Create the "Ready Room"
January 2024
In Zombie Panic! Source, players choose their teams in what is called the "Ready Room". This is where players goes into triggers that activate their team selection.
The room itself
The mapper decide where and how to design the "Ready Room" (also called lobby), however, there is a rule to respect : Players that haven't chosen their team should not be able to interact with the "playable part" of the map.
The "Ready Room" can be a room isolated from the "gameplay" part (like the official maps Harvest and Aquatica) or tied to the "gameplay" part but with a "wall" that prevent interference (like the official map Biotec).
Creating the triggers
Creating the triggers is simple, we're gonna create the "Survivor Team" : 1. Create a brush with the "tools/toolstrigger" texture where you want players to join the survivors once they have touched the trigger. 2. Convert the brush to an brush entity and select "trigger_joinhumanteam", there are no need to configure the "Name" and "HUD Description Message" parameters.
To create the triggers for the Zombies and the Spectators, just duplicate the one you made for the survivors and change the entity to the one corresponding to the team ("trigger_joinzombieteam", "trigger_joinspectatorteam")
Hints and tips
- To indicated which team correspond each trigger, you can place non-solid brushes (func illusionary) in front of the triggers using those textures : "zpcustommaterials/zp_signs/zp_humanteam", "zpcustommaterials/zp_signs/zp_zombieteam" and "zp_custommaterials/zp_signs/zp_joinspectator"
- You can also use a blue light to represent the humans, a red one for zombies, and a white light for spectators
- You can use team specific representation to represent the triggers (for exemple, you can place weapons and ammo in the survivors section, blood and ragdolls for the zombie section)
