5.1. Target patterns

In Half-Life, when an entity triggers another entity it usually toggles its target (or targets). Specifically enabling or disabling an entity requires an intermediate trigger_relay entity that sends an 'on' or 'off' signal to the target entity.

Some mods, like Spirit of Half-Life, made it possible for any entity to send 'on' or 'off' signals simply by adding a + or - before the target name. The MESS target patterns behavior lets you do exactly that, and more. It works by automatically generating the required intermediate entities. For example, if a func_button targets +door, then MESS will insert a trigger_relay named +door, which sends an 'on' signal to door. This behavior is smart enough to only insert the required entities once, so if another entity also targets +door, only a single trigger_relay named +door will be inserted.

Available target patterns:

• Delayed triggering
• Enable target
• Disable target
• Kill target
• Show target
• Hide target
• Change target
• Set counter value
• Trigger multiple targets

Delayed triggering

This generates a trigger_relay that will trigger targetname after the specified delay.

This can also be used in combination with other target patterns. For example, +door:2 will generate a trigger_relay that sends an 'on' signal to door, with a delay of 2 seconds (both the delay and the 'on' signal are taken care of by the same trigger_relay). Another example: hide door:1 will generate an env_render to set the FX amount of door to 0, and a trigger_relay for the delay (because env_render doesn't support delays).

Enable target

This generates a trigger_relay that sends an 'on' signal to targetname.

Disable target

This generates a trigger_relay that sends an 'off' signal to targetname.

Kill target

This generates a trigger_relay that kills all entities named targetname.

Show target

This generates an env_render that sets the FX amount of targetname to 255.

Hide target

This generates an env_render that sets the FX amount of targetname to 0.

Change target

This generates a trigger_changetarget that sets the target of targetname to newtarget.

newtarget can also be a pattern, like +newtarget or -newtarget. Note that multi-target patterns take precedence, so button1->door1,door2 is interpreted as a multi-target pattern that contains a change-target pattern.

Set counter value

This generates a game_counter_set that sets the value of targetname to value.

Trigger multiple targets

This generates a multi_manager that triggers both target1 and target2. Targets can also be patterns, so +target1,show target2 will also generate a trigger_relay and an env_render, according to the 'enable' and 'show' patterns.

It's also possible to give targets a delay:

This generates a multi-threaded multi_manager that triggers target1 immediately, target2 after a 1.5 second delay and target3 after a 2 second delay.

Configuration

The following globals (defined in mess.config) can be used to disable specific patterns. This can be useful if you're making maps for a mod or game that already supports some of these patterns, such as Spirit of Half-Life: