Quote from CamBen on March 27, 2014, 4:17 pm

Did you check the force placement flag on the placement helper?

Quote from Crawfish on March 27, 2014, 4:47 pm

CamBen wrote:

Did you check the force placement flag on the placement helper?

Yes, and I also increased the effect radius. It works fine when I shoot the portals myself, it just won't work when shot from the weapon_portalgun on the stand.

Quote from RustyDios on March 27, 2014, 5:07 pm

This might be to do with how the gun sits "on the stand". If I recall correctly to get it to line up and look correct, the gun itself needs to sit 180deg out and slightly down to the right of the actual pedestal. Check in the instance and click the gun.. look for where the guns "box" is in the 3D view, you'll see what I mean.

It's a wild stab in the dark but the only thing I can think of that might be causing your issue ... ...

Quote from CamBen on March 27, 2014, 9:40 pm

Try using an invisible portalgun (add a keyvalue of "rendermode 10") in the right position and a prop_dynamic of a visible portalgun on top of it.

Quote from Crawfish on March 28, 2014, 1:09 am

I'll definitely try both of those theories tomorrow! I was a bit busy today with learning a few new things (trigger_catapult, indicator lights, a few things about how func_instances work, etc. Basic stuff.) Thank you both!

Kinda off-topic; I only just noticed it, but I think I've played a map by you from the workshop, CamBen. I'll have to look through my queue and see.

EDIT:

RustyDios wrote:

This might be to do with how the gun sits "on the stand". If I recall correctly to get it to line up and look correct, the gun itself needs to sit 180deg out and slightly down to the right of the actual pedestal. Check in the instance and click the gun.. look for where the guns "box" is in the 3D view, you'll see what I mean.

It's a wild stab in the dark but the only thing I can think of that might be causing your issue ... ...

Your solution seemed to work best. If nothing it pointed me toward what I needed to do. I had to go into the portal gun's properties and change the angle to "269.9" degrees, which I didn't think would even be possible, let alone work.

Quote from tile on March 31, 2014, 11:26 pm

i'd love to help you, but i'm tired and don't want to risk telling you stupid stuff that isnt correct because of it.

but, i would really like to congratulate you on starting with hammer and not pti. your off to a great start!

here's some tips that are good for general mapping:

• Borders on glass, and make sure it goes all the way around the glass....ALWAYS!
• Allow only the necessary puzzle space. (give or take a bit. You can't really get this perfect.)
• Need a big space? Add even more with toxic pits, bts backdrops etc. make your extra space look interesting.
• Walls need to be 16 units thick. (unless it's glass/see through. Then it should be 8 units with a border.)
• See through= border. See first rule.
• No glass floors, accept if they move or seem to look good in the given area.
• Compact and separate things. Looks bad and confusing otherwise.
• Grates, not holes. (unless you need a hole that something physically passes through, or the grate doesnt fit with the theme.)
• Glass must be in small proportions. Aka not huge panes of glass that stretch over a whole wall.
• No glass on top of another object.
• Big square rooms need variety along the walls.
• No overly bright lights.
• Don't put quotes and storyline points out of context, unless the new context makes sense. (ie, don't have glados just randomly appear and say "hello and welcome back" in the middle of the map, unless the player left and then came back.)
• Does it look like it makes sense? If not, fix it so it does.
• Does it look realistic? If not, please make it so.
• Experiment with more interesting architecture. (ie, a domed ceiling looks better than a flat ceiling.)

Have fun with learning to map, and i hope to see some good maps from you in the future!

Quote from Crawfish on April 1, 2014, 2:41 am

tile wrote:

-helpful snip-

Thank you very much! Like I said, I'm practicing the basics by recreating Valve chambers at the moment, but with that advice in mind, maybe I can make them less of "recreations" and more of "reimaginings".
I was actually going to do this for fun in the Puzzle Creator originally, but then I realized how little control I get over small details, and figured learning Hammer would be worth it in the long run, possibly for more than just Portal 2.

Quote from Crawfish on April 16, 2014, 12:36 am

Sorry about the double-post, but seeing as editing posts doesn't light the thread up again, I guess a bump might be in order.
I've come across a couple other minor issues that I'd like to resolve, that I haven't found much help for on the internet.

1: No matter what elevator instances I use, the floor in them is always extremely dark with extremely sharp light beams coming from the elevator. Any way I might be able to make the lighting look more like Valve's elevators?
What I mean:
Example
[spoiler][/spoiler]

2: Is there a way to make an exit elevator loop for as long as an ambient_generic is playing so it doesn't cut it off? Or do I just have to extend the elevator somehow?

3: How might I be able to port Portal 1's radio skin to Portal 2's model? I don't just mean modding the skin either. I want to be able to select the clean skin under the model viewer and choose which ones I want in Hammer.

4: Another problem with ChickenMobile's Portalgun pedestal instance. It doesn't always lower and close the pedestal after the gun is collected. Any way I can fix that?

On a completely unrelated note, because of limited space and limited choices in observation rooms, I made an observation room based off of one in Test Chamber 2 of the first Portal. Can I get some opinions?
Said Lab
[spoiler]Portal 1:
Portal 2:
I realize I'm not the best with screenshots... But I'm pretty happy with this. I clipped the edges by the window and nodraw'd the entire outside. It looks kinda like a Valve instance. I have no doubt there are enough observation rooms out there, so I probably don't need to upload this, but hey, I'm a showoff.[/spoiler]

Quote from TeamSpen210 on April 16, 2014, 3:49 am

1: You might want to check to make sure the projected texture is on/working, or that your compile settings are right.

2: Portal 2's elevators have functionality for this so that you keep looping through the same shaft if GLaDOS is still talking. (See the readyForTransition() RunScriptCode commands in the path_tracks, plus other logic). If you poke a bit you should be able to make this work for the ambient_generic, although I don't know a way to directly detect if a sound stops playing so it'd probably be easier to prevent the level load/vote screen until after a set time passes.

3: Best way to debug these sorts of things is to turn on developer 2, clear the log before you try then examine the I/O log after it fails to work.

4: Looks quite nice, I haven't actually seen many/any observation instances beside Valve's ones, and more can't hurt. You might not want to copy Portal 1's observation rooms so closely as Portal 2's don't use the same sort of layout. If you haven't, bevel the front edge of the walls surrounding the window so the nodraw won't conflict with the walls. You could also try nodraw/removing props from the interior, where the player won't be able to see. (Maybe clip the left-most wall and nodraw the closest part, though I'm not sure how much this would matter optimisation-wise.