move_rope festive variation

AttorneyAtMusic

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Nov 12, 2010
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As a gift to the denizens of the server that graciously hosts my crappy maps, I have been working on a festive holiday version of one of the server's more popular maps.

On some other holiday themed maps I have encountered, I've noticed that the move_rope cables have festive bulbs hanging off of them.
Is this the work of a mod or a custom model? Or is there simply a flag that can be changed in the entity to result in this?
Such a change would make a nice touch to the holiday theme.
 

Micnax

Back from the dead (again)
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Apr 25, 2009
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I think it's a holiday-only thing that's set by the game itself whenever it's Christmas or such (the same way the background of the main menu is set), which would mean it's hard-coded in, I'm afraid.

I'm coming to this conclusion because I'm looking at the cables used in mvm_bigrock and they look completely normal, yet in-game they have the festive bulbs wrapped round them. Very strange.

EDIT: Ninja'd by the Crash
 

tyler

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Sep 11, 2013
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I'm sure you could plumb the depths of the GCF and figure out what is being swapped in, and use that.
 

Pocket

Half a Lambert is better than one.
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Nov 14, 2009
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I don't think it's a standard rope texture; when you look "down" a strand, the lights emanate outward realistically. They probably have actual programming telling the game how to render it, that can't be replicated by a mapper.
 

AttorneyAtMusic

L1: Registered
Nov 12, 2010
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Would it be possible to embed a script that triggers that in the BSP?
Not that I would know how to do that of course. . .


On second thought, if I was feeling really motivated, I could probably dig around and find the sprites that correspond to the bulbs and then place them manually. But since this variation is only going to be run during the holiday event anyway, there's probably no reason to not just use the default move_rope entity itself.


Thanks for the assistance though
 

Fish 2.0

L6: Sharp Member
Nov 22, 2012
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Does Valve not have it replace the in-game rope automatically?

As in you put a rope, tf2 sees a rope then renders it as a chain of lights?
 

tyler

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Sep 11, 2013
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If it's just for now, you can just use a rope and it will revert later--Valve does not update all the maps every time this happens.

If you want it to be permanent, figure out what the christmas strings are by searching the GCF files with GCFScape and just using that rope texture instead of the default one.

And for your own benefit and education, there are no embedded scripts that trigger in the BSP. That's not how it works.
 

Blade x64

Logical insanity
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Sep 3, 2009
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Unfortunately with how the Christmas lights are done, they'll be a pain to do by hand. The light bulbs are colored sprites (materials\Effects\christmas_bulb) centered on the rope and given a random rotation.

Beyond emailing Valve and asking for such a parameter for the rope entites, there is no easy method of replicating the lights.
 

henke37

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Sep 23, 2011
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Wouldn't it be more of a rope material property?
 

Pocket

Half a Lambert is better than one.
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Nov 14, 2009
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And doesn't env_sprite, the only way to embed sprites into a map manually, disregard orientation and always render parallel to the viewport?
 

henke37

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Sep 23, 2011
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Can't you use prop_detail for sprites too?
 

Blade x64

Logical insanity
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Sep 3, 2009
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You're right, Steve. env_sprite doesn't have any sort of orientation, so all the bulbs would be pointing down.
 

Seba

DR. BIG FUCKER, PHD
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Jun 9, 2009
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I don't know if this helps, but the lights are wonky as fuck around certain models. For example:

00F7697DEE9B62F5E7280E004EB831CAD9B7DE14


As you can see, the lights are cut off by the blue boat but not by the oars or railing. IIRC the boat is nonsolid in that location; could that have something to do with it?
 
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Fish 2.0

L6: Sharp Member
Nov 22, 2012
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If it's just for now, you can just use a rope and it will revert later--Valve does not update all the maps every time this happens.

I'm pretty sure they do update some of the maps and put ropes in them, for example last year I remember 2fort having rope in the courtyards that wasn't there before.
 

Seba

DR. BIG FUCKER, PHD
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Jun 9, 2009
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Yyler meant that they don't recompile the maps and we don't have to redownload them; rather, they change some materials around.
 

EArkham

Necromancer
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Aug 14, 2009
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As you can see, the lights are cut off by the blue boat but not by the oars or railing. IIRC the boat is nonsolid in that location; could that have something to do with it?

I'd be willing to bet money (well, a crate) that it's due to transparency render order issues. If the boat doesn't use transparency, the texture might have $nocull 1 which can sometimes cause similar problems.

Another thing your pic shows is that it's apparently NOT limited to the texture -- that uses the rope texture, rather than cable, and it still gets lights. So likely hardcoded for rope entities.
 

tyler

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Sep 11, 2013
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Well, it'd be a shader thing for the rope, like pyroland.

I can also confirm that model has $nocull, but I forget the reason.
 

Pocket

Half a Lambert is better than one.
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Nov 14, 2009
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Wasn't there once an animated version where the blades would spin and there was a fake motion blur effect?