Scouring the tuts and information

[randy989]

Upon my return to Surface and possibly RtCW editing, I decided to begin the resurrection of my previous knowledge by rereading all the tuts on this site and abroad. I may once again become a regular member. Anyway, here's a few questions and such I have come up with so far. I'm sure more will be added to this list in the near future.

First, .aas files. This is not really a question, but more along the lines of advice to others, especially n00bs just starting out. I think I also brought this up back in April or May when I was a reg, but I think it sort of got pushes aside. Anyway, the method outlined in the tut says to copy and paste those two lines of text into a command prompt to compile your .aas files. I, however, found it much easier to use the .bat file that, surprisingly enough, is included with the download eyeronik has thankfully provided for us. So, my preferred method for .aas creation is simply to modify the batch file to match my map's name, and simply double-click it to make the files. Also, using this method does NOT produce incorrect file names, so you don't have to rename anything. If you're going map crazy and have a thousand different projects going at one time, you can simply put %1.bsp in place of your map's name, and run makeaas.bat -mapname from the Windows Run prompt. Still easier than copying and pasting two lines at a command prompt.

Second, sounds. I noticed that the sound tutorial instructs you to have the breakable radio target the target_speaker and to have the target_speaker also target the radio, so that when the radio is destroyed the sound stops playing. Is having the target_speaker target the radio necessary? It seems as if it should only need to go one way.

Also, for making a trigger field that triggers a sound, it says to give the trigger_multiple or _once a targetname, and have the target_speaker target that name. Shouldn't it be the other way around?

Those are my questions for now. Thanks!

And nice tuts, btw, eyeronik. Rereading them is really helping me out.

[eyeronik]

the sound stuff should work, i cant remember what i wrote but i always do the tutorials to make sure what i know does work. Ill recheck the sound one though as i added that part about triggering one in haste as i forgot to originally mention it. The radio, not sure about that. Ill check that.

And the make aas file, interesting, so your saying just double click the makeaas? oh i remember why now i didnt say do it, because it doesnt work on windows 2000, nt, (or probably xp now i think of it) so i didnt say do that, ill try put a note in for windows 95, 98 users that you can do it an easier way.

The coying and pasting lines, your saying name your map "%1" and then just typing in the map name? are you sure this works and creates the files? im not a sp map maker as you know so i rarely find any better ways of doing things sp style as i only ever learnt the essentials of that.

[randy989]

Okay, thanks.

Yeah, I forgot that batch files don't work exactly the same way in newer versions of Windows. Too bad.

Anyway, I was saying name your map whatever you want but in the batch file name it %1. I'm not sure if you know this or not, but anytime you put %1 in a batch file it will fill that with a parameter passed to the batch. So that way, if you want to make .aas files for say, mymap, you'd just go to Start->Run and type "makeaas.bat -mymap", and it'll replace %1 with mymap.

Speaking of that, even for XP and 2000 users, it would still be easier to do the process from Windows' run command rather than from DOS, since you don't have to change directories. It'll find it regardless of where it is.