Entity

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An object defined within Source or Source 2 as having characteristics which differentiate it from "the world" (world brushes).

Types of entites

Types	available in	Info
By Form
Brush entity	Source and earlier	See also:  Category:Brush entities A Brush Entity is an entity type in the GoldSrc and Source engines, created by tying an entity to a model made out of BSP geometry (brushes) in the map, giving the brush a specific effect or ability defined by the entity tied to it. (The default shortcut is Ctrl + T after selecting a brush) Purpose and Uses Brush entities are used for entities that require an area or trigger zone to be touched, hit, or used in order to perform a specific task. Another use of brush entities is to create a physical object that can move, such as an elevator, or a door (can be made by many brushes selected together and tied as a whole to a brush entity, forming a brush model). A great example of a brush entity that implements both of these designs is a func_button, which requires a brush to specify the area the player must press, touch, or shoot to activate the button; the button can be made using any shape of brush, or even a group of brushes, and can be textured to give the appearance of a real button. Brush entities such as the func_button have special features that affect the physical brush they're tied to, such as moving the brush in a general direction when activited, giving the effect of the button being pushed in and then popping back out. Another example of a brush entity is a trigger_multiple which can fire some outputs once the player walks into its area of effect (the volume of which is defined by the volume of the original brush used to make the trigger). Tip:Many brush entities work when spawned dynamically via commands/vscript and setting keyvalue solid 2 and desired mins/maxs after the entity has been spawned. This is useful when needing to create non-visual brush entities without recompiling the map. It's also possible to reuse bmodel of other brush entities used in the given map. Example:Making trigger_multiple by console commands which will break any prop_physics that touch it ent_create trigger_multiple targetname test spawnflags 1032 OnStartTouch "!activator,Break"; ent_fire test addoutput "solid 2"; ent_fire test addoutput "maxs 100 100 100"; ent_text test; ent_bbox test; (not all games' ent_create command supports more parameters beyond classname in which case they need to be set via ent_fire addoutput) General types Trigger brush entities These are invisible during normal play and fire outputs or affect entities when they touch the trigger's brush. They are subclasses of CBaseTrigger and their visibility can be toggled using showtriggers_toggle if their brush used a visible texture like toolstrigger. trigger_multiple trigger_push trigger_playermovement Nav controlling brush entities These aid in controlling or creating the navmesh and are also invisible. func_nav_blocker func_nav_prefer func_nav_attribute_region Visual brush entities Brush entities whose brush is intended to be seen by the player and may add some special functionality to it. func_detail func_brush func_illusionary func_door func_movelinear Other func_ladder func_detail_blocker fog_volume See also Rendering related keyvalues and inputs available to all brush entities Generic Keyvalues, Inputs and Outputs available to all entities /Rendering related keyvalues (GoldSrc) Category:Brush Entities Point entity Mesh entity - successor to brush entity
Point entity	Source and Source 2	This is a draft page. It is a work in progress open to editing by anyone. Remember to check for any notes left by the tagger at this article's talk page. See also:  Category:Point entities Point Entity is usually defined as simply an entity that is not a brush entity i.e. entity that is created by Hammer Entity Tool on specific point on a grid instead of tying brushes to an entity. More meaningful definition for a point entity is an entity that doesn't render a 3D model and its position in the world affects its functionality. It still may have a visual component (env_sprite, keyframe_rope) or create a visual component (infodecal, info_particle_system) but most of them are without one (ambient_generic, info_target, point_hurt, info_teleport_destination, info_elevator_floor). Other types of entities that are also created on a specific point and are usually referred to as point entity are model entities and logical entities. Point entities by these standards are most of the time subclasses of CPointEntity. General types Target of other entities These serve mainly to provide their position for other entities that target them. info_target info_teleport_destination info_null info_survivor_position info_lighting info_mass_center Spawners Their position serves as a place where to spawn player/npc/weapon. info_player_start npc_maker info_zombie_spawn weapon_item_spawn env_entity_maker Viewcontrol point_viewcontrol point_viewcontrol_multiplayer point_viewcontrol_survivor Visual env_sprite infodecal info_overlay info_particle_system move_rope Sound ambient_generic env_soundscape env_microphone - detects sound Lights light light_spot light_dynamic Other point_hurt env_laser point_playermoveconstraint More[Todo] See also Brush entity Model entity Logical entity List of entities Category:Point Entities coding Your First Entity
Mesh entity	Only in Source 2	Mesh entity/overview
Path entity		Path entities are a type of entity recently added to the tools. They can be created with Path Tool (Shift + P). Todo: Path entities may not be fully functional in SteamVR Home. Document which path types work. Stub This article or section is a stub. You can help by expanding it.
By Internality
Internal entity	In all Engines	Internal entites/overview
Non-Internal entity		A Non-Internal entity is when there is no entity in the FGD by default. an FGD tells Hammer what entities exist in the engine, and what keyvalues, inputs, outputs, and flags they have. If information for an entity is missing from an FGD, it can be manually added through Hammer without it. FGD info is not required to use anything, but it does help make the mapping process much simpler. See Non-FGD features for more info.

Limitations

For reasons of memory allocation, there is a limit to the number of entities GoldSrc/ Source/ Source 2 can manage at once.

The combined size (in bytes) of a map's entity data should also be considered, even if the number of entities is within safe limits. Large amounts of entdata can take a noticeably long time to transmit from server to client, and may lead to crashes.

For more info, see Entity limit.

See also

• Category:Entities
• Adding Point Entities (part of a series of tutorials)
• Creating Brush Entities (ditto)
• Entity creation (a quick reference)
• Entities in Depth
• List of Entities
• Coding Your First Entity
• Console command dump_entity_sizes
• Constraint
• preserved entity
• Void