Universal "Action" Command

[Ghost_Fang]

[Spike]

[Dr. Shadowborg]

Some good starting material to look at for this:

[Ghost_Fang]

would it work if i derived it from the axe weapon, and have the traceline do action() instead of attack or something? (minus the models and anims etc)

[Dr. Shadowborg]

It should, that's what I did for the interaction in that NPC code. Note however that you may have to do different things to get the same result on different objects. e.g. doors and buttons vs. NPCs

[Ghost_Fang]

[r00k]

[Dr. Shadowborg]

[frag.machine]

[Ghost_Fang]

[ceriux]

[Dr. Shadowborg]

[Ghost_Fang]

So how would i "send" commands through a trace? All it would be for is for helping a player up from being incapped, weapon pickup, and MAYBE opening doors if its possible.

[Spike]

You can "send" commands the same way pain or death is "sent", or the same way as regular triggers.
The bottom part of SUB_UseTargets might give you a hint.

[Sajt]

The proper thing is to create a new function pointer called "th_activate" or something.

.void() th_activate;

And set it for every entity that is supposed to be interacted with.

Then the player has an impulse command which traces forward, and if it hits something:

local entity oldself;
...
if (trace_ent.th_activate)
{
oldself = self;
other = self;
self = trace_ent;
self.th_activate();
self = oldself;
}

Note the setting of 'other' which lets the th_activate function do something differently based on who activates it. (If you need that.) You could also use 'activator', or even a function argument to th_activate. But using other will make a certain something easier to do for lazy programming helpers like me... (see later)

Note: Picking up weapons with this will be a little more difficult because weapons are SOLID_TRIGGER. Traces won't hit SOLID_TRIGGER items. If they were SOLID_CORPSE (a common extension not in vanilla Quake) it would be easier. If you need to support all engines though, say so and I'll tell you how to "hack" it for SOLID_TRIGGER items...

So if you want to make a door use this, simply go to the func_door function in doors.qc, and replace "self.touch = door_touch" with "self.th_activate = door_touch". That SHOULD do it. Since we set "other" when calling th_activate, everything should already be taken care of.

I haven't tested any of this though, I may have forgotten something...