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Particle Fountain?
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 Re: Particle Fountain?
Posted by Anomaly on Tue Dec 16th at 4:06pm 2008

I've been working on a HLDM (HL1, not HL2) map that is based on a Dark Forces II map called Death's Dome by Juztyn, it was in the Massassini Temple Pack 3. In the center of the dome was the equivalent to a trigger_push, it was a particle fountain that pushed you up and out of the dome.

I've got the trigger_push done all right, and it works well. But what is missing is the 'special effect' that went with it; particles streamed upward to indicate the presence of the trigger_push. I want to know how to simulate that effect in Half Life.

I've tried using a rain texture and 'additive', and flipping it upside down with a func_conveyor. This had a nice effect, but there was a 'shadow wall' - you could see the darkness around the rain where the rest of the brush is. I tried playing with some sprites, but I couldn't get any of them to look attractive. I'd like to somehow use the gauss gun particles to stream upward.

Any ideas?



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 Re: Particle Fountain?
Posted by G4MER on Tue Dec 16th at 7:18pm 2008

Can you turn shadows off in properties of the object?



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 Re: Particle Fountain?
Posted by Anomaly on Wed Dec 17th at 6:03am 2008

It's not producing an actual shadow from a light source. The black part of the brush is still slightly visible, using Additive/100. If I set it too low, the brush disappears entirely, and bringing it up where the 'rain' is visible makes the rest of the black areas appear.

I will try to post a picture if that doesn't explain what I'm talking about.



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 Re: Particle Fountain?
Posted by G4MER on Wed Dec 17th at 6:16am 2008

Please do..



Quote
 Re: Particle Fountain?
Posted by Anomaly on Wed Dec 17th at 4:18pm 2008



The 'shadow curtain' is what is plaguing me, at least on this method of trying to generate a particle fountain.

If anyone has any ideas on creating a particle fountain using the square dots from a grenade explosion, or using the glowing parts from a gauss, I'd much rather use that method.

I tried a env_shooter, but it wouldn't stream continuously.

The settings on it are Additive with 75 as the FX amount. If I go lower, you can't see anything. If I go higher, it makes it more opaque. Am I missing something? The latest ZHLT or something?



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 Re: Particle Fountain?
Posted by Anomaly on Wed Dec 17th at 7:58pm 2008

I think I've figured out why the shadow curtain is happening; it seems endemic to the texture, IE it isn't 'true black'. I set the top to the 'black' texture from the HL wad, and that works just fine.

I'd still like suggestions for generating other effects along this line, however.



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 Re: Particle Fountain?
Posted by tnkqwe on Sat Dec 20th at 10:13am 2008

The Fountain can be a func_conveyor moveing up,ending with some smoke.I mean something like this:



Never think about bad things!
TNKqwe:The New Killer qwe

I am Engineer - Play Free Online Games

Citizen Arms



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 Re: Particle Fountain?
Posted by G4MER on Sat Dec 20th at 10:32am 2008

There is a way to create your own particle effects. I am having a hard time finding the data on that at the moment. Maybe RIVEN or AARON can clue us in on it a bit more.



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 Re: Particle Fountain?
Posted by fishy on Sat Dec 20th at 3:11pm 2008

I tried to get my head around the particle editor, but it was like trying to wrestle a large deranged octopuss.
http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Category:particle_System
Maybe someone with more experience of code can figure it out better than I could.

I give up. I tried all sorts of ways of posting the link, but even using the 'code' tags, it still doesn't work right. smiley

[Edited by Riven =link should work now]



Quote
 Re: Particle Fountain?
Posted by tnkqwe on Sat Dec 20th at 5:40pm 2008

When adding the link,just add the code for smiley between the words "Category" and "article"


Never think about bad things!
TNKqwe:The New Killer qwe

I am Engineer - Play Free Online Games

Citizen Arms



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 Re: Particle Fountain?
Posted by Riven on Sun Dec 21st at 5:22am 2008

Quoting fishy
I give up. I tried all sorts of ways of posting the link, but even using the 'code' tags, it still doesn't work right. smiley

I think I fixed it. Just use the url tags as normal but make sure that the 'P' in Category:particle isn't capitalized otherwise it will think it's an emoticon and screw up the code.

Quoting Muhnay
There is a way to create your own particle effects.


If I'm not mistaken, I don't think the Goldsource engine has compatibility with the new particle editor introduced with the Orangebox version of the SDK. This is the Half-Life editing forum and not the Half-Life 2 editing forum correct?

I don't know much about how the Goldsource engine goes about emitting particles, but to make a transparent texture work as a particle you must make any completely transparent parts of the texture (particle) completely black.

The new particle editor in Source has systematized the process of creating functional good-looking particles. I haven't been able to make anything worth mentioning yet, but based on my playing around with it, it's somewhat straight-forward. And here is a tutorial for it already! Particle Editor @ Interlopers


Blog: www.playingarchitecture.net
LinkedIn: Eric Lancon
Twitter:@Riven202




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