You tell me

No, It shouldn't be, it's a technique just like portal bumping, standing, peeking...there's to many to count. I was actually thinking about making a post about all of these to bring knowledge to the forums.

Yeah, the difference here is you are exploiting a bug in the game engine, and not portal physics. I promise you that going outside the world brush boundaries was never an "intended solution" to any part of the game.

I emailed Jeep Barnett to see if they can make an engine update to make going out of the world instantly kill you.

By no means am I saying it's not an exploit, and I do realize that this isn't a speed running site, but might I say this: Me and Kich are experianced in OOB, we can help the map makers prevent it from being done (it's not hard to "disable" the ability to OOB), the post that you learned of the term on (aldez's test chamber) was actually relatively hard.

On top of that, no one would ever consider an OOB route to be comparable to a normal route, even in the speed running world they're known as two different things.

Might as well email them and say going into noclip should instantly kill you.

They actually made OOB'ing harder, since you used to be able to run around outside of the map, now you have to be near a portal.

PortalFan77 wrote:
Might as well email them and say going into noclip should instantly kill you.

Do you really think that is what I said, or that they are equal? You are dumb if you do.

msleeper wrote:
Do you really think that is what I said, or that they are equal? You are dumb if you do.

But I am dumb.

I don't really see why it would be a bannable offense, doing so isn't an attempt to offend people it's just showing them that it's possible. Not exactly sure how you'd really enforce that to begin with.

As Siiig brought up, it's more to show the person that it's there and that they may want to fix it. Valve has already taken measures to disable it from happening, if you go too far outside of a portal you become stuck.

Also, technically it is a manipulation of portal physics; it's just a matter of "where" rather than "how." It's the same thing as edge glitching, you're just doing it at a place that would put more of your body outside the map than in.

If someone were so inclined to prevent it however, they may just be able to encase their level in a giant cube of ooze; it would cause you to die if you were to leave the level's walls.

Kich867 wrote:
If someone were so inclined to prevent it however, they may just be able to encase their level in a giant cube of ooze; it would cause you to die if you were to leave the level's walls.

Haha, it's not that hard. You just need to cover the outer surfaces with "no portal." MOST map makers do do it, but in the case of aldez's chamber, he didn't get the last few key points (the elevators).

Kich867 wrote:
[...] it's more to show the person that it's there and that they may want to fix it.[...]

Exactly. You guys are very helpful to point out these things.

The fact that it is possible means that people might do it by accident and get themselves in trouble. When my brother first played Portal, he managed to accidentally make the cube disappear in chamber 9 (the "impossible"one).

When these thing get fixed, it improves the quality of the map.

(I haven't made all outer walls metal on Manic Mechanic, but now that I've learned that it's a smart thing to do, I will do it for my next maps.)

I'm out of the Portal loop, what is this "out of bounds"? I'm assuming it has something to do with entering the void of a map but how and why?

Remmiz wrote:
I'm out of the Portal loop, what is this "out of bounds"? I'm assuming it has something to do with entering the void of a map but how and why?

There are a number of glitches in Portal that involve abusing how the portals work.

Out of Bounds is simply using the Portal edge-glitch to force your body out of the level. It's fairly simple to do, the real problem is finding a place you're allowed to do it. Head over to Youtube and search "Portal OOB." The very first result is a series by a man named Transgenic86, arguably the best portal player on the planet. I would highly recommend taking a look at his speed runs, they're mind-blowing.

The other issue with OOB'ing is finding a place to re-enter the level to complete it, some people take great measures to not allow this to occur. For instance, the E-fields at the end of a level, if you put a portal outside the level above or below one of them and then go through it while standing, you will be forced into the level. This happens because somehow your body touches the e-field which triggers it, closing the portal you're going through. Since most of your body is now "inside" the level it pushes you back in.

A way to prevent that from happening is to structure the map in such a way that the e-field just can't be reached from the top or bottom. Another way is to simply make the entire outside of the map un-portalable (probably easier that way). Other ways include various amounts of metal around the edges of walls etc.

There are multiple reentry methods, but all of them require being able to place portals on the outside of the map. Removing that ability removes OOBing as a method of completion.

So if I understand correctly, making the outside of the map non-portal compatible doesn't necessarily prevent players from reaching the void, it just prevents them from getting back inside, disabling the use of OOB as a practical exploit.

Do you guys have any tips on how to keep players from (accidentally) entering the void? I'm not so much interested in making life more difficult for speedrunners, I would just like to keep people from getting shoved out of the map by accident.

Thanks in advance!

HMW wrote:
So if I understand correctly, making the outside of the map non-portal compatible doesn't necessarily prevent players from reaching the void, it just prevents them from getting back inside, disabling the use of OOB as a practical exploit.

Do you guys have any tips on how to keep players from (accidentally) entering the void? I'm not so much interested in making life more difficult for speedrunners, I would just like to keep people from getting shoved out of the map by accident.

Thanks in advance!

Yes, it'd just remove it's ability to be used as an exploit.

In regards to the player accidentally falling into the void, it's pretty unlikely as it stands anyhow. My best advice is just keep doing what you're doing. If you get a lot of reports on your map about it happening at a specific part, it may be because of a model glitch that you can just naturally shoot through. In the original Portal, Chamber 15, there's a corner that for some reason isn't solid and leads to the outside of the map if you fire a portal at it. I haven't encountered that in any other map though, be it original Portal or community made maps.

To get out of bounds one has to use the edge glitch, which often involves the use of a camera, box, or turret to stand on in order to get directly beneath a portal's edge, not a whole lot of players will use that technique as a solution to the puzzle unless they know about edge-glitching beforehand and are intentionally trying to bypass the puzzle.

I accidentally fell out of a map once or twice. I think it was called The Other 12, or something like that. I did a fling to a portal in the corner of the map and the next thing I knew I was outside the map itself. Pisses me off more than anything else. Why would anyone want to go out of bounds anyway?

In the speed running world, there are a lot of different kinds of speed runs. Single segment, segmented, OOB, Tool Assisted, etc. etc.

Many of the perfect Out of Bounds methods of completing a map require several pixel-perfect shots in rapid succession which is extraordinarily difficult to accomplish. More often than not, OOB'ing with the intent to speed run is significantly more difficult than doing the map itself, several of Transgenic OOB routes took upwards of 12 hours per chamber and multi-thousand retakes.

So, to directly answer the question, one would want to go out of bounds as a speed runner to challenge themselves on another aspect of Portal.

The poll wasn't serious btw.

HMW wrote:
So if I understand correctly, making the outside of the map non-portal compatible doesn't necessarily prevent players from reaching the void, it just prevents them from getting back inside, disabling the use of OOB as a practical exploit.

Do you guys have any tips on how to keep players from (accidentally) entering the void? I'm not so much interested in making life more difficult for speedrunners, I would just like to keep people from getting shoved out of the map by accident.

Thanks in advance!

Kich already answered this, but I figured I could shed some more light on it. If you hop on chamber 11 in normal portal (the point where you get the normal portal gun) it has one of the easiest points to go OOB in original portal. after you get the gun and go up into the room with the elevator, if you turn around and look at the door you just came through, look into one of the corners (the corner of the wall the door is on) and shoot a portal, you can shoot another that will land on the outside of the map.

From a mapping perspective, this happens because the BACK of the previous room is parallel to the face of this room. As any mapper knows, walls are only pixels thick.

My point in talking about all of this is to say that it would be very rare to accidentally go out of bounds.

Oh, and for anyone who is just lost here, this is a video of what I'm talking about, along with what OOB is used for.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2LlvcicSpI

at about 8 seconds he shoots through the wall.