This is a Hammer Editor translation of the entity and outputs setup used in the Custom Map Finale Hint Fix mod, which uses VScript.

This guide assumes you have experience in using the Hammer Editor and already know how to set up maps in Left 4 Dead 2, including finales.

If not, you should learn how to use Hammer as well as how to design maps for L4D(2).

If you don't intend to go into map-making, you can safely ignore this guide.

This entity fires a client-sided game event that prompts the game to clear all current instructor hints.
There are no side-effects to this despite the name of the event being "game_newmap" which is appropriately fired when starting a new map.

This should NOT have any spawnflags set.



Keyvalues for recreating the game's vanilla finale hint's style

These keyvalues are not necessary to be exact and the hint can be modified to anything you like, as long as it gets the point across to your players.

This entity does not have any spawnflags.


The trigger_finale entity (or entities) at this point should be set up somewhere in the level.
The only changes needed for trigger_finale is to add additional outputs to them in order to use these entities.

In order of what they do:

1. Fires the game event entity which in turn fires the game_newmap event.
   
2. On a delay of 0.1 seconds, fire our hint entity.
   
3. (Garbage collection)
   On a delay of 0.1 seconds, remove the game event entity as we no longer have any purpose for it.
   
4. (Garbage collection)
   On a delay of 8.1 seconds which is the same length as the hint's timeout delay plus an additional 0.1 seconds because of the previous output, remove the hint entity.

The 0.1 delay on hint_finale_custom is necessary to stop our game event entity's game_newmap event from erasing this hint. game_newmap WILL erase any and all hints indiscriminately!
(This is not a problem as finale hints are one-time pop-ups and already erase other hints anyway)

(Garbage collection) outputs are optional and serve to remove the entities after they won't ever be used again.
If you intend to use the same entity again, the output that removes the entity should be cleared.

If done correctly, the result should be your custom hint appearing



without Valve's dumb hint popping up before or after it to ruin the vibe.