Hi. I have a feeling I'm about to post a problem that many of you have solved several times, but googling and using the forum search hasn't yielded a solution.

I used to mess around with Hammer a few years ago when I was trying to make TF2 maps, but I always ended up with problems I couldn't solve and I'd abandon my attempt. Now, after spending some time with the Portal 2 pti, I've decided to go back to trying to learn Hammer, but I'm right back into .

I followed a YouTube tutorial. I built a square room. I added an info_player_spawn and a weapon_portal gun. Just for practice sake, I covered the outside in nodraw.

The map compiled without errors and loaded in Portal 2, and I could run around it and place portals just fine.

I went back into Hammer and built an enclosed hallway off one side of the room. I used the clip tool to make an opening so the player can get from the room into the hallway.

NOTES: - Everything so far has been snapped to a 64 grid.
- The hallway is built from nodraw and textured on the inside.
- I haven't used any funcs -- only nodraw and normal textures.

Now, when I save and run the map, I get the following errors in my vbsp:

ConVarRef gpu_level doesn't point to an existing ConVar (in yellow)

Entity weapon_portalgun leaked! (in red)

NOTES: - Yes, I have a leak. I realize that, so please don't tell me "You have a leak." If I remove the portalgun entity, the source of the leak is my player spawn. If I remove that too and run the map, I get "* leaked ***" (in yellow) shortly after the initial message about ConVarRef gpu_level not pointing to anything, but it doesn't identify an entity as leaking.

• Pointfile, as I said in the thread title, goes from the area where my player spawn and portal gun were, down my hall and right through the center of a solid brush and just a little bit out into the void before stopping. I've deleted the brush and replaced it. I've quadruple-checked that the edges of the brushes are snapped together. I've built a nodraw box around my room and hallway to contain a leak, and nothing's changed.

At the end of my vbsp, I get, in red, the message that it couldn't read the map's .prt.

NOTE: The map is called newroomtest1 -- no spaces or capital letters.

--- I also have radius culling disabled.

Anyone have any ideas of what I can try? I don't know how to paste my vbsp into a thread, because I can't copy it. Is there a command to export it to a notepad file?

Is there any other information I can provide?

Thanks in advance.

Oh, here's something. If I delete both the player spawn and the portal gun and run the map, the vbsp says there's still one model and one entity. I don't know what they could be. If I have some extra entity beyond the container of my map, I don't know what it could be, I don't see it, and I'm not sure how to find it. Maybe the model and entity being referred to are things like the camera?

Solved?

From interlopers:

"in my experience transparent (like grate w/black) textures on the inward face wont seal a map. even if the outside has nodraw on it.

If the pointfile goes through the center of the brush it means the texture isn't sealing i belive."

The texture inside my hallway was grate. The brushes were nodraw on the other sides, and I still have the whole map enclosed in a nodraw box. Could that really have been the problem? I've switched the texture inside the hallway to something else, and the leak's gone. So I can't use grate like that?

Well, you can see through grating, right? The point of sealing a map is to make it so you can't see from the level in to the "void". So that's totally a leak. Change it to a more opaque texture and you'll be happy, or put another room on the other side of the grating.

Oh, and did you box your map all the way around, like a big cube around your map? Don't do that, it causes issues especially with bigger maps. Seal the map properly instead of cheating like that

One final note - the entity that vbsp refers to as leaking is almost never the problem - it's just the first thing it finds when trying to find a path from the outside in (which should fail)

quaternary wrote:
Well, you can see through grating, right? The point of sealing a map is to make it so you can't see from the level in to the "void". So that's totally a leak. Change it to a more opaque texture and you'll be happy, or put another room on the other side of the grating.

Can I have a skybox texture beyond the grate? That should work, right?

quaternary wrote:
Oh, and did you box your map all the way around, like a big cube around your map? Don't do that, it causes issues especially with bigger maps. Seal the map properly instead of cheating like that

When you say "seal the map properly", what do you mean? I made six separate brushes to create the box that contains my map. Is that what I shouldn't do?

quaternary wrote:
One final note - the entity that vbsp refers to as leaking is almost never the problem - it's just the first thing it finds when trying to find a path from the outside in (which should fail)

Yep. Got that. Thanks for responding and for your help!

Yes, you can have skybox behind the grate; that's not a problem.
Any material with transparency is transparent and thus doesn't seal the level off.

Looking at the points you made like working on the grid, lots of nodraw etc, it looks like you're doing great!

Lunch wrote:
When you say "seal the map properly", what do you mean? I made six separate brushes to create the box that contains my map. Is that what I shouldn't do?

What they mean is using the level geometry (floor, wall, ceiling etc.) to seal the level instead of creating an enclosure around the map. I don't repudiate this practice as much as others, as doing this is pretty much a necessity when creating large BTS/Destoryed levels; the only drawback I have seen so far is an increase in compile time. However, from a Hammer learning standpoint, it is best practice to seal a level properly, as creating these large enclosures becomes more impractical as the map grows: