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areaportals not working in-game
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 Re: areaportals not working in-game
Posted by RadiKal on Tue Mar 1st at 8:46am 2005

This problem is really kind of confusing me. For some reason, out of the blue the latest compile of my map causes all area portals to be "closed" in-game even though they're set to be always open. Even doors linked to portals won't cause the portals to open. All I see is the eerie copying effect beyond the hole. I didn't change ANY area portals, and my map has no leaks. I just added some func_details. Just wondering if anyone's encountered this problem and if I'll need to delete the changes I've made...

EDIT: Hmm...I'm a fool and after further investigation I found that my map does have a leak..or so I think... it says that the areaportal doesn't touch two leaves, the usual areaportal error, so I loaded up the pointfile. The problem is, the line generated starts in an open area, goes about 3 ft to the nearest entity, and ends. It doesn't cross any area portals or leak out of the map. Also, its in an area of the map that I've been done with for weeks and haven't touched... Even more odd is that when I compiled again to find the brush number of the area portal, I went to the brush and found it wasn't an areaportal at all! It was just a hint brush I had created and wasn't tied to any entity... all ideas are welcome I don't want to revert to an older version if its unnecessary





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 Re: areaportals not working in-game
Posted by Liberal.Nyulism on Tue Mar 1st at 1:06pm 2005

Yes, I had this problem as well. The areaportals move into closed state if they don't touch two areas, which means that there is a leak around one of your portals, OR, more likely, (which was my problem) that there is a leak in your world brushes between the areas that you've tried to close off with portals.

As for the lin file, when the lines are really short, it's hard to find them because the direction that you view them from may mean that the zero-width 'points' that constitute the line, can't be seen.

I have had other problems with defective brushes, so that the line goes right through an apparently solid brush, especiallyl one that I"ve munged the vertices. So, I would remake the "pierced" brush from scratch.

I started out putting hint brushes in all the entrance and exits, then I made copies of them as regular world brushes (textured with plywood of course) and made vis groups of each set. Next I hid the hints, and changed one of the world brushes into an area portal, and ran just vbsp. This got the lin file for the leak between the areas. By starting with a small part of the map, and working outward, I was able to find the multiple leaks (usually near entities) that were causing the problem.

I should probably write a tutorial on it, because so many people ask the question,and all the examples I've seen are far to simple to convey how hints and areaportals actually affect vis.

This may be more commiseration than advice, but give it a shot.

It was exasperating, but on the other hand, I now understand how to use always-open areaportals to block vis when hint brushes arent enough. So maybe it was worth the pain....

-cheers





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 Re: areaportals not working in-game
Posted by iceman on Wed Mar 2nd at 2:31am 2005

ive had the same problem it seems to me that area portals have troubles dealing with sliding doors on mine i just put it some where else and dont bother to tie to a door have the state always open



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 Re: areaportals not working in-game
Posted by Campaignjunkie on Wed Mar 2nd at 4:18am 2005

I've had similar problems. I just chopped up nearby brushes a bit more or split nearby portals with some hint brushes (not area_portals, the regular kind of portals that VBSP / VVIS produces), and that seemed to do the trick. Though I'm not too sure why.
[addsig]



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 Re: areaportals not working in-game
Posted by SaintGreg on Wed Mar 2nd at 8:15am 2005

First off, you dont tie hint brushes to entities. That may or may not cause you any problems, but there is no need to do this.

Change that and see if the pointfile changes to be more useful, as its probably a simple error that when you see what you did you will kick yourself.

[addsig]



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 Re: areaportals not working in-game
Posted by RadiKal on Wed Mar 2nd at 8:31am 2005

no the brush was tied to no entity

i hadn't touched it in about a month, it worked fine the previous compile, nothing makes sense...

finally i just reverted to an old saved version and redid the changes, i save often so it was a minor setback really..just a perplexing problem



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 Re: areaportals not working in-game
Posted by SaintGreg on Wed Mar 2nd at 1:16pm 2005

oops I am dyslexic or something, i thought you said WAS tied to an entity. My fault. Is it working now?
[addsig]



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 Re: areaportals not working in-game
Posted by Liberal.Nyulism on Wed Mar 2nd at 7:45pm 2005

Well, the location of the point file data is not accurate all the time with area portal errors.

Things that have caused this problem for me:

- I had an AP that touched a func_detail brush, and the pointfile line went through the top of the center of the skybox (45 minutes to find.)
- I had one area of a volume (a church) that leaked at the ceiling. The pointfile line showed up at the front door. (1 hour to find)
- I had a large building that separated two large outside areas. THere was a one-unit separation behind a window, that let vis see thu from one to the other area. The pointfile showed up on one of the doorways between the area. (2 hours to find)


If all the AP's arent corrrect, they appear to all fail, and move into closed state.

Hope this helps even a little bit.






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