[SOLVED] Areaportals Are Messed Up

shiftey · Post by **shiftey** » Fri Oct 10, 2008 12:58 am

I've checked around and as far as I've looked I couldn't find anything that was fixing this problem I'm having. My areaportals, regardless of being an open or closed portal, don't draw whats on the other side of them until you pass through it.

I have them set up exactly the way they should be and I have no leaks in my map. I tried combinations of linked to doors, I/O'ed output from door Open/FullyClosed, and open portals. They all unveil the void until I pass through them.

Also, I'd rather not start another thread for this, my light_spots fade out in certain parts of my map. I think it might have something to do with my areaportals problem but maybe not. When the player spawns the wall in front of him is black and everything on the sides is lit, but as you approach the wall and get closer to the light, it fades on.

fug's Obsidian clips · Post by **fug4life** » Fri Oct 10, 2008 1:14 am

I'm not entirely sure but this might be a bug that was picked up with OB?

I don't really use areaportals and when I have I've had them always set to open. Sorry I know that's not much help to you.

Also double check the right faces are textured?

And as for lights sounds a bit wired?
I'd first check the order of your fall off distances if you have them set. just incase you have one value higher when it should be lower than the next.

shiftey · Post by **shiftey** » Fri Oct 10, 2008 1:27 am

Well I haven't set any fall off distances so that isn't the problem. That was the first thing I checked.

If it is an OC bug is there a way around it? I can't imagine that all of the maps on OC servers have no portals.

Hyperjag3 · Post by **Hyperjag3** » Fri Oct 10, 2008 2:23 am

Regular areaportals are really hard to use effectively in multiplayer because the server controls them, so you have to open/close them for all clients at once. They should still work though, I use one in a map I'm working on, though it's bound to a door. You might consider using areaportal_windows; they are clientside so they work individually for each player. Are the fading lights dynamic lights, or statically compiled lights?

shiftey · Post by **shiftey** » Fri Oct 10, 2008 2:31 am

The lights are static light_spots. They work fine in every room except the bathroom. I'm not even able to guess as to what could be causing it. I've never seen this happen. Certain brushes will change brightness as you change your distance from them.

TheMoon · Post by **TheMoon** » Fri Oct 10, 2008 10:55 am

That's most likely caused by assigning model textures to said brushes, and has nothing to do with the light itself. Try replacing the textures with others that don't have any "model" or "prop" in their name/path. If you really want the textures you have right now, you can also extract their vmt's out of the gcf, alter their name and change their shader to "LightMappedGeneric".

Blues · Post by **Blues** » Fri Oct 10, 2008 1:10 pm

For the areaportals: You might have an areaportal Leak. Normally that's what causes this weird behaviour of only rendering the other area after passing through. Look for something like "areaportal leak: brush 7837643 doesn't touch two areas" in your compile log.
Then you click View->Got to brush number... and put in the number you've just seen marked as leaked areaportal brush.

I'll be back home on sunday and if you don't solve it until then, i can post some more information, because there is another thing it took ages for me to find out how to fix it.

shiftey · Post by **shiftey** » Fri Oct 10, 2008 3:12 pm

Thank you. Yes areaportals are quite a pain in the ass. is it possible that its doing this because I have an object intersecting the areaportal? I will try to make a test map when I get home. At the moment it seems like a bug to me. It doesn't even produce a prt file when I compile.

fug's Obsidian clips · Post by **fug4life** » Fri Oct 10, 2008 7:51 pm

Forgot both of those things and have had both the problems/errors TheMoon and Blues mentioned before.
Sadly I deleted my offending portals that were giving of the error because I just couldn't fix. I think I only had like 6-7 and I backwards deleted and just left two main ones I knew that were working. I know a method I was not happy with

shiftey · Post by **shiftey** » Fri Oct 10, 2008 10:24 pm

TheMoon wrote:That's most likely caused by assigning model textures to said brushes, and has nothing to do with the light itself. Try replacing the textures with others that don't have any "model" or "prop" in their name/path. If you really want the textures you have right now, you can also extract their vmt's out of the gcf, alter their name and change their shader to "LightMappedGeneric".

Thank you, it worked! I was reluctant to check at first because its a blatant wall texture but for some reason its under "props_debris." Stupid vertex lit textures...

Blues · Post by **Blues** » Mon Oct 13, 2008 1:09 am

For the areaportals, normally it's not a problem if there are things intersecting them. There were doors and stuff intersecting on oc_return_c17_01 when i optimized it for DaMaN.

One problem i ran into was the following:

There was a construction like this, where i put an areaportal:

Where the green lines are func_details, the black lines world brushes and the grey ones mark the areaportal i put there.

I solved it like this:

Just turning the roof of the warehouse thing into world brushes, creating some more vis-leaves.

But as i looked at it later on i think it could also be done like this:

If you have construcions similar to this you might test one of my suggestions, maybe it will help you to get rid of the areaportal leak.

shiftey · Post by **shiftey** » Mon Oct 13, 2008 1:31 am

Thank you for the diagrams. Well I was already aware of this, because it was my first problem. Now I fixed up my areaportals, they just don't react to any I/O or connected doors. They only open when I walk through them.

shiftey · Post by **shiftey** » Sat Oct 18, 2008 2:18 am

Ok so I fixed up my areaportals by starting a new map. Something must have been bugged in the old one. Now I'm having a problem where only certain items are being drawn from within closed portals. Valve SDK says its because the areaportals on the same axis merge themselves.

EDIT: I have 5 prop models of the m4 in a row and they keep rendering on and off. Every time they do I drop to half my fps. No other time do i experience a drop in fps. What could be causing this?

fug's Obsidian clips · Post by **fug4life** » Sat Oct 18, 2008 12:04 pm

What sort of prop_ are they? Is it a dynamic and did you change the render mode by mistake or fx or something?

shiftey · Post by **shiftey** » Sat Oct 18, 2008 3:47 pm

Its a prop_physics_multiplayer set to don't move. The m4a1 model is the only ones blinking on and off. When they do my fps drops by half until the models show back up.