Question about the Trigger_Catapult
Hello everyone, and being my first post, I wanted to say thank you to everyone (especially msleeper) for the help with instances!
Anyway, on to my question: I've noticed that stepping onto a trigger_catapult can have different results, depending on where you step upon it. For example, stepping onto the front may not give as much 'kick' as stepping onto the back... I don't understand why this would happen. In a map I'm designing, it makes the difference between landing right where I want the player to (on the back), to falling in the water at roughly 2/3's the distance.
In addition, I'm having trouble with another catapult that I have set outside of a portal-able wall. For some reason, when the 'Use Threshold Check' is set to no, the launch is done just fine. However, when I have it set to yes, it's as if the launch is not performed at all, and that's even when forced 'through' it by means of the map. I didn't even have troubles with this in my test map, yet I cannot spot a difference when referring back to it.
I hope I worded this correctly... can anyone help me understand what I'm doing incorrectly?
For the first one:
I've noticed that too. Not sure why it is. Do you have the catapult attempting to launch things at an info_target (it's one of the parameters I think)? That can make it try to hit a single spot, and hopefully reduce the variance in where stuff lands by a bit if it's not set up that way already.
For the second one:
Make sure the threshold is set to a speed the player will realistically be traveling when they touch the catapult. That's the point of the threshold check - it gives a boost if you're going fast enough, but won't catapult at all if you're not. I don't know what a realistic speed is unfortunately, but try 1000 if they're able to use speed gel or a significant-length fall to get into it; I believe Valve uses that at least one place.
You can also keep lowering the threshold until one works for your situation.
For the first one:
Yes, I currently have it set to an info_target. However, it is inside a 'well' (as in, water surrounds a set of walls the player falls into, kinda like a basketball into a hoop 
). The top of the 'well' has a faith plate, but when certain requirements are met, the faith plate is moved, allowing the player to fall through the 'well' toward a portal-able surface. The angle is fine for ensuring the player lands on both (the target faith plate or the target surface) without problem... haven't had a problem as long as I step on the back of the launching faith plate.
This gets confusing saying 'faith plate' and 'catapult' so many different times... hopefully I'm wording this well enough?
Second one:
I'm not exactly sure how to maximize the upper speed check to 1000 or so... currently I set the Player Speed to 450 (since that's the speed the player will be launched at), with the Lower Threshold to .15, and the Upper to 1... but after your suggestion I increased the Player Speed to 1000 and no luck.
And just to make sure I didn't make a noob mistake, I ensured that the correct flags were checked.
I noticed the same. However. When I minimised the trigger area to the actual launch circle the effect was prefect. And more realistic. The launch pad should launch only on the coloured circle in the middle. Try it. The result will be absoluteley awsome!
Alright, figured out my problems.
Problem 1:
I used the newly given "Portal 2 (Tools Mode)" to find out what speed the player was going when they hit the catapult, therefore giving me the amount I needed to place into the 'Player Speed' box.
However, the problem was this: I found a correlation between the number I put into the 'Player Speed' box, and the speed the player needed to fit inside the threshold. It was a parabola that opens 'upward'... therefore, the speed I needed to input was at the vertex.
For example: When I put in either a speed of 350 or 1600, the threshold window was roughly the same (1350 to 2000). However, the vertex happened to be right around 785 (which gave a threshold window of 900 to 1400). After getting other variables worked out (with the launcher, nothing to do with this piece), Tools Mode states that since the Threshold was met, it automatically "adjusts the velocity so it will hit the target".
Problem 2: Thanks MediaBurn, I took your advice. I made the trigger smaller, and it works. However, the prop_dynamic isn't solid, so I put a player_clip brush on the surface of it (as to not block shadows), and it works fine.
Now if only I can figure out how to get the sign instance to show what I want it to, I can finally move on! But that's another thread
Hey everyone,
I have the same problem as the thread starter.
But I think for player speed values <=1000 the equation for the boundaries is:
lower bound: speed_value-(speed_value*lower_threshold)
upper bound: speed_value+(speed_value*upper_threshold)
But for values under 1000 I have no idea how to calculate the bounds.
I will try to dig deeper into this, but if anyone has an answer, feel free to post it.
l4ck3r