[IDEA] PortalGun mod

[Osiris]

For those of you who have played VALVe's new game, Portal, you know the greatness of bending physics and cheating space to solve puzzles. I am currently am thinking/researching a mod that will be somewhat of a conversion for DX to this end. A fully functional portalgun (minus the ability to see thru the portal, as i don't believe the Unreal engine can handle/support this), included with puzzlemaps to play in. I am currently hoping to develop both SP and MP versions. Please discuss and mention ideas in this thread.

I will require help from mappers and possibly support from other coders, and a full PortalGun model will be needed. Please help if you can.

My main thread will be located on my forums, here.

[~[R2K]D-BLOCK~]

Cant wait for it.

[Tonnochi]

Yes, agreed.

[Kaiden]

Hm, like Allan's TeleportRifle?

[Osiris]

OMG no. this will be way more complex. have you ever played Portal?

[Kaiden]

Only the odd Flash version someone posted here lol.

[Osiris]

ahh. that would explain it. think of the flash one, only in 3d. preserve velocity while changing direction etc.

[Osiris]

AH! arlready ran into a problem. I need to modify the players velocity based on the perpendicular of the Face the portal is on. Heres a pix.

[Alex]

A portal gun was already made. You're too late. Try to catch up with all latest developments, before making something others already made.

[Osiris]

really? please post a link so i may see it.

[Survive.]

Yey, thanks. At last, I have requested this a few times but no people accepted

=D

[Tonnochi]

We need links to a portal.

[Alex]

Hmm... not sure where to find it. I'm sure there was a portalgun released before... It might even be by you? xD

[Osiris]

That one WAS by me. But served a different purpose and even had a fatal bug: it crashed servers, with a bug sourced from the engine i believe. That code will not be used here, and the design of this version shal be fairly different. the visual aspect of the portals shall be along a plane, ie a wall instead of a point in space, liked the Ringed entrances to the other mod. Much as like the game portal. I have most of the code done, with the exception of changing the velocity of the player as mentioned above. All thats left is that one coding part, plus somehow ignoring the players keybinds and remapping the mousebuttons, then the visuals.

[Osiris]

For those that are here, and care, Alpha testing of the Gun is now going down in my Entitys Lair Server. Graphics are not done, but the main coding of the gun is. Come and join!

Edit: well thats over, and a few bugs were spotted, but things look good. Thanks to all who came to test with a good heart.

Bugs:
-View reset (due to being based on portals rotation)
-Reload-Scope bug-when pressing reload and scope, the players view is locked into scope mode.
-Cleanup from dead players- Placemarker Gfx left behind, not deleted.
-Laggy transition (mentioned by only a few)
-Telefrag

i can't remember any more, but Allan or any others that tested saw others, please note them here.

[Tonnochi]

You should keep the original sound for the portal gun.

[Allan]

Ah, I remember one:

- Due to using Touch for the portal activation, shooting a portal directly underneath yourself whilst standing still needs you to either move off it, then back on it, or jump on it to activate it for the player.

Not sure how you could fix this mind you, but I think there is a check for if two objects are colliding somewhere. If you use that, and firing the gun makes the player and the portal collide, you can get the gun to call Touch on the portal when it's shooting.

EG:

Code: Select all

if(whatever the check for 2 objects colliding is (Check the player and the latest moved portal)==true)
{
    portalvariable.Touch(playervariable);
}

Naturally, replace the variable/callback names with what you need.

[~ô¿ô~Nobody~]

There's a new version of your portal gun?

[Osiris]

Yup, importing the sounds was one thing already on the to-do list.
Allan, what i will do is when the portal is made, do a radius actors searching if Owner is in range. if so, call touch.
Nobody! long time no see! This mod is not entirely related to my old version. That was bugged, and also the mechanics differed slightly. IE you could not mount on wall and create a loop from wall to floor with sideways velocity.This is more geared to mimic Portal, includijng puzzlemaps, and the portalgun will not be the only object in the mod. I will create EnergyBalls, as well as Sockets, Buttons, Maybe even the companion Cube! The thing is i will need a team of mappers and modellers, as well as help from coders when i get stuck. Nice to see you again bud!

[Baleout]

If you want puzzlemaps etc you will need to create a texture or something else that doesn't allow a portal to be placed on it.

[Osiris]

I had that in mind as well.

[Osiris]

Remembered another one. Non-player actors dont go through.

Current list is:
-Nonplayer actors not transported (fixed - only tracers will not go through)
-View reset (due to being based on portals rotation)
---This is a problem as when the portal is tilted, i want the view along the hitnormal, losing Z, but when on the ground, i want to leave the view alone. Not too sure how to do, as i can't seem to get an IF working in reguards to HitNormal.
-Reload-Scope bug-when pressing reload and scope, the players view is locked into scope mode. (fixed)
-Cleanup from dead/dc'd players- Placemarker Gfx left behind, not deleted.
-Laggy transition (mentioned by only a few)
-Telefrag (fixed)
- Due to using Touch for the portal activation, shooting a portal directly underneath yourself whilst standing still needs you to either move off it, then back on it, or jump on it to activate it for the player. (Fixed)
-Portal doesn't attach to movers.

Also trimmed down filesize by using pcx format instead of bmp lol.

[Osiris]

:S

Code: Select all

Warning: Other object in slot
Warning: This is: PortalGun DXMP_Area51Bunker.PortalGun1
Warning: Other is: Class Engine.NetPendingLevel
Critical: appError called:
Critical: Assertion failed: LinkedObjects[k]->IsValid() [File:D:\prj\Clean\Core\Src\UnClass.cpp] [Line: 677]
Critical: Windows GetLastError: The operation completed successfully. (0)
Exit: Executing UObject::StaticShutdownAfterError
Critical: UStruct::CleanupDestroyed
Critical: (Class DXMTL152b1.MTLNSF)
Critical: CleanupRefs
Critical: ULevel::CleanupDestroyed
Critical: ULevel::Tick
Critical: (NetMode=1)
Critical: TickLevel
Critical: UGameEngine::Tick
Critical: XGameEngineExt::Tick
Critical: UpdateWorld
Critical: MainLoop

Any idea WTF this means?
I keep GPFing the server with random errors. IE no two are the same.

One guy (i think he was the one who created the crash) had created a portal on the sky (yellow i think) and one on ground then jumped through. I believe it was him because i picked up the first portal, and the third hadn't picked one up. as the portalgun is #1, i think it was the guy that jumped through.

And sorry for the triple post, but they are seperate ideas.

[Kaiden]

Wow an error message that explains itself haha:

Warning: Other object in slot
Warning: This is: PortalGun DXMP_Area51Bunker.PortalGun1
Warning: Other is: Class Engine.NetPendingLevel

Still dunno what that means though.

Idea sounds good!

[Alex]

That sucks. A native GPF. You fucked something up badly. Good luck finding out what you did wrong

[Osiris]

i got similar problems with the portal mod. I THOUGHT it was native. Any ideas ppl?

[Alex]

It is native. And you broke a 'rule'. You crashed because of an assertion. An assert is like this:

Code: Select all

assert(1 == 1);

Don't know if the statement should be true or false to make it crash, as I almost never use assert.
But either way, inside the assert there is an statement, and if either true or false comes out, it crashes/does nothing.

[Osiris]

so the magical line would be here

Code: Select all

Critical: Assertion failed: LinkedObjects[k]->IsValid() [File:D:\prj\Clean\Core\Src\UnClass.cpp] [Line: 677]

Care to look at the code? My mods shall always be opensource, but ill post it buggy-tagged

[Alex]

Line 677 is inside UnClass.cpp, a native source. You cannot look at it, thus you cannot know what is wrong.

[Osiris]

yes but you can take a look at my code and maybe find a way around it? this came up in my other portal mod too..