Portals and Quake
7 comments
·January 10, 2025paulryanrogers
phire
No. Prey was one of the first games to hype portals and non-euclidean maps for gameplay.
Portals for rendering date back to the dawn of 3d graphics and many early FPS engines used the concept.
But these portals were only there as a rendering optimisation. While you could abuse them to make non-euclidean maps, the tools were intended to make proper maps, and the portals would be invisible to players.
to11mtm
I think Build used some form of portals as well... primarily for water/underwater transitions, but there was at least one level in Duke3d that used it for some non-euclidian geometry.
d3VwsX
Pretty sure water was just a teleporter? You may be thinking about the mirror effect? I think that was a kind of a portal effect. You had to make a large empty section behind each mirror that was used by the engine to render a mirrored copy of things in front of the mirror.
You could make some weird impossible geometries by just superimposing sections. Two sections could occupy the exact same coordinates, but movement and rendering were done across edges shared by sections and did not care about if there was some other section in the same space. As long as there was never a way to see those sections at the same time.
CyberDildonics
Pretty sure water was just a teleporter? You may be thinking about the mirror effect?
That's what they just said? They didn't mention the mirror effect? The mirror effect was done with duplicate geometry? It occupied the overlapping space of what was behind it? The build engine didn't have vertical levels? It was all done with overlapping geometry?
smitelli
E2L11 “Lunatic Fringe.” The map has an outer ring containing 720 degrees of hallway. Surprisingly disorienting even when you know that’s what’s going on.
null
Interesting. I recall Prey being the first game to hype portals for rendering, though I think theirs may have been for drawing not just culling? Does anyone know how it worked?
Dark Forces apparently also used portals for culling, IIRC.