Question about making a zip line

(sparky) #1

I have an idea of using a zip line on a map idea that I have so I thought of the ways that I can get around this with the limitations of ET.
First I thought that there could be an electric pole with the wire from it to go to the outside of the wall of the building.
Secondly there could be a window underneath that wire location on that building.
Thirdly, there could be a window ledge below the window where the person can release onto.

The way I first thought of grabbing the zip line is by a metal tube which surrounds the wire and when he presses ‘F’, he is grabbing it similar to when you grab a dead body on the floor and you drag it. You have it locked in your hands until you let go. To get the metal tube to slide back to it’s starting position you drop a grenade near it to send it off.

But then I thought that I lost all of my realism using this method and I came up with something better. The second way I thought of doing this is maybe to using something that already exists in ET and that is the TANK vehicle. By pressing ‘F’ you can enter the tank and be locked inside of the tank riding it. When you hit ‘F’ again at anytime, you are release from it which can be dangerous if you are sliding on the wire 3 stories high. I thought that maybe the allies engineer can jump straight up to the wire which is a few feet higher than him (or be boosted up if the wire is higher) (or jump out from another window), to the wire and then the “Grabbing Icon” can show up so that you know that you can grab it. When you press ‘F’. you are riding on it, just like riding on the tank in a path designated by a script.

This idea seems better since you don’t have to see a metal tube or any object and you don’t have to return the object to the original location. The only thing that seems questionable is if there is a way to return that invisible tank back to the start or can you just have an unlimited amount of invisible vehicles at the start of the wire line?

What do you guys think?

edit** also, if you don’t know what a zipline is, what this http://youtu.be/3r0pROzHY5M

(UJERebel) #2

It’s a very cool idea :slight_smile: thx for the video tough :smiley:

I guess you can just return the tank from the last spline to the first with speed 10000000 and nobody will notice :slight_smile: Maybe create doors so you can only enter with a present tank?

And just create the invisible tank over a wire would be cool :slight_smile:

(stealth6) #3

push the player through water. (Not sure how feasible this is, but I thought I’d just float the idea)

The water would disable your weapon and you’d be in that lying down animation from the movie
WIth the push triggers you can slowly increase speed I think.

The player can also get off anywhere they like and will keep their current speed (realistic)

Only problem is disabling the sounds when you enter / exit / are in the water.

(sparky) #4

Good idea, but what happens if the person doesn’t release in time, he will be returned with a speed of 10000000.
But what if in the script, the zip line releases anybody still on the invisible tank?
Similar when a tank goes over 5 mines, it releases the driver and he can’t get back on.
And then your idea of returning the invisible tank to the start would work.

Sounds good. Anybody have any other thoughts? Is it too much work to do?

(sparky) #5

Not sure what you mean. Wouldn’t this create an animation of him swimming? This would be a problem.

(UJERebel) #6

I think the water would create much problems :slight_smile: like indeed the animation and sounds.

For the player returning: trigger_hurt at the end :slight_smile:

(stealth6) #7

In the video he was lying down, I guess I misunderstood.

(sparky) #8

oh I’m sorry, that’s true. The video has the guy lying down but I meant a zip line where you hang on with your hands(gloves on), and slide down the rope at an angle. Thank you for catching that.

So do you think this idea is possible? Do you think anyone can build this zip line?

(Hydrium) #9

Iam pretty sure cortex had multiple of these ‘ziplines’
it was pretty buggy though. maybe you can pick it up and improve it?

heres what i looks at around 1:30 , as you can see it was pretty hard to stay on it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7JOyfnAdOs

(UJERebel) #10

UJE 00 Also has a paraglider (parachute) Which you could easily convert.
You can build it and i will help :slight_smile:

(sparky) #11

That was a very funny video on cortex. That zipline doesn’t seem to be stable as you said, so I don’t think it would be good to use.

@Rebel: I would like to help wherever you think I could help but I don’t know what I could help with.
The wire is a normal electric cable found on many maps already. The invisible tank is just chopped down to be smaller exterior size with an invisible texture. The script, as you said, was kill the tank in order to remove the driver, and then return the tank at a very high speed to complete the circular path.

Edit** but if you mean work on the paraglider, is it stable? Does it work perfectly like the tank? Because it seems like the tank idea is the most stable so far.

(UJERebel) #12

It’s pretty stable, but i don’t think it will be good for you purpose :slight_smile: i think you can’t get out and can’t be shot :s
Just test UJE 01 somewhere :slight_smile: (not 00 like i said before).

And kill the tank? I would just put a trigger_hurt at the end of the path.

(-SSF-Sage) #13

You can always make the pressing off F trigger it go down and back up when you press it at the bottom (accum to check). It’s very simple to script that. Or then apply a trigger to notice when the player is gone, it’s easy as well. So the “tank” will stay until the player releases it. Or you can just make it dissapear once at the bottom and sent it back up, so player will drop off automatically. So that won’t be a problem in any way.

But I don’t think you can use the actual tank, as you probably won’t be able to remove the gun model, without messing the game. It could be a clip box the player is inside, which is setstated default/invisible kinda like an invisible tight elevator. But do notice if a player is standing inside the clip when it is invisible and you return it back to default (back to solid) he will be crushed to death. Ofc the player will be able to “move” in it. If you want you can teleport the player inside it so he is aligned perfectly inside the cube to minimise the moving range (to zero if possible, animations will remain). Also too big speed might crush the player. And you can apply push triggers around it so other players won’t get crushed.

Setstate clip cube + push + teleport? Could work.

So I’d probably try this first:

Press F.

  1. Setstate trigger_push around the clip cube to push the other players away just a tiny bit
  2. Setstate clip cube default (cube is solid)
  3. Teleport player inside the clip cube
  4. Attach the (hold trigger to clip cube by tag
  5. Move the clip cube to end spline, stay there.

Press F AGAIN (at any point):

  1. Resetscript
  2. Setstate clip cube invisible (cube is nonsolid)
  3. Move the clip cube to back start point at any speed you want.

If you want decoration (metal bar etc.), you can attach it to the clip cube by tags. Or make the decoration model as a separate mover and move it separately, so it will continue down even when player is released, then you can make it “bounce” back at a small speed, so the next player has to wait a bit.

Everything can be timed perfectly.

(sparky) #14

I don’t think that is a good idea because you are assuming that the person is alive while riding the zip line. If he get’s killed he won’t be able to send the zip line back.

Another thing, he should not be using his gun model. A zip line was typically used by holding onto something with both hands, while it was wrapped around the wire overhead. For this reason, he should not have his gun model show on the hud. It should appear like drawgun=0.
If the person let’s go at any time before reaching the end of the trip (whether by death, or by letting go) the tank should return to the top automatically. For this reason it seems like the tank idea is the best so far.

[ul]
[li]It prevents the drawgun,
[/li][li]it locks the players in place,
[/li][li]he is able to be shot,
[/li][li]he goes in only one direction so he can’t move except to look. [/ul]
[/li]The only difference I see is that he has to be shootable all over his body, not just the head box. So far, it seems like the only difficulties is making the tank almost the size of the player body so it doesn’t crash into future obstacles in different maps. Another difficulty is making that tank transparent so that the player body shows up. I’m curious if the regular tank effects the player body texture or does the player body get fully rendered while driving the tank. The other difficulty would be the infinite circular path. I’m not sure that anyone has ever written a tank path in an infinite circular path. And the last difficulty I see is the acceleration of the vehicle. I’m not a mapper so I don’t have your experience–has acceleration and deceleration been done before in mapping? perhaps by triggers?

(-SSF-Sage) #15

[QUOTE=sparky;396015]I don’t think that is a good idea because you are assuming that the person is alive while riding the zip line. If he get’s killed he won’t be able to send the zip line back.
[/QUOTE]

Possible to check with attached trigger. So getting shot is not a problem at all.

[QUOTE=sparky;396015]
Another thing, he should not be using his gun model. A zip line was typically used by holding onto something with both hands, while it was wrapped around the wire overhead. For this reason, he should not have his gun model show on the hud. It should appear like drawgun=0.
If the person let’s go at any time before reaching the end of the trip (whether by death, or by letting go) the tank should return to the top automatically. For this reason it seems like the tank idea is the best so far.

[ul]
[li]It prevents the drawgun, [/li][li]it locks the players in place, [/li][li]he is able to be shot, [/li][li]he goes in only one direction so he can’t move except to look. [/ul][/li]The only difference I see is that he has to be shootable all over his body, not just the head box. So far, it seems like the only difficulties is making the tank almost the size of the player body so it doesn’t crash into future obstacles in different maps. [/QUOTE]

I don’t think you can pull it off. Without a mod. There is no other way to lock a player except while holding a mg. Mg can be attached to anything tho, so god forget the actual tank atleast, you can create that part as you want. But I don’t think you cannot hide the mg model, without completely removing the model by replacing the model with an empty one. Then mg model will dissapear completely from the servers with the map. And the player can still shoot etc. with the mg even if you “can’t see” the mg.

This is no problem tho. Tank idea requires a mod and coding. With box you need no coding and it’s easy, but the player can turn 360 and will have his own gun in hand. And he will be able to jump, prone and crouch.

Next thing, I don’t think there’s no way for you to add animations for player model of any sort on any method for this to look right without a mod.

Ps. Just watched that cortex video. Never played the zip line so I don’t know. But possibly could be done by moving a regular common/ladder texture. But you’d probably fall easily when it’s moving. Things go easily wrong with high speed movement with the engine. And it will act like normal ladder.

(sparky) #16

Yes, I agree with most of what you said but with regard to the player model appearing different, I agree that would have to be modded and I don’t want to mess with that. The zipline should be available on etpro or jaymod etc. The way around this is not to affect the playermodel from outside, but simply to effect only the player model from 1st person view. In other words, simply drawgun for all weaponbanks = 0 during the ride. There is a problem with my idea here and I’ll explain why but first I would say that your MG explanation seems better.

The problem with my idea of effecting a person’s drawgun to 0 seems to be effecting the client’s settings. I don’t know if this is the case but it would seem that if we effect the drawgun cvar of a client and then make it 1 again, that it might turn the cvar on, for clients who have it default off. I don’t know.

The MG idea is good because as you said it locks the player from movement. There are a few problems with the MG idea and I was wondering what you think about them:

[ul]
[li]Making the MG a vehicle[/li][li]Making the MG transparent[/li][li]Not using the MG FOV which seems to be about 70 or 80[/li][/ul]

Can you please explain why you believe that using the drivable tank would require a mod? I would think that using a tank with mg is the easiest since it is already a vehicle which takes care of the first of the problems listed above.

(-SSF-Sage) #17

You cannot forcecvar for a client. All players would get their weapons hidden.

You can have attach mg to anything or nothing at all (nonsolidnodraw). So player will not notice anything else than the mg if you want so.

You can change the texture of the mg with remapshader to nodraw so the mg seems transparent. But then all other mgs in the level will be hidden (it will atleast function normally with other maps then). And you can still use it like the normal mg.

Fov, nope.

You won’t need a mod if you tolerate certain things like shooting with mg when you use the mg method (aka tank).

(sparky) #18

There is one other solution that I thought of, the script for the mg is taken apart to only take the relevant code which is needed. The only part of the code needed is the attachment. Whatever makes the ‘F’ key make the client attach himself to the mg can be used for the zip line, no? That would solve everything except the drawgun problem.

Or would this be a mod change?

(-SSF-Sage) #19

No. It is a special action for a special entity. You cannot make it attach to anything else than the mg. Without a mod change.

If you fake the attachement (clip cube/ladder etc.), then it will draw the personal weapon of choice. If you place water inside the cube, you cannot disable water effects and drowning.

(stealth6) #20

What if you put the player in a box with common/ladder on all sides?