MISCELLANEOUS KEYPOINTS 

The Indian Fakir a.k.a "Machismo"

www.unrealism.com/unrealedmax

INTRODUCTION

This is the second installment in my miscellaneous series, aiming to explain all the various actors found under key point, in the classes menu. You can use these actors to make custom boats, fighters, etc. move around in a realistic way (the main object of the tutorial); trigger off sounds, etc.

NOTE: @#! - It would be nice to use that actor in every level that you make.

I. PATH POINT & OBJECT PATH - THE BEST THING THAT HAPPENED TO CUSTOM MOVING BOATS, FIGHTERS, CARS , ETC.

Caught your attention didn't I?. Its true pathpoints are the best thing that happened to stuff like boats and fighters. They work just like interpolation points, the difference being that where Interpol's direct the path of the player, pathpoints direct the path of movers. If you have read my interpolation point tutorial you'll understand that this is just great for those boats. If you were to make a boat using just a mover its movement would be dictated by the numkeys and it would look really odd - the movements would seem artificial. This is where pathpoints come in - they direct the path of the boat making it seem natural. I'll give an example to better explain this concept. Falcon One strap yourself in we're going on a flight, lets jump to it:
1. Lets create a room for the fighter to do the bombing raid in - say about 768 x1024x10000.
2. Make your fighter and add it in as a mover at one end of the box. You may want to make this into a dynamic light mover by going to the movers properties and under mover changing bDynamicLightMover to true, don't forget to set the values under lighting after you do this. Under movement you may also want to set the rotation like yaw and pitch. Give the mover a tag and set object initial state to NONE. You may also want to set the move ambient sound.
3. PATH POINTS: This mover will move according to the path points that you place in your level. If you wanted a fighter to just come in straight and go out you could just set the key frames. But if you have a huge winding canyon and want the fighter to weave in and out - you should use path points, COOOl!
TIP: There cannot be more than 35 path nodes in a level. The first and last path points are dummies, which means that if you wanted the fighter to move through 10 points you would need to add in 12, the one at he beginning and the end being dummies. A level must have a minimum of 4 path points.

Add in the amount of path points that you want the fighter to move through in your level. Say you want your fighter to move left to right, right to left and just weave crazily all over the place just place in path points at all the "points(?)" that you want the mover to turn at. If you want the mover to come in low and then move off higher just place path points that form a V. Place the first path point behind the fighter which is outside the level (remember you cant see it in the 3D view) and the second point in front of it where ever you want the fighter to start off.

PATH POINT SETTINGS: Open up the path points properties and expand path point, here you'll find three values:
- curvespeed: Determines the direction of the fighter mover at that point. Play around with this value for the best one. You may want to change it for each point depending on the situation.
- sequence_number: The first point will be 0, the second 1 and so on in a linear line.
- speedU: Determines the speed of the fighter at that point. If you want the fighter to come in fast and slow down and then take off fast this is the value that you should configure. A value of .25 will move the mover through that point in 25 seconds.
Also under movement you should set the rotation values that you want the fighter to take at each point.

Remember the last and first path points need not have curve speeds and speedu's set but must have the sequence number put in. The curve speed of the second point (sequence number of 1) will determine the initial direction of motion and the last but one point the end direction. The fighter will be placed on the second point on entering the level, because as stated above the first point is a dummy.
4. OBJECT PATH: After you have the path points set out, locate and place in an object path actor (cant locate it? damnit this is a key point tutorial find it under key point, still don't see it? visit a doc maybe he can help :). Open up its properties and expand object path, here are the three groups of settings that you will find:
bAlterPitch, bAlterRoll, bYaw - You could set these values to true if you want the mover to change its yaw, roll, etc. This will be affected by the values of the rotation that you gave under mover.
RAdjust - If you set any of the above to true, give the amount of yaw or what ever that you want be it to be adjusted to here.
PathActorTag - The tag (under events) of the fighter that I told you to set before.

Now expand advanced and set bStatic to false (if I may be so bold as to point out a slight mistake here - I mean object path is used to set the mover to move then why on earth is bStatic set to true by default).

Place a trigger nearby and give it an event, set the same as the tag of the object path and ALL the path points. Whoohoo!!! Sierra Hotel Falcon One, that falcon topic is now a smoke and hole in the ground. Now on playing the level you should see the fighter come in and go out of the level.

GENERAL NOTES

• MY SETTINGS: Mover Rotation- -16874; All Path Points- rotation 50, curve speed -300, speedU - .30 for all but two which was set to .10, sequence numbers were set normally; Object Path- bAlterYaw true (rest false), RAdjust only yaw set to 18000.

• BOAT SETTINGS: While making a boat that you want to see doing all sorts of twists and turns first add in the mover and then the water. SpeedU is the key to making the boat seem to start of slowly and then take of. Depending on the size of the river set the rotation for path point, the reason I'm mentioning this is that don't give it some humongous value, something like 50 or so should be nice enough.

• To put your Falcon (if anyone's wondering, yes I'm a Falcon4 fan) through a bombing raid the best way to do it would be to use a dispatcher. Have the trigger set off the dispatcher along with the other stuff discussed above. Give suitable outdelays for the dispatcher and under outevents set a thing factory's tag (have the thing factory connected to a spawn point - under navigation point - by the same tag); a exploding wall (both the mover and the effect); explosion chains etc. all going off. This requires careful timing, but if you set it up straight the fighter should come in and then it will spawn a war shell, then the wall will bust and then there will be a row of explosions and the fighter will fly out.

• That's all you have to work under these limitations. What the hell, you didn't expect something like those cool cars we've seen from pre-release movies in HALO, now did you?. 

@#! II. AMBIENT SOUND

This just produces sounds again and again. Use this in as many places as you can in your level - the level of reality that it adds is worth it. It is just like setting the ambient sound of any actor. Just go to the sounds properties, expand sound choose the sound that you want to use in the SoundFx browser and hit use. Play around with the pitch, volume and radius settings. For example if you have a fan in your level it would look mighty funny if it did not produce any sound at all. You could place some ambient sounds in and around (this is where it proves more helpful than setting the ambient sound of the fan actor) and use the fan sounds. The radius is also very important. I find that very few mappers (except the pros of course) even bother with ambient sound, but it adds greatly to the "ambience" of a level so you should use it a lot.

TIP: After the placement of all your ambient sound actors and setting their radius etc. hit the joystick button (so that it is unselected) in the 3dview and fly around to see how the sounds would "sound in the level". This should give you an idea of which sounds need their volume and radius adjusted.

TRIGGERED AMBIENT SOUND

Do I even need to say it. Just triggers of the sound and makes it play on and on. What is the point of it?. Say you have to destroy a machine as one of you assault objectives. You could have a normal sound for the machine, on the machine being destroyed you can have the triggered ambient sound set off so that it emits a broken hiss (for such an effect make sure binitiallyOn is false and bPlayOnceOnly is again false). Nice effect!.

@#! III. BLOCK ALL

Another nice actor. Just as the name suggests it blocks anything from passing it. This is affected by the collision radius and height under collision in its advanced properties. If you were to place a decoration like a lamp in your level make sure that you add in a block all in its center. The application is so wide I cant explain everything here.

TIP: To set the collision radius properly so that it has the proper reach to it, select the block all, set its radius, go to the overhead view and in the actor menu choose radii view. You should see a red circle around the block all, showing the area that the block all will block.
HINT: Even though we don't need it anymore, block monster blocks all actors found under the pawn menu and lets you pass through, with the block player doing just the opposite.

IV. DYNAMIC AMBIENT SOUND

This actor plays sounds based on the probability factor listed by you.
- bDontRepeat - Two sound should never play in a row.
binitialllyOn - Whether you want the sound to be playing already. Meaning when you approach the actor should you hear the sound or should it start emitting after some time.
- minRecheckTime - The minimum amount of time that a sound will be played before it can be restarted.
- maxRecheckTime - maximum time the sound will be allowed to play before the next is stared off.
playProbability - Higher the number, higher the chance that the sound will play. 
Sounds - Choose the sounds that you want to be played (if you want to hear it in a specified way then use the sound that you want to hear first then the next one and so on).

For example I used - bDontrepeat - true, bInitiallyOn - True, maxRecheck -5, min Recheck - 1, playprobability - 60, and bats, crickets and swamps for the sound.
HINT: Unlike ambient sound you cant hear the dynamic ambient sound in the 3d view by turning on real-time (the joystick).

V. a. EARTHQUAKE

Just creates an earthquake. If bThrowPlayer is set to true the player is thrown around (oh really? I didn't know that! :), duration - how long the earthquake should last. Magnitude - the size or the effect of the earthquake, radius - the area affected - both these values have to be arrived at by a process of  experimentation. Have the earthquake set off by a normal trigger through tags and events. Remember, this actor only shakes the player.

V. b. CH_EARTHQUAKE 

Same values as the earthquake will be present in the properties sheet. A new value called CH_Earthquake will be added - if you set this to true it will throw decorations around. Nice to have this in a room full of decorations, and on entering it have the decorations and the player thrown around instead of only the player.

V. c. THROW STUFF

Just like the above, does nothing else.

VI. LOCATIONID

A locationid works just like the location string of a zone info. The only difference being that the radius of the zone name can be defined and you need not place zone barriers. Great for use in huge outdoor levels. Just place one into your level and in its properties got to locationid and you'll see entries for location name and radius. Say you have a great out door level and you want to call it outside, if you have a waterfall in the level, you can have a locationid name the place as waterfall.

VII. SPECTATOR CAM AND QUAKE CAM

Used only in assault end sequences. For complete information read my assault tutorial on this site.

VIII. THING\CREATURE FACTORY

I'm too lazy to explain this since it has already been explained on this site (now you know why I left myself a loophole by calling this miscellaneous). Have a trigger set off the thing factory. Have a spawn point with the same tag as the thing factory [its located under navigation point and lets the game know that the thing (could be some thing like a war shell from projectiles) has to placed or spawned in that place - you can adjust the way in which it gets spawned by rotating it in the overhead/ side views].

That's it for this tutorial. If you still want more information on the other key points or on these key points please email me.