General Portal Mapping FAQ (Updated with Wiki!)

msleeper · Last edited by msleeper on Thu Jan 03, 2008 9:27 pm; edited 3 times in total

I had an idea earlier about information for here and the Wiki. There are a lot of quick fixes and simple setups to do things for Portal maps that don't necessarily warrant a full tutorial, but are useful enough information that they should be kept somewhere.

So, let's get a general FAQ going here. I'll be relaying the relevant information to a Wiki article once we get a few good tid-bits of information, so for now let's just keep it in this thread.

Post a question if you have one, or if you know of a common problem, post the question and the solution.

EDIT - Wiki article online! Here is a link to the wiki - Read it and be informed!
http://wiki.thinkingwithportals.com/wiki/Portal_Mapping_FAQ

EDIT - This thread will be cleaned up often! If you had a question that was here and is now missing, check the wiki article since it was probably moved there.

msleeper · Posted: Fri Nov 30, 2007 4:24 pm Post subject:

Cubemaps are too broad of a topic, and aren't Portal-specific.

As youme said, the cube tubes should have a full tutorial really as they're not a simple or quick thing.

volt · Test Supervisor Joined: 22 Nov 2007 Posts: 124

Speaking of clip brushes of sorts, I tried to make a rocket turret that retracted into the floor (similar to the Glados fight), but when I did that, I was able to clip into it with my player, cubes, regular turrets, etc. So, I tried putting a func_brush with Clip, Player Clip, and then again with NPC Clip, but in every case the rocket turret was still clippable.

Would func_clip_vphysics succeed where these others have failed?

Duffedwaffe · Posted: Fri Dec 07, 2007 8:42 am Post subject:

msleeper · Posted: Mon Feb 18, 2008 4:32 pm Post subject:

Cleaned up the topic, updated the wiki article, Keep posting your common FAQ's!

msleeper · Posted: Thu Apr 24, 2008 5:17 pm Post subject:

Cleaned up again.

Portalboat · Posted: Fri Jun 06, 2008 4:07 pm Post subject:

Does the boxes spawned by the cube dropper share the same name as the entity for spawning?

Bulska · Test Supervisor Joined: 16 Nov 2007 Posts: 170

For 'how to make basic & advanced entities' I advise mappers to look up the Portal Prefab package posted somewhere here on the forums.
They are very usefull to figuring out how things work, besides giving you an easy and quick to use button, door, lift and such.

msleeper · Posted: Mon Jun 30, 2008 5:26 pm Post subject:

Cleaned up and updated the Wiki. Thanks everyone.

jdw159 · New Employee Joined: 30 Oct 2008 Posts: 3

I’m in a video game level design class and I decided do make portal maps. My teacher is not very familiar with hammer and I’m having a problem he hasn’t been able to help me figure out so i was hoping you all could lend a hand. the problem is not with getting things to work in Hammer but rather finding things to continue to work on my map. when i look threw the list of Entities I can’t find 80% of the portal stuff. i can find the turrets, cameras, portal gun, and the starting elevator but nothing else. Ex. boxes, buttons, doors, energy field generators, and those clear pains of glass. Infact when i go to Edit - Entity gallery, I still can’t find them. After I told my teacher abut this he tried fining this stuff on his home PC and had the exact same results as I did.

So please excuse this if this is simply a simply a newbie problem bit I would really appreciate some help.

thanks

Josh W

Remmiz · Posted: Thu Oct 30, 2008 10:21 pm Post subject:

jdw159 · New Employee Joined: 30 Oct 2008 Posts: 3

hmmm i see. . . i will take a look thew the wiki and continue my work thank you Remmiz!

Duffedwaffe · Posted: Thu Oct 30, 2008 10:29 pm Post subject:

You should probably take a look at the sample map valve has supplied with portal. It's chamber 5, free to study and copy from in Hammer. It's fairly simple once you see how it all fits together.

You could also get the handy tool GCFScape, which allows you to open Portal's data, extract a map, and then use VMex to decompile it into Hammer. I recommend you only do this to study the internal workings of the map though.

Alternatively, you could download one of the many prefab packs on this site via the download database, but you wouldn't learn anything from that, now, would you?

Hope that helps.

jdw159 · New Employee Joined: 30 Oct 2008 Posts: 3