A few texturing, entity, and creating new weapons questions

[OCD2]

 

Is there a way to make a circular endcap textured 1:1 with a texture?    Aka can we make detailed circular textures for gtk radiant?   Was hoping to make a circular shaped door that had some see-through window ports.

Can you use trigger multiple switch to make a light entity change color?    

Is it possible to make a grappling hook that sticks to players?    I've seen a mod with a functional grappling hook that moves the player -  could something like that be made to stick to player characters?      Ultimately I would like to create a "cable" that shoots from the player,  will stick to player models,  and if you press the use button again it it retracts the cable and force pulls the person toward you.      Is that possible, without coding?

[NAB622]

I don't see why you couldn't make a circular door..... Maybe I'm not understanding fully what you mean with that though.

Edit: Do you mean applying a texture to a 'Cap' patch without it deforming around the patch? If so, yes that's possible.

 

Lights can't change color, but you can toggle them, and that would be a pretty good alternative.

Grapple hook that latches onto players would not be possible without a code mod for sure.

Edited October 23, 2020 by NAB622

[OCD2]

14 minutes ago, NAB622 said:

I don't see why you couldn't make a circular door..... Maybe I'm not understanding fully what you mean with that though.

Lights can't change color, but you can toggle them, and that would be a pretty good alternative.

Grapple hook that latches onto players would not be possible without a code mod for sure.

Regarding the grapple idea, thank you for letting me know it's a coding job.   Outside of my skillset, so I can put that on the backburner.

 

Regarding lighting, so I'll have to make two light entities, one starts on and one starts off and toggle between the two - is that correct?

 

And lastly regarding the circular door - I guess I do not know how to make circular textures that fit a circular brush/patch 1:1.  I would like to make a door with a porthole and some embellishments.  I searched the site with no luck - are there any tutorials?

[NAB622]

Yes, to change colors you just toggle two (or more) lights. Just keep in mind that you can only have four lights hitting a single surface or the lightmap will go crazy and bug out on you.

For the door, I'd have to see the texture, but I'm sure it's possible. The CAP option in the patch inspector should be a good start. You could also use brushes if you want to. It's a lot easier than it sounds, i think, but you have to know your way around the surface inspector and/or patch inspector to do it.

[OCD2]

20 minutes ago, NAB622 said:

Yes, to change colors your just toggle two (or more) lights. Just keep in mind that you can only have four lights hitting a single surface or the lightmap will go crazy and bug out on you.

For the door, I'd have to see the texture, but I'm sure it's possible. The CAP option in the patch inspector should be a good start. You could also use brushes if you want to. It's a lot easier than it sounds, i think, but you have to know your way around the surface inspector and/or patch inspector to do it.

Thank you for the tip on texturing the patch.

I see with the cap option it applies the texture to the patch without distorting.     Knowing that, I think I can create a texture to fit in the style that I need,  thank you.

Regarding the lighting question,   I was hoping the relight the whole level using the light entities on a switch.    Probably about 15+ light entities.    In some stretches, the floor would certainly have more that 4 lights hitting it at once across its entire length -  Would that cause the problematic bug out,    or does the bug out take place if the exact same area is being lit by 4 different light entities?

I really appreciate the help.

[OCD2]

One more texture question:

I used textures/colors/white2  for detailing some of my map.

I want to take white2, and use it to create my custom texture.

Ive opened assets 1, and looked in the colors folder (and tried browsing all others) and it only shows black blue gray green orange and red.      No white2!

Where can I locate the color white 2?

[ChalklYne]

@fullkevlar

could be the name of the shader entry?

regardless... why would you change base assets? might cause conflicts with other peoples maps.

I would say instead, create a custom texture and add it into a custom pk3. Then replace the white2 areas of your map with your custom texture. Its always best practice to leave the base assets alone. From my experience at least. maybe I'm reading you wrong

[OCD2]

14 minutes ago, ChalklYne said:

@fullkevlar

could be the name of the shader entry?

regardless... why would you change base assets? might cause conflicts with other peoples maps.

I would say instead, create a custom texture and add it into a custom pk3. Then replace the white2 areas of your map with your custom texture. Its always best practice to leave the base assets alone. From my experience at least. maybe I'm reading you wrong

I understand what you're explaining

Im making a pre alpha build,  with quick placeholder stock textures at the moment.     

I wanted to simply take that color, and use it to make a door with some details, and keep the same white color to stay uniform to the maps color palate.   I would then save the door texture as maybe white door so there is no conflict.

Ultimately I will probably make my own textures, though at the moment im trying to stick with stock - my understanding is you can host a map with stock textures and people should be able to join without having to download a pk3.

 

And youre correct, after looking at the color textures again, the white2 option is a shader. 

[NAB622]

4 hours ago, fullkevlar said:

I was hoping the relight the whole level using the light entities on a switch.    Probably about 15+ light entities.    In some stretches, the floor would certainly have more that 4 lights hitting it at once across its entire length.

Should be fine if they're the same targetname and the same color. Go for it.

1 hour ago, fullkevlar said:

my understanding is you can host a map with stock textures and people should be able to join without having to download a pk3.

No, users would still have to download the bsp and the shader file somehow. The only way to host a server where the users don't have to download anything to join you is to use entity modding, which is very restrictive on what you can do. You cannot create any assets when entity modding, and you are limited to whatever bmodels are in the map you've loaded.

As far as copying the system shader for your own use - I'm sure it's just using map $whiteimage. Very easy to recreate. I can't write shaders freehand or i would post one here.

[OCD2]

2 hours ago, NAB622 said:

Should be fine if they're the same targetname and the same color. Go for it.

No, users would still have to download the bsp and the shader file somehow. The only way to host a server where the users don't have to download anything to join you is to use entity modding, which is very restrictive on what you can do. You cannot create any assets when entity modding, and you are limited to whatever bmodels are in the map you've loaded.

As far as copying the system shader for your own use - I'm sure it's just using map $whiteimage. Very easy to recreate. I can't write shaders freehand or i would post one here.

Thank you for clarifying!