: Anyone can confirm what's going by opening up Hang Brian in Forge or Weland
: and looking at the trigger polygons.
: I believe that the "secret" in the spoiler guide is simply a
: mistake. From what I recall about how the Marathon engine works, it is not
: possible to reenter an area you've already been in and have new things
: teleport in, unless you step on a polygon you didn't step on before.
: From what I remember, items can only teleport in due to the proximity of the
: player or due to the player stepping on a trigger polygon. Trigger
: polygons will spread a signal to adjacent polygons, causing items/enemies
: to teleport in, until the "signal" stops at a border polygon.
: So, in Hang Brain there are really only two possibilities: 1) you enter the
: central room and the items teleport in when you step on the right polygon
: (or get near the items), 2) you enter the pit at the end of the level, the
: pit is an item trigger, and the pit is connected by hidden polygons to the
: central chamber where the items teleport in; in this second case however,
: the items would already be present once you revisit the central room.
: So, the secret shouldn't be possible the way it is described. I suspect that
: whoever "discovered" the secret just didn't step on the item
: trigger polygons on their first visit, and then on their second visit did
: step on them and mistook this for a secret.
: Either that or there's some sort of special scripting on just this level for
: just this secret.
That's really how triggers work? The M2 engine is kooky. My exposure to the doom engine (and well, anything) would have me assume the items have a tag or identifier they share and have a parameter set to not appear until a trigger activates them, and when you step on a polygon with that trigger, it would be instant, with no need for all this signal traversal we have to deal with in IRL systems.
