How do the various fizzler vtfs work?
Hello, I've been screwing around with fizzlers recently and I'm wondering if there is any documentation on how the various fizzler vtf files work? The file named "fizzler_flow" for example. They seem to be strange colors that somehow make the fizzler move/act differently. In the meantime, I will be experimenting with editing these pictures to see what happens, but concrete documentation would be very helpful. Thanks in advance for any info!
Now let's solve this thing! ^^
WAIT! This is mine, guys!!!!! 
Man, I've been SO messing around with this for a while now. I'm preparing several "forcefields" for my upcoming mod and I've developed some of them looking pretty good. Let me explain from off the top of my head.
First of all, the shader. This is the SolidEnergy shader, one of the most complex ones Valve has developed (and there is NO information about this shader). Bare in mind that this is the same shader that the laserfield uses. It produces awesome effects (i'm sure more than we could even imagine 
) The fizzler vortex effect, that incredible effect that appears when you get a cube near the fizzler, is managed by a material proxy called FizzlerVortex that you see at the end of the Fizzler.VMT file.
The other material files (VTFs):
1. Fizzler_flow: well, this is similar to how water flows and moves in the game... you can make a flow map to describe the movement, to tell the directions that you want each part of your texture to head to. Basically it consists of a drawing with certain specific colours that the engine recognizes as the direction onto an axis... Not much ppl know, but here there's an AWESOME flow map painter (thanks to Sprowl, who found it while developing his mappack "Cleanup-Vertigo" 
), grab it from here.
(Useful information: Read this article, this VALVe guy Alex is so nice, I even contacted him some time ago and also read this wiki piece)
2. Fizzler_ripples_dim: this is the (base)texture that you see, those ripples that move around the fizzler, appear and disappear... All you need to create your own custom texture is an alpha channel so that the shader can do the same effect by mmixing the alpha and the other channels.
3. Fizzler_noise: this is a "background" noise to give the translucency of the texture a bonus noise (you can make many of these by rendering 'Clouds' in Paint.Net or PS and adding some blur)
- 4. Fizzler_bounds: this is the most interesting from all of them (to me 
) because it determines WHERE do you want the fizzler effect (the ripples and the noise) to be present, what areas on your texture will the effect appear. Again, same as for the flow map, there are several colours to determine this:
LOL, I have the texture here at work! ... fizzler_bounds image
- Black colour: whatever bit painted in black colour will show NO effect at all... you can experiment with it making for example black lines or circles and you'll see that the effect will not be drawn there in game
but in the rest of your flow map.
- Pink/blue colours: this is the parts where your texture will flow... I think the pinkish parts are where the texture is more noticeable and the blueish ones, where it gets a bit more dimmed.
- A "greenish shade": all that you draw in a sort of light greenish shade colour will be there drawn and static as an overlay in your fizzler. This is the most interesting part of this file Just play around with it. This is how the fizzler edges are made (I think you can pick up any light kind of colour for this):
I'm pretty sure that yyou have already messed up with all the values in the .VMT, they simply change the final effect caused; tbh I like it more or less how it is, I couldn't obtain better effect by changing those values. The only interesting ones here are:
- $FLOW_COLOR This is the RGB colour of the fizzler itself (it doesn't really matter what colours you use to make your texture since the colorr will be defined here; an absence of this line will simply make the fizzler a similar shade of blue it has right now but slightly darker )
- $FLOW_VORTEX_COLOR This is the RGB colour for the vortex when you get an object closer to the fizzler... try to select a shade of the color above.
One good little tip many of you won't know 
In many VALVe textures the color values are expressed as floats (number with decimals) instead of an integer between the range 0-255... like so:
$FLOW_COLOR "[0.025 0.08 0.1]"
$FLOW_VORTEX_COLOR "[0.64 2.058 2.56]"
If you want to use a RGB colour into the range 0-255 you only need to change the square brakets [] by {} like for example:
$FLOW_COLOR "{250 80 1}"
$FLOW_VORTEX_COLOR "{64 250 250}"
It will work like a charm
Good luck with this! Will you post an image (or video) of your custom fizzlers?
useful tools and stuff here on TWP 
[spoiler]
[/spoiler]Oh my, I wasn't expecting such a detailed response and I thank you very much for this post! I might if I ever get into making my idea really fancy. Basically, I had the idea of anything that moves through the "fizzler" (which is not really a fizzler in my tests) changes gravity based on which setting the gravity field is on. For example, the map I'm messing around with now looks like this (it's just for testing this idea, so warning it is very ugly):
http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/902 ... 1B32939A8/
The arrow shows where gravity is changed when moving through this field. And in this picture you can see the box in it to get the gist of the idea:
http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/902 ... 68A645BA6/
At the moment, the whole idea is pretty messy and would probably be cleaner/easier if I knew scripting, but basically I have 3 different rooms connected with world portals to give the illusion that gravity is changing when you go through it. BUT ANYWAYS, the whole reason I asked about the fizzler textures was because I had the idea of flowing "arrows" in the field that would change based on which way gravity was going at the time (for example, if gravity was up, the field would look kind of like ^ ^ ^ ^ in rows).
Right now, when you press the button, the gravity will change to the left wall instead of the ceiling; then the ground; then the right wall; and back to the ceiling to close the loop. The arrow will also point to the corresponding direction. If I could figure out how to make arrows in the field, they would be a better visual cue for more action-oriented tests I have ideas with this gravity field later on. A tiny arrow is good for puzzles, but if I want to have flinging and such, a larger indicator would be better.
I will mess around with them and try to create my flowing arrows idea, and again I thank you very much for the post! The flowmap sounds like it will be very useful. I am going to save this information for later use, if you don't mind.
Now let's solve this thing! ^^
OK, understanding now better!!
If you checked out the Aperture Valentine maps, you'll find a special fizzler we made in which there were some hearts flowing around the fizzler which was pink customize as well This is very very easy to create as I explained in the previous post by mmodifying the basetexture, since that is the texture that will be flowing... It's so easy that I just made a quick test texture for you right away!
This is the $basetexture... Test the file attached placing it wherever into your materials folder and correct the path for the $basetexture properly in your .VMT file.
(Don't forget to click on "FIT" in the Face Edit Sheet when applying your textures on the brushes... those pics show you didn't do )
EDIT
About the gravity... wouldn't it be much easier to use the console command sv_gravity and play with its values (the default is 600 I think) via a point_clientcommand and triggering different values depending on where is the player? Or maybe a trigger_gravity
useful tools and stuff here on TWP [spoiler]
[/spoiler]
If you checked out the Aperture Valentine maps, you'll find a special fizzler we made in which there were some hearts flowing around the fizzler which was pink customize as well This is very very easy to create as I explained in the previous post by mmodifying the basetexture, since that is the texture that will be flowing... It's so easy that I just made a quick test texture for you right away!
This is the $basetexture... Test the file attached placing it wherever into your materials folder and correct the path for the $basetexture properly in your .VMT file.
(Don't forget to click on "FIT" in the Face Edit Sheet when applying your textures on the brushes... those pics show you didn't do )
EDIT
About the gravity... wouldn't it be much easier to use the console command sv_gravity and play with its values (the default is 600 I think) via a point_clientcommand and triggering different values depending on where is the player? Or maybe a trigger_gravity
Well that texture looks really nice compared to my idea... 
Thank you for the example.
And I have tried toying with the gravity stuff. It would be much easier for objects, but for the player, if gravity is flipped, they still stand upright, so their head is basically rubbing against the ceiling the whole time. I also want to change the orientation of the world which requires the world portals from what I've tried. Unless it doesn't, which would be really nice to know about...
But I am going to bed for now, I will try and check on this thread later if anything else comes up. Again I thank you for the help, it is very much appreciated!
Now let's solve this thing! ^^
I didnt ask, but also Thanks for that explain about custom fizzler josepezdj ^^
Well I've tried your suggestion for a part that does not involve the player, and now I have another question...is there any way for gels to be manipulated through trigger_vphysics_motion? It seems only the boxes are affected...
Now let's solve this thing! ^^
Maybe this depends on which flags you checked and which ones you didn't. Try checking the flags 'Clients', 'Pushables', 'Phisics Objects' and 'Everything' to see if it works. But to be honest I never tried gel manipulation like that
The sv_gravity has the cons that while for some entities the effect is immediate, others will need you to restart the map in order to take effect if you change its values in mid-game...
Possible (complex) workaround: I know ppl manage to lead the gels up through the diversity vents by means of info_particle_systems and info_targets. Chicken uploaded some awesome stuff about this here. You could try to use this system to fake the desired effect.
It's difficult to help out more or come with possible workarounds though without knowing the structure of your puzzle
useful tools and stuff here on TWP [spoiler]
[/spoiler]Maybe this depends on which flags you checked and which ones you didn't. Try checking the flags 'Clients', 'Pushables', 'Phisics Objects' and 'Everything' to see if it works. But to be honest I never tried gel manipulation like that
The sv_gravity has the cons that while for some entities the effect is immediate, others will need you to restart the map in order to take effect if you change its values in mid-game...
Possible (complex) workaround: I know ppl manage to lead the gels up through the diversity vents by means of info_particle_systems and info_targets. Chicken uploaded some awesome stuff about this here. You could try to use this system to fake the desired effect.
It's difficult to help out more or come with possible workarounds though without knowing the structure of your puzzle
Right now I'm just messing around with the ideas in my head and not making puzzles out of them just yet. Like I want to get a feel for how to create the things I need to make the puzzles later on if that makes any sense. So the gravity field upwards is working well, now I had put a paint_sprayer in the same test room to try and make it go up at the ceiling and maybe have some kind of puzzle where the gravity change is the puzzle. The most simple one I can think of just to try out my idea is to have a Conversion gel sprayer go through the gravity field, making the paint hit the ceiling. Then you can make a portal there and basically paint the roof with white paint since its gravity will be flowing upwards instead of down. This idea sounds like it will be very difficult with the tools I have...
For now, I can fake a gravity field with cubes by simply using trigger_vphysics_motion square that is right after the "gravity field" (which is just a brush that objects can go through). I wish I could figure out how to change the physics of objects that go through the field that would work everywhere...do the objects perhaps have a gravity setting that can be modified with simple Input/Output commands? I think they don't but maybe there's something I'm missing. I mean the main idea was that you put an object in this field, and it's gravity is changed. So even if you took it out and moved it around, it is still supposed to stay going upwards instead of down even outside the field.
Now let's solve this thing! ^^