Making Ladders

[lagged-pride]

I'm just fooling around on the map editor, and I was wondering how to make a ladder, any help would be appreciated, thanks.

[Baxter]

there is an entity of it from a few of the maps i'm not sure wich ones though .

[Vector_Matt]

I've heard that you use any shader with ^ at the beginning (^ladder, ^OMGN00B, ^hehe, ^somethingrandom), not sure if it's true as I've never tried it.

[Baxter]

are you talking to me?

[Dersaidin]

try making a brush textured with common/ladder

[chompers]

It's done with a shader. It probably should have been included in common-trem, but them's the breaks.

Here's an image that I put into textures/common-trem so that it's visible in radiant:


and then just include this shader in each map's shader file that needs it. this is just borrowed from tremor or one of the other maps with ladders.

Code Select Expand


textures/YOUR-MAP-NAME/ladder
{
qer_editorimage textures/common-trem/ladder.jpg
qer_trans .40
surfaceparm ladder
surfaceparm nodraw
surfaceparm nolightmap
surfaceparm nonsolid
surfaceparm trans
surfaceparm nomarks
surfaceparm noimpact
surfaceparm playerclip
}


edit ^^^ do common/ladder brushes work for you? I could never get it working, which is why made that one. You *could* just use nexus6/ladder and hope that the nexus shader never changes, and in that case you will want to put an image called ladder.tga into textures/common so that you can see it in radiant.

[lagged-pride]

Hmm, not to sure it works for me. All I see is a normal textureless, but the blue boxes are colored red, does this mean that it won't work for me either?

[Ingar]

Ladders won't work unless you use the q3map2 parameter -custinfoparms in the BSP phase of the compile.

Go to the build menu and choose Customize.
Select the entry you use for building your map and find the line that says

Code Select Expand

[q3map2] -meta "[MapFile]"
Change it to

Code Select Expand

[q3map2] -custinfoparms -meta "[MapFile]"
An other  option would be to use a q3map2 frontend or to write a shell script (.bat files are shell scripts too!)

If you write your own ladder shader, better put your texture in textures/YOUR-MAP-NAME. Here is the ladder shader I use for Procyon:

Code Select Expand

textures/procyon/ladder {
       qer_trans .75
       qer_editorimage textures/procyon/ladder.tga
       surfaceparm ladder
       surfaceparm nodraw
       surfaceparm nolightmap
       surfaceparm nonsolid
       surfaceparm trans
       surfaceparm nomarks
       surfaceparm noimpact
       surfaceparm playerclip
}


I've also noticed you have to make the brush with the ladder-shader slightly bigger than the brushes that represent your ladder.

[Lava Croft]

I've also noticed you have to make the brush with the ladder-shader slightly bigger than the brushes that represent your ladder.

Actually, just model your ladder, but make a block that entirely covers your ladder, and apply the actual ladder shader to that block, the ladder itself is merely there to make it look a bit more realistic. Kinda like this:



That's how I do it.

[krom]

A bit strange Lava.
The ladder brush should oversize the ladder geometry only in front where the rows are.

[Vector_Matt]

A bit strange Lava.
The ladder brush should oversize the ladder geometry only in front where the rows are.

It's entirely possible to climb a ladder from the side, not normal, but possible.

[lagged-pride]

I don't really get how to make my own ladder, so i'm just going to try to steal the Nexus6 ladder, but when I "stole" it, it just shown a no texture, but with red boxes

Unless you could explain it a bit more to my comprehension?

Code:

textures/YOUR-MAP-NAME/ladder
{
  qer_editorimage textures/common-trem/ladder.jpg
  qer_trans .40
  surfaceparm ladder
  surfaceparm nodraw
  surfaceparm nolightmap
  surfaceparm nonsolid
  surfaceparm trans
  surfaceparm nomarks
  surfaceparm noimpact
  surfaceparm playerclip
}

Where do I put that?

[techhead]

Speaking of ladders, it would be kinda nice if smaller aliens could climb them, but I won't get my hopes up.

[lagged-pride]

Smaller aliens can already wall crawl, so making a ladder for them would be essentially pointless, to bad humans could wall crawl, heh.

[techhead]

*Cough* Granger *Cough*
Ever been unfortunate enough to fall into the Tremor basement?
Either evolve, die, or be very patient...

[vcxzet]

*Cough* Granger *Cough*
Ever been unfortunate enough to fall into the Tremor basement?
Either evolve, die, or be very patient...

I fell as a tyrant
also fell as a goon+ but with goon I managed to go up again

[chompers]

if youre stuck in tremor basement as granger or tyrant, just jump on a dretches head while they climb up.

If youre stuck underneath the basement it's a bit trickier, first you need to kill the egg that spawned you there, then kill yourself, then hunt down the granger that built the egg and kill it several times.

[lagged-pride]

if youre stuck in tremor basement as granger or tyrant, just jump on a dretches head while they climb up.

If youre stuck underneath the basement it's a bit trickier, first you need to kill the egg that spawned you there, then kill yourself, then hunt down the granger that built the egg and kill it several times.

kill it? I didn't know grangers were genderless, but what you should also do is maybe contact an admin? start a vote kick once you find out who.

[Lava Croft]

A bit strange Lava.
The ladder brush should oversize the ladder geometry only in front where the rows are.

The only things you 'should' do with mapping are technical things, the rest is up to your imagination. So if I want ladders that are not annoying, I make such ladders.

lagged-pride, before you continue, you want might to read up on Quake3 Shaders, since that is what that piece of code is, a ladder shader. in tremulous/base/scripts/ you make a file named yourmapname.shader, and you paste the code in there. When done correctly, you should be able to select the ladder shader from Radiant's texture browser.

[krom]

Vector & Lava: probably my True Combat remains that stir my senses to do such strict ladders!

[WolfWings ShadowFlight]

And the simple fact is, it's perfectly possible to climb most 'fixed' ladders from the edge just as fast as from the flat.

Then there's triangular trusswork as another option. Climb that from any angle fairly easilly. :-)

[Lava Croft]

Vector & Lava: probably my True Combat remains that stir my senses to do such strict ladders!

As everybody, I hate ladders that have such retarded brushwork, they make you fall off from moving an inch to the side. Gameplay over Realism. Presentation over performance.

[lagged-pride]

Thanks ofr the help, i'll ask you guys if I need any more help (I hope I don't have to )

[chompers]

... in tremulous/base/scripts/ you make a file named yourmapname.shader, and you paste the code in there. When done correctly, you should be able to select the ladder shader from Radiant's texture browser.

In order for it to work correctly in radiant, if you make your own shader you should also add yourmapname to scripts/shaderlist.txt

[Lava Croft]

In order for it to work correctly in radiant, if you make your own shader you should also add yourmapname to scripts/shaderlist.txt

I'm incomplete, as always.

[techhead]

Hanging off the side of a ladder is one thing, but ladders that you can climb the back of are questionable.
Make the brush not go THROUGH the ladder, please.

[Lava Croft]

Hanging off the side of a ladder is one thing, but ladders that you can climb the back of are questionable.
Make the brush not go THROUGH the ladder, please.

LOL? You can't climb a ladder from both sides? What kind of weirdo are you? Ladders look and function pretty much the same on both sides, mind you.

[Survivor]

Hanging off the side of a ladder is one thing, but ladders that you can climb the back of are questionable.
Make the brush not go THROUGH the ladder, please.

LOL? You can't climb a ladder from both sides? What kind of weirdo are you? Ladders look and function pretty much the same on both sides, mind you.

Lava rocked it. Common sense++

[techhead]

Going up the back of a ladder so your head hits the ceiling when you just want to walk around it, thats annoying.
Also, Human-only ladders are racist!
Ladders should be for both races!

(I could also argue that Grangers are handicapped)

[Survivor]

We should remove ladders altogether then because you might fall off them if you look too far to the left...