Hi.

Something about test chamber 18 has been bothering me for a while. It's rather complicated. Something physical to represent both 2 portals and yourself could be useful.

Picture the following situation: you're standing somewhere, facing north. You put 2 portals on the ground, next to each other. When you jump into one portal, still facing north and looking down, you will come out of the other portal, looking up and now facing south.

You need to know this for several advanced chambers and challenges, when you jump into one and come out of the other, and have to move backwards to get onto a platform. So far so good, and consistent with the way portals work.

If you start putting portals on the ground in other directions, everything stays logical. Put portal B facing north, portal A facing west, and jump into A facing west, and you'll come out of B facing south. Jump into A facing east, and you come out of B facing north. It works this way all the time... with one exception.

Start chamber 18, and go to the room with the platforms at different heights, where you need to put portals on ever higher platforms while jumping through them, and eventually on the angled one that flings you towards the exit. You know the one I mean.

Put a portal on the first platform, and let's call that direction north. Now you put another portal in the pit to your left, direction west. Jump in it, and you'll come out of the other portal, not facing south as you would expect, but facing north ! In fact, even if you jump into the pit sideways, facting north, and put a portal down as you are falling, you'll still come out of the other portal, facing north. It's completely inconsistent with every other portal you put down anywhere else, and I don't understand why.

Anyone else noticed this ? Anyone know why this is so ? Or am I the only one bothered by tiny details like this ?

Edit: I've been testing it some more, and it seems that every portal you put on any one of those platforms is automatically swapped, presumably to make the level easier. Could someone perhaps remake the chamber in a custom map to see if my assumption is correct ? I've never made a single map myself. :-/

there's this brush entity, func_portal_rotate or something, that allows you to predefine the rotation of any portal that's created in it. I guess they placed that on top of those platforms to make the puzzle easier.

Well, short-term, it does make that puzzle easier. But if you look at the entire game world, it makes it inconsistent. If you have a mechanic that works one way 95% of the time, and then works completely different the other 5%, it can get kinda hard. If you are used to "jump in one portal, come out the other facing the other way", and suddenly that gets swapped around, it makes you doubt yourself.

Especially since there is no indication that it will happen, it just does. You can see that the direction is swapped if you put a portal on the platform and another on a wall and look through it, but that requires close examination of something that you shouldn't have to examine.

Anyway, I'm just happy that I'm not crazy. Jumping through portals and shooting others in mid-air is hard enough without having to worry that the game will randomly change the way they work. Now that I know about that brush, I can just assume that they will work normally, and occasionally get killed when some portal somewhere gets swapped for no discernible reason whatsover.

Meh.

i think its like func_portal_orientation that does that. it makes it easier because it places you in the right direction and you dont get confused mid fling, i've used that in my map that i'm making right now and it helps. good stuff.

uXs wrote:
Or am I the only one bothered by tiny details like this ?

i think that might be the case. lol. cuz i have played this map.. ALOT. (all of them really) and i just got done playing it again (well i have an addon that adds "challenges" to the advanced chambers) and. i was trying to see what you were talking about. and i did notice that no matter what direction i was facing going into the "pit" portal. i always came out facing "north" on the "pillar" portal... never seemed to bother me. usually when "portal-orrientation" is a requirement (or aid) to solving a puzzle i will usually do one of two things; first I save (in both cases (save is your friend)). then i will either 1) place my portals and jump through seeing how i come out and then reload my save with this information in hand. or i will 2) place a portal and look through it examining how the view changes (and thus orrientation)

rellikpd wrote:
i think that might be the case. lol. cuz i have played this map.. ALOT. (all of them really) and i just got done playing it again (well i have an addon that adds "challenges" to the advanced chambers) and. i was trying to see what you were talking about. and i did notice that no matter what direction i was facing going into the "pit" portal. i always came out facing "north" on the "pillar" portal... never seemed to bother me. usually when "portal-orrientation" is a requirement (or aid) to solving a puzzle i will usually do one of two things; first I save (in both cases (save is your friend)). then i will either 1) place my portals and jump through seeing how i come out and then reload my save with this information in hand. or i will 2) place a portal and look through it examining how the view changes (and thus orrientation)

I don't know. I think it's rather useful to know that if you jump into portal A, you will come out of portal B backwards without having to test if that is actually the case all the time.

And when you say that you will always come out facing north in that level 18 room, you're wrong. Put a portal in the pit facing west, jump in and turn 180 degrees so you enter it facing east, and you'll come out of the pillar portal facing south.

But as I said before: I can live with it. I'm happy to know I'm not crazy and the level really does change your direction.

uXs wrote:
But as I said before: I can live with it. I'm happy to know I'm not crazy and the level really does change your direction.

Okay, but if you ever decide that you can't live with it make sure to take the anti-impact-damage devices off your legs before you make the big jump. Or seek professional help...preferably not from an AI construct.

[GLaDOS]All subject intending to handle self-rotating portals must be informed that they may be informed about applicable regulatory complience issues. No further complience information is required or will be provided, and you are an irritating test subject.[/GLaDOS]

So far the AI construct.

[MALCom]All applicable regulatory complience issues are handled by the Aperture Science Regulatory Complience Issue Monitor. Please consult to a Regulatory Complience Issue Coworker for any questions about applicable regulatory complience issues. For further information, please don't bother.[/MALCom]

And there we have the other one too.

It might be interesting to try and use that trigger in Hammer. I'm sure they can be usefull in making test chambers... somehow. Maybe a platform on which portals always spawn in a certain direction, and the direction can be rotated with a button.

Lol, I always thought GLaDOS said all subjects intending to handle gamma-leaking portals..

That is what she says, "gamma-leaking portal technology".

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Portal

I slightly changed her line to make it fit more to the thread. It wouldn't at all amaze me if she always says almost the same things, only slightly different each time.