Camera Portals

[kaziorvb]

i see, that there were some small issues about camera portals, but i couldnt finally figure out how to make them usable for trem.

i just want to have  usable monitoring room. ive seen a camera portal tut but it was entirely for q3 - the sfx/portal_sfx shader was used there and i dunno what to do with this cuz theres no shader like that for trem (i could make one but i dunno it would even work).

i guess the structure of the mechanism is the same:
http://bubba.planetquake.gamespy.com/camera1.html

and ive seen one portal for trem (pulse map), so i would very happy if someone would tell me how to make cam portalz

ty

[Caveman]

WTF?!
3MB for such a crappy sig?

dude, you really went overboard with it.

[Survivor]

Yes, if you've seen pulse you know the impact it will have on fps. And it's exactly like q3 you just have to write your own shader or copy the one from pulse.

[St. Anger]

A room full of mirrors in Trem would be pretty cool. Just imagine all the humans shooting the walls.

[Survivor]

A room full of mirrors would produce a Hall of Mirrors effect which would suck in the extreme  :wink:

[chompers]

yeah that tutorial has everything you need except for the shader, problem is that the common portal shaders dont work in tremulous.
Here is a simpe portal shader to get you started:

Code: [Select]


textures/YOUR_MAP_NAME/portal
{
qer_editorimage textures/niveus/scratchglass.jpg
        surfaceParm noLightmap
        portal
        {
               map textures/niveus/scratchglass.jpg
                blendFunc blend
                alphaGen portal 256
                rgbGen identityLighting
                depthWrite
        }
}


[Stof]

A room full of mirrors in Trem would be pretty cool. Just imagine all the humans shooting the walls.

Mirrors? No no no! Portals should be used to make that :

[techhead]

To reduce the FPS drop, it would be nice if there could be a "Use structure" button to look through the camera. That way, we can actually shoot at stuff.

[Taiyo.uk]

The "pulse" map by Soubok has a monitoring room. There are two screens that you can see the alien and human bases through.

[techhead]

Anyone notice the huge FPS drop associated with having two BUSY portals in the same vis area?
If the aliens set up a base in there, you will die from the Acid Tubes before the frame changes.

[vcxzet]

if you played q3 you must have noticed the lack of mirrors
there was a reason ...

[chompers]

Yeah, there is definitely more ways to make bad portals than good ones. You really need to use them sparingly and put them in areas where there is little else going on. The little dead end off the human base in tremor for example would be an OK place to put one.

[techhead]

To reduce the FPS drop, it would be nice if there could be a "Use structure" button to look through the camera. That way, we can actually shoot at stuff.

What about my idea?
Has some merit?

[chompers]

The way it works now is not so far from your idea. The 'alphaGen portal' line in a shader makes it fade out over distance.

With the shader a few posts up, if you were standing 257 units away from the portal surface, it would not be functioning as a portal, but getting any closer switches it on, gradually blending into the camera view from the static texture.

So theoretically, you could have any number of portal surfaces in the one room. As long as they are at least twice the distance from each other as whatever you specify in the shader, you'll never activate more than one at a time.

If you were to set the value very low, they would switch on only when you are right beside them, much like an automatic 'use' function. You cant shoot through a portal, but you can setup a teleporter / portal camera combo which is very effective. The quake 3 map IK3DM1 does this really well.