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Quasar

Linked Portals in Action

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CodeImp said:

AHA! So it is ZDoom's idea! Eternity is just the first sourceport that makes a really flexible implementation ;) I wonder how long it will take before it is actually complete, including proper line of sight through portals, is there an ETA?


AHA No. Portals like this have been my idea since my Legacy coding days before Zdoom had the build renderer in it or mirrors or skyboxes. I attempted to implement the idea several times in Legacy as a way to avoid using 3D Floors for large scale 3d geometry however, the feature mostly resulted in crashes... so the idea was scrapped until I joined Team Eternity and tried my hand at the idea again.

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Yea but I had the idea to make Doom years before Carmack did, I just didn't do it, now praise me instead heh :P

Do you have an ETA for these portals?

Quasar said:

Also please keep in mind that if ZDoom and its derivatives want to implement this, they're going to need to do it from scratch. We've not given permission for any EE code to be used under BSD license. And I'm really looking at the multiplayer ports that are closed-source when I say this, as they could take whatever they wanted and no one would be able to verify where it came from. If linked portals popped up in such a port in short order, I would be highly suspicious. It has taken a couple of years to get them to the point they are now at, including all the work on basic non-linked portals that has to be done first.

Oh dear, licensing dramas again. Last time that happend someone ran off crying and came back later with the sourcecode (I'm still wondering if I would get the same executable if I'd compile it, or if compiling is possible at all :P)

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CodeImp said:

Yea but I had the idea to make Doom years before Carmack did, I just didn't do it, now praise me instead heh :P


uhh...

SoM said:

I attempted to implement the idea several times in Legacy as a way to avoid using 3D Floors for large scale 3d geometry however, the feature mostly resulted in crashes


sounds like a bit more than just the idea to me. :p

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Oh get it, its a joke. Stop trying to care whos idea it is. More import is when its done, because these are good and I'd like to see some good mappers using this!

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speaking of mappers and getting this... how did esselfortium get it? this is the coolest source port so far, linked portals just kick ass. best DM maps ever are going to come to doom. will slopes be implemented at all to this (just curious)?

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Butts said:

speaking of mappers and getting this... how did esselfortium get it? this is the coolest source port so far, linked portals just kick ass. best DM maps ever are going to come to doom. will slopes be implemented at all to this (just curious)?


In #zdoom a while back, I asked SoM if he could send me a test build of Eternity with linked portals. Now, though, you can easily get the latest SVN, pre-built for Windows, here: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=211429&package_id=254153

If you want to try mapping with linked portals, keeping in mind that they're still not finished and there are some major issues still needing to be worked out, check out these links:

Zarkyb's tutorial on using linked portals can be found on the Eternity wiki: http://eternity.youfailit.net
Here's SoM's test map: http://sl4.startan3.com/wasd/ptest2.wad
Here's my impossible map from the video: http://sl4.startan3.com/wasd/portals.wad
Here's my work-in-progress remake of Quake DM4, and the accompanying texture wad: http://sl4.startan3.com/wasd/spacedm6/

As for slopes, they've been requested and turned down a billion times, but Quasar and SoM have recently been thinking of some ways to do them. I'm not saying there will be slopes, since it's up to them in the end, but maybe someday. :P

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Well, seeing this is new, I'm going to do all I can to mess with these new fangled portal things.

I'll post up a map when/if I have something fun and enjoyable :D
P.S. Is there a DoomBuider config for this or do I have to guess my way through?

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Edward850 said:

Well, seeing this is new, I'm going to do all I can to mess with these new fangled portal things.

I'll post up a map when I have something fun and enjoyable :D
P.S. Is there a DoomBuider config for this or do I have to guess my way through?

There's a download link on the "Linked portals tutorial" page of the Eternity wiki, which I linked to in the post right above yours.

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Strange, I can only find the updated slade config. O well, It's not that important.

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Nice. Very, very nice.

However, am I the only one who's getting a weird 'bouncy bouncy' effect when climbing up the stairs to the chaingunner's level in Esselfortium's test map (portals.wad)?

Oh and as long as I'm having a whinge someone should update the Wiki tutorial to reflect the fact that 'Monsters have Infinite Height' is no longer an option in the compatibility menu. Someone - hypothetically - might spend a while piddling about thinking he (or she, perhaps, since this is purely hypothetical, like I said) was looking in the wrong menu. Or something. Hypothetically.

Now I'm off to start a new map I'll never quite finish.

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Lance MDR Rocket said:

However, am I the only one who's getting a weird 'bouncy bouncy' effect when climbing up the stairs to the chaingunner's level in Esselfortium's test map (portals.wad)?

No, you're not, it's a known problem but SoM should get around to fixing it some time. Linked portals are a work-in-progress feature.

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Lance MDR Rocket said:

Oh and as long as I'm having a whinge someone should update the Wiki tutorial to reflect the fact that 'Monsters have Infinite Height' is no longer an option in the compatibility menu. Someone - hypothetically - might spend a while piddling about thinking he (or she, perhaps, since this is purely hypothetical, like I said) was looking in the wrong menu. Or something. Hypothetically.

That option has been renamed to "Disable 3D object clipping" to more accurately describe what it does (it doesn't just affect monsters, and it doesn't just affect the height of things).

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Lance MDR Rocket said:

However, am I the only one who's getting a weird 'bouncy bouncy' effect when climbing up the stairs to the chaingunner's level in Esselfortium's test map (portals.wad)?

Heh, the chaingunner is in SoM's map (ptest2), not mine.

But yeah, that's a known issue. You get portal'd up to the upper area, but then gravity brings you down into the lower area again, but you get instantly portal'd back up to the top area since your upper body is there. Once the code for being in between two portals is done, that bug will be no more.

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When the linked portals are finished, I'm probably going to make a Doom 2 city style level with lots of tower buildings.

I plan to divide the outside into several 128-tall parts, each linked with each other by horizontal portals. Similar horizontal portals will be inside the buildings, in the stairwells.

But how will I be able to include elevators? Can elevators or any such movers go through linked portals, or are there tricks to simulate that? Can portals be activated and deactivated by scripts, so as to transform the visible levels above into a lowering ceiling, for descending, or to transform what's below into a raising floor, for ascending?

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printz said:

But how will I be able to include elevators? Can elevators or any such movers go through linked portals, or are there tricks to simulate that? Can portals be activated and deactivated by scripts, so as to transform the visible levels above into a lowering ceiling, for descending, or to transform what's below into a raising floor, for ascending?

Movable floors' passage through linked portals was in progress last I checked. I saw a screenshot, but I eventually discovered SoM lied to me ;~(

Still, it's an intended feature.

I would like the idea of being able to activate a portal at a certain point in a map - i.e. a switch-based solid-floor trapdoor "opening" into an underground room by having the floor lower into a portal similar to how solid pathways can be set to lower "into" liquid by changing to the next matching floor texture.

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It works now, except possibly for smooth transition -- you can ride lifts up through portals, for example, but as you cross the plane it gets a little jerky. I imagine that will be fixed by the work that is ongoing right now, however.

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I tried making a vertical chain of portalled sectors, but Eternity couldn't render the portal beyond the portal. It showed HOM.

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Are you sure you set up the portal and anchor lines correctly, and set the correct floor/ceiling heights? Portals within portals are definitely doable.

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Sounds more like an old engine. I set up multiple tests to that effect when portals were fresh and portals in portals always HOMed out on me. I heard they were fixed a while ago but I never did test it again. Be sure you're testing with the latest SVN build.

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Edward850 said:

Well, seeing this is new, I'm going to do all I can to mess with these new fangled portal things.

I'll post up a map when/if I have something fun and enjoyable :D

Ladies, gentleman and esselfortium.
I have just made an example wad. 2 hours work with trial and error with these dam portals, but I finally got something to work.

Nothing detailed or confusing. I may go ahead with my idea of making a proper playable wad with portals later on.
http://edward850.serveftp.com:8080/users/Edward850/edportalex.zip

Don't worry, I have cared about detail. No eye bleeds here.

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esselfortium said:

Here's my impossible map from the video: http://sl4.startan3.com/wasd/portals.wad

Here's something fun you can do on this map (at least as of the current version of Eternity)

1. From the start, walk straight ahead until you're standing right on the boundary between two portals (use the automap to tell when you're there.)
2. Fire a rocket straight forwards.
3. Wait at the rocket travels...
4. Rocket telefrags you.

If you get lucky, the telefrag might throw you to a point where the after-death view tracking shows the rocket whizzing by over and over.

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I tried using those portals on polyobject's walls. To bad, the connected distance is static. It would have made it possible to put just anything "inside" the polyobject. Any chance moving portals become possible in the next version?

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LogicDeLuxe said:

Any chance moving portals become possible in the next version?

Not even Portal (you know, that game without cake) has those.

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For linked portals, probably never. Among other things, in most cases I'd imagine it'd probably break the consistency-checks (i.e. the portal lines all physically matching up with the anchors in any connected areas) that are done when a level is loaded, and generally confuse the hell out of systems that are made possible by only having to do the setup once. :P

I have asked SoM in the past about the possibility of moving anchored portals (the render-only, non-interactive kind), though. Of course it wouldn't come close to the insane power of moving linked portals, but it'd be a whole lot more realistic a feature to expect. Of course I don't know all the technical specifics, but I figure that if skybox cameras can move already, then moving anchored portals would be pretty similar, with the addition of factoring in the player's position rather than only their facing angle in the portal camera's rendering.

With that said, though, while moving anchored portals would be pretty awesome themselves I don't think they're in the current plans. Maybe someday? It'd be nice but who knows :P

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