prop_physics mass / weird behavior

Hi all,

When I put a breakable wooden table or piece of furniture in the game, I use a prop_physics entity. Everything works fine except for one thing:

Certain ones, upon being hit or bumped, will fly up into the air with tremendous speed and then come down on you. There is one table that, if you bump it, it flies up in the air like this and then crushes you. It is really weird. I've used the same model in other rooms as a prop_physics and it works fine, so I don't think it's a static model or anything like that.

Is it the mass I should be tweaking? If so, does anyone here know the mass multiplier scale for common objects like tables, etc? I don't know if HL2 has a weird scale for masses, or if it's pretty straightforward units that it uses.

It might "know" the mass automatically from the material the prop is made from (metal/wood/etc.) and the volume, so entering 1 as the mass scale is probably a good idea.

Don't forget there is a "prevent motion enable on player bump" flag you can tick if you don't want the player knocking your props around!

I would also double check the exact position of your flying-table in
Hammer. Sometimes if you place the prop_physics entity slightly
into another solid brush, it'll make the model get "pinched" in a
brush, and according to real-life physics, it'll snap on you when it's
distrubed (kinda like a mouse trap).

I had a table that always spawnned overturned because I had a corner of
it extending into another model (a chair). When I increased the
distance between these models, all is well.

<DIV class=quote>
<DIV class=quotetitle>? quoting carpaltunnel</DIV>
<DIV class=quotetext>it flies up in the air like this</DIV></DIV>
Saying 'like this' doesn't help... we can't see it

"will fly up into the air with tremendous speed and then come down on you" <---- like THIS

yeah, the ground was "pinching" the props... moving them 1 unit away got rid of the problem