Hi,

I'm new to Hammer, and I'm just playing around with it. A couple problems have come up, and I need advice on how to fix them.

1. The shadows in my map are screwed up. More specifically, the shadows of my cameras are messed up. I have a light in the middle of the room. The cameras on the left most wall show shadows just fine. However, the cameras on the right most wall don't show shadows at all. Is there a setting I'm missing or something?

2. I'm trying to make auto-portals that appear at the end of a puzzle rather than doors. The way I am designing my map, the player must return to the starting room, but I don't want to remake my other rooms to loop around to the starting room. I tried using func_portal, but all it does is re-open the last two portals that I placed. Is there another way of automatically creating portals?

Thank you for your time and advice.

Post a screenshot of your shadow problems, and also the exact settings for your light entity.

Do you mean prop_portal? What are the settings/flags on it?

1) ummm... beats me. I'll defer this one to one of the experts.

2) Use a prop_portal entity. Set the name, Start Activated, and Portal Number properties (you can pair them if you want but if you're just using two portals it's not necessary). Use SetActivatedState in w/e output you're using to turn it off or on (0 and 1, respectively).

1.

Everything is in their default settings. I did have the same problem in another room, although it's not there anymore, so I can't show it.

1. Yes I did mean prop_portal. Sorry.

I use two prop_portal entities. I set one as portal 1, and the other as portal 2. I set them both as inactive. I create a trigger_multiple to set their active state to 1 when the player touches it. It works, but not in the way it's supposed to. Like I said, it will open up two portals, but the ones that I created with the portal gun. If I create a fizzler to erase those portals, stepping on the trigger will just bring them back.

prop_portal doesn't appear to have any flags.

For the lighting, make sure that both npc_camera's have their "dynamic shadow" or whatver property set to Enabled. Also, you might want to use a shadow_controler entity if you haven't already placed one in your map.

As for your portal problem: "prop_portal"s have a "NewLocation" output which can be used to set the location and orientation of your portals. Write down the coordinates of where they are now. Then, wherever you have the trigger to activate the auto-portals, fire the NewLocation output with those coordinates as the parameter override. (The format is six numbers separated by spaces, in the order "x y z pitch yaw roll".)

Ah! The "NewLocation" output worked like a charm. It's kind of irritating that you have to do that every time when you're able to place the entity anywhere you want.

With the shadow problem, I have all the settings correct. I even did a direct copy of the left camera to see if I inadvertently changed something. If I detach the right camera, it will cast a shadow on everything except that wall. The same goes for the left camera. Oh well, I guess it's not a huge deal. It won't affect the way the map is played if shadows can't be cast on a certain side. It's just annoying.

Anyway, thanks for the replies!

And thank you for tipping me off to the problems that arise when one tries to use fixed portals and the portal gun in the same map.

But now that I think about it, a more effective solution may be to just change the LinkageGroupID of the portals you have at the end. That way, the player won't be able to move them by firing the gun (unless she uses a console cheat), so you won't have to rely on NewLocation to set things right. Just make sure both sides have the same pair number and that it's not zero.

Hunter wrote:
And thank you for tipping me off to the problems that arise when one tries to use fixed portals and the portal gun in the same map.

But now that I think about it, a more effective solution may be to just change the LinkageGroupID of the portals you have at the end. That way, the player won't be able to move them by firing the gun (unless she uses a console cheat), so you won't have to rely on NewLocation to set things right. Just make sure both sides have the same pair number and that it's not zero.

Yep. This works too. It's kind of cool too because the player can shoot his gun, and there will be four portals in the map instead of the normal two. I wonder if this could be implemented into a puzzle without it being too trivial. Hmm...