Interesting... however, when I designed my complex seven-floor elevator with call buttons, in-elevator buttons, multi-floor-call-at-a-time, and floor-ordering, (all with standard ents, my 4th ever HL map) i used an ancient device to help me keep track of what all the ents where called and how the entire idea flowed.
This device is known as PAPER. That's right, i drew out my plans, so i could keep track of them. Maybe you should try it! -av Tim Holt wrote: > Was recently working on a pretty complex set of entities to manage a > firing range. It involves a fairly complex set of entities > (game_counters, env_renders, func_guntargets, path_corners, weapon > strips, triggers, env_messages, func_buttons, etc. etc. > > And what I found was that actually testing this in the "fuzzy" > environment of a game was not always easy for several reasons... > 1) I had no way to actively check the exact state of entities > 2) Things happened too fast at times > 3) Trying to scroll through the console to view "developer 2" > output is not very good. Especially in a multi-player environment > where people talking, dying, etc. cause excessive scroll. > 4) I had to shoot all 5 of the targets in the rifle range and there's > one that's pretty hard to hit :^) > > OK so what do I want? > 1) A set of code that can parse a .map file, analyze the entities > and identify... > a) common errors such as targets with no matching target ent > b) "orphan" entities that need to be targeted to do something, > but nothing targets them > c) "sequence trigger" entities that in some way start some > event or sequence of events. Examples are buttons, > trigger_once/multiples, etc. > 2) Something that will diagram my entity relations in an abstract > way. Has anyone ever used National Instruments LabView? > 3) A way to simulate some entity behaviour using this view. Click > on a func_button and "simulate" it's trigger - and watch just > what happens. > 4) View all entity properties during simulations to see just > how they behave, etc. > > Now what would be REALLY cool would be some extension to HL that let > extensive debugging/tracing information be sent to a second computer on > the net. So you could run the game on one machine, and monitor the > entities on another machine. Even perhaps manually trigger items via > the debugging panel. For example, what if you want to go into spectator > mode to properly view some event - yet then can't actually activate the > events because you're no longer a player? > > Ah well maybe this tool is called "WorldCraft 4"? > -- > I think...I think it's in my basement. Let me go upstairs and check. > -M.C. Escher > > _______________________________________________ > To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: > http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlcoders -- --------- [DRP]Avatar-X SillyZone Homepage: www.thesillyzone.com SillyZone Forums: forum.thesillyzone.com My Homepage: www.cyberwyre.com _______________________________________________ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlcoders
