In the chamber my brother and I just made, we found while play-testing it that the laser redirection cubes that we spawn are not always solid. They sometimes are, sometimes are not. The cubes need to be solid to solve the chamber. Has anyone seen this before, and can anyone help? I've looked around online and haven't found anything on the topic.

Are you carrying them in coop mode? Cubes behave differently in coop, including not having physics when held.

No, its a single player map.

What are the cube passing through? How are you spawning them? Via console commands, or placing them?

I had (and have) the same problem on one of my maps. [created with PTI]
The laser cube would be non-solid to the player only sometimes.

Other cubes would still collide with the laser cube, but not the player.
And the cube itself would still collide with everything elese, including grates.

I spawned the cube with the standard PTI cube dropper.
The Problem did however not always appear. o_O

PortalCombat is describing the exact symtoms of the problem, but I didn't spawn it the same way. I have it spawn from a point_template. I have it spawn right under a tractor beam so that the cube doesn't go flying away from the button that is underneath it when it spawns and lands on it. It collides with everything except the player, and it usually collides with the player. But when it doesn't, it can often make the player believe that it is part of the design, which messes up the chamber for that individual.

Portal 2 since DLC2 has lots of little bugs like that, especially with collisions. They're usually unpredictable and vanish if you restart the game, but you can detect them and show a message if necessary. My gel-from-scratch blobs about 1/4 of the time won't break when they hit things, so until you restart the game you'll just get useless blobs rolling around on the floor.

Perhaps you could parent a 'player clip' brush to it? I'm pretty sure it doesn't block lasers so it shouldn't interfere with the cube's behaviour. Getting it to work with the template could be a bit trickier, but it's probably do-able.

Goldenknighttim wrote:
I have it spawn right under a tractor beam so that the cube doesn't go flying away from the button that is underneath it when it spawns and lands on it.

I've encountered this bug before and every time there was a tractor beam involved. If you can lose the t-beam at the start you might see the problem disappear.

@srs bsnss: I doubt that pushing a playerclip would effect an object that it is parented to, but I can give it a try.
@ El Farmerino: The tractor beam is designed to stop the cube when it lands on the button underneath its spawn spot. I have no problem getting rid of the tractor beam, but I need another way to slow down the cube. Do you have any ideas?

The tractor beam only causes collision problems when the player leans on the cube on the wall while in the tractor beam.

Ok, I have it sitting on a button on the floor with the tractor beam there. Thanks for the information. I think I can set up some timing so I can fix it if thats the problem.

Laser cubes become ghosts (ethereal) when they are pushed into or near a brush with a funnel. They can still activate buttons and be pushed with other cubes but you cant push/jump on them. Its a bug.
Happened for me too when a funnel pushed it into a rotating panel.
Also rarely happens with normal cubes, but with them its the opposite: in my map #1, there was a door what was set to force close and do damage if blocked. If a storagecube was in its way, it just pushed it away but probably partially "killed" the cube, so it was there, but when placed on a button, nothing happened.
Laser cubes also act weird when a laser goes thru them, it "freezes" them, so for example if you try to push them with a moving panel or func_door, they just go thru it (or they float when cubes/platforms are moved from under them), but if they are not activated, then they are pushed properly (so when you want to move an active cube by any mean, you must turnoff/turnon the laser for 0.1 second).
Laser cubes are very bugged in Portal2. To prevent the ghosting, remove any func_brush (even if they are arm/panel attached brushes) from a funnel's way (funnels force to push the cubes, maybe thats the reason).
In a map I started to make 1.5 year ago, the same thing happened in a test 100% of the time, and had to abandon it because of this. Failed to find any fix. I may continue it with a workaround, where the cube gets fizzled and a new one will be dropped, soe the player will never retrieve the ghosted cube, because the next part of the puzzle is about jumping on it, which is not possible when its ethereal.

Try using the ExitDisabled state on it right before pushing it with a panel or whatever.