Entities #

An entity is a player or a vehicle in most cases. An entity is a base class that is extended by the alt.Player and alt.Vehicle types respectively.

They share similar properties of an Entity such as:

• pos - A Vector3 Position
• rot - A Vector3 Rotation in Radians (-3 -> 3)
• id - An incremental identifier created on creation of this Entity type.
• model - A numbered hash of a named model such as alt.hash('infernus')
• destroy - Most commonly used for Vehicles, but removes the Entity entirely

Changing Positions of Entities #

If you ever want to change the position of an Entity in the world, you can simply change the pos property.

import * as alt from 'alt-server';

/**
 * @param {alt.Player} player
 */
function handleSpawn(player) {
    player.spawn(0, 0, 0);
    player.model = 'mp_m_freemode_01';

    // This is changing the player's position.
    player.pos = { x: -867.1437377929688, y: -172.6201934814453, z: 37.799232482910156 };
}

alt.on('playerConnect', handleSpawn);

Comparing Entity Types #

If you need to check if the Entity is a certain type such as a vehicle or a client you can use instanceof.

const someVehicle = new alt.Vehicle('infernus', 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0);

if (someVehicle instanceof alt.Vehicle) {
    console.log(`this is definitely a vehicle!`);
}

const somePlayer = alt.Player.all[0];

if (somePlayer instanceof alt.Player) {
    console.log(`this is definitely a player!`);
}

Validating Entities #

This is often overlooked by newer developers but you should always be verifying a player, or vehicle before manipulating it.

What we mean by this is that when a player leaves a server or a vehicle is despawned, the vehicle or player may no longer be valid.

This is why we check with the code below.

Otherwise you get the ever so famous base object is not defined error.

const somePlayer = alt.Player.all[0];

function doSomething(player) {
    if (typeof somePlayer === 'undefined' || !somePlayer.valid) {
        console.log('This player just disconnected, or is invalid.');
        return;
    }

    console.log('That is a valid player! Do what you want!');
}

doSomething(somePlayer);

Quiz #

Let's do a recap on what you have learned in this section. Answer the following questions.