Discouragement Field

The Discouragement Field or Laser Field is a special energy field in Portal 2 which blocks only the player (instantly killing them), not other objects. It can be considered as the counterpart to the Emancipation Grid.

Manual Creation

For this tutorial we're going to create a Laser Field with a width of 128 units. Select the tools/toolsnodraw texture and create a 128w 1l 128h block brush.

Now click Shift + A to open the Texture Application Tool, select the front and the back face of the brush, apply the effects/laserplane texture and click "Fit".

Click for preview.

Note:I recommend that, after you hit "Fit", you also align it to the top, as well as adding 256 to the 'Y' axis. This will add to the visual effect by removing the annoying yet very common gap in the middle part of the field.

Next, tie the brush to an entity by clicking the toEntity button on the lower right side of the Hammer Interface and make it a func_brush with the following settings:

Property Name	Value
Name	deathfield1_brush
Render FX	Constant Glow
Solidity	Never Solid

Now, we want the Laser Field to kill the player when they try to pass through it. For this, create a 128w 2l 128h block brush that overlaps the first brush you made, apply the tools/toolstrigger texture to every face and make it a trigger_hurt with these settings:

Property Name	Value
Name	deathfield1_trigger
Damage	1000
Damage Cap	1000
Damage Type	ENERGYBEAM

And of course, make sure the Clients flag is enabled, otherwise, it won't work.

To make it look like the lasers aren't just coming out of nowhere, create two prop_static entities. One to the left and one to the right of the Death Field brush. Select the model models/props/fizzler.mdl and set the skin to "2".

Click for preview.

Now create an ambient_generic and place it roughly in the middle of the brush. Use the following settings:

Property Name	Value
Name	deathfield1_sound
Sound Name	LaserGreen.BeamLoop
Volume	4
SourceEntityName	deathfield1_brush

The flags Start silent and Is NOT looped must be disabled!

Alright, the Laser Field itself is ready to be used in-game now, but for sure you want to use the possibility of turning it on and off in your map. For this example we will use a prop_floor_button. Name it something like "button" and create the outputs:

	My Output	Target Entity	Target Input	Parameter	Delay	Only Once
	OnPressed	deathfield1_brush	Disable		0.00	No
	OnPressed	deathfield1_trigger	Disable		0.00	No
	OnPressed	deathfield1_sound	StopSound		0.00	No
	OnPressed	deathfield1_light	TurnOff		0.00	No
	OnUnPressed	deathfield1_brush	Enable		0.00	No
	OnUnPressed	deathfield1_trigger	Enable		0.00	No
	OnUnPressed	deathfield1_sound	PlaySound		0.00	No
	OnUnPressed	deathfield1_light	TurnOn		0.00	No

Congratulations! You have created a fully functional Laser Field for use in your map!