Portal¶

Portal nodes are used to enable visibility between Rooms.

Description¶

Portals are a special type of MeshInstance that allow the portal culling system to 'see' from one room to the next. They often correspond to doors and windows in level geometry. By only allowing Cameras to see through portals, this allows the system to cull out all the objects in rooms that cannot be seen through portals. This is a form of occlusion culling, and can greatly increase performance.

There are some limitations to the form of portals:

They must be single sided convex polygons, and usually you would orientate their front faces outward from the Room they are placed in. The vertices should be positioned on a single plane (although their positioning does not have to be perfect).

There is no need to place an opposite portal in an adjacent room, links are made two-way automatically.

Properties¶

bool	include_in_bound	`false`
NodePath	linked_room	`NodePath("")`
PoolVector2Array	points	`PoolVector2Array( 1, -1, 1, 1, -1, 1, -1, -1 )`
bool	portal_active	`true`
float	portal_margin	`1.0`
bool	two_way	`true`
bool	use_default_margin	`true`

Methods¶

void	set_point ( int index, Vector2 position )

Property Descriptions¶

bool include_in_bound = false

void set_include_in_bound ( bool value )
bool get_include_in_bound ( )

When a manual bound has not been explicitly specified for a Room, the convex hull bound will be estimated from the geometry of the objects within the room. This setting determines whether the portal geometry is included in this estimate of the room bound.

NodePath linked_room = NodePath("")

void set_linked_room ( NodePath value )
NodePath get_linked_room ( )

This is a shortcut for setting the linked Room in the name of the Portal (the name is used during conversion).

PoolVector2Array points = PoolVector2Array( 1, -1, 1, 1, -1, 1, -1, -1 )

void set_points ( PoolVector2Array value )
PoolVector2Array get_points ( )

The points defining the shape of the Portal polygon (which should be convex).

These are defined in 2D, with 0,0 being the origin of the Portal node's Spatial.global_transform.

Note: These raw points are sanitized for winding order internally.

bool portal_active = true

void set_portal_active ( bool value )
bool get_portal_active ( )

Visibility through Portals can be turned on and off at runtime - this is useful for having closable doors.

float portal_margin = 1.0

void set_portal_margin ( float value )
float get_portal_margin ( )

Some objects are so big that they may be present in more than one Room ('sprawling'). As we often don't want objects that *just* breach the edges to be assigned to neighbouring rooms, you can assign an extra margin through the Portal to allow objects to breach without sprawling.

bool two_way = true

void set_two_way ( bool value )
bool is_two_way ( )

Portals default to being two way - see through in both directions, however you can make them one way, visible from the source room only.

bool use_default_margin = true

void set_use_default_margin ( bool value )
bool get_use_default_margin ( )

In most cases you will want to use the default Portal margin in your portals (this is set in the RoomManager).

If you want to override this default, set this value to false, and the local portal_margin will take effect.

Method Descriptions¶

void set_point ( int index, Vector2 position )

Sets individual points. Primarily for use by the editor.

Note: This function will not resize the point array. Set points to set the number of points.