Hi,

I'm trying to build the elevator tutorial on the wiki...so far it all works except for the fades.

I tried fiddling around with the two fade entities, but with limited success. There's probably something really simple that I'm missing. Here's what I have:

The first fade, which starts the screen off black:

Name Fade_Black
Duration 0
Hold Fade 0
Fade Alpha 225

With "stay out" checked.

Triggered with a 0 second delay.

The second fade, to get rid of the black:

Name Fade_Transparent
Duration 4
Hold Fade 0
Fade alpha 0

With "fade from" checked.

Triggered with a 1 second delay.

So in theory, the screen should start out black, then after 1 second, fade slowly to normal during 4 seconds, and then stay that way. But what I see is one second of black, and then suddenly it's bright again.

I am sorry if this has been answered before...but I checked the wiki, and also tried searching the forum. I guess there's just something really simple I'm missing...

Thanks in advance!

Joe-Schmoe wrote:
Hi,

I'm trying to build the elevator tutorial on the wiki...so far it all works except for the fades.

I tried fiddling around with the two fade entities, but with limited success. There's probably something really simple that I'm missing. Here's what I have:

The first fade, which starts the screen off black:

Name Fade_Black
Duration 0
Hold Fade 0
Fade Alpha 225

With "stay out" checked.

Triggered with a 0 second delay.

The second fade, to get rid of the black:

Name Fade_Transparent
Duration 4
Hold Fade 0
Fade alpha 0

With "fade from" checked.

Triggered with a 1 second delay.

So in theory, the screen should start out black, then after 1 second, fade slowly to normal during 4 seconds, and then stay that way. But what I see is one second of black, and then suddenly it's bright again.

I am sorry if this has been answered before...but I checked the wiki, and also tried searching the forum. I guess there's just something really simple I'm missing...

Thanks in advance!

i've never used fades. so don't know if this is correct, but from your info i'm guessing you need to make the duration of the fade longer. you have it set to 0. which means it will take NO TIME to unfade. (fade from black) set it to atleast 1 (i'm guessing 4 would be good though) and it should take THAT LONG to turn from full black to normal light density

Correct, the duration is the time that it goes from Color 1 to Color 2. Fade Hold is the time that it will remain at Color 2 before the entity stops.

I tried a test of just the fade portion of the wiki tutorial, and for better or worse it worked fine for me. I used just the two fade entities exactly as described triggered by a logic_relay with outputs set to trigger "OnSpawn" instead of a trigger_once, but it should work just the same. I noticed that portions of the tutorial dealing with the fade are marked as (broken), but I'm not sure what that is supposed to mean.

It sounds like there might be something else going on with your map. I'd start by double checking the settings on the fades. I noticed for instance that you posted that your fade alpha was set to 225, which I assumed was a typo for 255. The alpha will affect how opaque the fade is at its darkest, so it should be 255 for a fade from black.

Then double check how the fades are triggered by looking at their inputs. If the problem persists, post a description of all of the trigger's outputs, for instance:

trigger_once
outputs:
onstarttouch : fade_black : fade : <none> : after 0 seconds
onstarttouch : fade_transparent : fade : <none> : after 1 second

Also check for overlapping cloned entities.

Another option is to use only one env_fade. The only reason to use two is if the duration that you hold the fade needs to be variable in-game (for instance if you want it to be held until one NPC kills another and you don't know how long the fight will take). If you know how long the fade should be held (1 second) and how long it should take (4 seconds) you can set the fade like this:

env_fade
name: your pick
duration: 4
hold fade: 1
fade alpha: 255
fade color: 0 0 0
flags: check "fade from" only

Happy hunting.

There is also another option that I have found out about that (I think) is easier. You just click on the menu that says "map", then go down to where it says "Map Properties...". There should be an option in there called "Level fade in". If this is easier then, well, it's easier. You may not, however set the fade time .

Excellent, that's got it working! Thanks guys.