After playing many cutom maps one thing I've noticed is a severe and often very irritating lack of func_portal_bumper brushes.
They are very simple to use and improve playability vastly when put in the right places.

What they do: If you try to put a portal in an area that would mean it crosses a portalbumper it shoves the portal to the nearest space that doesn't collide with a portalbumber or non-portalable texture

Handy for: Bits where portalable and non-portalable textures meet.

If you don't use them: The player can fire a portal on a section of concrete that is close to a metal texture and have thier portal rejected. The player feels cheated and is made unhappy, like this -

If you do use them: The player can fire a portal at exactly the same place and the portal is accepted (Note - the portal doesn't overlap the metal texture). The player continues as though nothing special has happened, completes your level and feels that much happier, like this -

How to use them: Make a thin brush and texture it with an invisible or nodraw texture and place it along the metal side of the join, you don't need to bother at corners. Make sure it is right against the wall and hit CTRL + T to tie it to an entity and make it a 'func_portal_bumper'
(I prefer invisible because you can see through it, nodraw just hurts my eyes)

Acceptable excuses for not using them: You're retarded.

From this point on, I expect to see no more maps without them, because they are so simple to put in place and are so very helpful

See picture if any of this is confusing:

Thanks! I'll start using these right away!

These don't work for me. Please make an example map.

espen180 wrote:
These don't work for me. Please make an example map.

The effect they have is very sublte, but you can make sure it works but making a large flat area (touching the wall obviously) that is entirely on a portal-able texture and shoot a portal at it, if it goes slightly to the side its working fine

I don't understand how it is supposed to work. Here's a screenshot of my issue, is what I'm doing really the use of this entity?

I think you should place a metal floor under your prop_static, which can't be seen by the player, and place on that metal piece the portal bumper.

Is the effect produced relative to the size of the bumper?

espen180 wrote:
Is the effect produced relative to the size of the bumper?

the bumper doesn't work like a noportal volume, you CAN STILL PLACE PORTALS IN IT however, it tries to shove them off.

Hurricaaane wrote:
I don't understand how it is supposed to work. Here's a screenshot of my issue, is what I'm doing really the use of this entity?

It looks like the portal_bumper goes into the floor, it shouldnt, make sure it is flush with it.
If that fails use a noportal volume because that is the correct way of solving the problem you have.
portal_bumpers are for making placements of portals easier, not stoping them from being placed

Bulska wrote:
I think you should place a metal floor under your prop_static, which can't be seen by the player, and place on that metal piece the portal bumper.

overly complicated, a noportal volume is used for this

I'll post an immage showing the situations you should use portal_bumpers and noportal volumes in a little bit

I also had slight problems when I made a func_portal_bumper too thin; sizing it up a little made it work. Also, er, youme, you might want to edit the post to say func_portal_bumper instead of func_portalbumper, just to erase any possibility of confusion because of that.

Korjagun wrote:
I also had slight problems when I made a func_portal_bumper too thin; sizing it up a little made it work. Also, er, youme, you might want to edit the post to say func_portal_bumper instead of func_portalbumper, just to erase any possibility of confusion because of that.

What are you talking about? all my posts say portal_bumper already?

Awesome! I was feeling cheated in the map I'm designing - I thought this behavior was built into the engine with no other work necessary. I'll start using these right away.

Hurricaaane wrote:
I don't understand how it is supposed to work. Here's a screenshot of my issue, is what I'm doing really the use of this entity?

Think about it - if all the bumpers do is try to move the portal to the nearest portal-ble surface, that behavior makes sense. The surface says it's portal-ble, so the bumper isn't really changing anything. Try adding a single metal cube below that device (or other non-portal-ble surface/blocker) and the bumper should work just fine.

With portal_bumpers:
Any portal fired at A will be 'shoved' to B

Without portal_bumpers:
Any portal fired at A will be rejected, even though it is clearly portal-able
Any portal fired at B will be accepted

Joins 2, 3 and 4 need portal_bumpers whilst join 1 doesn't

The wall emmiter needs a no_portal volume around it as shown at 5 otherwise the top right inset will happen