Some things I need to know (opening/closing portals, moving lights, and more)

[Altered Reality]

There are some things I want to add in my level, but I don't know how. I hope someone will be so kind to explain me how to.

1) How do I trigger a glowportal to open at runtime, let an enemy out and close again? And what about it opening, letting an enemy out and remaining open?
2) Is it possible to use the death of a group of enemies to trigger anything? For example a glowportal opening anywhere I want in the level?
3) How do I create moving lights to make e.g. a searchlight?

[Sebultura]

1) Do you mean to have a portal that opens once you spawn in the map, then a monster comes from this portal and the portals closes? If so, you need the following:
Step #1: Add a monster to your map ("monster" > "monster_hunter_alien")
Step #2: To get the monster spawn with a portal, set the "portal" attribute to 1 (and if the player must directly see the monster in front of him, don't forget to make the monster face the player)
Step #3: Create a simple shape, then make it a trigger_once ("trigger" > "trigger_once") & reshape it so that it contains the player spawn object ("info" > "info_player_start") and then set the "target" attribute to the monster name
Step #4: It seems that if you only do this, there will be a problem with the monster not appearing & blocked in the portal (I suppose that there's some kind of attributes to play with, like "offset_portal_vector" & "portalCollide"), so here's a quick tip to avoid this: in your trigger, set the "delay" attribute to 1 (the player will spawn, then 1 second after the portal will open and the monster will pop from it).

Now if you want to let the portal opened, you must consider this first: the previous steps create, in fact, a fake glowportal, i.e. there's nothing, no real room behind it.

So to see that: in your monster, set the "portal_closeDelay" to 0 (= infinite time) and see the fake portal in action...

Ok so I suppose that if you want the portal to remain opened, you need a real glowportal, so do all the previous steps + the "portal_closeDelay" stuff, then create a new room in your map, then add a glowportal ("object" > "object_glowportal"), then in your monster, set the "portal_buddy" attribute to the name of your glowportal and the "portal_noteleport" attribute to 0 (so that you can use the portal).

Of course you'll probably need to play with different monster attributes, like the "can_see_portals", "can_grenade", etc...

I suggest that you open the "feedingtowerb.map" map in the editor (the 3rd map) then just see the monsters attribute with the game in mind (second monster for instance, that's the one I studied quickly to see how to do it).

[Altered Reality]

Thanks a lot!
Is there a full list of all monster attributes somewhere?
Also, how do I just trigger a portal (with no monster) to open? And after I triggered a portal to open, can I trigger it to close again?

And... is it possible to trigger an event by SHOOTING something, instead of walking somewhere?

[Zwiffle]

Triggering a portal is very very easy. It's almost the exact same thing as triggering anything else.

Create a portal, then set its name value to something you want, then set its startActive value to 0. This will set the portal 'off' when the map starts. Then, set a trigger_once/trigger_multiple brush or whatever, targeting your portal. Then, when you enter the brush, your portal will show up as expected.

I assume triggering a portal to close is the same thing; each time you trigger the portal it will switch its setting (i.e. triggering it when it's 'on' will turn it 'off' and vice versa.)

For attributes, I don't know if it's a FULL list, but just clicking a monster entity and looking at the entity window will show you a large list of different attributes you can set.

For shooting something, I'm sure you can do that too, but I'm not quite sure how. I can try to find out later today though. Probably, you'll have to give an object a health amount, then a trigger value, and when the thing "dies" it will trigger the specified event.

[Altered Reality]

I just noticed an undesired effect. If I create a monster that spawns through a portal, and the portal is real (=it leads somewhere and the player can pass through it), when this portal is open, the destination portal is CLOSED! So I can reach the destination through the portal created by the monster , but I cannot return to my former location! How can I avoid that?

EDIT: I found it out. There are 2 causes.
1) If there is a single portal (generated by a monster), the destination portal must have startActive set to 0. If it is set to 1, when one portal is open, the other will be closed and viceversa.
2) If there are more than one portal leading to the same destination, the opening of each of them will toggle the status of the destination portal. So, if portals A and B (generated by monsters) lead to portal C, which is closed at startup, the following will happen:
- The map is started, all portals are closed
- Portal A opens, a monster comes out. At the same time, portal C (the common destination) opens
- Portal B opens, another monster comes out. At the same time, portal C CLOSES!!!

So, if I have multiple portals leading to the same destination, the startActive key of the destination portal may have to be set to 0 or to 1, depending from the opening/closing times of the portals generated by monsters.

[Altered Reality]

For shooting something, I'm sure you can do that too, but I'm not quite sure how. I can try to find out later today though. Probably, you'll have to give an object a health amount, then a trigger value, and when the thing "dies" it will trigger the specified event.

I found out how.

- Create the desired function in the script
- Create a trigger_relay (a type of trigger which is NOT activated by walking through it), give it a name, then set the "call" field as the name of the desired function
- Create a func_damageable, set the "target" field as the name of the trigger_relay, set the "health" field as you wish.

Now, when you shoot the func_damageable, the script function will be executed.