Quote from Crawfish on February 13, 2015, 9:35 am

TeamSpen210 wrote:

That's the second purpose of the AddOutput command. Note that depending on how the entity is coded it might not necessarily have any effect, or you might need to turn entity on and off to have the change apply or something like that. My favorite keyvalues to use is RenderMode = 10 and RenderColor. Rendermode 10 makes an entity not render at all, hiding the model but still keeping effects. This lets you make funnels with invisible emitter models, and things like that. RenderColor "tints" a model, so you can make things look different colors.

An alternate way to get the panel to stay out on spawn:
- Set the prop_dynamic to have a default animation of 64_out_straight_idle (so it starts out without moving).
- Set Hold Animation to true (when the animation reaches the last frame it pauses).
- OnMapSpawn SetParentAttachmentMaintainOffset @ 0.00s, then SetAnimation to "bindpose" after 0.1s (this teleports it into the standard starting position, moving the brush with it).
- Send SetAnimation inputs like normal to get it to move.

I see, I'll keep that in mind.

Also, that's the exact same method I've been using. It's just that for some reason, the last sound of the 64_in_straight animation (the panel making a loud ker-chunk sound) doesn't play until I walk into the arm's model or into the trigger itself, this being especially weird because it's a trigger_look and shouldn't have any effect from just being touched.

Quote from HMW on February 13, 2015, 12:25 pm

Those delayed sounds seem to have something to do with the sound script system, or the animation system. I hear it a lot too in my maps, especially for ramps / stairs. As far as I can tell, it has nothing to do with outputs being delayed, or anything like that.

Here's my theory for how this might happen:

1. Some model animations have sounds set to play on specific keyframes.
2. During each game cycle, the game checks the current frame of the animation. If it's on or past the sound keyframe, the sound plays.
3. The game also does not animate anything that is not in view. (In another area, visleaf etcetera.)
4. As soon as the model comes into view, it snaps to the correct frame, thereby triggering all sounds that were queued up for it when the animation started.

You can probably solve it by disabling sounds while the animation plays, as described above, or using an animation that does not play any sounds, like BindPose suggested by TeamSpen210.

I haven't tried either of those yet; I sort of like it when things clunk around a bit when the player enters, sort of like a pinball machine when you start a new game

Quote from Crawfish on February 13, 2015, 5:32 pm

HMW wrote:

Those delayed sounds seem to have something to do with the sound script system, or the animation system. I hear it a lot too in my maps, especially for ramps / stairs. As far as I can tell, it has nothing to do with outputs being delayed, or anything like that.

Here's my theory for how this might happen:

1. Some model animations have sounds set to play on specific keyframes.
2. During each game cycle, the game checks the current frame of the animation. If it's on or past the sound keyframe, the sound plays.
3. The game also does not animate anything that is not in view. (In another area, visleaf etcetera.)
4. As soon as the model comes into view, it snaps to the correct frame, thereby triggering all sounds that were queued up for it when the animation started.

You can probably solve it by disabling sounds while the animation plays, as described above, or using an animation that does not play any sounds, like BindPose suggested by TeamSpen210.

I haven't tried either of those yet; I sort of like it when things clunk around a bit when the player enters, sort of like a pinball machine when you start a new game

Ah, that makes a lot of sense! Thank you. I'll try all of these methods next time I'm working with arm animations.
But for now I've kinda fallen in love with straight_pistons as methods of moving wall and floor sections with awkward dimensions. Only problem is I can never get a good set of sounds for them.