is there a good easy way to make a dust cloud shoot up into the air after a env_explosion goes off?
the explosion is on a track, i tried to put down a shooter to chuck debris but after 10 mins of this happening the level looked like the the moon landing site with small rocks everywhere (as they dont vanish for some reason)

so if there a way to make the gibs vanish after a few seconds?
or a way to make instant smoke from explosion?
however please note that the explosion is on a func train thingy so would the smoke move with the train or just shoot into the sky form the spot the blast went off?

can you not just put a func_dustcloud on the track as well? You can adjust the spread speed to make it nearly instant im sure

i cant find any item called func_dustcloud

its a func_dustmotes i belive . ..

And as far as as a shooter not removing it's objects after agiven time there should be a perameter in the entity that specifies this

Grrrrr, I was just typing a long reply and the power flickered at my house, so let me start over....


Ok, to make a dust cloud you need to do the following:

First, create a big block in your map. This big brush will be the volume that the dust cloud takes up, so make it kind of big. Texture the brush with NODRAW. Once the brush is created, highlight it and click Ctrl+T to turn it into an entity. It will default to a func_detail entity, but we want a func_dustcloud, so scroll down a few and choose func_dustcloud. Hit Apply to save the change. Now you'll see a lot of options to alter how the dustcloud looks. You'll need to name it something, maybe "dust1".

Now then, you want it to go off with your explosions, right? And since I'm guessing your explosions are following a track for a mortar field, parent the dust cloud entity to your moving track, or to whatever the explosions are following. This ensures the dust cloud follows your explosions. Oh, also make sure the dust cloud is around the track or whereever it is that you want the dust.

Now for triggering the dust cloud. Whereever you trigger the explosion, add another Output command for the dustcloud. Target the "dust1" entity and give it the action "TurnOn". This will turn on your dust! Hurray! And that's it!

(As a side note, I can't remember if you have to "TurnOff" the dustcloud. So if your dust never goes away, add the turnoff command after a long delay.)

If this is too confusing, I can probably whip up a quick example, since I know it's always easier to actually see how it's done.

as for the debris not dissappearing, try going into the env_shooter's Flags and checking "strict remove after lifetime".

the func_dustcloud didnt have a parent option so i couldnt link it to the train, instead i set the gibs to vanish, thanks for showing me the option i needed