damaging yellow forcefield

[WAR_Nuker]

yeah this is real complicated and specific. what i need is a forcefield....that is intially off but is activated by pressing one of two buttons (the buttons shouldnt be a problem). when it is activated....it remains invisible until someone touches it or shoots it. in the event someone touches it....i want it to cause some damage....make a little buzzing noise....and i want the forcefield to light up a translucent yellow until the player stops touching it. in the event someone shoots it...i just want the forcefield to light up for like half a second and give off a small buzz noise. when someone presses one of the two buttons again....the forcefield should turn off completely. right now...im having trouble making a translucent yellow material. in game and in hammer its yellow....but it should be translucent. i added "$translucent" "1" to the vmt and it doesnt seem to do anything.

 

[FictiousWill]

Your yellow texture needs an alpha map, to begin with. Create it in photoshop with an alpha channel and save it using the source texture plugin. That's as far as I can help without hypothesizing.

 

[Raeven0]

The rest can be done with a trigger_multiple and a func_button around the force field brush.

 

[FictiousWill]

Tue that! I was thinking how to capture output from trigger_hurts, but that's because I'm an idiot.

Trigger the hurt and the color change together, one doesn't need to instigate the other since they occur simultaneously.

 

[WAR_Nuker]

awesome....i was having my doubts on whether or not this could be done....only problem now is i dont have any experience in alpha channeling....but im sure i can find a tut for that.

WHOA its too bright....how do i make it...more translucent?

 

[WAR_Nuker]

omg this is pissing me off....what do i gotta do to make it clearer? heres what the vmt says:

"unlitgeneric"
{
"$basetexture" "narshaddaa/yellow"
"$translucent" "1"
"$nodecal" 1
}

i put nodraw on 5 sides of the brush and got 1 of the sides to show up as two sided....but its just too damn bright. do i gotta make the color darker or something?

 

[FictiousWill]

Well firstly make it lightmappedgeneric. If it's too bright still, then you 'do gotta' darken the texture. Adjust that alpha map to play with opacity.

 

[Raeven0]

UnlitGeneric == fullbright.

 

[WAR_Nuker]

WOO got it. and are you sure its lightmappedgeneric? i mean....its a (seemingly) glowing energy forcefield. wouldnt it look odd if it had shadows? maybe im misunderstanding but does lightmapped generic mean it gets shadows cast on it and unlit generic mean it doesnt get any shadows cast on it?

Edit: ok then yeah unlit is what i want. thanks guys.

 

[WAR_Nuker]

ok now that that is all out of the way....i have the button ready with the forcefield (made the forcefield a func_brush). when the button is pressed the field turns on and when its pressed again it turns off. this is almost what i want. only thing is i dont want it to be visible when its turned on....only when it is touched or shot. everything else seems to be going smoothly....

Edit: hmm i just though of using an invisble func_brush in combination with a visible, non solid forcefield.

Edit: nope....didnt serve much purpose.

 

[WAR_Nuker]

alright ive made quite a bit of progress. when the button is pushed the forcefield remains invisible but is still active. when it is touched the forcefield becomes visible until you stop touching it (this only happens when the button is IN). only thing now is the func_button you were speaking of. i got that to work and all....when you shoot it it flickers on and then off in .5 seconds. however....i cant disable or enable it. its always there no matter if the button (the one that activates the forcefield) is pushed or not. i need to make it (field flickers when shot effect) so that it will only flicker when the forcefield button is activated. otherwise....i dont want it to flicker when shot. how would i do that?


Edit: lol.....its a button....it moves....

 

[WAR_Nuker]

ok now for setting the damage....i think ill use a trigger hurt. i tried it with the trigger multiple and couldnt get it to work. used onstarttouch !activator removehealth 5 and it didnt do anything. at least with trigger hurt i can set the damage type to electric shock. i think that is all....for now. thank you both so much.

 

[Lamer]

u have to bind hurt and sound entyties with the button too or else the effect will be only visual (like u said it's invisible but still it does the job)

 

[Raeven0]

Trigger_hurt has all the outputs of trigger_multiple. It's probably your best bet in this case. Tie OnTrigger to activating and deactivating the force field effect, and put a playerclip there, and you're set

 

[WAR_Nuker]

the bigass func_button serves as a sufficient playclip methinks. btw i set that up so its initially out of the way....and then the activator button is pressed the func_button moves really fast to its other location so that it blocks players AND lights up the forcefield when you shoot it. that func_button is covered in the nodraw texture. also....ill get rid of that trigger multiple and put all of its inputs and outputs to the trigger hurt....cause right now i have both and they are the same exact size and overlap eachother. i did set up that sound thing btw so its pretty nifty.

 

[WAR_Nuker]

ok one more thing....i went to bed and woke up this morning and checked my map again....and i notice that my forcefield isnt displaying on both sides anymore. heres what my vmt says yet again.

"unlitgeneric"
{
"$basetexture" "narshaddaa/yellow"
"$translucent" "1"
"$nodecal" 1
}

what do i add to make my forcefield double sided?

 

[Raeven0]

"$nocull" 1

 

[WAR_Nuker]

ah i see. it used to have that but i deleted it since i didnt think it did anything that i wanted.