How To Place Portals Right The First Time (OP Outdated - See Replies)

If you have opened some portals you may have noticed they don’t always orient the way you would have wanted them to and trying to change this can be very costly and frustrating (at least it was for me)

Anyway i decided to take a bullet for the team and work out how to get the portal you want the first time! (750 Oort Shards later)

///////////Edit: I’ll make a Video Detailing this when i get some recording time =)//////////

A video focused on Portal orientation:

By popular demand I made a video covering the basics of navigation, warps, and portals

Here we go…

Awesome Cheat Sheet By @jasoncfinley

Think about three factors:

  1. What direction do you want to enter?
  2. What direction do you want to exit?
  3. What direction will you need to open the portal from?

Here’s all the ways you can answer those questions:
Enter Exit Open
North North North
South South North
North South South
South North South
West West West
East East West
West East East
East West East
East North East
West South East
East South West
West North West
North West North
South East North
South West South
North East South

Terms:
Destination / Destination Portal: The portal/side you take the token from

Opening / Opening Portal: The portal/side you fuel and open from

HxW: Height by Width… 2x1 portal - 2 blocks tall and 1 block wide

All Portal Blocks Are Placed On the Ground
(Although I’m about 95% sure that placement beyond shape does not matter)

2x1 Portals
When Dealing with 2x1 Portals the destination block placement does not matter!
They will always be aligned to North / South

(please prove me wrong here)

I’ve tried placing the destination blocks facing West/East, North/South, on the ground, walls, and ceiling… everytime the destination was aliened North/South

The orientation of 2x1 Portals Depends on your orientation when opening the portal
(not 100% sure if this is determined when clicking “Open” or when you break it open with a tool)

Aligned Cardinal Directions 1 / Opening while Facing North
Produces a Portal that faces the Player North when entered from the North (and South when entered from the South)

Red Arrows: Entering Orientation
Green Arrows: Exiting Orientation

Counter Aligned Cardinal Directions 1 / Opening while Facing South
Produces a Portal that faces the Player South when entered from the North (and North when entered from the South)

Red Arrows: Entering Orientation
Green Arrows: Exiting Orientation

Miss-matched Cardinal Directions 1 / Opening while Facing East
Produces a Portal that faces the Player North when entered from the East (and South when entered from the West)

Red Arrows: Entering Orientation
Green Arrows: Exiting Orientation

Miss-matched Cardinal Directions 2 / Opening while Facing West
Produces a Portal that faces the Player North when entered from the West (and South when entered from the East)

Red Arrows: Entering Orientation
Green Arrows: Exiting Orientation

2x2+ Since these portals can be pre-shaped we now can have portals aligned W/E on both sides!

//////////////All of these assume that the Wide Part of the Destination is Facing West/East///////////

Aligned Cardinal Directions 2 / Opening while Facing West
Produces a Portal that faces the Player West when entered from the West (and East when entered from the East)

Red Arrows: Entering Orientation
Green Arrows: Exiting Orientation

Counter Aligned Cardinal Directions 2 / Opening while Facing East
Produces a Portal that faces the Player East when entered from the West (and West when entered from the East)

Red Arrows: Entering Orientation
Green Arrows: Exiting Orientation

Miss-matched Cardinal Directions 3 / Opening while Facing South
Produces a Portal that faces the Player West when entered from the South (and East when entered from the North)

Red Arrows: Entering Orientation
Green Arrows: Exiting Orientation

Miss-matched Cardinal Directions 4 / Opening while Facing North
Produces a Portal that faces the Player West when entered from the North (and East when entered from the South)

Red Arrows: Entering Orientation
Green Arrows: Exiting Orientation

19 Likes

I just seen this post. Great job explaining in detail how to build a portal! Thanks

Let’s add a ‘flip portal direction’ button to the portal/warp gui :wink:

10 Likes

Great idea!

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Could also add a rotate action to the chisel much like you can use it to rotate crafting tables ^^

Haha brilliant post @Jiivita , thank you. It would seem that the level of detail you’ve gone into to show just how cumbersome this is means @lucadeltodecso will be updating us with a nice simple method instead :grin:

But you got us there and i appreciate the effort and roadrunners that gave their lives for the cause!

I once put an idea into the forum about horizontally aligned portals.
You could put them on the ground or into the sky and jump straight in.
So you put the destination portal straight into midair and after jumping through a portal,
you’re free falling for a few seconds and open for example a parachute or sth. higher advanced :smiley:

lol yes a:

Would have saved much headache and a small mountain of Oort Shards =P

horizontal portals already work (mostly, some rendering bugs may apply)

1 Like

This sounds interesting but i could see issues of falling back in the portal if you try to jump up into it… and it would complicate the areas around such portals since you would need a place to land on both ends AND a place to jump in from above to enter on both ends… wouldn’t be cool to go through a portal just to see that its quite difficult to get back through it.

i guess there could be some code to force the “exit” to always drop the player towards the ground… rather than exiting above the portal just to fall back into it. But honestly i would rather the devs work on other game enriching areas than over complicating portals =/

Maybe a post launch update???

2 Likes

as in they are in the live build? The thought never occurred to try one o.O lol

OOooooooMYYyyyyYYY GOoOoOOOoRRRRRRD :heart_eyes:

It’s a good idea. Maybe, it makes things a little more “complicated”, but it would enrich the game pleasantly. Isn’t it for creativity and trying out things? I won’t bug to implement this idea for 1.0 but it’d be a shame if not tried out.

Does this mean you could make a never ending fall?

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Make two horizontal portals like in Portal. Try it. Try to get over 100000 fall damage. Screenshot it and be the legend.

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It could also mean, a trapped access to a new world. One way. Falling down through a portal from the sky with no way back, unless you finally craft a portal. Theoretically. One could also set up a collumn back to the portal, unless it is too high in the air.
It would be for advanced players. But I also believe it doesn’t get along with current Sanctum restore points, where you can warp back to a saved position.

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Thank you for the shout out!!

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Lol thank you for condensing the information down into a supper usable form!

As you can see, I tend to obsess over details and over explain things… which sadly can interfere with the intened message o.O

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@Jiivita the OP is a great explanation of how portals work and how you came to your conclusions, I’m glad you took the time to work it out and write it up :slight_smile:

5 Likes

I’m trying to get a portal to Therka going and it’s not working–I don’t see the issues addressed here (or I don’t know enough to recognize the answer), so here goes:

The token says 2.x 3 portal. That’s either 2h x 3w or 3h x 2w.

3h x 2w – not the right size for the Solum -> Therka distance.

2h x 3w – portal shapes incompatible.

If there just isn’t enough juice to make the trip, that’s not showing up as the complaint.

What should I be doing to get this to work?

2 Likes