Short version: *
Is there a possibilty to achieve that the player falls through a portal without touching the portal's edge for 100%?*

Background-info and what I have tried:
I made a Map in PETI and for the last step the player has to fly vertically through a portal at a 30?-floor panel. I thought I could make it easier to hit, when I enlarge the Panel in Hammer, but you still hit the edge of the portal sometimes, which is bad because that kills the horizontal movement and you have to start the main part of the map all over again then: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/f ... =105851352 and, what is even worth: the player might think that the right solution is wrong, because it didnt work.

I tried to "rescue" the map with placement-helpers. However, this would only help, if I could force also the player into the center. Is this possible? I mean like the tractor beam moves the player into the center. I dont know how to extract this property out of the tractor-beam-prop.

Thanks in advance...

regards,
Leon

Also, you can use the hacky way VALVe does flings: use a trigger_catapult with a threshold check, aimed at a target in the middle of the panel.

• The general idea is to make a kind of "tunnel" to make the player go through it with no chance of movement and in order to make it not touch the panel on the portal's edges. For this you'll have to create the following:

• First of all, of course don't forget to put in the panel an info_placement_helper as well). Set the following to YES:

• Use helper's angles > YES
• Force Placement > YES

And if the panel is 128x128 units sizez as in your screenshot, put a radius of 90. Remember to place it baring in mind that the blue line means the top part of the portal, and the red line should be oriented to the outside of the flipped panel

1. Secondly, make a physical tunnel out of brushes textured with the playerclip toolstexture in all sides. to do this, simply browse the playerclip texture in hammer's texture browser; once selected, make the 4 brushes from the 30? panel upwards until reaching a desired height. these 4 brushes should allow an inner room capable to contain the player but also narrow enough to force the player to fall centered to a portal on the flipped panel. Now select all those 4 brushes and press Ctrl+T to tie the brushes to a func_brush entity and give it a name, such as "player_tunnel" for instance And now set its property 'Start Disabled' to YES.

2. Now the key is to activate that tunnel when the player is more or less flinging along the cavity made by the tunnel. to do so, create a trigger-multiple brush entity (the same as above: pick the trigger toolstexture in your browser, make a brush textured with the trigger texture this time and tie it to a trigger-multiple entity). Try to make it more or less the size of the tunnel's inner hole and place it somewhere at the upper part of the tunnel, where you think the player should pass by in his trajectory... the idea would be to activate the "tunnel" only when the player is into the tunnel's hole, not in any other possible situation, ok? For the trigger_multiple, you'll have to set the following outputs:

• OnTrigger > player_tunnel > Enable (set for this a delay depending on when exactly you want the tunnel to be active, you'll have to mess around with that and make some tests to fine-tune this up! )
  - OnTrigger > player_tunnel > Disable*** (set some delay to make sure the player has already passed thorugh the portal)

I hope this helps! Try and if you need more help or you encounter any probenms, just say

EDIT

LOL Felix, almost at the same time! You thought of the same 2 options than me... but I only described the one I thought it's easier.

@FelixGriffin: the catapult solution might be even faster, but I think I will try the tunnel for this situation, because you can use it in both directions, which is necessary to solve this map.

I am positively suprised of you guys

If you want to use it in both directions, you can place another trigger on the panel. That's how VALVe would do it. But the playerclip tunnel is much easier and will probably work better.

I built the player-clip-textured cone and made it to func-brush. It is enabled only during the flight. Triggerzone before to enable and triggerzone after for disable, thisway the player cant be blocked by it, when it is not used.

Further, I moved the portable tile on the angled panel so that the rotation axis is in the center of the portable tile. This way I need only one portal-placement helper.

The placement helper is already rotating correctly, but due to the helper I have the problem, that the portal stays, although the panel was flipped! The portal is 30? angled towards the portable tile then (half in air, half inside the tile). I tried to disable/enable the helper with the button, which triggers the panel, but the portal stays. Do you have an idea how i can fix this? (When i make the placement helper invisible, the portal disappears again like normal, after the panel flipped)

Leon wrote:
Further, I moved the portable tile on the angled panel so that the rotation axis is in the center of the portable tile

Hmmm... do you mean with that second "portable tile" (btw, portal-able) the ceiling portalable tile? I must say I recommended you to force the portal placement of the helpers. I played your map and they are not forced (it all would be easier)... but anyway, let me know if I got the point of the map:

• Taking the knowledge that the first "learning room" teaches you, my guess would be that the final movement in the second room is to have one portal one that ceiling's portalable tile and the other portal somewhere on the floor that allows you to get out from it with the necessary angle to erach the exit ledge; of course the mechanic is to jump down from the lift to the floor portal and shoot the new one on the flipped panel right when you get out from the portal opened on the ceiling... am I right?

Considering I'm right, I tried to place the floor portal in many different locations, but all the time I was launched up towards the corner where the lifter reaches... To me, the floor portal should be open near the area where the floor button (the one that controls the lifter) is... OR right in that floor portalable tile below the entry of this room...

Leon wrote:
The placement helper is already rotating correctly, but due to the helper I have the problem, that the portal stays, although the panel was flipped!

Do you mean that the portal stays open on the flipped panel even though you press the floor_button and it changes to a horizontal position?

josepezdj wrote:
I must say I recommended you to force the portal placement of the helpers. I played your map and they are not forced (it all would be easier)

I have the placement helpers only in my hammer version. I have not republished it yet, because at the moment the map is in a state I should not publish.

josepezdj wrote:
Do you mean that the portal stays open on the flipped panel even though you press the floor_button and it changes to a horizontal position?

Yes, it stays open and is half in air and half inside the portalable panel then.

May I add you in steam and send you the hammer-file? I will write a PM to you. ^^

Leon wrote:
Yes, it stays open and is half in air and half inside the portalable panel then.

Wow, that's so weird! Have you parented the placement_helper to the flipping panel?

Leon wrote:
May I add you in steam and send you the hammer-file? I will write a PM to you. ^^

Dude, it is not that I don't want to, really, but I've already got so many friends on steam asking for help that I use to map offline in order to be able to get my job done I hope you'll kindly understand

josepezdj wrote:
Leon, I just don't get it boy You need to parent the helper to the panel and to don't remove that parentness (why would you?)... Just enable-disable the triggers and the playerclip textured func_brush, but leave the rest as it is.

Leon wrote:

May I add you in steam and send you the hammer-file? I will write a PM to you. ^^

Dude, it is not that I don't want to, really, but I've already got so many friends on steam asking for help that I use to map offline in order to be able to get my job done I hope you'll kindly understand

oh ok sure, I kindly understand. Maybe there is a person, in your friend list, who learned from you and does not have so many friends asking for help as you have? I will transfere my experiences too, when I gathered it, promised.

I removed the parentness only for testing whether it is causing the air portals (it does not).
Which trigger can I disable, so that the air portal disappears? It does not help to disable the placement helper, if the portal was already placed.

Leon wrote:
Which trigger can I disable, so that the air portal disappears? It does not help to disable the placement helper, if the portal was already placed.

My point was: if you have the info_placement_helper parented to the flipping panel, it will move with the flipping panel, from 30? to 0?... I bet it's impossible that a portal stays in midair... unless you introduced the command allow_mobile_portals 1 in the console Did you?

edit: yes it worked ^^

So, we learned: portals stay if the placement helper is placed in the rotation axis

Try this: go to the prop_dynamic properties of your flipping panel, go to "model" tab and set it to idle_open or something similar so you can have the model in hammer open and stopped. Now you should manually move the panel and get it near the amrs' panels until reaching more or less the possition the panel would have in game; do your best to align it it the more precisely possible (lower the grid scale to 1 )... now place the info_placement_helper touching the panel's portalable surface and in the desired position (according to thee upper portalable panel. Now select both the flipping panel and the helper and hit Ctrl+G to group them. Finally return the panel to its horizontal orignal position.

I hope that helps out!

EDIT

Lol... if I would have known you already managed it I wouldn't have written all that above!!

Ok finnaly I am done, now the map name fits rather for creating it then for playing it lol. I did that last jump 150-200 times and adjusted the brushes over 30 times...
Maybe I would not have started that, if i had knew that before, but once I started I took it personal >.<

But now I am really happy that it finnaly works. Thanks a lot
If you want to test the result, here you go http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/f ... =105851352

I will check out your futuristic mod for sure!

cheers

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I liked the usage of the flipping panels and portals to get that angled fling. You might use that for more complex and bigger maps! Cheers!