User talk:JeffLane

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• Archive 1 -- October 10th, 2006
• Archive 2 -- February 2, 2008

Team Fortress 2: item_teamflag

There has been an issue brought up here which drew my attention. My question would be that is there a not-in-FGD input which instantly returns the flag to its base position, and if not, is it possible to do this otherwise? --Baliame ^(talk) 14:40, 30 Dec 2007 (PST)

No, there is no input like this on item_teamflag. It may be added at some if there is a specific need. --JeffLane 18:48, 2 Jan 2008 (PST)

By the way, is there any chance valve will fix up and release a flag model? I realize you guys left in the tfc flag model, but not sure if it can be used at the moment. --Frostbite 19:26, 2 Jan 2008 (PST)

We would release a different flag model other than the briefcase if we shipped a specific new game type that required it. --JeffLane 18:12, 3 Jan 2008 (PST)

Aww, come on >.> could you at least add support for flag model replacement? >.> --Frostbite 18:03, 4 Jan 2008 (PST)

I want it too but we should pester Robin about this instead of Jeff. --wisemx 18:38, 4 Jan 2008 (PST)

While I do agree with that, Jeff is the more or less the only Valve representative I see online. (unless the others are stalking in the shadows) --Baliame ^(talk) 04:15, 5 Jan 2008 (PST)

Moving a "Category:" page

I've noticed that the "Move" button is not available in any Category page. Is this an "admin-only" option, or does it not exist altogether? I'm asking because there are some categories of other languages that could (and should) be moved to their "proper" page: Category:<page>:<lang>, to help documentation maintenance. Other than that, would the only solution be a plain-old nasty copy/paste to the new page? --Etset 15:42, 18 Jan 2008 (PST)

Categories are not real pages. If you add the [[Category:Something]] to any page, the category is automatically created if it doesn't exist. Likewise, if you remove it from all pages and the category doesn't have any custom text, it will disappear. --Baliame ^(talk) 08:57, 19 Jan 2008 (PST)

Yes, I am aware of that :) What I would like is a suggestion as to how to move the content in one of these Category pages, without doing it through an ugly copy-paste method (which, as we know, kind of ruins the point of the "History" section of a page, etc). I though there might be some "admin-side option/button/tool" that could accomplish this. If not, well copy-paste will have to do... --Etset 09:07, 19 Jan 2008 (PST)

PS: Found this at Wikipedia: "To change the name of a category, one needs to change all category tags, and copy the editable part." Seems like copy-paste it is then... --Etset 09:41, 19 Jan 2008 (PST)

Yes, I believe the feature was omitted from Wiki to avoid confusion. --Baliame ^(talk) 15:20, 19 Jan 2008 (PST)

Alyx gravity gun choreography

How was the scene at the beginning of Episode Two with Alyx using and handing Gordon the gravity gun choreographed? Were the elements put together in Face Poser or burned into the animation? Specifically, was Alyx holding the GG one single animation or was it the Alyx model holding a separate GG model? Noclip 08:25, 19 Jan 2008 (PST)

Well I do know Valve animators work in XSI where they use multiple models to animate the most of the scenes, so they probably used a prop_dynamic and have that being animated along with alyx, and then once she hands it the gun to you, it turns into weapon_physcannon. --Frostbite 12:42, 1 Feb 2008 (PST)

I did not work on that particular scene, but I believe it was done with a bodygroup on Alyx for the grav gun. I will ask the animators and get back to you. --JeffLane 13:54, 2 Feb 2008 (PST)

Try decompiling the Black Mesa East map to see how it's done (that's what I did) When you look at the vortigaunts cooking dinner, (elevator scene, as you pass with Judith) each has a chef's hat and cooking utensils. Those are both dynamic props, and can be attached using a special form of SetParent. Unfortunately, they need to be dynamic props, but if I'm correct an upcoming update will allow just about anything to be used as a dynamic prop.--Katana314 12:34, 26 Feb 2008 (PST)

Need your attention

Could I please direct your attention to the following issues/posts/stuff (just give it a quick look, please):

• SDK Docs in other languages: links need to be updated.
• Shaders & Parameters: help needed!

I believe that would be all, for now. Thank you in advance! --Etset 12:23, 24 Jan 2008 (PST)

Here I am to bother you once more... and once more...

• Talk:Source Engine Features: this (protected) page has "duplicate" content with another article (& btw, what about deformable terrain?)

* More users are getting a Loading problem with the Source SDK (see Talk:Loading problem#More Information)!

Again, 2×thanks in advance! --Etset 05:08, 13 Feb 2008 (PST)

• The Source Engine page is information for engine licensees and will remain protected.
• Deformable displacements is an engine feature available to licensees.
• Regarding Loading problem, I'm not familiar with this error and this is not my area, but I will see what I can find out. Questions like these belong in the SDK Forums. Because of the decentralized and unstructured nature of talk pages, a wiki is really a inferior tool for individual questions and answers. That's not what it is designed for. Discussion forums work much better in this regard. As a separate issue, "Loading problems" is also far too general of a question to provide a reasonable answer. I've moved it to a more specific page title. --JeffLane 12:43, 15 Feb 2008 (PST)

Gotcha, and thank you. About the Source Engine Features page, I'm not asking if it could be unprotected, I'm only saying that...

1. It lacks all of the links that the Source article page has.
2. Both pages have (almost) the same content (there are some discrepancies), which is redundant. (I suggested using the {{:PageName}} "trick" to load the Source Engine Features article's content to the Source article page., since no one has though up anything else to put there...)

...and that this could be "fixed". Not a pressing priority of course, just pointing it out. Cheers! --Etset 17:10, 15 Feb 2008 (PST)

I understand. The other Source article was created by a VDC user as a duplicate of this page and edited. The original page is linked from numerous external sites and we wish to retain pages like this in their current state without editing and extra links to other sites. I don't think the duplicate content causes any real problem. --JeffLane 18:00, 15 Feb 2008 (PST)

Okie dokie! That's all for now, thanks! :) --Etset 11:32, 16 Feb 2008 (PST)

And again it comes to pass, I'm here to ask:

• Could you please categorize this category under Category:Page protection, please? Many thanks fly out in advance! Thank you! :) --Etset 16:21, 18 Feb 2008 (PST)

Releasing Shaders

I don't know if you've gotten this request before, but we're having a dicussion (Talk:Shader_Types_and_Parameters) about the possibility of Valve releasing at least the names of all the currently working shaders/parameters to the community (so we don't need to guess at them anymore). I'm referring to parameters like (but not limited to) "$decalscale" and "$selfillumtexture" (not included in the released code, but still used in official materials), and shaders like "alienscale", "jellyfish" and "jojirium" if they exist (because as it is now, we can't tell if they do). (You can answer at Talk:Shader_Types_and_Parameters.) Thank you. --Andreasen 07:03, 25 Jan 2008 (PST)

Repeated spammers

What do we do with spammers that haven't been blocked before, but already have a spammer tag?

1) Leave them alone, with the risk of being overseen.

2) So far I just inserted some spaces with the point being that I can add an edit summary which is then visible in the recent changes.

3) List them here (on this talk page).

4) Add a line to the user page stating the number of times the bot spammed. (Again the point is to have an edit summary visible in the recent changes.)

--Pizzahut 04:19, 26 Feb 2008 (PST)

Number 1 is "too risky".

Number 3 would be one helluva job! If you take a look at how the bot nicknames are being chosen, considering 26 alphabet letters plus 10 digits (36 characters total, considering that nicknames are case-insensitive which I'm not sure about), that gives a total of 36^10 = 3656158440062976 combinations. Now if you presume that half of these have already been banned (which is a very conservative estimate), you still have 1828079220031488 combinations to go (i.e. what I'm aiming at is that this page would be unnecessarily "flooded" with usernames while there are already categories for listing spammers). Adding the spammers nicknames here would have to be done manually anyway, so I present a better solution below.

Number 4 would require either

1. Changing the {{spammer}} template or
2. Manually add in a small sentence that states how many times the spammer has struck.

Either way it's a part from what we've done so far to mark these spammers. In fact, a better alternative would be:

1. A "new" spammer is marked with the {{spammer}} template, which automatically places him under the spammers category.
2. When an admin wants to ban spammers, he simply visits the spammers category and bans every user that is listed there and changes the {{spammer}} template to the {{banned spammer}} template, which places the spammer under the banned spammers category. Now the spammers category would be empty, so there would be no more "hidden spammers" left to be banned.

Note that even if the admin doesn't wish to go through all the spammer's user pages and change the template, regular users can spot when the admin bans spammers and help by changing the template themselves. Also, if we keep doing this on a regular basis, it will be fairly easy to just visit the spammers category and (using the ban list) quickly determine if spammers have been banned or not.

At the moment this alternative would require some work to be done in cross-checking those spammers (in the spammers category) with the ban list. Until then I believe I would go with option number 2. --Etset 04:47, 26 Feb 2008 (PST)

A bit off-topic, I saw Tom Edwards mentioning Akismet and Bad Behaviour at Template talk:Spammer. Perhaps these tools would help. --Pizzahut 05:53, 26 Feb 2008 (PST)

Bad Behaviour stops almost all spam dead for me: 746 comments in the past week, but when I was more active it's been as high as several thousand. I've only ever had one complaint sent through the error page it sends when it blocks a submission, and that was from somebody using a beta browser that sent wonky HTTP headers. It supports MediaWiki out of the box now - there's no excuse any more! :-p --TomEdwards 08:56, 26 Feb 2008 (PST)

Adjudication needed

I created Think() the other day, but Etset thinks contends that the ()s are bloat and should be removed. I contend that they mark the article as being about a function (like $ does for material commands) and, as long as they aren't filled with arguments, that makes the extra two characters worth having. Keeping the ()s also makes linking to the articles a little easier, as you don't have to worry about redirects. What do you think? --TomEdwards 09:02, 26 Feb 2008 (PST)