SWAT's introduction sequence

One of my CT spawn points looked really plain. The players start on the roof and drop down (loosing 30heath in the process :biggrin: )

I wanted to add a little something like the intro sequence in SWAT. Where the players rapel out of a helicopter and so on. I got the physical layout done, including that hatch which needs to be blown open.

Questions are.

[*] In Counter-Strike, can we make ropes so the players can rapel down? And how.
[*] Can those ropes be droped (like in the movie) or made to disappear (kill_target?)
[*] I have a func_breakable which targets the door when destroyed, I was wondering if it could be made that the only weapon capable of doing the damage would be the pump shotgun.

You cant make ropes like that in cs, but heres an idea:

Make an env_beam with its sprite texture being "rope.spr". Make it long like the rope you need and sorround it with a func_ladder. Oh, and if you make its bottom target a func_tracktrain (invisible) and make it move slightly between 2 path_tracks, you should have a pretty cool rope effect :biggrin: (careful with the swing thing, no more than 1 degree). Hope this helped.

ok, I sort of get what you mean... but env_beam are point based, how do I make them long? As for the sway effect, I dont really need that cause the players get off the heli, the ropes would then drop and the helicopter flies off.

Well, i meant to make the distance between the targets longer. And i guess you could make the rope drop and dissapear by making a func_tracktrain (beams target the tracktrains origin) that moves down and that, when it passes a certain path_track, activates a relay that makes the rope vanish. :eek:

Could be worth a try. What about the func_ladder, can I kill that?

I think the relay can fix it too. If not, try to target it directly. Hmm...i dunno, never tried this.

I dont know if you can kill it, but what you could try is putting a invisable door around the base of the rope (starts on bottom then moves up when you want it to), so it blocks the player from touching the actual ladder brush.

Ok I got the heli setup and the ropes with the ladder and all, I havent compiled to see if it works yet though. This next question is 2 part. Can I make the main rotor of the heli a func_train with an origin brush so that it can rotate but also follow a path?

Also, if I can do that, would it lag on a 32man server? Or should I just try and find a special texture that would immitate a revolving rotor?

You could do that but I'm fairly certain it would lag. And for the rope thing you can killtarget them but you can't target them. For example you could remove a rope but not make one appear.

Any map that uses any kind of comlex train will lag in multiplayer mode. Having a moving helicopter is nice, but when people play 30 rounds straight, they will end up hating having to wait and do all the climbing down etc. I think your best bet is to have a helicopter alredy landed on the roof, which the players spawn in or near to - you could have a helicopter sound and rotating blades and stuff to.

Also, the falling damage part, any team with half a brain will send one guy down and let the others jump onto his head to avoid getting damaged at all.

The heli starts there the players rappel down then the heli leaves. So all they have to do is climb down. And thats not all the CT's, just 3. There are many CT spawn points in the map. Cause the teams are 16 player (requirement by the competition)

OK. Well it is possible to have a helicopter with a rotating blade that moves with the helicopter, but it's not worth doing and will lag. I suppose it might be possible to have a fixed-axis helicopter blade sprite that would be able to move by being the end sprite of an invisible beam that targets a train that follows the top of the helicopter. But then the helicopter would have to stay level. A neater solution would be an animated texture that rotates, but I don't know if that is possible.

You could make the ropes lower down. Have a winch in the helicopter that comes off a sticking out bit at the level of the roof of the helicopter, that has no rope coming down from it. At the point where the helicopter stops, have a brush the length of the rope with the rope texture, whose bottom lines up with the top of the winch sticking out bit. Have the ladder entity already in place, then when the helicopter stops, make the rope-textured brush lower down through the func_ladder (as if it is coming off the winch), then when it has gone say half way, let the players out of the helicopter and on to the rope to climb down. Then you could have the rope-brush move back up just as you kill the ladder. The hard part is hiding the top of the rope-brush... perhaps you could have a low sky in that area so that it start/ends up out of view...

yea I think I will make the rotor an animated texture.

As for the ropes, Im working on them lol.

Well to answer you question about the helicopter, you would need two tains, one for spinning (blade) and the other the actual heli body on two separate tracks.

I like the idea of comming down the helicopter, you just dont need it to move away when you land, and as a possible idea, make it so you can repel down a vent and land on top of the terrorists, giving it a unique surprise.

yea I think I will make the rotor an animated texture.

As for the ropes, Im working on them lol.

....Yeah .... I could call it that .. I guess... by the time the CT's get into the map they have 50 health, well with 1 ct that is.

Wild Card said:
yea I think I will make the rotor an animated texture.

As for the ropes, Im working on them lol.

Hey, cool!Could you please pass the texture to me aswell?Ive been looking for something like that for AGES!

Andrei, I will pass the texture along. Once I either find one, if not I'll have to make one.

Crono, lol. I sent the map to my friend Phil cause he wanted to see how it was. He complained that originally the CT's only lost 30HP, and that now they loose 60HP.

I think I know why though. The rope and ladder was there. But I put a trigger_auto to remove them after a delay of 10 seconds. The trigger state was off. I took the trigger away and Im willing to bet the rope will be there along with the ladder. Its the trigger... They hate me as much as MM's hate Orph :biggrin:

Model helicopter, anyone?

It really sounds like CS could benefit from some of the Spirit of Half-life features... :smile:

Maybe I'm missing something here but why would you WANT them to lose hp? I'd imagine alot of people would complain about it.

lol JFry, you are missing something. I dont want them to lose health. It just my trigger_auto would never spawn the rope therefore the player (at the moment) would have to jump down. But I fixed the problem.. Stupid trigger state... grr...

Ok, FYI, the helicopter dosent move anymore, but it still has the rotor, I couldnt make an animated texture good enough.

But I still have 1 problem. Getting my rope to appear. As far as I know, the entity setup is flawless. 2 info_targets with a env_beam. I have the sprite set to "sprites/rope.spr" and I added the OP4 rope.spr to the cstrike/sprites folder. The "start on" flag is ticked with a life of 0 for infinite. But the beam wont appear.

set the render effects(eg:color, amount, and all that other stuff) and for RXamount 255 most likely

Alright, I did something and now its semi visible. I'll have to play around with it to get it working.

how about 2 func_wall_toggle in a cross shape rendered normally which toggle in and out in sequence very rapidly. Then you could add a semi-transparent func_rotating. This is just an idea off the top of my head but I'd imagine it would look cool.

EDIT: whoops thought you were talking about the rotor still. I really need to learn to read these.

lol JFry.

I was also having a problem with my lights earlier today and discovered the problem. I had 3 different sets of ZHLT and 5 .RAD files. I think I need to clean my VHE folder :biggrin: Anyways, I fixed the ZHLT problem and the .RAD. And the FDG problem. Now I am compiling and we'll see how things turn out.

I might have some screens too.