So no matter how hackneyed this whole "portal" idea is on this forum I felt like I'd give it a try (concept wise). After examining Lord Tim's Enduratism I had an idea, what if you could x-loop a smaller 3rd (it used to say 3d) backround so that when you reach teh end of it you come out where it started? You would then be able to make "portal zones" that you could optionally go into throughout your battles on your map.

Except that you can only x-loop the entire map. Not only one part of it.

The only way I can see a portal working is through code.

Here are my ideas.

Shooting

Needs:
-A gun hurr
-A portal gib that is compatible with the following ideas:
-The ball needs to know which way its going in relation to the world [ex North South, or +X -X or whatever X,Y North and South is]
-The Ball needs to know either the angle of the surface it hit, or the general opposite angle it was fired [So if it's fired left, the portal spawns facing and angled in relation to the right.]

The Portal

The portal needs the following:
-A method of creating an actor and it's equipment from an ID variable
-A method of assigning ID's to an actor, and include his health, weapons, ect.
-A method of 'remembering' ID's and transferring them to the exit portal.


Implementation

The Actor walks up to Portal A

Portal A assigns it the variable 13, and remembers that variable. It then removes the actor instantly and mess free.
Portal B then needs to Read "ID 13" and spawn the associated actor, weapons and all.

It would be glitchy, buggy, and ect., but I think just made portals.

I of course don't know how LUA works, but thats about all you need to make it I think.

I suppose you could do that with LUA if you really wanted to, but it'd be a whole lot simpler to just go object.moveto(location). Surely it will have something like that. But alas. Pure speculation. This thread remains open for further discussion.

Well, Garry's Mod (which uses lua) has a working portal gun mod, you can see through them and everything. So you could do it with Lua, fairly easily. Lots of tweaking probably.

Okay, while Lua will probably allow for the addition of portals, depending on the scale of its use, the Half Life 2 engine and the Cortex Command engine are entirely dissimilar and probably should not be compared like this.

"new concept" don't make me laugh, I have been concepting this since before the game "portal" even came out.

I already have a working gun, it's just the portals that don't work, because THEY CAN'T as of yet.

I know a way that could work for stationary pre-placed/bunker module portals, it may work but only for one actor type, so if you go in with a crobo, out will come something different.

(yes I know concepting isn't a real word)

edit also I have posted this "lua" code on the devlog:


edit2: yeah if you haven't checked there is some snippets of actual usable lua codes in action here: http://www.datarealms.com/devlog/cortex ... a-console/

Not to mention,


This should be a pretty fun new gameplay mechanic.

Portals sticking to walls at the right angle and velocity angle alteration will be the harder parts of making a portal gun.

Oh, and you'll need to have a small delay before you can jump out of a portal and back into it, or you'll go in a loop.

I will work non-stop on day one of release to update my portal gun (all sprites and code by me), it has been around since build 17 I think, and it will also have the gravity thing as well . since it is already done I will just need to implement the lua. yay. this is not advertising, the mod has not been released, I was waiting for this build... and wishing deeply that portals will be possible, seems my wish has come true... ownage... coincidence?

I imagine about ten portal guns coming out within the first two weeks.

I think people are too obsessed with portals.
They'll arrive and people will say "Oh. Portals. Cool." and that will be it.
They don't give much that is useful and as soon as they're done people will lose interest.

Once we get portals, someone should make a custom portal campaign. Like with GLaDOS and stuff.

Although it is kinda hypocritical of me to say this, I do agree with metal chao. The only dope nasty situation i could envision for them would be portal "squads" where a guy digs into ur base and creates a portal into it and you have to fortify your defenses specificallly in that area to block troop advancement.

That sure would be dope nasty, wutangfan.

Anyways.

I think portals, as in true, functional, aesthetic portals a la Portal from Valve are going to be harder than anticipated.

Now a teleporter, that's easy. But, a 2d slice that will align with surfaces it's projected on to, AND transfer velocity correctly? Much harder than a basic teleporter.

I think transferring velocity will be ok, but your right... in 3d the surfaces have a set rotation that can be called upon, but in CC the surfaces don't have a rotation... they are just a load of material pixels created via a MAT file.

edit: The only way I can think of is having 2 points at each end of the object and on each side of the object, if one point is touching a material then rotate the object until the other corresponding point is touching... which I don't think is possible.

Yeah.

I think you could do it if you restricted it down to three basic portal shapes: flat horizontal, flat vertical, and 45 degree angles.

Then if you checked the pixels around where the projectile from the portal gun struck, you can determine whether they're straight, if there's anything in between them, and what "portal" to use. By defining all that, the velocity changes are all fairly straightforward.