Outputs, Inputs, Flags and Visgroups

How are these used?

What are these Used For?

Who uses these?

And when should you use these?

Also please explain them to me. I have never used anything but the flags tab. And want to know what these other tabs are used for and how to use them.

Inputs are incomming triggers that affect an entity.

Outputs are out going triggers that affect other entities.

Input and Output (aka I/O) go hand in hand.

Example: the player triggers a func_button, the button is set so when
it is triggered it sends an input to a func_door. The door takes
that input and opens.

so Player---input--->button---output = open---> ---input--->Door--output = open

Flags are simple options that some entities use. For instance
func_doors have a flag called "start locked" if that is checked it will
start locked, if it isn't checked it will start normaly (duh).

VISgroups are groups of objects in your map that you can show or hide,
this helps when you arn't working in an area and want to clear up your
2D view.

Inputs/Outputs allow entities to trigger other entities and affect them in various ways... there should be a tut on here about the I/O system. Play around with them for a bit, you can get some fairly cool effects. Its like the "target" field in HL1 but much more sophisticated and powerful.

Visgroups allow you to hide certain areas of the map, to make it easier to just work on a certain area in the map (select some objects, hit "make invisible" in the toolbar, it will make a visgroup for them). You can toggle visgroups on/off in the visgroups panel on the right hand side of the hammer window. Theyre particularly good when you have lots of areas stacked on each other and the 2d views get confusing, or you have a huge detailed map and hammer gets jerky unless you hide some areas.

Hope that helps. :smile:

I like to make custom VISgroups for the following:

• HINT brushes

• Clipping (func_clip_vphysics and plain playerclip/clip brushes)

• Triggers and other large volumetric entity brushes (all that nodraw tends to get in the way)

You just turn them all off while editing, and turn them back on before
compiling. All objects have to be added to the VISgroups
manually; that's in the object properties. Everything can go into
a VISgroup, even world brushes.

I/O is covered pretty well in tutorials here on SnarkPit, I
think. Most flags are self-explanatory; if you have a question
about a flag, check out an entity guide.