Final Solution Updating for posterity. Ultimate solution that allows me to put the triggers inside the instance w/out needing the prefab was to parent the triggers to another entity in the instance. As soon as I did this, like magic, everything worked perfectly.

---

Solution/Workaround: trigger in instance could not detect projected_wall_entity, but creating the instance without the trigger, then creating a prefab that contains the trigger plus the instance works.

---

Has anyone come across situations where their triggers work directly in a map, but don't work when they're used as an instance?

I'm trying to create a light bridge catcher that can detect when a bridge enters it, and trigger outputs.

I've essentially got it all complete and working -- except when I try to put it in an instance and then insert the instance to a map, it's stops triggering.

I've set up a trigger_multiple with flags set to everything, then applied a filter that looks for projected_wall_entity. This works perfectly when it's directly inside a map. But I want this to be a repeatable element, so I want it in an instance.

Any ideas on why the trigger wouldn't work in this situation? I add the instance into the map, and nothing happens. I can then literally copy+paste from the instance directly into the map, recompile, and everything works just fine.

Did you forget to put your filter entity in your instance?

Nope, it's in the instance itself.

Weird thing is that if I take the filter off, I can activate the trigger just fine (with the player, with cubes). Yet even then it won't activate with the light bridge.

Edit: If I remove just the trigger from the instance, and keep everything else in the instance, then create a trigger directly in the map, it also works. However, the trigger placement has to be pretty precise, so I don't want to have to recreate and position it every time.

Also, in thinking about it, I think the filter part is actually irrelevant to the problem.

Ohh, maybe you could try making it as a prefab, with 1 real trigger and the rest as an instance. Then it would just automatically create the trigger and the instance in one group, but the trigger would be in the map instead of the instance.

I did try that, and it does trigger correctly that way...but then I can't have any outputs from the catcher back to the world (at least I don't think I can). Edit: I just needed to ungroup the Prefab after inserting it so I could access the instance.