My area portal-ed door is causing "hall of mirrors"?

[OCD2]

 

I had a nice block of time today to work on my map project.

So I clean up a few areas, made some small changes and adjusted some textures around the map as a start, with intentions of making some larger changes soon afterward.   

But ran into a problem in an area that I did not touch today.      (As seems to be customary when I have time to work on my project!)

Now in testing the map ive found that in one C shaped corridor near a door that contains an area portal,  if you look towards that corridor, one wall is producing a hall of mirrors effect.

The strange thing about it, is if you open the area portal-ed door,  the hall of mirror effect stops while the door is open - but then returns when the door closes.

What might cause that to happen?

 

Approaching the area:

 

Opening the door with the area portal removes the "hall of mirrors":

 

The area portal door closes, and the "hall of mirrors" returns:

 

Things I did to trouble shoot:

I ran Bobztoolz, which found 4 duplicate plane brushes (not on the problematic wall).

I removed entity lights from the area.

I slammed my fist on my desk, but nothing happened.

Im stumped!

[NAB622]

Does that wall surface z-fight with any other brushes in Radiant? If it does not, I think this is a q3map2 bug. Your map is probably making a blocksize-related slice directly across that wall. To see if this is the case, open the prtview plugin and load your map's portal file up. If you see that wall running across a larger slice, then yes, that is your problem. There are two ways to fix it: either move the entire map to the side a little bit, or change the blocksize in the worldspawn.

One other thing to check, is to make sure your areaportals are done correctly. They should be textured with system/skip on all sides but one, otherwise they will create a void inside the door that might mess up the vis compile.

 

I've seen this once before, but I don't remember who posted it or where.......otherwise I would link it.

[OCD2]

3 minutes ago, NAB622 said:

Does that wall surface z-fight with any other brushes in Radiant? If it does not, I think this is a q3map2 bug. Your map is probably making a blocksize-related slice directly across that wall. To see if this is the case, open the prtview plugin and load your map's portal file up. If you see that wall running across a larger slice, then yes, that is your problem. There are two ways to fix it: either move the entire map to the side a little bit, or change the blocksize in the worldspawn.

One other thing to check, is to make sure your areaportals are done correctly. They should be textured with system/skip on all sides but one, otherwise they will create a void inside the door that might mess up the vis compile.

 

I've seen this once before, but I don't remember who posted it or where.......otherwise I would link it.

I do not see any z-fighting in the area.  (other than the areaportal flickering inside the door if you look up at it from below with hidden floor brushes)

Ive not tried anything with prtview ever, so Ill have to give that an attempt and see what I can find.

I am a newer hobbyist modder,, with lots to learn -  My area portals are strictly brushes with the area portal texture.    They were working as they should before today, but clearly one of the changes I made around the map had an impact. 

I would like to try the proper way of area portal creation you mentioned as a fix - Does it matter what side is textured with area portal?  

[NAB622]

Think of each face of an areaportal brush as sealing areas off from each other. The correct way to use an areaportal is to texture the entire brush with system/skip, and then on one face of the brush that will completely separate both areas, texture it with system/areaportal.

If you texture all sides of a brush with system/areaportal, it will create a void the size of the brush, and when the player steps inside it, all entities will disappear.

I don't know if that's related to your disappearing wall issue, but it's certainly something to try. Gotta make sure everything is right before continuing.

 

Also: I found the other thread I had mentioned. It's one of your older threads, apparently: https://jkhub.org/forums/topic/11762-strange-map-leak-on-one-wall-of-map

[OCD2]

35 minutes ago, NAB622 said:

Think of each face of an areaportal brush as sealing areas off from each other. The correct way to use an areaportal is to texture the entire brush with system/skip, and then on one face of the brush that will completely separate both areas, texture it with system/areaportal.

If you texture all sides of a brush with system/areaportal, it will create a void the size of the brush, and when the player steps inside it, all entities will disappear.

I don't know if that's related to your disappearing wall issue, but it's certainly something to try. Gotta make sure everything is right before continuing.

 

Also: I found the other thread I had mentioned. It's one of your older threads, apparently: https://jkhub.org/forums/topic/11762-strange-map-leak-on-one-wall-of-map

 

Creating the area portals out of system/skip, and then one face of the door being Area portal did the trick!

Thank you guru!