Emplacement Gun

Who could forget the famous emplacement gun from Half-Life 2? Because the mapped ones seem to have broken in GMod, I decided to realize them as a SENT.

Features

• Working emplacement gun almost like in Half-Life 2
• Searchlight to make sure you won't miss a target, similar to the beach before Nova Prospekt
• Easy to spawn and use
• "World no collide" property allowing you to place it wherever you please.

Spawning

This SENT can only be spawned on top of a clamp (models/props_combine/combine_barricade_short01a.mdl). In case you aren't aiming at a clamp while spawning it, it will spawn a clamp for you - and automatically attach itself to it. Simply go to Entities, Half-Life 2 and select the Emplacement Gun.

Usage

To use it, simply get close to it and press your +use bind (i.e. E). While it is possible to operate it while standing in front of it, it is not recommended to do so. While handling it you can still walk around, crouch and jump as usual - however, if you get too far away, it will return into standby mode. To fire, simply click and hold your +attack bind (i.e. left mouse button), to toggle the searchlight use your flashlight/impulse 100 (i.e. F) bind. It will stay on if you leave, which makes it an excellent but deadly spotlight. To use the world no collide, rightclick it while pressing C and select "Turn world collision off". You can then move the clamp around as you please - perfect in combination with the color and weld tool.

Known bugs and list of things that won't happen

There are a few things that aren't exactly as I want them to be, however, due to limited knowledge of GMod/the Source Engine or a lack of motivation to do so, they aren't exactly fixable by me. If you find other bugs or know how to fix them, feel free to comment/SF me.

• The crosshair isn't the position the gun shoots at. I tried the best I can, but without getting into deep, fancy maths, I'm not quite able to improve the aiming to HL2 standards. I tried porting the code from the SDK, which resulted in an even worse performance. It's a hideous thing and I would really like it to work, believe me, but it's simply too time consuming for me.
• It doesn't work with NPCs! Yes, it doesn't. Likely, it will never. This isn't a bug, this is intended - I would have to script the whole thing, starting with NPC behaviour to find and man a gun and ending somewhere with intelligent target finding - but then again, the aiming (see above) would be off, so the NPC couldn't hit anything unless it's extremely luckily.
• When I turn on the flashlight, it seems red! Move it a little. No idea what causes it, but it goes away as soon as you move it a little bit.
• The flashlight is weird/lagging! Source Engine lightning stuff, a big :shrug: from me here. Because the spotlight itself wouldn't be bright enough, I added another light similar to the flashlight to it - those seem to somehow not be exactly in synch, so it gets a little bit icky.
• When I use it, the physgun halo/something else stays visible! I'll admit it, hiding the weapon is done a bit poorly. I recommend just switching to a weapon without any effect before using the emplacement gun.
• Switching to another weapon while manning a gun makes the viewmodel visible again! Nothing I can do there, as far as the documentation states there's no hook telling me that you've switched your weapons. I don't want to restrict weapon switching though, so you've got to live with it.
• Can you please make it duplicable! No. The entity itself is quite small (at least the area where you could physgun/toolgun it - spawn a bunker_gun.mdl and see yourself) and therefore, duplicating would be quite frustrating even if it did work. That's also the reason the emplacement gun itself isn't standalone but rather forced to be attached to a clamp - it makes it easier to manage it.