MISCELLANEOUS TRIGGERS

"Machismo"
cool_machismo@yahoo.com

INTRODUCTION

This tutorial will deal with some not so commonly used triggers found under the trigger class like triggered textures, counters, etc. You need to have read the other trigger tutorials on this site to understand this tutorial. On reading this you shouldn't need to ever have to read another UT trigger tutorial in your life as this explains the use of all but two of all the triggers found in UT.

NOTE: All commonly used triggers are marked with @#! . You should pay more attention to these, the others can be used but their use will be obscure or they may never be used at all and if at all only one in every 100 maps.

TIP: The best way to set the collision radius of any trigger is to go to the overhead view, select that trigger and hit the actor menu and choose radii view, the radius will show up as a red circle.

@#! I. TRIGGERED TEXTURE

Locate triggered textures from under triggers and place one in your level. Place a normal trigger and set its event to something and give that as the triggered textures tag. The purpose of the triggered texture is say to change the surface texture of something from one texture to another. I'll give a quick example here. Load the Indus7.utx texture package. Create a big box place a trigger and triggered texture. Set their tags and events. Build a cube 256x256x10 using any of the monitor textures. You just need to go to the property of the triggered texture to the following (see picture on the left). bTrigger OnceOnly is set to true as we don't want this event to be set off again and again (usually). Destination texture is the texture that we want to be changed, in this case the monitor that we added in. Textures 0 is the original texture that will be displayed on the monitor. Texture 1 is the second texture that will be displayed when the trigger is set off. If you were to set texture 2 etc. on being triggered it will go through the list and display the final texture. 

@#! II. COUNTER

This will be easier to explain by continuing with the above example. On being triggered the counter waits for a specified amount of time and then sets off the other events. Say we wanted the triggered texture to be set off after a certain amount of time on being triggered we would do it in the following way. Set the event of the trigger and the tag of the counter to the same. Set the event of the counter and the tag o the triggered texture to the same. Under the counters properties you need to set the following: a. bShowMessage - If you want the message to be displayed on the HUD (note its will be displayed on the HUD not the screen); b. CompleteMessage -When the time to count is over it will warn you by displaying this message on the HUD; c. CountMessage - You can give something like Only %1 more minutes left to kick butt; d. NumToCount - On being triggered how long to wait before (in this case) setting off the triggered texture. Great!.

@#! III. MUSIC EVENT

A nice little trigger that gets set off by a normal trigger by the usual laying down of tags and events. On being triggered it plays music (aren't I the bright kid now :). Under the music events properties in music event these are the properties you need to know of : a. b AffectAllPlayers - Whether all players will hear. If true everyone on that map will hear the music. If false it will be heard only in the vicinity of the sound (affected by the sound radius under sound); b. b OnceOnly - Whether it will play only once or keep repeating; c. bSilence - I don't know if its obvious but if you are wondering why on earth would I want to set a music event in a level and have it "play silence". This can be used to send chills down the players spine. This will be affected by the song that you have set for the level in level properties (F6)|audio section. Say you have a song for your level and have a really dark room in your level. If you were to set bSilence to true for a music event that you placed to be triggered at the entrance of the room, imagine the kind of effect you could achieve - the only sound that will be heard in the room are the players footsteps ........... and suddenly from a corner something emerges............... wow!; d. Song - What song you want to use if you want a song played. e. Transition - How you want the songs to switch: MTran_Instant will switch the songs immediately (yeah, yeah), MTRAN_Segue - This makes the songs seem connected, in the sense that they same to be the same song only the music has changed drastically "an uninterrupted transition from one movement or piece of music to another without a pause", MTRAN_Fade - The first piece of music slowly "disappear" and then the second piece plays. You could also try MTRAN_SlowFade and MTRAN_FastFade. Remember you also need to set the type of transition for bSilence.

IV. STOCHASTIC TRIGGER 

Sto..... sto..... sto.... , fuck cant even pronounce the damn thing straight, what the hell am I going to use this for?. The stochastic trigger works like a dynamic ambient sound but uses events instead of sounds. The meaning is that where a dynamic ambient sound sends out sounds the stotrigger sends out events that keep repeating themselves over and over depending on the settings of course. Say you want a door to look like its swaying in the breeze then you need to use the stochastic trigger. Place a mover that forms a door and give it a tag (you may want to play around with stay open time in the mover property) and make sure object initial state is trigger open timed. Place a normal trigger and a stochastic trigger nearby. Set the event of the trigger and the tag of the stotrigger to the same thing. in the stotriggers property, under stotrigger, expand events. This is where you enter the events that you want the stotrigger to call (naturally there should be a minimum of one). For this example you should enter the tag of the door as event0. maxRecheckTime tells the trigger it has to attempt to redo the event after the maximum time specified, minRecheckTime means that when the amount of time entered here is reached it should attempt to redo the event and triggerprobability is how high a chance does this trigger have of affecting game play. Under object initial state make sure always active is chosen. The values have to be arrived at by a process of experimentation.

V. TRIGGERED DEATH

The difference between this and special event deaths is that using triggered death you can add screen flashes and death sounds. Under this triggers properties the start flash fog and the end flash fog values determine how much "flashes" you receive on the screen when you die - that's the best I can explain. Start Flash Scale and end flash scale determine the size of the flashes. I found that entering too high values made everything invisible so keep the amount low. You can use the custom death sounds under male/female death sound.

@#! VI. TEAM TRIGGER

This trigger will affect the instigators enemies but not his "teammates". It just adds another little subdivision to the trigger properties called team trigger (what else can it be:). Here you set the team number. For CTF blue is 1 and red 0 and for assault red is 1 and blue 0. 

@#! VII. DISTANCE VIEW TRIGGER

Feel free to prove me wrong, but as far as I can figure this one out is that it makes bots see certain things that they may not be inclined to see in the distance. This is great for use in CTF matches requiring the use of the sniper rifle. This is how to use this trigger - say you have a CTF map and you want the bots to snipe or look at another position. Set a team trigger in the red base and a distance view trigger in the blue base (this could be placed strategically at the entrance to the base or some high position that seem to be the bots favorite sniping position) and tag them up. Set a team trigger in the blue base and distance view triggers in the red base. Now say that a red team bot triggers the distance view trigger in the red base. Remember the team trigger will affect all except those on the red team. What happens now?, the blue team bot on the ground will look up at the team trigger or at least at the distance to find out what set it off. Set a nice big collision radius for the distance view trigger and a lesser but still big number for the team trigger. This is nice to force bots to acknowledge and return sniper fire. Imagine setting the team trigger on top of the red base and a distance view in the blue base, when a red bot starts sniping from the top of the red base he will set off the distance view trigger in the blue base forcing blue bots to search for the cause in the "distance". You may also want to set team trigger under the team triggers properties to bTimed - true.

@#! VIII. DISPATCHER

 Ah! this is one fan-fucking-tastic trigger. The application and uses are great. I will not go into this in-depth as it has already been explained elsewhere on this site. Say on triggering something you want 5 events to happen simultaneously with specified delays then this superb, cool baby is the one for you. You've heard my ravings and you should know by now that this is probably the second most widely used trigger other than the normal trigger. Set a trigger to set off the dispatcher. Say on being triggered you want a door to open first, then after some time a spawn of rockets, explosion next and so on. Set the tags of all these items. In the dispatchers properties set the tag to the same as the triggers tag. The go to dispatcher and in outevents the sequence in which ou want the events to be triggered. In this case outevent0 will be the doors tag, outevent1 will be the spawn points tag, outevent2 will be the explosion chains tag. Under out delays you will give the delay time that you want the events to be set off. In this example say I wanted the door to be opened immediately, then outdelay0 would be 0, if I wanted the spawn point to be activated next after say 2 minute delay I would enter 2 in outdelay1and so on.

IX. ROUND ROBIN

This works just like the dispatcher. The only difference being that there is no out delay, instead you just have an option to have the round robin loop. Enter the out events and do the tagging just like the dispatcher. Set bLoop under round robin to true if you want the round robin to proceed again and again through the outevents. Great to make custom guns that move and spawn rockets again and again.

X. JUMPER

Works just like the kicker the only difference being that it moves the kicked class only in the z direction. This is great for you lazy bums out there who don't want to set up kickers. To make it work set a trigger and tag it to the jumper. Under the jumpers property you just need to set jumpZ (directly in front) value to the amount of distance you want the class pawn to jump, and bOnceOnly if you want the jump to be taken only once - usually false. Say you have a line of path nodes approaching a ledge from which you can jump to another ledge. Just set the trigger nearby and the jumper with the amount of the jump you want the bot to take in front. For more information read the kicker tutorial on this site.

XI. ELEVATOR TRIGGER

 Used for the normal elevator "feel" that you may want to impart to a mover. Here we'll discuss another use as the one stated above is easy to configure normally. The elevator trigger works normally only you can specify what key frames you want the mover to take and its move time (all that can be set in the movers properties). This is useful for one sided triggers. Say you have a door that moves with 3 keyframes - 1 opens it 1/4 the way, 2 opens it 3/4 the the way and 3 opens it fully. It is triggered on one side by a normal trigger and on the other side by a elevator trigger. When the player crosses the door the door should close again. In the elevator triggers properties|elevator trigger you could set GoToKeyFrame as 1. What will happen now is that the door will get triggered open by the player, when the player crosses the door it will close fully, now if the player were to try and open the door from the other side it will move only to key frame 1 and refuse to go further. You could also use it normally.

 Whoopee! That should cover all the triggers that will ever want to use and all the triggers that you have in Unreal Tournament. BioFear (bots will just back out before entering the area making it appear like they are exhibiting fear) and FearSpot don't need any explanation. I haven't as yet found a use for the fade view trigger and the code trigger. If you do find a use or have any more questions don't hesitate to email me.