Night and day

[Firkat54]

Is there any way to make one part of a map have one skybox texture, and another part a different one?

Can this be done with a point_servercommand ?

I want to make a CS:S training map, with a night time scouting objective, and then a teleport sends them to a day time shooting range.

Also, is there a way in CS:S to strip a player of weapons? After the teleport I want them to be stripped of all weapons and they can walk into a buyzone.

 

[Raeven0]

Day and night: no, only one sky is allowed per map. However, in much the same way a Darken filter works in Photoshop, you can place translucent black func_brushes over your sky to darken it.

Strip: use a player_weaponstrip entity, fired by a trigger.

 

[Firkat54]

Strip: use a player_weaponstrip entity, fired by a trigger.

I thought that was HL: DM only?

 

[Raeven0]

Surprise! It works in CS:S too.

 

[Firkat54]

Awesome, thanks.

 

[Limpet]

I got a question about day and night.

Has anyone made an enitiy that would simulate sun movement over time in the source engine yet? Might be a good thing to have for something like a survival mod or somthing.

 

[Firkat54]

why not just set a bunch of timer crap? Turn one off, and the next one on kinda thing.

 

[Raeven0]

In Source, there are two ways to make light: true dynamic lights (e.g., light parented to a prop and torch), and lightmaps (e.g., lamp and sun). Neither of these works for creating variance in environmental light levels.

True dynamic lights can't be used because, quite simply, they lag the hell out of the poor engine. Lightmaps can't be used because each face is (supposedly) engine-limited to exactly four different lightmaps. Every differently-named or differently-styled light uses up a lightmap slot on every face it brightens. Corollary: each brush can cast at most four different shadows on a given face. Simulating a sun would require much more than four unless you can accept very, very cheap shadows.

What you can do is name your light_environment, then send it SetPattern inputs to force it to be of a different brightness (every named light supports 26 levels of brightness). However, because of lightmap limitations, every shadow will stay in the same place; and, because _ambient is calculated differently than other brightnesses, the ambient lighting of the map will never change.

 

[Limpet]

Simulating a sun would require much more than four unless you can accept very, very cheap shadows.

Couldn't you maybe fade between the four lightmaps? Granted its still cheap but its not as obvious if you fade between them.

But I guess once it gets to that point it involves modding the engine.

 

[Raeven0]

You can't fade between them as that would require the use of additional lightmaps

 

[Limpet]

Oh I see.