POrtal drawing

[wedge2211]

OK, I have some questions on the portal-drawing process, cause I keep getting "areaportal doesn't touch 2 areas" errors. I knwo the most common cause is that the portal brush doesn't completely fill a doorway out to all the struct brushes making up the walls, but all of mine DO. and I still get those errors. I had to delete a few portals becasue I realized that some glass windows allowed ways to see around the portal. However, I have some portals which seem to compeltely block off an area that apparently do not. So, a couple questions to help me figure this out (vital to release of Mars map...):

 

How exactly are portals blocked off?

 

If I have an L-shaped room, does it need one big L portal or one vertical portal and a horizontal one?

 

If I have a complex structure that wraps around, ie, the player is able to walk around in a complex path that turns around several times such that they end up where they started but only pass through one door, can an area portal block off that door, or does the fact that the player can walk all the way around from one side of the door to the other negate that? I guess the simplest case is a hallway with four right-angle corners: the player can walk in a big square. If I put a door in the middle of one hallway, can I put a portal in it or will that generate an error?

 

thanks if you can answer these!

[Shadriss]

Ok, , I'll try to tackle this one...

 

If I have a complex structure that wraps around, ie, the player is able to walk around in a complex path that turns around several times such that they end up where they started but only pass through one door, can an area portal block off that door, or does the fact that the player can walk all the way around from one side of the door to the other negate that? I guess the simplest case is a hallway with four right-angle corners: the player can walk in a big square. If I put a door in the middle of one hallway, can I put a portal in it or will that generate an error?

 

If it wraps around, as you describe, then it's essentially the same area. Areaportaling would do abslutely nothing, much as the window idea would. As for that L-shaped room - the only place a areaportal should really be used is in a doorway - not in the middle of a room.

[Wes Marrakesh]

What shad said. I think you are referring to hint brushes in your second question.... try to avoid those, methinks.

[Tyler_Durden]

Actually, i'm having the same problem with the portals but i think i might have figured something out: let's say you have a passageway with two doors with an area portal in each door. the ceiling is one grid unit high, the same goes for the walls and the floor. Now when i compile the passage, i get an error, so i go and try to find the leak, but there is none.

 

Now i notice that the passage ways that do work, have the doors set so that they are put inside the building that the passage is connecting to. So when i place the portal and the door inside the building and compile it works.

 

My theory is that when a door opens upwards, it has to pass into an area that is at least its equal height and not touching the void when it opens. I tried that with my map and it worked.

 

So when you make a ceiling try to make it so that the height is at least as much as the door so when the door opens it passes inside of the ceiling and does not touch the void at all. But don't make the whole ceiling that thick as that would take too much space and probably cause slowdown. Instead make a brush that's at least 2 units thicker than the door, so for example if your door is 1 unit thick and 8 units high, make the ceiling about 3 units thick and 9 units high. As i said i tested this theory and it seemed to work, however i still had one area portal not working but i think it might be due to a leak instead.

 

If this doesn't work, disregard everything i said here, as i'm still pretty new at this.

[lassev]

I don't know if there is any support for it in theory, but it seems areaportals are easier to make work, if two rooms are separate boxes rather than one big room divided with a wall.

 

And, despite Wes' disbelief in hint brushes, i encourage you to try them. However, if you have but one L-shaped room in one vis-block (pardon the term, I can't think of a better), it might not be worth the effort. But if you have two rooms connected with a corridor and you do definitively not want to put doors between, hint brushes are the answer. Best way to learn their usage is trying. And try using big ones (with oblique edges, not necessarily 90 degrees) instead of multiple little ones, as they are not areaportals.

[Shadriss]

Areaportals are acutally fairly simple to understnad and use... I havent messed with hint brushes YET, but I understand some of the priciples.

 

An areaportal is best used in a door. To seperate two rooms from each other. Not that I mean two different rooms, not one with a dividing wall, especially if that dividing wall is a detail brush.

 

Now, ,the way the door is constructed DOES have inpact on the areaportal. Here's how I construct mine (And I've not had any problems with the "doesnt touch two areas" error).

 

I make the door iteslf. Then, I surround that door on all sides (excepting the entry and exit) by a wall i grid unit think (Using the "8" setting in JK2rad). This includes the top and bottom, so essentially, I have a hollow box open on two sides. Kind of like looking into a big cardboard box that's been opened.

 

Because, when I make the door brush into a func_door, it in essencee becomes a detail brush. It does not block light, nor vis. So, in order to keep the void from rushing in, it needs to be surrounded by those brushes.

 

The areaportal brush itself needs to fin ENTIRELY IN THE DOOR ITSELF. Not the door FRAME, but inside the DOOR. If your doors are three grid units thick (as mine are) then the areaportal sould be 1 unit thick, so that you cannot even see it's there unless you go inside the door brush itself. The height and width of the door can and should be exactly the same as the door brush, ,but it's thickness needs to fit inside the door.

 

I hope that made sence... but I've been doing them for so long that it's second naturte to me now. The Richdiesel Tut on doors explains it a bit better, ,and I have been using his method, so...

 

Hope that helps.

[Tyler_Durden]

I don't know, Rich's door tutorial is pretty complete but he doesn't really go in depth about how you should construct the doorway. He basically says that it shouldn't z-fight or whatever with the door itself. But he never really said what the measurements of the doorway itself should be. And he doesn't say a lot about area portals, only that they should fit within the door itself, but that's about it. Either that or i'm totally missing something.

 

A question i have is can you make a copy of an area portal to put in another doorway? Or will it cause an error because you have two of the same portal in a different area?

[Shadriss]

You CAN duplicate them. They dont have any identifiers to them, so it doesnt mappet. AS to RIch not mentioning dimensions, there IS a reason for that... because doors can be ANY size you want.