Sprowl and I are continuing to develop levels involving Reflection Gel, and the big problem at the moment is that the gel looks like Conversion Gel when on the ground, even though the paint blobs and particles are different. We've been looking for a way around it, but it doesn't seem to load any texture for the colors (except lightmaps?). It must be some sort of script or hard code.

When I was looking through some screenshots of Portal 2 I saw this one, with the yellow Conversion Gel, and I wanted to know if you would mind telling us how you accomplished this.

http://steamcommunity.com/id/RubyCarbun ... 3373767635

Thanks!

Making a thread for a specific person isn't really a good idea

Sorry about this. I'll send him a PM.

Here are the commands:
speed_paint_color 255 106 0 255
bounce_paint_color 0 165 255 255
portal_paint_color 128 128 128 255

I've looked around the commands and I've yet to find anything labeled "Stick_paint_color" (SInce it registers as Stick Gel") and even something that has to do with reflection gel.

Sorry for the late reply, I woke up like 15 minutes ago. All in all this probably should have been a PM.

Also these commands don't change blob color. just what hits a surface.

EDIT: Oh and painted cube is a texture that I edited the texture for.

EDIT EDIT: It also changes the color for when the player is hit by it.

EDIT EDIT EDIT: > spongylover123 wrote:

It's a secret kept inside rhetorical.
I doubt he would give that information away without omnicoder's permission.

It's not a rhetorical secret, I was just browsing commands. I've never even gotten to use the Adhesion Gel before. :/

RubyCarbuncle wrote:

It's not a rhetorical secret, I was just browsing commands. I've never even gotten to use the Adhesion Gel before. :/

Yeah, I got a feeling Omnicoder told you when I first saw that picture.
And isn't Adhesion Gel a vscript thing?

spongylover123 wrote:
RubyCarbuncle wrote:

It's not a rhetorical secret, I was just browsing commands. I've never even gotten to use the Adhesion Gel before. :/

Yeah, I got a feeling Omnicoder told you when I first saw that picture.
And isn't Adhesion Gel a vscript thing?

I believe so, however I think it broke after the latest DLC. Seeing as how the Reflect Gel is registering as Stick Gel. I'm not entirely sure on that though.

The sticky gel did become reflection gel, but it's still a bit sticky. An orange cube can't slide on it, and a (purple?) cube can't slide on orange.

Adhesion Gel involved a vscript, which, AFAICT, involved tons of triggers to find where the paint hit.

Thanks so much for answering!

You could always just not put Conversion Gel and Reflection Gel in the same map. Then all they'd have to do is read the description to figure out it's Reflection Gel and not Conversion Gel.

@FelixGriffin No problem, and yeah those left over properties could be used in a few unique ways. From what I can tell there is no way to make the command register before the map is loaded, something you could do though is make a small map to activate the command and then have it transition to the main map which uses the gel. This would mean it can't be posted on the Workshop though. If it is possible to activate it before the map loads than I don't know it. I'm not very good with all that I/O stuff.

Also another question to those who can answer. Does anyone know how to change the blob textures of the main three gels? I would love to have Red Repulsion Gel and Black Propulsion Gel blobs.

RubyCarbuncIe wrote:
Also another question to those who can answer. Does anyone know how to change the blob textures of the main three gels? I would love to have Red Repulsion Gel and Black Propulsion Gel blobs.

It's indeed a texture, so you can't change it trough a command. You can find the materials in materials/paintblobs. Important are
- blob_surface_speed- blob_surface_bounce- blob_surface_portal- blob_surface_stickIt's just a square, filled with one color. So it's easy to change.

Sprowl wrote:
RubyCarbuncIe wrote:

Also another question to those who can answer. Does anyone know how to change the blob textures of the main three gels? I would love to have Red Repulsion Gel and Black Propulsion Gel blobs.

It's indeed a texture, so you can't change it trough a command. You can find the materials in materials/paintblobs. Important are
- blob_surface_speed- blob_surface_bounce- blob_surface_portal- blob_surface_stickIt's just a square, filled with one color. So it's easy to change.

I can't believe it's that simple ._. I always thought there was some advanced scripting involved. I've seen those textures before but I never got them to work properly. All I ever got was a glowing white blob. Come to think of it though I came across the same problem when I was making the Hard Light Bridge yellow and I managed to fix that as well.

RED AND BLACK GEL HERE I COME!

Thank you btw.

FelixGriffin wrote:
You can also change their VMT's to make them look even more different. There seems to be some sort of internal reflection in there, which is hidden by the solid-colored blobs. And the reflection (stick) one looks very cool with full cubemaps.

I'll have to look into that.

RubyCarbuncIe wrote:

FelixGriffin wrote:

You can also change their VMT's to make them look even more different. There seems to be some sort of internal reflection in there, which is hidden by the solid-colored blobs. And the reflection (stick) one looks very cool with full cubemaps.

I'll have to look into that.

if anyone want cubemap reflections for gel use this vmt

paintblob
{

$uvscale "0.006" 

$baseTexture "paintblobs\blob_surface_*"

$normalMap "paintblobs\blob_surface_normal"
$bumpstrength "0.2"

$diffuseScale "1.0"

$phongexponent 40 
$phongboost 2 
$phongexponent2 400 
$phongboost2 7 

$rimlightexponent 8
$rimlightboost 300

$envMap env_cubemap

$fresnelBumpStrength 0
$fresnelWarpTexture "Models/blob/blob_fresnel_warp"

$interior 1 
$interiorFogStrength "0.4" 
$interiorFogLimit "0.4" 
$interiorFogNormalBoost 8 
$interiorBackgroundBoost 0 
$interiorAmbientScale "0.1" 
$interiorBacklightScale "0.1" 
$interiorRefractStrength "0.1" 



$nocull 1
}

I have one final question concerning Gel though. How would I be able to reskin the particles that appear when a surface is hit? I got the gel blobs reskined but the particles are still wrong.

See the particles are still orange.

RubyCarbuncIe wrote:
@spongylover Thanks for this, I;ll test it out soon.

I have one final question concerning Gel though. How would I be able to reskin the particles that appear when a surface is hit? I got the gel blobs reskined but the particles are still wrong.

See the particles are still orange.

edit the particles in alien swarm.

you need to change the color in the particle properties. or use the particle initializer, "color random".

EDIT: Okay so, I edited the particles, however how exactly do I replace them in game? I tried doing what I would normally do to change textures in the pak01_dir.vpk but that only made an error which made the whole room get filled with a ton of X patricles.

Similar to this.

Any idea why this is happening, and how I can fix it?

If you copy the relevant PCF's (paint_splat_fx, etc.) and rename them, then edit THOSE, you can change the manifest slightly by commenting out the old lines and adding the new. You also need a bang in front of the filename to have it load the sticky ones, which the game doesn't precache. (I recently posted a small file with new PCF's for the sticky paint, which can be edited unlike the normal ones.)

I recently created a new element that affects gels in really cool ways and was wondering if I could make rainbows .