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PART 4 - SURFACES

In this tutorial I will be covering how to make platforms, and how to make use of the surface and content properties of a brush to make your environment more realistic...  Now who ever heard of water that makes a walking on metal noise when you walk on it...  Come to think of it you shouldn't even be able to walk on water...

And it is with water that this tutorial will start.  You may have tried to make a brush into water before by using the water texture in the common textures and found that (a) it is solid and (b) it makes a noise very much unlike water. 

WET WATER...

To make your water act like proper water first you will have to make a brush to fit the space you want full of water.  Try to make it obey the laws of physics by making sure it fills the space :)  Then select the brush/brushes you want turned into water in the usual way.  The first thing to do to make them into water is to apply one of the water textures which can be found in the set of common textures.  Once you have done this your brush should look like water.   Unfortunately it still is NOT water.  It is solid and probably makes all the wrong noises when you try to walk on it.

Now to make your brush into water what you will have to do is press S for surface properties.  In the 'surf flags' section of check boxes select water.  The surface of your brush must be water.  In the 'content flags' set of check boxes select water.  Your brush must be made of water.   You can modify the waters translucency by using the surface flags. 

flags.jpg (35440 bytes)

A USABLE LADDER...

If you have tried to make a ladder before and it hasn't worked then you have probably forgotten to adjust the surface properties of the ladder to make it a ladder.  Ladders are infact extremely easy if you haven't tried to make one before.  All you have to do is use brushes to make two 'poles' and then use some more brushes for the rungs joining the 'poles'.  Once you have done this press S for surface properties and under the content flags select 'ladder'.  Easy as that. Of course you could assign the ladder value to any brush, if for instance you wanted to make a tree or a rope climbable. 

Once you have your ladder you can also use the surface properties surface flags to modify what your ladder is made of.  This will   adjust the noise that is made when you climb the ladder and any effects it may have on the player.  You can do this to any brush you make...

SOME MORE ENTITIES...

Now for the final item in this multipurpose tutorial I will explain how to make platforms.  By platforms of course I mean the quake style platforms that rise when you step on them...

In kingpin they are really quite simple to make.   In your map where you want the platform just make a brush in the shape of the platform you want at its HIGHEST position.  If you make the brush at the position the platform will be in when it is lowered it will not work.  Don't worry though, although it appears at its highest point in the editor it will be at its lowest point in the game.

Now select your brush and press N.  Make the brush into a func_plat entity.  Now you will have to set some values for the entity for it to work right.  First set the key 'speed'.  A value of 300 is usually quite good, but you can experiment with faster or slower speeds.  Secondly you will have to set the 'height' value.  This is the distance you want the platform to move.  If your platform is 192 units from the floor for instance you set the height value to 192.   If the platform seems to sink into the floor and get stuck try reducing the number by decrements of 8, as one square in the editor fully zoomed in is 8 units by 8 units.    

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This page was last updated on Sunday, September 12, 1999 at 07:18AM EDT.