Forum | Thinking With Portals

#1 · May 31, 2013, 11:01 am

Has anyone got any advice on how to create an info_paint_sprayer that sprays gel with any sort of consistency? Regardless of what I try I cant get a consistent coat of gel on a surface, it is always patchy and even when some spots look covered they often don't provide the gel effect.

I've attatched an example of what's going on in my level so far. I've spread blue gel on both sides of the wall for a couple minutes now (it should ideally only take 10 or so seconds).

a3_eile_hanoi0003.jpg

I've also attatched my info_paint_sprayer (as it stands currently, I've tried quite a lot of different variations to no avail).

2013-05-31 15_55_48-Hammer - [C__Users_jordan.marshall_Dropbox_a3_eile_hanoi_a3_eile_hanoi.vmf - Tex.png

#2 · May 31, 2013, 11:36 am

So you want the player to put a portal on one of the walls and the gel should cover the wall in front of the portal with gel? That should work by itself just fine, however the problem I see with your layout is the space between the walls: it's to small. The gel can't spread while flying after it went through the portal to cover a bigger place with gel.
Did you try enabling "Blob Spread Radius"? Maybe this can help.
You could also try to use workarounds. They are the fastest and safest way to cover a specific place with gel:

If you are using paint sprayers

Spoiler

Use a cube to detect if a place got painted (OnPainted Output) and then activate sprayers that look into the direction of the walls, or activate a paint_sphere

- place a weighted_cube into the wall
- disable smart edit for the cube and add a new key "rendermode" with the value "10", this makes the cube invisible
- the output of the cube should be something like "OnPainted > Paint_Sphere > Paint"
- also place a logic_auto in the map and disable the motion of the cube

Here's the Setup I use in one of my maps.

If you are using paint blobs

Spoiler

Detect the paint blobs with a trigger and then use paint_sprayers or paint_spheres to cover the place with gel

- create a trigger_multiple in front of every wall you want a detection
- create an output like "OnStartTouch > Sprayer > Start"
- also create a filter_activator_classname to decide between physics objects and the paint bombs

Workshoppage

#3 · May 31, 2013, 11:57 am

Cheers Sprowl, the workarounds are quite useful and i'll make note of them, as i hadnt thought of that before.

Currently I am trying to get the player to portal one wall and soak the other with gel, however i'm experimenting with different ideas using gel and they all seem to have the same outcome (previously gel dropped from the roof about 512 units above and had the same patchy spreading on the floor).

#4 · May 31, 2013, 12:51 pm

Isn't that just what gel looks like? The area should be fully covered as far as game mechanics are concerned.

Falsi sumus crusto!

#5 · May 31, 2013, 1:00 pm

I'm afraid not, there are quite a few *dry* spots that don't bounce, in fact i couldn't even get my second bounce going and its pretty well saturated.
I tried the same with speed gel across the floor and it wasn't possible to move fast for more than a few split seconds, it looked about the same as the wall did.

Gel spreading consistency