Fake water
Hi!
I have in mind to add a new kind of obstacle that is electrified water that should be a way to do the same thing than goo but with 2 advantages:
-It can be not deep, just 50 cm high
-It can be toggled on/off
But with my experiments, I noticed that water causes enormous portal lag even if we turn off reflections and much of refractions. It's like a big camera is giving a refracted picture of what's under the water.
And with another experiment, I could find that refractive GLASS with a an animated texture water don't lag at all the player (actually, a bit).
So, here's the trick:
-An invisible, lag-less water, absolutely invisible, just the sound, swim and splash effects.
-A refractive glass we can go through
The problem is, I can't do the invisible water. Is there a trick I can do? I know that in Half-Life 1 mapping, a buggy func_illusionnary could make water when set to volumetric light. Equivalent in HL2? Trick with materials?
Thanks for any help,
Hurricaaane.
Author of Minecraft mods (MAtmos, Minaptics, NoteSlider) and Garry's Mod addons (Gunstrumental, SharpeYe, GarryWare, DepthHUD).
Have you tried the low-quality water textures? the dx70 versions and such?
I've personally not seen any amount of lag when putting portals under water. But it kinda glitches up now and then, not showing up properly sometimes.
Yeah, use the DX7.0 water textures and it won't do any of the neat rendering stuff and you should be fine.
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For the glass, just make it a non-solid func brush. For the water, create a texture that is 100% transparent, then your vmts like this.
Above water vmt
- Code: Select all
"LightmappedGeneric"
{
"$basetexture" "[name of folder]/[name of water vtf]"
"$translucent" 1
"%compilewater" 1
"$abovewater" 1
"$bottommaterial" "[name of folder]/[name of below water vmt]"
"$surfaceprop" "water"
"$fogenable" 0
}
Below water vmt
- Code: Select all
"LightmappedGeneric"
{
"$basetexture" "[name of folder]/[name of water texture]
"$translucent" 1
"%compilewater" 1
"$abovewater" 0
"$surfaceprop" "water"
"$fogenable" 0
}
Since you are going to having shallow water in your map, you probably won't need the second vmt.
gepy wrote:"The companion toilet cannot speak, however it can take your crap."Journey - no idea on length = don't know the % done
Why would you put portals under water? It would be wierd, (no physics sims in Source, so the water cannot drain,). Im just wondering.
Oh, and the DX 7 should work. Silly DX 7... no refraction or any fun stuff like that..
Extensive analysis has shown that not all types of matter can traverse the portals. Matter that is known to be capable of traversing the portals is: test subjects, cubes, the ASHPD, cameras, most solid objects actually. However, large bodies of liquid act very glitchy with the portals and thus cannot traverse them.
As MALCom stated above: you could include something in your storyline that the portals cannot transport water, or that they include some kind of special forcefield or something. Would seem me the most obvious. Aperture Science probably don't want you to move the water anyway, so...
"Duct Tape is the answer."
Now that would be a cool feature to have. Imagine having to flood/unflood rooms to solve puzzles, not just in Portal but in a FPS game as well. Good idea for Valves next engine.
I'd be very curious to find out how portals work with water and water levels. I'd guess the reason there's no water in Portal is because they couldn't adapt the engine in time to deal with variable water heights and portals spawning on the water level. Just a guess...
/kick user MALCom
Finally, some rest!
Well, wouldn't it be possible to do someting with portal detectors and func_water_analogs? Through carefull chamber design, you could try to create something where you can place portals on only 2 places, one underwater and the other above an empty container, and that if you place the portals there the first body of water is emptied, and the other filled.
Just some idea, though. It would be frikking hard to execute.
"Duct Tape is the answer."