Tutorials
Rappelling Combine
This brief tutorial will go over how to make a combine soldier rappel down a rope from a height and dismount at the bottom.
Step One: The Setup
First off, make yourself a small setup room, with a ledge or a slope that your combine soldier will be jumping off. Then place your soldier at the edge of the platform he will be rappelling off, It is important that you must note that he should start where you want his rappel to begin, this means do not have him above the platform, the first surface the binding box around the soldier touches will be where he dismounts. In my example I have him dangling off the edge, you can use the model animation "rappelloop" as a reference as to where he will be. I do this because the soldier idles in that loop animation until the trigger is set off.
This is my setup that you can view in the sample .vmf
Step Two: The Trigger
Now just create your trigger, whatever it is, in this case I'm going simple and using a trigger_once, but, of course you can do this with other outputs like "ondeath" etc. Your output setup should look like this if you are using trigger_once
Step Three: The Conclusion
Now that was easy wasn't it? The best kind of situations you can use this method in is either from a distance or somewhere where it will be hard for the player to see the combine in the default loop animation. For example in one of my maps I have an intense Rebel Vs. Combine battle, in this battle after x amount of time two hole plugs in the ceiling will break open and 3 combine elites will rappel down in a rather cinematic style, all that was done with the method above and delaying some outputs slightly so they don't look camp and slide in at the same time.
You can download the sample .vmf here
Wiggle987