Insert weapons, markers and ammunition

In this tutorial I want to show you how to insert weapons, weapon markers and ammunition bottles into your map and how to adjust settings. But before you start you should make sure that you have installed the latest version of World of Padman. With older versions before WoP 1.5 especially the implementation of weapon markers in the way described here will not work. Furthermore, it can’t hurt to have a look at the weapons page again, because there you will find all weapons of World of Padman with their default values clearly arranged.

Overview of weapons and ammunition bottles

In the following table you will find relevant weapons and ammunition bottles with their associated entity names in alphabetical order. The NiPPER is also listed there, although each player already has this weapon as a standard weapon automatically and does not need to collect it. It is therefore not very useful to position this weapon in your map, but the corresponding ammunition bottle should definitely find a place in your map. PUNCHY and iNJECTOR were deliberately omitted here, because the melee duck, in contrast to the gauntlet from Quake 3 Arena, is available to every player at any time. We didn’t even create an entry for the iNJECTOR in the entities definition file (entities.def), since this weapon only appears in the game mode InstaPad and, like PUNCHY and NiPPER, doesn’t have to be picked up by the player.

Figure	Weapon name	Entity names
	BALLOONY	weapon_balloony ammo_balloony
	BOOM-BOOM BETTY	weapon_betty ammo_betty
	BOASTER	weapon_boaster ammo_boaster
	BUBBLE G.	weapon_bubbleg ammo_bubbleg
	iMPERiUS	weapon_imperius ammo_imperius
	NiPPER	weapon_nipper ammo_nipper
	PUMPER	weapon_pumper ammo_pumper
	SPLASHER	weapon_splasher ammo_splasher

Insert weapons and ammunition bottles

The weapon and related ammo bottle entities can be selected by right-clicking via the context menu under weapon and ammo, respectively, and thus inserted into your map at the position of the mouse pointer in the selected Radiant view. Like all items, weapons and ammo bottles fall to the ground when the map is started. To prevent this, first select the weapon or ammo bottle entity you have inserted and open the Entity Inspector by pressing the N key. Then place a check mark at suspended (spawnflags 1 will be set) and the entity will remain at the place where it was originally spawned.

If a weapon or ammunition bottle doesn’t appear in the game even though you have placed it in the Radiant, it may be because they spawn too close to a brush. You can recognize this by the message “ammo_nipper in solid at (-496.0 1496.0 1648.0)” in the WoP console after starting the map. You can open the console with the key combination SHIFT + ESC. The three displayed numbers represent the coordinates of the respective entity in the Radiant. A solution is to position the entity a little higher or with more distance to the next brush.

Insert weapon markers

All points where weapons appear on the map are marked in World of Padman with a so-called weapon marker. This is a small map object or model, which is available in different colored designs and had to be placed manually in the maps until WoP version 1.2. Since in some game types, such as InstaPad, no weapons are to appear at all or only at selected positions, depending on the game type, the remaining weapon markers will disturb.

Therefore, since WoP 1.5 the weapon markers are defined directly via the key marker in the selected weapon entity. Open the Entity Inspector again by pressing the N key and enter marker in the key field. As value you can enter orange, green, blue, black or purple in the value field and thus define the design. The marker will then automatically appear at the spawn point of the weapon, but only in the game, not in the Radiant. If a marker is not aligned properly, you can rotate it along the Z-axis by entering the key angle with a decimal value between 0 and 360.

In the following gallery the different colored designs of the marker are shown again. We in the WoP team have agreed to always choose only one design within a map and to avoid mixing. This is of course up to you.

 

 

Change of weapons

Weapons but also other items such as powerups and ammunition bottles can appear at the same point in the map in alternating or random order. This is sometimes useful for small maps when there is only little space for all weapons or other items. Therefore you have to place the two desired weapons in the map at the same place. It does not matter if the weapon models overlap in the editor. Now select both weapons and open the Entity Inspector again by pressing the N key. Afterwards enter key team and value weaponcycle1.

The key team ensures that the weapons are linked together, thus forming the team weaponcycle1. You can also define the value weaponcycle1 yourself and enter something for it. The only important thing is that both entities get the same value and that it is unique in the whole map. It is sufficient if the weapon marker is defined for only one of the two weapon entities. If you have done everything right, the two weapons in the game should now appear alternately after picking them up. If you want both weapons to alternate in random order, you have to check the box randomselect in the Entity Inspector (spawnflags 2 will be set). If a check mark has already been set for suspended, the value for spawnflags is automatically increased to 3. This can also be entered directly for key and value.

Note: The time it takes for a weapon to respawn in the team is determined by the value of the key wait (see next section) of the previously picked up weapon. So if the key wait is set to -1 (single appearance) for one of the weapons in the team, the rotation of the weapons in the team will be stopped after this one weapon has been picked up.

All keys and associated value ranges

In the following I will go into some more keys and associated values that you can apply to the weapon and ammunition bottle entities.

• angle: As already mentioned, you can use it to rotate the entity around the Z-axis. The decimal value you enter is between 0 and 360, but since the weapons and ammunition bottles in the game rotate around the Z-axis by themselves the whole time anyway, you can only rotate the weapon marker sensibly. If you do not define angle, the default value is 0.
• wait: This allows you to define, by entering a decimal value, the time in seconds after the entity should reappear at the spawn point after it has been picked up by the player. If you do not define wait, the default value is 5, but by entering a value of -1, you can prevent the entity from respawning. It will then only spawn once in the map and never again after being picked up by a player.
• random: This allows you, by entering a decimal value, to define a limit for a random time deviation in seconds. This is used to calculate a minimum and a maximum time delay. The final time delay is then a random value that lies somewhere between the minimum value (= wait – random) and the maximum value (= wait + random). This way, the respawn of the entity can be given a certain randomness and is not so easy to predict by the experienced player. If you do not define random, the default value is 0.
• count: This allows you to define, by entering an integer value, the amount of ammunition given to the player when he picks up a weapon or ammo bottle. If you do not define count, the default value depends on the particular weapon or ammunition bottle. The default values can be found in the table on the respective weapon page and in the description of each entity in the Entity Inspector. However, there are two restrictions: First, if the player already owns the weapon and picks it up again, the amount of ammo will only increase by 1. Second, the player can only pick up a maximum of 200 ammo, except for the iMPERiUS, which has 2 shots. In both cases, the values you defined for count in the entities are ignored.
• marker: As already mentioned, you can use it to assign a weapon marker to the weapon entity in the designs already shown. As value you can enter orange, green, blue, black or purple, but you should not change the designs within your map between the entities.
• team: As already described, you can link several entities with each other by entering team and any unique value. They will then spawn in alternating order unless randomselect has been set. The time it takes for a weapon to respawn in the team is determined by the value of the key wait of the previously picked up weapon. So if the key wait of one of the weapons in the team is set to -1 (single appearance), the rotation of the weapons in the team will be stopped after this weapon has been picked up.
• target: Picking up the entity works like a switch and triggers the target entity defined as value by the key target. How this works exactly has already been described in the tutorial Handling sound effects, in the section “Sound effects with trigger”. This basically works with other entities as well.
• targetname: The entity target_give can point to the weapon or ammunition bottle entity with the key targetname and the corresponding value. Using a trigger and the target_give, the weapon or ammunition can be given or taken directly to a player. Viktor Karp has described this possibility very well in his tutorial 27 (German only).
• gametype: This allows you to decide specifically in which game types the entity should appear and in which not. The available values are
• ffa (Free For All), tournament (Tournament), single (Singleplayer), spray (Spray Your Color), lps (Last Pad Standing), team (Free For All Team), ctl (Capture The Lolly), sptp (Spray Your Color Team), balloon (Big Balloon).
• notfree: If you set the key notfree to the value 1, the entity will not appear in the game types Free For All, Tournament and Spray Your Color.
• notteam: If you set the Key notteam to 1, the entity will not appear in the game types Free For All Team, Spray Your Color Team and Big Balloon and Capture The Lolly.
• notlps: If you set the key notlps to the value 1, the entity will not appear in Last Pad Standing game type.
• notsingle: If you set the key notsingle to the value 1, the entity will not appear in the game mode Single Player.
• notbot: If you set the key notbot to the value 1, the entity is ignored by the bots and not picked up.

Notes on placement

As already mentioned, you don’t need to place NiPPER and PUNCHY on your map. With especially large maps like the TrashMap it can happen that weapons are scattered far apart. In such a case you should consider which weapons could be installed more than once. In the TrashMap all weapons are present twice except SPLASHER, BOASTER and iMPERiUS, but that is really an extreme case. Speaking of the extremely powerful iMPERiUS, this weapon should be neatly hidden and should not be easily accessible. A spawn interval of 90 to 120 seconds should not be undercut. Our maps often contain a bottle of ammunition for the iMPERiUS. Like the weapon itself, this should also be neatly hidden or in a place that is difficult to access.

Otherwise, everyone can distribute the ammunition bottles in his map as he wants and surely there are very different and successful concepts. At this point I just want to introduce my method, which at least for the TrashMap has worked quite well. First I insert a certain number of each type of ammunition depending on the size of the map at an arbitrary and free place. In the TrashMap there were 4 pieces of ammunition for each type of weapon, not to forget the ammunition for the NiPPER. For the double weapons I add an additional bottle of ammunition per weapon type, in the TrashMap I add 5 pieces. From this more or less clearly arranged pile of ammunition bottles I combine three of each. This combination of three always depends on the weapons which are near the intended position of the ammunition bottle. The whole thing gets complicated by the three-dimensional distribution of the weapons in the map, by additional teleporter paths and the high number of possible combinations. If a weapon is missing in the immediate area of an ammunition bottle triple combination, I always insert a NiPPER ammunition bottle as third. I hope that the following illustration makes this a bit more comprehensible.

Finally, I can tell you that a good placement of the weapons as well as all the other items is a real challenge and the gameplay of the map elementarily depends on it. Therefore use all the possibilities of alpha and beta tests to have your map checked by experienced players in this respect. In most cases, the level designer is better at creating the map than he is at playing it and therefore cannot do without the experience of the players.