FYI Non-portalable textures

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Yekyaa
59 Posts
Posted Oct 15, 2007

been meaning to post this.
from http://kenjara.wordpress.com/

Quote:
How to get the portal gun: -

Select the entity tool (Shift+E)
On the right in the entity object box scroll down to weapon_portalgun
Click in the map to place it!


How to make walls unportalable: -

Create a new brush
open the texture browser and search for no draw
apply the no draw texture to the brush
select the brush and press ctrl + t
change its class to func_noportal_volume
place it in front of a wall that you dont want a portal to be made on.
This entry was posted on Saturday, October 13th, 2007 at 2:37 am and is filed under Computer Gaming. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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paraddoxx
21 Posts
Posted Oct 15, 2007
Replied 3 minutes later
nice
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msleeper
4,095 Posts
Member
Posted Oct 15, 2007
Replied 3 minutes later
I am convinced there is a way to make walls not portable without using the entity. And that doesn't include new tools being released.
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Hober
1,180 Posts
Posted Oct 15, 2007
Replied 9 minutes later
And some people are convinced that the world is run by a flying spaghetti monster who manipulates reality with His Noodly Appendage.

Just sayin' ....

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msleeper
4,095 Posts
Member
Posted Oct 15, 2007
Replied 4 minutes later
Well, considering I made a test map a few days ago with metal walls that I couldn't put portals onto, it's clear it atleast can be done.
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Hober
1,180 Posts
Posted Oct 15, 2007
Replied 6 minutes later
I know what you mean. In Hammer I managed to get some Portal textures to show up as not pink-checkers for a limited time, but now I find myself unable to repeat it under the same circumstances.

Clearly this form of mapmaking is equal parts voodoo and skill.

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espen180
307 Posts
Posted Oct 15, 2007
Replied 1 minute later
I use a different method, which desen't create that twirl when you try to make portals.

First, build your map. Then, group all the brushes which are non-portable. Turn them into a func_illusionary. Then, Shift+drag them to make a copy. Apply the glassbreak texture (filter glass + break), and turn it all into a func_brush. Choose the Texture render mode with Render amount 0. Place the new func_brush over the func_illusionary so what they are in the same spot.

You now have walls which, when attempted portaled, will make the falling particle effect like in the official game.

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msleeper
4,095 Posts
Member
Posted Oct 15, 2007
Replied 3 minutes later
Now THAT'S thinking with portals!
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Yekyaa
59 Posts
Posted Oct 15, 2007
Replied 1 hour later
Nice I haven't done any maps yet as I don't have HL:DM, this is the first Steam game i've purchased so I think I need to wait for the official
SDK before I can actually map.

Unless someone has suggestions on what I can do without ever having
downloaded/purchased any other Steam games.

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Ralph
59 Posts
Posted Oct 15, 2007
Replied 23 minutes later
Looking at a portal materials .vma file, we find

Quote:
"LightmappedGeneric"
{
"$basetexture" "Metal/metalwall_bts_002a"
"$surfaceprop" "metal"
"%keywords" "portal"
"%noportal" 1

...more stuff...

}

The line %noportal is either 1 or 0 depending on weather you can put a portal on the material. Reading Valve's development wiki, it says that lines starting with a % are directives for the tools only, and are not loaded by the game. From this we can assume that blocking portals is done somewhere in the toolchain, either in Hammer or most likely the new BSP program, once we have access to the updated SDK it should happen to our maps as well.

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EMUGOD
34 Posts
Posted Oct 15, 2007
Replied 3 hours later
any tanslucent/parent textures are unportable, and make the partifcle spread effect. i used a bunch in my map.
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Grudge
307 Posts
Posted Oct 16, 2007
Replied 7 hours later

Ralph wrote:
Looking at a portal materials .vma file, we find

Quote:

"LightmappedGeneric"
{
"$basetexture" "Metal/metalwall_bts_002a"
"$surfaceprop" "metal"
"%keywords" "portal"
"%noportal" 1

...more stuff...

}

The line %noportal is either 1 or 0 depending on weather you can put a portal on the material. Reading Valve's development wiki, it says that lines starting with a % are directives for the tools only, and are not loaded by the game. From this we can assume that blocking portals is done somewhere in the toolchain, either in Hammer or most likely the new BSP program, once we have access to the updated SDK it should happen to our maps as well.

Spot on mate. If you want to do it the hard way, so be it. The easy way is what Ralph suggested, you just have to wait.

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Spacemonkey
34 Posts
Posted Oct 16, 2007
Replied 16 hours later
I worked out an easier way, maybe not the best way, but it works.

Any brushes you want unportable, tie them to a 'func_door'

A portal can't be created on a func_door brush. (make sure you deselect the 'on touch' flag, otherwise your walls are gonna start moving all over the place.)

I'm not sure what other func entities would work, i'm also not sure how make a whole alot of func_door brushes will effect map size.

EDIT: there a problem tough, the brushes don't show stuff like reflections that well.

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Mapster
396 Posts
Posted Oct 16, 2007
Replied 7 minutes later
The func noportal_volume brush will do for the mean time, when the new SDK comes out you can just go into view all entities and remove all of them, as simple as that.
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NullSoldier
41 Posts
Posted Oct 16, 2007
Replied 53 minutes later
WARNING: Don't be lazy and tie all of the brushes to portal_novolume. I thought I Was really clever and tried to do that, and when I loaded up my map all of them are nodraw by default! I guess we really have to deal with large map sizes untill the real SDK comes out.

What is taking them so long..

Btw, we need a cake and companion cube emote.

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Hober
1,180 Posts
Posted Oct 16, 2007
Replied 29 minutes later

NullSoldier wrote:
Btw, we need a cake and companion cube emote.

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msleeper
4,095 Posts
Member
Posted Oct 16, 2007
Replied 1 minute later

NullSoldier wrote:
Btw, we need a cake and companion cube emote.

I guess I'll make a cake one later tonight. Until then, have some turret.

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Hober
1,180 Posts
Posted Oct 16, 2007
Replied 1 minute later
"Your skill in Forum Quickdraw has increased by 1."
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msleeper
4,095 Posts
Member
Posted Oct 16, 2007
Replied 1 minutes later

Hober wrote:
"Your skill in Forum Quickdraw has increased by 1."

No, I accidently pressed the "edit" button since it is right next to the "quote" button and it took me a second to figure out where my post went, since it was never there.

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Hober
1,180 Posts
Posted Oct 16, 2007
Replied 1 minutes later
Oh well.