Despawnfader

Overview

This component is responsible for gracefully removing an entity from the game by visually fading it out over time. It handles both the animation of the fade and the eventual destruction of the entity, synchronizing the fade state between the server (master sim) and clients.

Dependencies & Tags

• Dependencies: While not explicitly added as components, this script interacts with inst.AnimState for visual effects and relies on the networking capabilities provided by net_tinybyte for synchronization.
• Tags:
  • Adds NOCLICK when fading out to prevent interaction with the entity during its removal process.

Properties

Property	Type	Default Value	Description
_fade	net_tinybyte	nil	A networked net_tinybyte variable used to synchronize the fade value between server and clients.
fadeval	number	0	The current normalized fade progress, ranging from 0 (fully transparent/removed) to 1 (fully opaque).
updating	boolean	false	A flag indicating whether the component is actively running its OnUpdate loop.

Main Functions

_ctor(self, inst)

• Description: The constructor initializes the component, associating it with the entity instance, setting up the networked fade variable, and initializing internal state flags. On clients, it immediately registers an event listener for fadedirty to react to server-side fade changes.
• Parameters:
  • self: The DespawnFader component instance.
  • inst: The entity instance this component is attached to.

OnFadeDirty(inst)

• Description: This function is called on client machines when the _fade networked variable changes (becomes "dirty"). It triggers the client-side fade process to match the server's state, recalculating fadeval and starting the component's update loop if not already running.
• Parameters:
  • inst: The entity instance associated with the event.

OnRemoveFromEntity()

• Description: Performs cleanup operations when the component is removed from its entity. Specifically, on client machines, it removes the event callback for fadedirty to prevent memory leaks or errors.
• Parameters: None.

FadeOut()

• Description: Initiates the fade-out process for the entity. It sets the fadeval to 1, ensuring the entity is initially opaque, starts the component's update loop if not already active, adds the NOCLICK tag to prevent interaction, and sets the entity's persists property to false to prevent it from being saved. It then immediately calls OnUpdate to start the process.
• Parameters: None.

OnUpdate(dt)

• Description: The core update logic for the despawn fader, called periodically. It decrements fadeval over time, calculates a non-linear transparency value (k), and applies it to the entity's AnimState:OverrideMultColour. When fadeval reaches 0, the entity is either removed on the master sim or the component stops updating on clients. On the master sim, it also synchronizes fadeval with clients via the _fade networked variable.
• Parameters:
  • dt: The time elapsed since the last update, in seconds.

Events & Listeners

• Listens For:
  • "fadedirty": Listened to on client instances of the entity to synchronize the fade state with the server.