3 Buttons - Green buttons, blue buttons, and yellow buttons (might change later)
Along with green cubes, blue cubes, yellow cubes.
The basic concept: Green cubes have to go on green buttons.. etc
There is also a few other things:
The wildcard cube - A multicolored cube, can go on any button.
The explosive wildcard cube - Goes on any button, but will explode after a while. (Not sure if I want to implement this)

I've already got some puzzle ideas and more can easily be created with this new system.

So, anyone want to share their thoughts on the concept? Ideas? Suggestions? Help possibly (creating the colored buttons/cubes)? Any feedback is greatly appreciated because I think this can be a great success.

BenVlodgi wrote:
although I am surprised to not have seen it much in portal 2.
the pain is mostly the texturing of functioning cubes.

Well, I did see it before. Rand0mNumbers did something similar (and awesome). Check:

1_cvoC423FQ

rendermouse wrote:
You don't need a custom texture to change the color of the cube. Just edit the entity, turn off "Smart Edit" and add a key of "rendercolor" with the value "255 0 0" for a red cube.

Then again it wouldn't look nice anymore. Like in Cortal, normal cube except reskinned the center of it.

Kinda what he was talking about.

UsCobra11 wrote:
Little update.
I've thought more about this! A storyline too!
I do agree with what pitkakorvaa pointed out... but for now the rendercolor can be a placeholder.
I might need a modeler to work on those, and another little test element I came up with.
PM if interested

Cobra there are other easier ways without the need of a modeler for the cube model change... I think the rendercolor is very odd too.

The main idea is to make the cube model point to a different material folder where you would have the new skins stored (do not change their original names in order to do this simpler). To achieve this there are 2 methods:

1. Hex the metal_box.mdl model. The only requirement is to always keep the same number of letters in the path. Place this hexed model in a different location than the metal_box.mdl is (other than models/props/)... You don't need to name the model differently (don't do in order to don't need to change also the model's path) The game will recognize the new model (as long as it's under /models folder) and you should introduce it in the game via a prop_physics Now use filters (filter_activator_model + filter_activator_name for example mainly, or the filter_multi if you prefer). This method allows you to only have to use a drawing software to make your skins, no need for a modeler Check the picture below to see an example:

hexed cube mdl
You only need to download a hex editor and open the mdl file. Go to the final line and check on the right part; in my example I changed "props" by "josec"

1. You can achieve the same by decompiling the model, then open the .qc file and tell there where would the new model search for its textures. This way allows you to store your textures in whatever folder without restrictions in its path, as long as they're properly indicated into the .qc file; also you can give whatever name to the cube the model and such. Now compile it again. It's not so difficult but it's more complex, so I won't go in depth with this one, try the method 1

For the buttons do the same hexing method and then simply choose a different world model within it's properties.

Any help you need or doubt do not hesitate to pm me, ok?

UsCobra11 wrote:
I've gotten the hexed model and such but I'm not sure how to change the skin...

For changing the skins you can follow up these steps:

1. I guess you know the original skins are located in the first pak01_dir.vpk file into portal 2/portal2. Extract them all to your new model's textures folder (for example /models/cobra).

2. Open each of them with VTFEdit and export them to any of your desired image formats. TGA format allows you preserve the alpha channel and layers though I don't really use this one. For your information, the cube textures have an alpha layer (with transparency) in order to allow light spot certain parts of the texture (as the material textures are $selfillum 1 if you look into the .vmt files). Take for instance the first skin 'metal_box.vtf' (no. "0" in the hammer model); the alpha layer looks like this; while the normal layer looks like this... I use JPG format usually to go faster though (but this overrides the alpha channel, k?).

3. Edit the exported image with whatever image-editing progranm. I use Pain.Net usually because it's free and really intuitive, but I'd recommend Photoshop. For any of those, you'll need a VTF plugin (if you want to save the modified textures back to VTF format using any of these programs). This one is for Paint.Net; this one for Photoshop. Then 'save as...' the samed name than it had. However, you can always import the new textures directly with VTFEdit. Use DXT5 (common) image format and save it as version 7.5.

4. Now it's important to correct the paths into the .vmt files! So go to your /cobra folder and open each of the .vmt files and change the paths like so:

VertexLitGeneric
{
$baseTexture "models\cobra/Metal_box"
$bumpmap "models\cobra\Metal_box_normal"
$phong 1
$phongexponenttexture "models\cobra\Metal_box_exponent"

$phongboost 1

$phongfresnelranges "[5 1 2]"

$selfillum 1
$nodecal 1
}

The really important line is the first one though, where you indicate where is the $basetexture located... I think you can keep the rest paths as they were so the engine look for the original ones into the pak01_dir.vpk file... The above code is for the case you extract ALL the files to your /cobra folder...

And that's pretty much it. As I mentioned above, you can introduce the hexed model as a prop_physics and then use filters for the buttons (as you know they only react to prop_weighted_cube entities )

I was aware of half of the things you said above (FG helped me out a bit), but my VTFedit is broken. Apparently I have to reinstall a bunch of Windows stuff to get it working again. I'll worry about that later. Again, thanks for the help!

I bet your problem is .NET Framework 2.0. Download it for x64 here and for x86 here

If anyone is interested, here is a file explaining the backbone of the mod.
I think it can be a really great production!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aaJ9yGXg5E8