How to make an entity strobe?

[silverjoel]

How do I make an entity strobe like the lights?

[Error]

please be more specific.

like, make the model disappear then reappear? or make the entity emit a strobing light?

[silverjoel]

No no, I mean strobe with light. Like flash as if it were being electricuted.

I see the lightstyle that causes the level lights to flicker in different ways, but how would I apply that to an entity?

[Error]

I'm not entirely sure what you mean, but I'd go with using an engine that supports .colormod

that's the easiest way. plus you could get a cool blue-ish tint on the color.

[Spike]

world lights use lightstyles, which are compiled in to the map.
The style then uses a lightstyle string which says the light level at a particular (repeating) point in time.
If you want your ent to move (and thus move the area lit too), this isn't an option.
In which case you need to use dynamic lights.

There's some DP extension which provides extra fields to specify specific light radius/colours, or you directly spawn a dlight in csqc, either way setting the light levels per frame. But without extensions, you're limited to 'self.effects |= EF_DIMLIGHT'... which obviously can't strobe.

[silverjoel]

So I'm stuck using a bunch of nextthinks? That's too bad.

[leileilol]

quake is entirely a series of nextthinks

[metlslime]

strobing moving light: add EF_MUZZLEFLASH every 3-4 frames

strobing light, no movement: give the light a targetname in the editor, this will give it a unique style. Then, at the appropriate time your code should set the light style to e.g. "azazaz" or similar. Then when finished, set it back to "a" or "m" depending on whether it should still emit light when not strobing.