Mapping 104: Targets

## Target

Imagine you're a skilled archer in a medieval kingdom, and you've been tasked with hitting a specific bullseye on a target. The entire target represents the virtual world in the Quake 3 engine, and your goal is to create a custom experience by placing different elements on this target. Now, within this target, there's a particular spot, the bullseye, which is your "target" in Quake 3 mapping. This spot is where you want players to focus, where something special or significant is located—perhaps a key item, a critical area, or a memorable feature in your game level. In Quake 3 mapping terms, a "target" often refers to entities or elements in the game world that are linked to specific functions or events. For example, you might have a "target door" that players can interact with to open, or a "target\_teleporter" that transports players to another location when activated.

So, just like your archery skills are focused on hitting that bullseye, in Quake 3 mapping, you're placing and connecting targets to create interactive and dynamic elements in your game level, adding depth and engagement for the players. Let's go over some of them. Targets perform no action by themselves, but must be triggered by another entity. Again, follow the entity defs to learn more!

### target\_activate

If an entity has an inactive flag turned on, target this at that entity to activate it.

### target\_delay

This can be seen as a delay fuse. Once triggered it will wait the appointed time before triggering its own target. They are useful for having doors wait, or creating effect chains.

 targetname
 delay
 wait
 random

### target\_counter

Think of this like a scoreboard counter, once the count is met, it will fire. Try this, set your count to 3 and get something which fires at it three independent times. Once the third time this target is fired, it will fire at it's target.

### target\_location

This entity makes the locations appear in the UI in the top right corner for MBII. Whichever is closest is what pops up as the current player's location. You can use ^1colors within the message key if you want!

### target\_position

A common entity, it is used to aim other entities. This helps trigger\_push portal\_cameras with orientation.

### target\_print

This entity is used to print messages onto either everyone present, a singular team or a singular player. It can only be seen by a singular player when he activated it by a trigger. Its use lies in simple warning system of map events but can also be used in combination with either trigger\_class or \_equipment triggers to create alarms. The spawnflags are pretty straightforward and don’t really need an explanation. Be careful with target\_prints targetted by a target\_multiple which do not have a wait key as this can flood the server or cause a crash.

### target\_push

In essence this is a trigger activated trigger\_push. Just use that instead. If you use this the push comes from the centre of the activating trigger. The Bouncepad spawnflag makes the bounce sound. Useless.

### target\_relay

The target relay is a filtering trigger which can determine which team is allowed to continue the chain. You can also make differential chains with this where pushing the same button or passing the same area has different effects for the different teams. The spawnflags red\_only and blue\_only are pretty direct but random makes it choose one of all the entities with the targetname the relay is pointing to. So if you have 4 different triggers with the same targetname to which relay is pointing it will only activate once.

### target\_score

A point giving entity. Could be used for creating award areas where players might score easy points or large amounts of points. Unsure if this works.

### target\_speaker

Soundsource entity. Uses .wav. It can either be activated singular by a trigger, or continuously looping which can be deactivated and reactivated by a trigger. This is determined by the spawnflags. Looped\_on and Looped\_off are obvious. Global makes it be heard mapwide and Activator only to the player who activated it.

### target\_teleporter

Entity which must be activated by another trigger and be aimed at the misc\_teleporter\_dest. Easier to use trigger\_teleport.