Angel_Mapper wrote:
I haven't seen a box dropper tutorial yet, is there one? I figured out how to make one, I can post a tutorial on the wiki today if there isn't already one floating around the forums.

http://www.portal-mods.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=70

about halfway down the page

have fun

Angel_Mapper wrote:
Hmm, I'm not sure I like that tutorial, it leaves too much to chance, and I'm not sure it even works (at least, my water never destroyed my cube, even with all of the trigger_hurt's flags checked).

I put a trigger_remove in the bottom of my water to remove the cube, so the dropper would re-spawn one, so if you stupidly dropped your box in the water you didnt have to go swimming to get it back, the dropper gave you a new one.

And yes, it is a little dogey, but box droppers work differently for each map.

basicly you want this:
something that detects when do drop the first box and spawns a box, a few seonds later you open then close the lid and spawn a new box but this time dont let it out the dropper. Then something that detects if the player needs a new box and opens the lid to let the box out, closes the lid and spawns a new one.
simple really

Angel_Mapper wrote:
You would think. Even having a respawnable box is no small task for someone new to the editor.

Are you joking!?!?! i could respawn a box within 10 minutes of using hammer........ I wish.

It took me so long to fully get to grips with hammer, well, I've still not fully got to grips with it. for example I still dont understand area_portals, I just cant get my head around any example, they are all worded so I cant understand them

If you are new to hammer (wich from your comment I assume you are) stick with it, it gets steadily more and more rewarding, whilst not actually becoming more and more difficult (provided you practice).

Angel_Mapper wrote:
I'll put one up in a bit, just have to put this last ball launcher in.

Ok, all done:

http://wiki.thinkingwithportals.com/wiki/Box_Dropper

It's not linked to the main page yet, I want someone to go through and verify that I didn't miss anything.

youme wrote:
It took me so long to fully get to grips with hammer, well, I've still not fully got to grips with it. for example I still dont understand area_portals, I just cant get my head around any example, they are all worded so I cant understand them

Looks like they're used for optimization. They divide the level up into zones so the game doesn't render the entire level through the walls, only what it can see through the area portals.

Same thing Unreal does with Zone Portals:

http://udn.epicgames.com/Two/LevelOptimizationBSP.html

Read this until your eyes bleed: http://www.student.ru.nl/rvanhoorn/optimization.php

EDIT: For your own edification Angel, Source's Areaportals are more powerful because we can open and close them at will. There are also Areaportalwindows which are drawn/rendered based on distance from the player, used for things such as the City 17 street battles.

msleeper wrote:
EDIT: For your own edification Angel, Source's Areaportals are more powerful because we can open and close them at will. There are also Areaportalwindows which are drawn/rendered based on distance from the player, used for things such as the City 17 street battles.

Antiportals provide the same functionality in Unreal, by triggering them to toggle them on and off, and by CullDistance for distance from the player. These two editors really aren't that different, heheh.

Wroth wrote:
Is there any way to set it so that the box dropper only spawns another box if you lose the current box? so far it's spawning another one everytime a turret/camera/random physics object gets dropped in the water.

You'll need to use a filter on your trigger_remove, or whatever trigger you used.
set up a filter_activator_name and name it something like box_filter and set the filtertarget to the same name as the box. Or something like that