Newbie questions about Portal editing - I'm new please help!

Hi guys,

I'm new to this forum and hammer editing, so please bear with me with the newbie questions but any help would be great

1st Question - I was wondering if anyone knows of any sites/maps which contain vmf map files included so I can look at how he/she has made their map in hammer? All of the portal maps I've downloaded so far, just contain BSP and BNS files, just to play it.

2nd Question - Does anyone here know how to create Aperture Lab elevator in Portal? I've tried following http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Creating_a_portal_elevator
but it has no example map to look at and I don't understand half of the steps, any tips or links?

3rd Question - I realise that isn't Portal specified site - this doesn't make much difference as its all hammer/HL editing right? They share the same principles right?

Thanks for any help, it would be greatly appreciated!

Jonesy (the new guy)

CaptainJonesy said:
1st Question - I was wondering if anyone knows of any sites/maps which contain vmf map files included so I can look at how he/she has made their map in hammer? All of the portal maps I've downloaded so far, just contain BSP and BNS files, just to play it.

Snarkpit.

Hammer itself has some/many.

Try the prefabs. They're a wonderful resource for teaching.

Lastly, many of the oldtimers online have their maps in their portfolios. Andrew in particular has all his stuff available.

CJ recently posted his vmf to his 20 brush entry.

Before you ask, open notepad. Copy the contents of CJ's vmf into it. Save it to "BLAH_BLAH.vmf". Put the new file you just made into the folder that contains your saved vmf files.

and.... Welcome to Snarkpit.

[EDIT] Upon reflection it looks like Andrew only has his RMF files, but still, look around. They're out there.

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The best things in life, aren't things.

If you want to find a web community dedicated to Portal, then I redirect you to look at ThinkingWithPortals.com
They're also listed in our links page, if you haven't looked there yet...

As to your third question: No, this isn't a Portal specific site, but yes it is all covered under Source engine editing which all games using this engine use the same tools and entities for the most part (some have specific entities in Hammer for example), and we do dabble with Portal here. Which leads me to your second question...

I've personally built a working portal map (albeit bugged), but working nonetheless. And The Portal elevators are somewhat straightforward, if you've built elevators in Source before that is.

I did reference that tutorial on the VDC you linked, and it helps specify a few things, but nothing beats just looking at how the actual ones were made.
I haven't mapped for Portal in a while, so I thought I remembered there being a default SDK map that was included when you downloaded and installed the configurations for Portal in the SDK. I went looking and I didn't see any. But then I saw where I had decompiled all the original maps from Portal. That's where I learned how to do it. So, I would ask you to go get the decompile tools and decompile the Portal maps, but I figured that would take much longer to explain, than just grabbing one and uploading it here. It's the .vmf of the second map in the game, which includes two working elevators and all their triggers and effects. One even goes through a level transition, so you can see how that is done too. It's small, so here it is:

Portal_decomp.zip

And feel free to comment anywhere else on the site, we welcome newcomers and appreciate your activity on the site!

Welcome to The SnarkPit!

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

Thanks guys for the welcome and for your examples of maps, they been very helpful and handy - I got a good idea how to make box dropper and elevators now! Thanks for pointing me in the right direction - you're been very helpful.

Just to ask quickly Raven - where did you find that source map of the 1st section of portal map? I looked everywhere through the scources files/folders in my directory and I couldn't find them, how did you get access to them?

Thanks again
Jonesy

@ a guess, he decompiled it and zipped it and loaded it to his website.

Just a guess.

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The best things in life, aren't things.

CaptainJonesy said:
where did you find that source map of the 1st section of portal map? I looked everywhere through the scources files/folders in my directory and I couldn't find them, how did you get access to them?

I think Orph is COMPLETELY right...

I used a common third-party tool developed by 'Rof' called: VMEX. It uses Java to load a BSP in a nice GUI and decompile it into a relative .vmf file. Don't trust it completely though, because it does not deal justice to brush-based entities and some triggers. Either way, it's meant to be a tool for reference only. Basically, you could extract all the BSP files out of the Portal GCF 'folder' and load them into VMEX and decompile every one of them to see roughly how Valve or any mapper for that matter, achieved their effects. But remember to stay responsible, and never blatantly copy anyone's work using VMEX, that's just plain plagiarism.

A note about the VMEX site: At the top is the latest version for download (~2007). At the bottom are installation instructions.

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

Riven said:
I think Orph is COMPLETELY right...

It happens. The generous here would prolly say that's the third or fourth time... The rest would argue that it was just dumb luck.

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The best things in life, aren't things.

Ok I've used VMEX once before, the other day to look someone's map, certainly very useful! Sorry to be pain but where actually is this GCF 'folder' located? Like what directory - Program Files > Steam > Steamapps > (username) > portal - I can't find it?

Thanks again

Jonesy

CaptainJonesy said:
Ok I've used VMEX once before, the other day to look someone's map, certainly very useful! Sorry to be pain but where actually is this GCF 'folder' located? Like what directory - Program Files > Steam > Steamapps > (username) > portal - I can't find it?

Thanks again

Jonesy

You aren´t a pain, forums are made to ask questions and help others. If it wasn´t we wouldn´t be here right now

The GCF File you´re looking for should be in

Program Files > Steam > Steamapps

Good luck!

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Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/Nibgames

Orpheus said:
He may not be a pain Nib, but you telling him he same path, what he already told you sure is.

I´m pretty sure I gave him a shorter path?

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Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/Nibgames

It it the end of the path then?
If so, I retract my earlier comment. I thought it was nearer to the maps folder, but I am not home to check.

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The best things in life, aren't things.

Yeah end of it, but I just checked it over here and all of my GCF's are located there

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Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/Nibgames

Thanks Niborius - Yeah very true One more thing to ask - the file you need is called "Portal content.gcf" right? How do you extract BSPs out of this file? With VMEX you can only convert BSP to VMFS, Right?

Try this
Times gone by it was as easy as using winzip to extract files from HL1. I dunno if this is still true with HL2.

In the end though, Google is your friend. Search "extracting gcf to bsp"

Word of warning: never MOVE, always EXTRACT!!!!!!!!!!!

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The best things in life, aren't things.