Source; Playing Video Files In-game Thread

Is it possible to Play custom .Avi / .Bik video files in game through using a entity within the hammer editor to trigger them to play? Any help is much appreciated

I'm sure you could code it.

It is possible, how I can not tell you. I was in a GMOD server the other day where they had something they coded that allows players to watch youtube videos in the game. I would look into coding it and or even possibly a large moving texture maybe. (Not as practical) Im not sure, if you figure it out let me know how you did it!

There are a few GMOD plugins that allow you to play flash movies on special entities within GMOD, the plugins are written in LUA.

There is a tutorial on the Valve Developer Wiki about procedural materials that allow you to play AVI files on world surfaces, written in C++. It's draw back is that the C++ library it uses to read the video files can only play a very specific type of AVI file, and it doesn't do anything to try and re-size the file to fit on the surface it plays on.

The 2nd one is what I modified to display JPGs and other images on the virtual screens of entities in Source Media Arcade. The ultimate goal of SM Arcade includes playback of video files on these screens as well.

If, by chance, you merely want the video file to be launched in a new window when triggered by an entity as opposed to displaying the video in-game, then the current version of Source Media Arcade could accomplish this for you.

I have tried looking at ways of encoding them, This has proven to be very difficult as finding such a tutorial is difficult and my knowledge of LUA and C++ code is VERY limited. as well as this i noticed that in the HL2 MOD "Nightmare House" .BIK files are played in game. after decompiling the maps i have discovered that they are triggered through a Point_clientcommand using the console command "Play video"

However i cannot get this to work, when the command is triggered, the game freeze and the only way to rectify this is pressing the escape key and exiting out of the game.

If someone could please advice me on how to create the same effect or provide further detail of the console command, your help would be much appreciated

So you're trying to play a video in an add-on Nightmare House 2 map specifically, correct?

I did the programming for Nightmare House 2, so I can tell you how I got it working. It's actually very easy to fix video playback in Source 2007.

Just change line 26 of
src/game/client/vgui_video.cpp
from this
vgui::VPANEL pParent = enginevgui->GetPanel( PANEL_GAMEUIDLL );
to this
vgui::VPANEL pParent = enginevgui->GetPanel( PANEL_ROOT );

Then you can just trigger the playvideo command in hammer.

Edited by: eXeC64

eXeC64 wrote: I did the programming for Nightmare House 2, so I can tell you how I got it working. It's actually very easy to fix video playback in Source 2007.

Just change line 26 of
src/game/client/vgui_video.cpp
from this
vgui::VPANEL pParent = enginevgui->GetPanel( PANEL_GAMEUIDLL );
to this
vgui::VPANEL pParent = enginevgui->GetPanel( PANEL_ROOT );

Then you can just trigger the playvideo command in hammer.

Thanks for your help, Much appreciated mate

Edited by: Curtainpole