Help with some basic lighting and animation effects
Hello everyone!
I am working on my first basic map.Its a momentum map in which the player must take a "leap of faith" in order to find the platform at the bottom of a pit they can portal on. The room will be pitch black (I am using the skybox black texture) and contain random holes in which the player will fall and die (only by sheer exploration will they find the correct hole). This was designed for a friend of mine to prank another friend of ours so of course its an annoying and pointless map lol.
The problem I am encountering is in two areas. First I cannot find the prop that is a diagonal extension arm with a flat surface where I can place a portable surface. I dont know the name or term used for this prop but it rests at a 45 degree angle.
Secondly is the leap of faith portal surface (the one at the bottom of the cavernous map). I wanted the player to not be able to spam the portal gun downwards until he hit a portable surface. Instead I wanted him to have to jump and the surface "flip over" (using some kind of prop or animation) once the player passed a trigger. Again I do not know of a prop that can do this.
On a side note I was having an issue with how lighting works on white surfaces as it is. I was under the assumption that once you introduced a light source into the map that any ambient light would be removed. This seems the case for everything that is textured black skybox but not for the white portal surfaces. They seem to emit their own light from their surface. Is there anyway to fix this?
I appreciate any and all help you can give me thanks!
P.S. I can upload my unfinished map when I get home from work if anyone cares to look at it and find any major flaws in the design (ones that could lead to crashes or wtv).
Problem: You say theres no diagonal panel
Solution: Rotate it
Problem: You don't want the player to shoot a portal until they reach the bottom
Solution: Emacipation Grill or func_portal_no volume
(don't want people to see the grill? Use a trigger texture instead)
Problem: You want the room to be pitch black
Solution: Compile without LIGHT or VRAD
Problem: Flip over walls
Solution: Check here: http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki ... ing_panels
Solution: Rotate it
Ive seen a robotic prop that I can attach a panel to for a better look I know I can just rotate it
Problem: You don't want the player to shoot a portal until they reach the bottom
Solution: Emacipation Grill or func_portal_no volume
(don't want people to see the grill? Use a trigger texture instead)
I dont want it to be a portable surface until someone passes a certain point in their free fall.
Problem: You want the room to be pitch black
Solution: Compile without LIGHT or VRAD
I want it to be pitch black except for where I place a few lights I dont want textures to omit a light.
Problem: Flip over walls
Solution: Check here: http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki ... ing_panels
Go into the model browser and look up arm 64 rusty.
Yeah when they pass the func_portal_no volume they can place a portal, the textures don't emit light unless you compile with VRAD unless you make a black light.
Yeah when they pass the func_portal_no volume they can place a portal, the textures don't emit light unless you compile with VRAD unless you make a black light.
func_portal_no wont prevent them from placing starting portals right? only prevent portal surfaces from being active till after they pass through. Also if I remove Vrad my light sources that I add in through entities will work right?
You can make a func_noportal_volume on the portal surface then make a trigger_once in a area you want the person to pass to allow the player to place a portal
Then make an output on the trigger_once
OnTrigger - func_noportal_volume - Disable
Or just have a panel thats non-portalable on one side and portalable on the other, and tie it to a func_door_rotating that rotates 180 degrees once you pass the trigger.
Ok so ive finished the map.
I couldnt get the trigger to turn off the no portal field (Not sure what I did wrong) so what I ended up doing was just painting the entire floor a skybox non portable black and then painting the portal surface a skybox portable black. What this meant is everything appeared black but upon shooting your portal down a specific area you could make a portal. It still was hard to pull off for a player since the portal surface was only wide enough for the portal to be shot in one facing direction.
I would really like to go back and change it so it uses a proper trigger at some point. The map is super simple yet insanely difficult given the fact that you dont understand/know where the other portal surface is since only 2 are visible and one serves no purpose other then to distract you.
I also couldnt figure out still how to get the lighting to work properly. I had two light sources in the map and I couldnt figure out how to get only them to show (I couldnt find the VRAD option or wtv).
Ive uploaded the initial version in complete single player portal maps if anyone wants to break the map down and take a look at it and give me any newbie tips in my technique.
I think one of my main issues was figuring out how to take a surface and auto fit it into a whole in another surface (so their was no gaps).