Nubs-Safe-Zones

Safe Zone mod for Garry's Mod. This was developed a while ago, but I never actually put it on GitHub until now. Originally inspired by the now unsupported Safe Zone mod from the GMod Store, I decided to recreate it. Here's how this version is better:

• The original didn't have any saving. You would have open a specific file and paste Lua code. It was nice enough to generate this lua code, but was an unnecessary step. This also required a server restart. With this mod, you just have to select the tool, click two points, and you were done.
• This is mostly programmer friendly. You can register your own type, change the behavior of what happens in a zone, or just disallow people as being in the zone (such as a permission system) When an entity (prop or player) enters a zone, it calls certain hooks.
• This mod factors in the hitbox. The original only factored a props position, which would lead to bugs where a prop was still inside the zone but it's position was not. This means that a large prop could still be used to push players outside of the zone.
• This mod ghosts any props brought into a zone. The original would delete them without warning.
• This mod is optimized in which large prop counts won't cause lag. The original scanned every prop in the world every tick, while this limits how many it will scan per tick.

Client Console Commands

• nsz_show_zones (0|1) - Shows a debug of all the current zones and how long it took to scan props during every tick.
• nsz_show_display (0|1) - Shows or hides the "you are in zone" indicator.
• nsz_delete <zone ID> - Deletes a zone by ID. SuperAdmin only be default, however has ULX permission support. You can get a zone ID by using the console command nsz_show_zones
• nsz_gui - Opens the GUI for the mod.

Server Console Commands and Variables

• nsz_prop_checks_per_tick <# props> - How many props to check per server tick. Higher number = more lag, but faster detection. If this number is too low, props dragged between lines of the same zone may flicker out and back into the zone. Default is 50.
• nsz_aabb_v_sat_sensitivity <sensitivity> - Range of 0 to 90. This is the angle which determines whether to use AABB (Axis Aligned Bounding Box) detection or SAT (Separating Axis Theorem) detection. 0 = always use SAT (slow but accurate), 90 = always use AABB (fast with false positives). Default is 10.

Bugs

1. If two zones of the same type are next to each other, and you drag a prop through the line between them, the prop will flicker out and back into the zone. There is no good fix for this. The flicker occurs if the nsz_prop_checks_per_tick isn't high enough.
2. If all zones are removed, any entities in a zone will remain marked in the zones they were in until another zone is created.

Completed Features

These are features that were in Upcoming Changes listed below, however have been completed and moved to this list.

• Client settings are now available. Mainly you can just change where the zone indicator appears on screen and what it looks like.
• Moved from Weapons > Other to the toolbar to the right of the spawn menu. Removed the weapon version.
• Completely overhauled zones. Before, prop ghosting and preventing damage was baked into the mod. Now I've reworked the "API" if you will. Now the default zones are equal to any other addon for this mod, with some changes:
  • Hooks "EntityZoneEnter" and "EntityZoneLeave" were removed.
  • New hooks:

    Hook Name	Arguments	Description
    NSZRequestEnter	string zoneIdentifier, Entity/Player ent	Fires when something tries to enter a zone. Return true to block it from entering.
    NSZEntryDenied	string zoneIdentifer, Entity/Player ent	Fires when the NSZRequestEnter hook had a return value of true
    NSZEntered	string zoneIdentifier, Entity/Player ent	Fires when something successfully enters a zone.
    NSZExit	string zoneIdentifier, Entity/Player ent	Fires when something exits a zone.
    NSZThink	string zoneIdentifier, table players, table entities	Fires with standard "Think", however provides tables formatted as players[Player ply] = number elapsedTimeInZone. Same goes for entities.

  • New functions:

    Function	Description	Return value
    nsz:GetEntityOwner(Entity ent)	Tries to use CPPI (which every server should have) to get a player. Falls back to "Spawned" hooks.	Returns a Player or NULL.
    nsz:GetZones(Entity/Player ent)	Checks the cache for the ent and returns all that they are in.	Returns a sequential table of all zones the ent is in.
    nsz:InZoneCache(Entity/Player ent, string/table zoneFilter)	Checks the cache for the ent.	Returns a boolean of whether or not the ent is in the zoneFilter.
    nsz:KickFromZone(Entity/Player ent, string/table zoneFilter)	Kicks the ent from any of the supplied zones in zoneFilter.	Returns nil
    (Internal) nsz:GetZonesTable(Entity/Player ent)	Gets the modifiable cache table for the ent.	Returns a table formatted as table[zoneIdentifer] = timeEnteredZone.

• If both client convars nsz_show_zones and nsz_show_display are set to 1, the zone ID will now appear on the zone display. Due to optimizations, it only shows the first zone ID you enter, and doesn't update until you leave all zones of that type.
• nsz:RegisterZone() function has been revised. Arguments have been reordered to be more intuitive as well as the first argument can just be a table with the zone data.
• nsz_show_zones debug text now has a more accurate checked/total scan count, as well as how many used Vector, AABB, and SAT detection.
• Language support has been implemented, will need to create documentation at some point
• Credits page

Upcoming Changes

I'm planning on revisiting this in the near future and making a few changes. Once these changes are made, I'll update it on the Steam Workshop.

• Add a variable for no pvp zones that will allow a player back into a zone if they haven't died since they left. (started)
• server/concmds.lua still needs language support.
• For the steam workshop, figure out why the materials aren't sending to the client if the server isn't using this github repo.

Cut Changes

These were things I wrote down that I wanted to do, but I don't want to let scope creep catch up to me as well as they just aren't the most necessary.

• Add a zone preview and even placing multiple zones before uploading to the server.
• I'd like to figure out a way to optimize nearby/intersecting zones by merging them with the feature above. This may be cut.