Really need help

No one is going to make your map for you, you're just embarasing youself by offering your vmf.

Areaportals are a tricky concept to get your head around but once you understand how they work you'll use them without even thinking.

They have to seal an area, much like you seal the map from the void.
They go best in doorways and windows, if you put one in a doorway, it must touch all four sides of the doorway and then you have to plug ALL other ways to get from inside the room to outside of the room. If you can find a path from one side of an area portal to the other side it will leak, so if you have one in a doorway you have to have ones in all the windows and other doors.

You're using the areaportal texture and you've made them func_areaportals right? Start simple with just one and put it in somewhere it will not leak though. if you've got a dead end corridor try it out there, although that probably wont be a good place for one later.
If you've got the problem of them all being closed, find the one that is open by running around the map (it helps if you can remember where you put them) and the one that is open is the one that is leaking.

Actually you have to make them work when you even block out your map. I wouldn't have the courage to do it afterwards.

If you can draw a line from one face of the areaportal to another without going through the areaportal, then it's not properly sealed. the effect is weird black effects by the areaportals and nonfunctional water, etc

BaNaNa - Don't feel like you are embarassing yourself. I have also posted vmf files and sometimes it's easier for somebody to take a quick peek at that and they can help you better. They probably won't DO your work for you but will offer advice. That said, Youme is a very helpful person and has helped me on a few occasions and the advice is good. But you should not feel embarrased for posting a vmf file.

You would probably do well to properly name your thread. Naming your thread "really need help" is bad etiquette and tells us nothing of what you need help with. You want to summarise your thread in the title, and although this is such a small thing it grates on the nerves of people who have to sieve through tens of threads a week entitled "hlp-plzkthx". It just makes things run more smoothly and you seem like less of another one of those "internet-noobs" that come and go with spammy threads of simple problems that can be solved just by properly taking the time (yes, this could be as much as an evening or two) to read an article, tutorial or two; rather than getting all your answers handed to you, by us, as it wastes peoples time.

It's probably just one of a few reasons why Youme sounds unimpressed and tetchy, along with the casual "here's my vmf, fix it" attitude many new comers have. Seeing a community with experienced mappers and 'trogding' it. It's taking advantage of people who do have other/better things to do with their time than labour over other people's broken work; exploiting their good nature. You have to realise most of these people such as Youme have spent months and even years reading/discussing articles, mapping theory and level designing, honing their skills privately; and are somewhat relunctant to slave for the new comers who can't be arsed to take a few hours of their own time (like they had) to figure out a problem for themselves.

We're happy to help, but we are not ammatuer mappers maintanence staff.

EDIT: Incase you take this the wrong way, this wasn't an attack on you but an explination as to the bluntness you've recieved. Because i too sighed in discontent when reading your thread title, and it's all very well telling Youme to take a chill pill; but we get this stuff daily and people get fed up of answering the same simple questions over and over.

You're almost right gratzr, its the lack of effort in the post that is most annoying. Its a classic, no information about the problem, just a vmf and plea for help.
One of the key things I'm trying to bludgen into mappers is indipendance, If you can't be indipendant then you will never make a fantastic map. You have to do lots of legwork yourself, as gratzr says, you've got to learn to fix these problems by yourself, by all means come and ask for help on a forum, thats what they are here for, but don't ask us to do the work for you.

Senario A:
You have a problem, a basic problem that isn't too hard to fix for the reasonable skilled mapper, you post your VMF and plead for help.
Someone is kind enough to download your VMF, fix the problem and re-upload it for you.
You are forever greatful and you continue mapping away.

What have you learnt? ..... Nothing, they did all the work for you, you will blunder into the same problem next time and be again, unable to fix it.

Senario B:
You have the same tricky but not impossible problem and you make a post detailing exactly what you have done, what you are unsure of, which tutorials you've used. Even posting screenshots of entity stuff if you think it needs it.
The community then pools knowledge and someone smart comes along and tells you exactly how to fix the problem, how to avoid it in future and some other tips on good mapping.

What have you learnt? Well a lot actually, you've managed to fix the problem yourself, even though you were under instruction. You will remember how to avoid it in future and if you do end up with it again you will know what to do, and if you can't remember you pop back onto the forum and dig into the archives to find the thread and re-read what you did.


Which is better?

What happened here is scenario A, partially, I've no idea if anyone downloaded your VMF and you haven't said anything about whether you fixed the problem or not, I gave you a load of information on area portals and common problems, with the hope you would come back and clarify, try out something I said and then with the new information you bring I can tell you what to do in greater detail.
But instead you just kinda left it open as to what you are doing and need help with, what are you doing? fixed the problem? still struggling? given up?.....

(Advises Youme it is spelt independent)

Areaportals are a simple concept. They divide area and hide areas that you cannot see, which means that you don't have to render that part of the map, optimising play speeds.

So, if you have three areas sealed from eachother with areaportals, and you are standing in one, and can see into a second one, but you cannot see the third one in your current view, you only have to render two areas. That means that one third of the map isn't being loaded, so you've saved that much processing needed.

Take this and apply it to a much large map with well placed areaportals, and you could save a lot of unnecessary rendering.

So, it is pretty simple. Divide your map into areas with areaportals. Logical, huh?

http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Areaportal

Like everything else, the dev wiki explains it.

spelling, my only downfall

Also, there is no t in grazr, lol..

Though gratzr sounds like i'm constantly being congradulated for some achievement i have yet to realise.

Way to go picking holes in my serious post!

At least the message is right.

Or is it?

(It's scenario, not senario)

(It's grateful, not greatful)

Youme got pwned