Recreating rotating posters from HL:S/BM

Pocket

Half a Lambert is better than one.
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Nov 14, 2009
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Does "poster" mean something completely different in non-American English or am I forgetting something significant about Half-Life?
 

spudboy

L1: Registered
Feb 8, 2015
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Fun fact: the spinning speed symbols on pass_warehouse all use func_door_rotating. That's what I would try if I were you.
 

Pocket

Half a Lambert is better than one.
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Nov 14, 2009
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Ah. Yeah, this is a rare case where using func_door_rotating instead should be no problem, because you'd want it to fire periodically on a loop anyway rather than just rotate continuously.

Though this is the sort of thing that would probably just be a dynamic prop nowadays; betcha almost anything the ones in Black Mesa are.
 

worMatty

Repacking Evangelist
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Jul 22, 2014
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If you make this part of a SourceMod plugin you'd have to distribute it with your map. Also I'm not sure you can really do what you need to, because the movement is built in to the game engine. It's 'Q Physics', or the basic physics engine (not VPhysics) that is responsible for the movement of brushes and player collision with them. I don't think you can manipulate it to such a degree using a server-side mod.

Crash's link is the best built-in entity to use because you can send an input to the rotating brushes asking them to rotate to an exact position. If your poster segments are square, those positions would be 0.25, 0.5, 0.75 and 1/0. But steve is right, that kind of thing is typically seen in dynamic props because it's far more efficient, so if you can do that in a 3D program like Blender, that'd be the best solution.
 

Pocket

Half a Lambert is better than one.
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Nov 14, 2009
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The other cool thing about doing it in an external modeling program is that you can use trilons and have it rotate between three posters instead of just two. (Four, to quote Monty Python, is right out, due to the pieces getting jammed up against each other when they try to turn.) Making perfect equilateral triangles in Hammer is impossible, but in a 3D modeling tool, it's one of the more stupidly simple things you can do.
 

Tumby

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May 12, 2013
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The other cool thing about doing it in an external modeling program is that you can use trilons and have it rotate between three posters instead of just two. (Four, to quote Monty Python, is right out, due to the pieces getting jammed up against each other when they try to turn.) Making perfect equilateral triangles in Hammer is impossible, but in a 3D modeling tool, it's one of the more stupidly simple things you can do.

I think triangular pieces would "jam up" exactly the same way.
 

Pocket

Half a Lambert is better than one.
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Nov 14, 2009
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Nope. When a square turns so that one of its corners is pointing up, there's another one pointing down. Triangles don't, so there's nothing for it to snag on. (Wow, it took me forever to put into words what would have been clear with an animated diagram.)
 

YM

LVL100 YM
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Dec 5, 2007
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Making perfect equilateral triangles in Hammer is impossible.

U wot m8?

triangle.jpg


This is as perfect as you're going to get out of any 3D package. Plus I even made a guide brush so you can line your origin up with the proper centre of the triangle rather than the centre of the bounding box.
 
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worMatty

Repacking Evangelist
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Jul 22, 2014
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Stuff about bastards being shits and stealing maps.
Sounds good. I remember being told a while ago that HMX compiled some of their Deathrun maps without any entity data, and used a plugin to load it in to the server, so that if a map was ever taken, it would be useless. Good luck in your endeavour. And give any server organisation who steal your stuff a f*** you from me.
 

Pocket

Half a Lambert is better than one.
aa
Nov 14, 2009
4,694
2,579
U wot m8?

triangle.jpg


This is as perfect as you're going to get out of any 3D package. Plus I even made a guide brush so you can line your origin up with the proper centre of the triangle rather than the centre of the bounding box.

Betcha almost anything it does something funny when you save and reload because it's off-grid. I can't even get it to hold on to a brush that snaps to a ½-HU grid because of some quirk of how it stores less-than-whole numbers.
 

YM

LVL100 YM
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Dec 5, 2007
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Just tried. It's still absolutely the same, definitely as good as you'd get with any 3D package.
 

Pocket

Half a Lambert is better than one.
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Nov 14, 2009
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Does it let you rotate the individual trilons and use that to apply the texture so it all lines up? That's the moment of truth.
 

YM

LVL100 YM
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Dec 5, 2007
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As I said
I even made a guide brush so you can line your origin up with the proper centre of the triangle rather than the centre of the bounding box.
What's your beef with triangular prisms?
 

Lain

lobotomy success story
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Jan 8, 2015
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This is the perfect thread for the tf2c dm map im planning, thanks everybody.