Portals in L4D, CS:S, DoD, etc.

Hello Snark Pit, long time no see!

I used to come here as salFPS, doubt anyone remembers, because I was mainly a lurker, anyways glad to see you're still around.

So the chase, let me cut to it.

I am currently PC-less, but I plan on getting one soon and I'm drawing up some ideas for mainly L4D maps. In catching up on some tutorials, a thought came to mind. Can Portal's portals be created on other source games?

As far as I know, I assume it can be done simply by making a "TV" (whatever the texture, function, trigger is called, I don't know) on a wall or whatever I want the portal to be and then adding a teleport trigger. Again my terminology is a bit rusty, but I hope my point comes across clearly.

If this isn't the case, what's a more efficient alternative if it can be done?

Also, what about the possibility of making a portal gun (regardless of the skin, I'm just talking about the function) in other games, or even a portal turret (controllable by players).

Let's say I wanted to make a fun test map (once I get a PC) and I add a turret that shoots portals just to make zombies that are rushing me fall to their deaths from the ceiling. Can this be done in the name of fun?

There was a lot more involved with portal's portals. When you step through the portal (or rather when you walked up to it) the portal engine would have to keep track of where the player was, what his angle was looking at the portal from, and then update the picture accordingly (Using vectors). Basically there is no portal's portal effect you can get outside of the portal game engine (Even though its just the HL2 engine with portal effects on it). However if you wanted to you can import HL2 (SP) maps into the portal game map directory, and play them. That is maybe what you've seen on the internet.

The method you described could work, but the portal would remain static. What do I mean by this:

Make a hole with your hand and hold it up. See the image through the hole? now move your head right and left, see how the image changes? Thats the portal effect. The method you described would make the image remain the same the whole time you moved your head left to right.

Hope that explains it.

Makes perfect sense, that's the only thing I couldn't figure out a way around.

I really would love for Valve to port the source code from portal into the main source engine. It's not a big deal, has nothing to do with any map for L4D I'm working on, but it does affect a mod idea I had.

Now, is the portal engine Source + Portal engine stacked on top of it? Or is it an altered engine that lacks some features the full source engine contains? ...is there even a source SDK?

Thanks for the reply man, it's hard not being able to map yet, seeing as how I don't have a PC yet, but this does buy me time to plan properly.

In short: Yes the Source SDK for Portal and all the orange box games are released. L4D's SDK won't be coming out until August (last I heard). -That doesn't stop you from mapping for it though. You can certainly start orange-mapping a level and adding basic entities (those you can expect to find in L4D) and then just open it up in the L4D SDK after its released -picking up where you left off.

If you want Portal's portals, and L4D's zombies together, you might have to wait until some programmer out there gets it done. I know they've already implemented Portal's portals into Garry'smod. -So if you want to play around with them with HL2's npcs, that ability is already there.

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Blog: www.playingarchitecture.net
LinkedIn: Eric Lancon
Twitter:@Riven202

Excellent. Thanks for the replies guys.

Seeing as how I don't have a capable PC yet, I think I'm gonna have to resort to drawing up designs on paper, and if I come up with specific designs, draw them on graph paper for easy transition.

Real quick-if possible-do any on you know the amount of units character models take up in L4D when compared to other major Source games, like HL2 DM, CS: S, and DoD?

I ask, because assuming I get a PC before the SDK is released, I don't want to scale everything incorrectly, ahaha.

Riven said:
In short: Yes the Source SDK for Portal and all the orange box games are released. L4D's SDK won't be coming out until August (last I heard).

That's possible, but i can't find any site saying that it'll be released in august :confused:.
All i heard is that it'll be released this spring, nothing more.

i assume the dimmentions to be the same 32x72 or was it 74. the only exception i can think of is the tank who is probably 64x72.

i do hope that if valve ever creats a 3rd generation source engine that they make the units more accurate. i mean if a person is 32 inches wide thats almost 3 feet, youd have to weigh 400 punds to fill that size, but 72 its about normal. at least then we could start building from blueprints