Monstermaker

Monstermaker got many new parameters and capabilities in Featureful SDK.

This page describes only changes introduced in Featureful SDK. Entity reference for standard Half-Life parameters and spawnflags can be found on twhl wiki.

Bugfixes

• Flag Start ON is working now (was bugged in Half-Life).
• Dead monsters no longer block the spawn point.

Warpball effects

Read Warpball templates

New spawnflags

• Auto size BBox enables a more precise calculation of free area when checking if monster fits the area. This flag is ticked by default in fgd. Without this flag the monstermaker will use a rough calculation which often exaggerates the real size of the monster thus not allowing a monster to spawn even if they would have enough space to fit.
• Cyclic backlog - use together with Cyclic. Keep track of the number of monsters who could not spawn at the time of monstermaker's firing (e.g. if the spawn place was blocked). The monsters from backlog will spawn later.
• No ground check removes the check for unoccupied space under the monstermaker. Useful for spawning flying monsters or monsters that should fall. Without this flag the monstermaker will avoid spawning a monster if another monster is currently underneath.
• Align to player makes the spawned monster align towards the player. Use it together with Max yaw deviation parameter to randomize the angle a bit.

New parameters

• Delay after blocked - delay before the next spawn attempt if previous was blocked by another monster. If not specified, the 'Delay between spawns' parameter is used as a delay.
• Target's Activator - Activator for Target On Release. E.g. can be set to Spawned monster to make a monster act as an activator for the trigger.

Choosing the spawn point

By default monstermaker creates a monster using its own origin as a spawn point. The Spawn position [LP] parameter allows to set a different entity as a spawn point.

You can also randomize the spawn position:

1. Create multiple info_target entities
2. Give them the identical targetname to all of them.
3. Set this name as Spawn position [LP] value prepending the name with @ symbol (e.g. if you name info_targets position, set the parameter value to @position).

This is useful if monstermaker can spawn multiple monsters and you want them to appear in different places on each spawn.

Configuring the spawning monster

Unlike original Half-Life, the monstermaker now can define custom health, body, skin, blood color, relationship class, gibs, model and other properties for the spawned monsters.

Even if monstermaker lacks some property specific for the monster, one can define it via custom keyvalues. In the editor toggle SmartEdit (like you do with multi_manager) and add keyvalues you want to forward to the monster prepending the key names with # symbol. This allows to set some parameters that can't be set via monstermaker otherwise (e.g. bodystate of monster_barney). Example:

#bodystate 1