General Code Structure Question

[Xalen]

Hello there, I have a rather conceptual question for someone with knowledge of HL2 source and its general structure...

• I need to create 3-4 different 'attributes', which are essentially sliders that range from 0-100.
  
• I want these attributes to be directly manipulable via keyboard input(e.g. when the user presses 't' attribute_1 will increase by 1, and when she presses 'g' it will decrease by 1).
  
• I want the value of these attributes to have widespread effects throughout the game (e.g. player run speed, weapon damage, and also entity inputs/outputs within Hammer).

My question is: What is the best way to add this kind of functionality on to the HL2 Source. Note I'm not asking how to write the code/logic itself, that should be a piece of cake, but rather how to begin. Where would something like this fit into the code as a whole?

For example, should it be a self-contained logical entity? If so, how could I access direct keyboard input? Should I write it as a new class derived from cbase.h or something similar? If so, how could I use it to send input/outputs to entities in Hammer? Will I need a combination of these two solutions?

Any advice, tutorials, or further questions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Nick

 

[tschumann]

I'm not sure that you'd need an entity for this. It sounds more client-side.
I'm not really familiar with Source programming, but there's probably a way to get key presses from the client. For the entity input/output, maybe you could send a server command with an ent_fire statement.

 

[Xalen]

Hey Tschumann,

Thanks for the reply. I was able to find a solution last night after digging through the game_ui entity code a little bit, which does something similar. It provides a good example on how to get a pointer to the player and capture key presses from there.

N

 

[tschumann]

Glad to help.