Portal Glitch Prevention

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An example of Portal Bumping

Portal Bumping

If the player shoots a Portal at the corner of the other Portal, it is sometimes possible to "bump" the second Portal up to 32 units through walls and other objects, to get the second Portal in a place that should be impossible. This glitch works on Valve's maps. How to fix: Place func_portal_bumpers around the edges of things like cleansers, and a func_noportal_volume as well. Portal bumping on the last level of Portal. Portal bumping here allows you to really mess with the game. This is why it is so important to fix this.

Note:nubSawace is credited for spreading knowledge of this bug; his video demonstration of the bug is available [here]

Going Behind Portals

Avoid 1 unit thick walls. Players can abuse these and get behind themTemplate:How?, although it is very difficult.

Edge Hopping

This works on one of Valve's maps. Make sure your metal walls, especially if they are detailed with some blocks sticking out, cannot be traversed.

Other design considerations

The following issues are not glitches in the sense of programming errors, but if not carefully considered by the mapper, they can be abused to circumvent parts of a puzzle and complete it in unintended ways.

Seal the bottom of Goo Pits!

Seal the bottom of goo pits properly. It doesn't kill instantly. Depending on the layout of your map someone may be able to get outside of or on top of it from here, and reenter later.

Infinite Loop

Watch out if your room has a portalable surface on the floor, with another on a higher section of floor, or for portalable ceiling over portalable floor. The player can abuse these to gain momentum to perform a fling. Some players have circumvented entire challenges in seconds using fling.

Here, the player can jump from the button to the ledge, bypassing the intending solution

Jumping off switches and other things

Players can jump onto switches and railings. Ensure they cannot jump off of these to get somewhere unintended.

Portal-through-Portal AKA Portal Standing

A varation of the "peek-a-portal" technique, Portal standing lets a player use a Portal as a ledge, allowing the player to continue moving by shooting additional Portals.

Portalable hallways with triggers

When building hallways with triggers, make sure that the player can't portal past the triggers.

Trigger_Looks

Always have a backup trigger in case the trigger_look doesn't get looked at. (where applicable)

Item climbing

If your map contains physics props (such as chairs, cameras, etc), the player can collect these and climb them to get to higher areas. Not much you can do about this unless you have invisible blocking brushes to block areas the player shouldn't be able to get to yet.

Unintended Shields

Make sure that turret related areas don't have any unintended shields. If the player has access to a dead turret that could be used to shield, and circumvent part of the map (eg. getting a box) find a place to put a cleanser to kill the turret, or make the turret Fizzle out when dead.

Placing portals behind objects

This glitch shouldn't affect the gameplay itself, but will make your map look bad. It happens when a portal is placed too close to an object, a switch, for example, and the object will float on the portal. To avoid this, just make a brush 4 units tall, a little bit thicker and wider than the object that is affected from the glitch. Then, place the object on the new brush, group them, and place them where your switch/button or everything else should be. Now the glitch is fixed without any noportal/portalbumper surface.

See also

• Portal Level Creation