Resizeable World Portal

[vrad-exe]

A glass-type item, which appears as a world portal the size of the glass in-game. This would be separate from other world portal items, like the Surface Division Field and the original world portal doors. In order to function, two world portals of the same size would need to be connected. The two items would accept inputs separately; the portal would only open when both items were fully activated. It would also be possible to use Start Reversed to flip the orientation of the portal, so they would face the inside of the voxel instead of the outside. This would ignore walls splitting up the glass, and generate the portal there anyway. Barrier Type would possibly be needed to prevent crashes, but would not change anything. The editor model would show the normal glass base along with two arrows pointing in/out of the portal, flipping to the other side when reversed.

In regards to the 4+ portals issue, I've found that setting r_portal_fastpath to 0 stops the bug. That being said, having lots of portals visible still degrades performance, so we'll want to have warnings about that.

Original screenshots, slightly outdated:

Reversing the portal would indeed change the editor model, something which was believed to be impossible at the time this issue was originally opened. The portal would also default to facing outward, instead of inward.

Connections to world portals would work differently, as described above.

As stated in the image, the logic gates seen here are simply used for demonstration purposes and would not be a part of the actual editor model.

[TeamSpen210]

I could use glass like this. Three problems:

• Worldportals are very processor-intensive, and would likely cause FPS issues if you made them very large.
• If more than 4 portals are visible onscreen, the game's renderer glitches and all kinds of weirdness happens. This basically limits you to 1 portal in Coop, and maybe more in SP. That slot is taken up by the observation room in Old Aperture, so you're very limited. Careful geometry placement can avoid this, but that's not something I expect most users to do.
• Glass isn't just rectangular - wall blocks can be used to split it up, or make other strange shapes. Worldportals need to be rectangular, and wouldn't be placeable in these situations.

[vrad-exe]

Another problem is the world portal light holes in P1.

[vrad-exe]

That also explains why you can see through the walls in my Aperture Tag for Portal 1 maps, because they use a lot of worldportal lights. I'm probably going to update them with regular lights once Pr21 is out. (I forgot to do that, and I've taken down those maps now.)

[vrad-exe]

@TeamSpen210 Fixes:

Don't generate worldportals into the compiled chamber if:

• They are too big.
• There are too many in one area.
• They are split apart by walls.

These requirements could be shown in the right-click menu for the worldportal (in BEE2, not the editor).

[BenVlodgi]

@Luke18033

worldportal lights

Whut? Light is pre-calculated at compile time.

Don't generate worldportals into the compiled chamber if...

Too many conditions to code around, even if they could be implemented, they might stop someone's puzzle that would have worked fine.
World portals can be turned on and off, what if someone has 10 of them linked together in a room, but only 1 set is ever on at a time based on the puzzle logic.

Fewer restrictions is always better.

[vrad-exe]

@BenVlodgi "worldportal lights" refers to the worldportal light holes stylevar for P1. I used a ton of light holes in those maps, so the rendering broke.

[vrad-exe]

@BenVlodgi Restrictions 1 and 3 should still apply, but restriction 2 can be removed. Maybe just put a warning in the item description that looking at too many activated worldportals breaks the rendering.

[BenVlodgi]

Why stop a world portal if its really large?
If the designer decides to bisect a wall with the portal, maybe stop them, but that isn't necessarily the worst thing ever.

I just think everyone should embrace the Hammer Master Race

[vrad-exe]

Yeah, I guess.

[vrad-exe]

So just Number 3 then?

[vrad-exe]

Wait, what's the "hammer master race"?

[TeamSpen210]

Well, Hammer is better than anything PeTI can hope to achieve...

[Enterpise]

@BenVlodgi If you think that, then why you are wasting your time developing this mod? Instead develping this, you should make P2 authoring tool tutorials if you think everyone should join the hammer master race.

[Konclan]

Because dumbasses like me can't make the sendificator and such in hammer

[BenVlodgi]

@Enterpise when do you think the last time I made a code commit to this project was? BEEmod/BEE2.4@79c169c (Sep 25, 2014) xD
Though it's not because I think it's waste of time, but I've slowly become unfamiliar with all the improvements and features @TeamSpen210 has made.
I've also been devoting more time to Backstock and other personal game projects.

you should make P2 authoring tool tutorials if you think everyone should join the hammer master race.

I don't have the source code for that, although, I really do wish to complete a pre-compiler that will collapse instances.

I'd love to have this conversation in the chat though :) Maybe you could make some suggestions for improvements for Hammer, personally I'm not sure what I'd change if I had the chance.

[BenVlodgi]

@Konclan isn't it just an instance?

[vrad-exe]

@BenVlodgi @Konclan @TeamSpen210 @Enterpise Alright, I didn't open an issue about resizeable worldportals just to have it turn into an argument that everyone should be using Hammer. I think I'm going to close this and copy the original comment to a new issue.

[BenVlodgi]

Leave this one open, no need to make more issues for the same thing. No-one had even posted here in a week

[vrad-exe]

@BenVlodgi But I'd prefer if we talked less about Hammer and more about resizeable worldportals!

[vrad-exe]

You know, maybe someday somebody will make an external editor tool which was like a combination of Hammer and the PeTI. I already have plans to make this in the future, but I don't want to make people forget about the BEE2. Not yet anyway.

[ghost]

@Luke18033 That's my dream.
I want a easy editor with so many features from hammer that are made easy to use.

[vrad-exe]

I have plans to make Puzzle Maker Plus or PeTI Plus in the future, which will be exactly that. It won't be done for a while though.

[ghost]

Do you actually know how to do it? Like change the limit of items, add more items, styles?
Also add more options for items.
Is it even Possible?

[vrad-exe]

Actually, I should have said that it won't be STARTED for a while. I'd most likely need experience with Hammer's compiler before I could make it. I have no idea how to use Hammer.

[ghost]

My estimate is that you probably will start making around 2017. It does take a bit of time to learn hammer.

[vrad-exe]

Luckily, I've found a whole playlist of Hammer tutorials on YouTube.

[FrozenDragon0]

@Luke18033 A puzzle maker plus would be great but to change a few things like a built in style changer you'd need access to the games source code which we can't get I already asked @TeamSpen210 yesterday if it was possible and he said it wasn't

[vrad-exe]

@ZombiePwner1 It will be a separate program.

[TheDarkBomber]

Technically it is possible to get the source code if you are a Valve Employee.

[vrad-exe]

Or if a Valve employee gives it to you

[TheDarkBomber]

@Luke18033 That would probably only happen if you pay them £300 or something.

[BenVlodgi]

@Luke18033 @TheDarkBomber you can get the source code for $25,000

[vrad-exe]

@TheDarkBomber We're not using the Surface Division Field. Stop asking for it.

[vrad-exe]

Borders should only be generated on sides which aren't touching a wall, if you didn't do that than some maps might look strange.

@TeamSpen210 Borders shouldn't be generated at all, actually. Doing that will make this easier to implement, since you won't need to re-create the glass border code.

[TheDarkBomber]

We can just use the Surface Division Field 👍 💯 🇬🇱

[Endermage77]

Absolutely implement the SDF.
However, the problem with it is that the SDF is not a free standing object, unlike, say, this worldportal suggestion here.

[Byzarru]

@Endermage77 I've suggested before making it a standing fizzler. I'd love to see this item in action.
@BenVlodgi

you can get the source code for $25,000

Let's get this bake sale started!

---

The worldportal has its use, primarily in making those confusing and wacky nonEuclidean levels. It shouldn't be a replacement for any other worldportal item, as they have their uses.

[Endermage77]

I know! I LOVE non-Euclidean levels. It's my favorite way to go.
And to forward their spread, we must expand the worldportal empire.

[vrad-exe]

The surface division field should be implemented too, but as a separate item. Since outputs don't work on fizzler items, we'd probably need some sort of "SDF Connector" item.

[Endermage77]

Is there some sort of problem with using the existing fizzler output item?

[vrad-exe]

In regards to the 4+ portals issue, I've found that setting r_portal_fastpath to 0 stops the bug. This might have some other unwanted effects though, especially on slower computers (every system I've tested this on has been a high-end gaming PC). We'd need to do some testing before being able to safely use this. Someone with source code access could also possibly be of some help, if the NDA doesn't get in the way.

[saismeesaimonsaimes]

Some COOL guy has made these as a UCP
https://github.com/benjaminpants/bsoa/releases/latest

[vrad-exe]

Are those resizeable using glass logic, as I suggested here?

[saismeesaimonsaimes]

I don't know, I haven't actually used them. It'd be cool as a first party item, though.

[vrad-exe]

I asked the P2CE devs about r_portal_fastpath. It can definitely affect performance, but we'd still need to test it on a bunch of different systems to figure out exactly by how much, and whether it's safe to use in maps.