Factum Solus - Portal Mod

[xenoverse]

Oh I see from ModDB it was released on the 10th.

This is a really great mod! I don't understand what people are saying about bad development. I liked it a lot! There must have been a good ammount of time spent on making this.

[Groxkiller585]

Now that i've thourghly played 5/6 times I think I can be a bit more accurate in my review. Please don't take any negative comments personally, I liked the mod alot, but it can be even better.

Like said before, the areaportal door. Set it up so the areaportal ONLY goes off if the door is SHUT. It is very easy, simply link the areaportal to the left or right door. Plus (if you haven't already) make it so the doors are forced closed, so the boxes/derbis blocking it get chucked away.

Most of the tests had almost no warning. "Deadly Toxics" the first time I went through made me think the floor would be toxic, not coming from the ceiling! Aperture is not completely in the dark about what is to come (with the exeption of the fire pit), they have signs saying just what to expect in a stick-man form. You could have made a stickman in a hallway, with the vent open and toxic water about to push him away.The signs that were there telled you what to expect BELOW, not ABOVE. Also that glitched the signs, not sure it's intentional.

Another issue was the fire pit. It was beautifully done as a test itself but there were alot of issues. Not fast enough? You die by rocket. Too fast? You take a mistep and fall into the pit. The rocket turrets themselves were a bit overused in the room, huge amount of pressure and the player doesn't KNOW the floor will come up. First time I went through I died because I didn't realize the floor came up, no sign that says it does, no warning. Warning for the fire pit yes, but no warning about the floor. Also, just so you know the env_projectedtextures failed to work, which isn't really your fault but sort of wrecked some of the room's looks. Quality in the BTS areas seemed to drop slightly after the huge room. I was wowed by it, then we go into tiny low-detail areas. Stick with what looks good, make a larger area, or detail the smaller areas more.

Now on to the positives. Most of the design was pretty well done, especailly most of the BTS areas. I checked an online video of it WITH the projectedtextures and it looks great. Most of the test chambers were portally to me. Your ideas for new test elements (or how to replicate P2 ones) are great, I liked the deadly-but-fun smashing door row. Storyline was cool as well, if you can pull off encorperating NPC's correctly with the portal gun then great job!

Overall, you made an awesome mod and I can't wait for EP2, but it really needs some more playtesting and bugchecks. Near perfect visually, lacking balance in the difficulty department.

[Generalvivi]

Hey guys, I know we were talking about the portal "funnel" and how to parent a trigger to the portal and such but I seem to have hit a snag where the player's collision gets turned off. When they exit my trigger they can walk through the walls of the level but as soon as I move my portal again their collision gets reset.

any ideas?

[omnicoder]

Collision getting turned off seems to be an odd thing in Portal... it happened in my repulsion gel test map too, and the only similarity is a Portal detector, so I guess they occasionally break collisions somehow.

[Groxkiller585]

Hey guys, I know we were talking about the portal "funnel" and how to parent a trigger to the portal and such but I seem to have hit a snag where the player's collision gets turned off. When they exit my trigger they can walk through the walls of the level but as soon as I move my portal again their collision gets reset.

any ideas?

I actually had a great setup for getting the funnel turned on/off, useful as it drops the entity count to only exactly what you need. Plus it can be recycled for other portal-though setups like the laser or bridge thing.

what I did was make it so the player must only use the orange portal (though you could add the technique to both portals, just double entities) then I made a small (VERY small, for preventing glitching reasons) func_door at the top of the portal. this door is set to move at a somewhat quick rate. There is a trigger in front of where the orange portal will be to let the laser/funnel/whatever go through. This trigger is set to go off if the door is within the boundry (A.K.A. when the orange Portal is placed there) and the trigger, in turn, sets off the blue portal entities. Now it has to be moving because it appears if it is stationary (Func_brush) the trigger does not pick it up that it is there.

This setup creates a mobile portal-triggerer so to speak. Now the portal is able to trigger triggers using this door. Once you move the portal, make it to the trigger simply shuts off the entities. Do this for multiple setups (funnels, Lasers, bridge, etc.) and your good.

Drawbacks of this setup are:

1: Occasionally, rarely, the game will crash if you attempt to place the blue portal. It's only happned twice, I have no idea what triggers it. I think parenting things to portals is a bit buggy.

2: If you make a wall/floor infinite loop (they are right next to each other, one on the wall one on the floor) and stick ANY func_physbox inside it will crash the game. This is totally out of the blue as I have no idea why it rejects them. one of my old maps leads me to believe they CANNOT go through portals, as when the ceiling fell into one (func_physboxes) they stopped on the portal like it was not there. Forcing it results in a crash.

Someone really should go through and make a list of what can go into a portal and what cannot. As in, what entities?

Func_Physbox apparently cannot.

[omnicoder]

func_physboxes go through portals fine.
And you've really really overcomplicated the things going through portals system. It's much easier to make a more flexible one without all sorts of doors and things.

[Groxkiller585]

func_physboxes go through portals fine.
And you've really really overcomplicated the things going through portals system. It's much easier to make a more flexible one without all sorts of doors and things.

How then? This one is the most flexible to me. The only thing I added was a door.

Then again I tend to overcomplicate problems to get a working solution.

Odd 'cus when one of them parented to a turret and they go through a portal, it crashes.

[omnicoder]

See these vmfs (not made by me)

[Groxkiller585]

See these vmfs (not made by me)

I have those. I'll take another look at them...

EDIT: That's just it, he uses func_portaldetector. However you'd need to use that on EVERY SURFACE you can portal.

My method uses only two entities to get the same effect:

The Portal Door and the Trigger. The trigger is ONLY in the place where the static Portal is. Since the player can move this portal (it only STARTS static), I used a trigger instead of a detector because it has a "onendtouch" output to kill any entities going "through" the portal. However upon looking at his for the laser I found out why my turrets are crashing- one of the flags were on when they should have been off.

[Fearlezz]

Ive decided to use my livestreaming channel to show you some mapping done for ep2.

If youve missed it live, you can always select it and play it again.
http://livestre.am/3tQ6

[Fearlezz]

Ah there we go

[Generalvivi]

looking cool man, do you need any extra playtesters this time around?

[omnicoder]

Gonna use HDR this time?

[Fearlezz]

Yes Ill use HDR.

And vivi, if you'd like to test, add me on steam

[Groxkiller585]

what's the purple stuff?