CS:GO SDK dispenser, earthquake, steam and chickens.

In this post I will teach you how to add and config a few other entities, such as;

• env_shooter, which I’ll use to create a dispenser that gives out drinks.
• env_shake, to create an earthquake effect.
• env_steam, to add detail to damaged pipes.
• chicken, add a few chickens into the level, why not?

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env_shooter – is a point entity available in all Source games. It shoots giblets out of its origin. These gibs can be either models or sprites.

env_shake – is a point entity available in all Source games. It controls screen shakes on players. With this entity you can simulate tremors (earthquakes, blast waves, passing vehicles).

env_steam – is a point entity available in all Source games. It is used to create a jet of steam or heat wave distortion.

chicken – Chicken is a chicken.

 

env_shooter (Dispenser)

To do this I will need; env_shooter and prop (preferred prop_dynamic).

Select the Entity Tool and use Objects dropdownlist to find prop_dynamic then left click in the level to add it. Double click the entity to open its properties. Open the Model Browser by selecting World Model and clicking browse. Select the vending machine model (vending_machine.mdl), then hit OK. Hit apply and close when finished (Reposition if necessary)

Select the Entity Tools again and filter this time for env_shooter and add it to your level. Reposition it to where the you want the giblets to come out from the bottom of the vending machine.

Double click the env_shooter entity to open its properties. You will notice it has a lot of properties that you can set. Here a few of the important ones;

 

• Gib Direction – The direction the gibs will fly.
• Gib Angle – The orientation of the spawned gibs.
• Gib Life – Time in seconds for gibs to live +/- 5%.
• Gib Velocity – Speed of the fired gibs.
• Number of Gibs – Total number of gibs to shoot each time it’s activated.
• Model – Thing to shoot out. Can be a .mdl or a .vmt.
• Simulate – Type of Model it will shoot it.
• Delay Between Shots – Delay (in seconds) between shooting each gib. If 0, all gibs shoot at once.

For the purpose of this post, I will set a few changes to these properties to allow bottles to shoot out from the vending machine.

• Start with the model. Select the Model property and hit browse button to open the Model Browser. Filter for bottle and select water bottle (water_bottle.mdl). Hit OK to apply it.
• Set the Simulate to be physics, as we want the bottle to have physics properties.
• Set number of gibs to be one, as we want one bottle at a time.
• Leave the Delay Between Shot at zero and Gib Velocity at 200 (The larger the value the further and fast it will go out).
• For Gib life is optional, as it relays on how long you want bottle to say in the level. I’m going with 100.
• Gib Angle 90 0 0. It will shoot the bottle side ways.
• Use  Top view port to config Gib Direction.

 

Lastly click the Flag tab and enable the repeatable setting to allow you use the env_shooter more than once.

Now that you have done that you will need to add a button to the machine to shoot out the bottle. I am sure you able to do that by now (hint create a brush with the invisible texture and tie it to button entity. In the Output tab set the Via this input to shoot).

Compile and run the map to test it.

 

env_shake (earthquake)

Select the Entity Tools and Filter for env_Shake in the Objects dropdownlist. Left click to add to the level, then double click the entity to open its properties.

Properties are;

• Amplitude – The amount of noise in the screen shake. Should be a range between 0 and 16.
• Effect Radius – The radius around this entity in which to affect players.
• Duration – The length of time in which to shake the player’s screens.
• Frequency – The frequency used to apply the screen shake. Should be a value between 0 and 255, where 0.1 = jerk, and 255.0 = rumble.

Flags setting are;

• GlobalShake – Shaking occurs throughout the entire map.
• In Air – Objects in the air are affected by the shaking.
• Physics – Shake physical objects to create realistic feel.
• Ropes –  Shakes ropes.
• Don’t shake view – Doesn’t shake players view.

 

This entity requires some testing to figure out the right property values. I have create two, each connected to a button to test the difference in-game

1- Default Amplitude and Frequency, but increase duration to notice the affect.

2- Increased the Amplitude 10, set the frequency to 180 with duration 10.

Attach these to button so that they can be triggered when used activates them. Compile and run the game.

 

env_steam (pipes)

Select the Entity Tools and search for env_steam in the objects dropdownlist. Left click in the level to add it. Double click the Entity to display its properties.

Properties are;

• Initial State – Option if starts enabled.
• Particle Type – Steam effect type. There are two; normal or heatwave. Steam effect type,
• Spread Speed -The amount of random spread in the particle’s velocity after they spawn.
• Speed – The default speed at which the particles move after they spawn.
• Particle Start Size – The initial size of the particles after they spawn.
• Particle end Size – The size of the particles at the point at which they are removed.
• Emission Rate – The rate of particle emission. i.e. particles per second.
• Color – Steam colour, only used if emissive flag is set.
• Length of stream jet – The length of the jet determines the lifetime of each particle.
• Translucency – Render alpha value.
• Pitch Yaw Roll (X Y Z) – This entity’s orientation in the world.

Flag settings;

• Emissive – Provides colour to the steam.

Will create three env_steam entities with different properties;

1- Initial state on, pointing up with Emissive setting selected to give white colour.

2- Initial state on, pointing up, particle speed 40, end size 30, 30 emission rate and coloured green (need to make sure Emissive is selected to activate the colour)

3- Initial state on, point up, but type is set to heatwave (It will not show steam but a heatwave)

Compile and run the game to view them in-game.

 

Chickens (bwak)

This entity is very simple to add. Select the Entity Tools and add an entity to your level. Double click the entity to open its properties.  Type in the Class dropdownlist Chicken and hit enter. The entity should change to look like the image above. This entity has no properties.

Nothing else to do. Compile and run the map.

 

Video 

Why I won’t be buying Titanfall

In this post I will explain the reasons why I wont be buying Titanfall, which is set to be released for the PC, Xbox One and Xbox 360 this March.

Before starting, I would like to indicate that I did not buy Battlefield 4 or Call of Duty: Ghost, because I anticipated the problems that came with them when they were released. I will do a few comparison between Titanfall, Ghost/BF4 (using what information there is online) and Black Ops 2/BF3 (games that I have played).

So let me start with Content.

From reading the articles, playing the beta and watching videos of the game online, it appears that Titanfall will not have a great deal of content to keep me playing.

The game is mutiplayer only, but has singleplayer elements.  Following the same idea that was used in Brink, do you remember that game? Which was hyped to reasonable standard before release but unfortunately it did not live up to that hype.

While playing the beta I did not take notice of the singleplayer elements, as I was focusing on staying alive. This made me think of how many people will do the same thing? Think the story that someone spent great time working on will be wasted.

The beta only featured few amount of weapons, but yet again its a beta. Although there hasn’t been any information about the weapons in-game but from what I have seen and read  it looks like the game will only be having a few handful of weapons. Battlefield 3 in my option had a good number of weapons for players to select from. While Black Ops 2 had a reseasonable amount, good enough to last months.

As there will be no singleplayer, that then could mean more mutiplayer maps, right?. Well as I am writing this post I have discovered that there will be fourteen maps overall. The ones I played in the beta felt like a medium size map when I played as a pilot but felt small while in the Mechs. Compare the number of maps with other shooters (Not including DLC maps, just standard game copy maps) like Battlefield 4 which has ten maps (which are big but can be cut sort depending on the game mode) and COD:Ghost which has fourteen medium sized maps.

So by comparing three games; Battlefield 4, Ghost and Titanfall. You will notice that;

• Battlefield 4 has Lots of Guns, 10 Maps (Ranging in size), Singleplayer and Co-op.
• Call of Duty: Ghost has Good number of guns, 14 Maps (Medium size), Singleplayer and Extension (or Zombies if you’re a Treyarch supporter).
• Titanfall will have a good number of guns, 14 Maps and three Mech/Titan types.

It does not look like you get much with Titanfall. So this then allows me to move on to the second reason.

Price

The cheapest place to buy Titanfall is from Amazon, at the cost of £34.99 ($58.45) for PC. While the most expensive place to buy Titanfall for PC is directly through Origin (EA’s failed Steam clone) and it will set you back £44.99 ($75.16).

When COD:Ghost and Battlefield 4 were released, they had the price tag of £34.99 on Amazon. With Battlefield 4 costing £44.99 on Origin and Ghost costing £39.99 on Steam.

So the reason here that I do not want to pay EA and Respawn £34.99 for a game that has less content than other games. I also do not want to pay them to forcing me to use Origin.

Support

The final reason is support. I will not expect any. The game will have no dedicated servers as everything will be running on Cloud servers. So you are provided with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 style of matchmaking, which give you random bans, increase of cheaters and lack of good games.

Studio co-founder revealed that Titanfall will not support mod and map tools at launch, but then again as the game will require Origin, so do not expect support even after launch. This shows that the game will have no future in growing, compared to other titles such as Counter Strike, Unreal Tournament and Quake, which to this day are still played by millions, due to the fact of the community support creating free content for players to play.

Beta Opinion

This is based on my opinion, others may differ.

Things that I did not like:

• Matchmaking Sucks.
• Everybody gets Mechs, its not earned.
• AIs are useless.
•  Hit Marker Latency/Not registering.
• Climbing problems.
• Some weapons are useless and others are overpowered.

Things that I did like:

• Movement and wall running felt smooth.
• Wildcard boosts also known as burn cards.
• You always enjoy watching Mechs fall from the sky.

So to sum up Titanfall would be that it’s a over-hyped and overpriced game. This does not mean that game is not good, its just that you don’t really get much for your money. It’s a little pick me up that will only last couple of months before getting bombarded by DLC until Titanfall 2 announcement at E3 2016.

Titanfall Maps , Battlefield 4 Maps , COD:Ghost Maps