"Tractor beam" effect?

evanonline

L420: High Member
Mar 15, 2009
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For my Mercs vs. Aliens entry I want to have a small effect where you can get "sucked up" into a tractor beam by one of the UFOs. trigger_push only does anything if you're already in mid-air, so I need something that can create an initial force. I tried having a func_door that opens on touch and closes immediately (so that was other players can be pushed up as well) but you just get stuck in it, even if it's set to be non-solid.

Anyone got any ideas? It's not exactly imperative since I'm still in the process of blocking it all out but I'm terrible at doing entity trickery so any help would be appreciated.
 

TMP

Ancient Pyro Main
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Aug 11, 2008
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As far as I know you can just set a player's velocity with !activator "AddOutput setvelocity x y z" or something like that, we discussed it in the chat once. That'll give you the upward force you want.

Not entirely sure if it works but I wouldn't be shocked if it did. Not entirely sure about the syntax, you'd have to mess with it.
 

Crash

func_nerd
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Mar 1, 2010
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The method I used to give upward force in probed and wubwubwub is by using a trigger push set to going up along with a playerclip 1hu above the regular geometry that disappears for a split second as soon as the trigger starts. Then I put little 2hu ramps just out the outer edge that you drop off of so you are mid air as you walk into the trigger. This has the downside of possibly getting stuck in these playerclips as they are enabled, though. All about timing.

TMP's method sounds a lot cleaner though, so I'd try that first. I'll probably give that a shot next time I update those maps.
 

Namieo

L1: Registered
Mar 3, 2013
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As far as I know you can just set a player's velocity with !activator "AddOutput setvelocity x y z" or something like that, we discussed it in the chat once.

"setvelocity" didn't work, but "basevelocity" immediately adds the specified velocity to the player. I'd love a way to set velocity to an exact value, though.
 

TMP

Ancient Pyro Main
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Aug 11, 2008
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"setvelocity" didn't work, but "basevelocity" immediately adds the specified velocity to the player. I'd love a way to set velocity to an exact value, though.

Ah ok, that's what I was thinking of.
 

evanonline

L420: High Member
Mar 15, 2009
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Have you tried a trigger_gravity with a negative value?

I tried this and it kind of had the intended effect, when you entered the tractor beam trigger area you got sucked up.

...Except, it just permanently set your gravity to -1, across lives. I'd die and come back and jump and I'd be stuck hugging the ceiling. Hahah. Was a nice thought, at least.
 

Egan

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Feb 14, 2010
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I tried this and it kind of had the intended effect, when you entered the tractor beam trigger area you got sucked up.

...Except, it just permanently set your gravity to -1, across lives. I'd die and come back and jump and I'd be stuck hugging the ceiling. Hahah. Was a nice thought, at least.

You could then just put a trigger_gravity inside each spawnroom with gravity set to '1'. Wouldn't be too expensive entity wise.

Although the trigger_push with a velocity output would work as well, I believe it was used in Vanilla's 72hour payload race map:

Just for reference, you can lift somebody off of the ground and fling them into a trigger_push by nudging their velocity upwards:
lyeFgbR.png
 
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evanonline

L420: High Member
Mar 15, 2009
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You could then just put a trigger_gravity inside each spawnroom with gravity set to '1'. Wouldn't be too expensive entity wise.

Although the trigger_push with a velocity output would work as well, I believe it was used in Vanilla's 72hour payload race map:

I was going to say, I tried this immediately after (also mentioned up above) and it works like a charm! Just wanted to mention the results of the other suggestion.

EDIT:

Actually I'm having trouble with this, I have the trigger_push set to do all this OnStartTouch, which I figured would accomplish the same thing. Should I set up a trigger_multiple to do this instead to create some lift? It just seems messy because I have a lot of trigger brushes in the same space (I also have a func_nobuild underneath the tractor beam because it seemed like it could be easy to abuse, plus the kill trigger at the top of the UFO...)

EDIT AGAIN:

Trying a trigger_multiple to create a push effect instead didn't work either.
 
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Pocket

Half a Lambert is better than one.
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Nov 14, 2009
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Have you tried a trigger_gravity with a negative value?
is this a brand-new feature or have we seriously had this since forever

because wow this sure is a thing