsters to walk on them.
The downsides are that they block monster attacks (unless the monsters' owner fields are set to the entity number of the func_wall - however, then they won't be able to walk across the gap, I think) and also coop players' projectiles. 
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