I've been working on a map which uses world portals to invert gravity. (Nothing too sophisticated - I built the rooms in the puzzle editor and then added the linked_portal_doors in Hammer.) Each world portal sends you through to the corresponding upside-down version of the room.

Now, one of the rooms contains deadly water. However, when I tried to complete its upside-down counterpart by copying the water tiles across and putting the texture on the bottom of the brush instead of the top, the results left something to be desired. The water appears very dark and drab with no reflections. Am I missing a step, or is upside-down water just never going to look right?

Also, am I correct in my assumption that there's no real way to reduce the extremity of visual glitches caused by world portals? I have instances where two of them may be overlapped in the player's view, which seems to cause X-ray vision. My understanding of the matter is that this is an inevitable consequence of my reckless deployment of so many world portals, but I'd willingly accept any advice!

(Is it bad form if I post the workshop link in this thread?)

Water doesn't work upside down, it's carefully hardcoded in the engine to be optimal for flat horizontal surfaces. But if it's upside down shouldn't it spill?

And there's no way around that. It used to be in the options (something like portal render depth?) but I don't think you can increase it any more.

This is the map if you want to see what I mean. Luckily, there's only a brief moment where the horrible water is visible. Thanks for the response!