Elevator lighting
Hi, I'm making a mod where the first tests are made with PTI and then modified and optimized heavily with Hammer. It seems to work nicely for me. I stripped out a lot of stuff I didn't need and replaced the elevators.
But why are the elevator rooms so dark? All of the monitors are black and there's hardly any lighting in the room. Before you ask I did set the videos in the arrival_departure_transition_ents instance to "media/laser_danger_horiz.bik" and "media/plc_blue_horiz.bik" which don't seem to work.
(And as a bonus, can someone tell me how to turn on the lights in the PTI large observation room? I tried observationroom4 ? instance:relay_lights_on;Trigger but it didn't work.)
First of all, there are many things happening there.
The videos are shown up the way they do because of a script. That script was substituted by another one in DLC2 release and it seems to be broken. Only PTI maps videos work fine.
Anyway, you're lucky because Brainstone made some awesome instances for you. Check this post.
About the lightng, you should have an env_projectedtexture in the arrival/departure logic instances (search near the elevator prop itself 
)... You can only have one of these entities active at a time (your observation rooms surely have another of these entities) so you should know their names and fire outputs "TurnOn" to each one you want active as the player walks through the map... Ofc you have many other resources to light up your observation rooms, your elevators or your map... Check the light entities' flags because many of them could be set to 'Start Off' (or 'Initially dark' )
useful tools and stuff here on TWP 
[spoiler]
[/spoiler]Sorry for being a little confused. The new instances look like they are for actual PTI maps. I'm not uploading it to the workshop and I swapped out the elevator instances for the normal Portal 2 ones. So if the problem is because of the instance, then wouldn't all the Portal 2 elevator videos be broken?
I told you, the problem is not the instances, it is a script that Valve modified... I guess Brainstone found any kind of fix to how the videos are managed by this script and introduced some changes to amend Valve's mistake... I'm not using these elevators so I can't tell where the fix is 
(pm Brainstone if you are interested)
Have you tried them? Did you test and watch the videos?
useful tools and stuff here on TWP [spoiler]
[/spoiler]
I told you, the problem is not the instances, it is a script that Valve modified...
The script they modified will pick a random video, even if you specify it in the instance.
Brainstone's instance is great, however it will only stretch the monitor video one way because of the inputs he put on the videos to get them to stretch and tile correctly.
On the note of the observation room: you can directly access entities by putting the prefix of the instance and the name of the entity originally in the instance in an output.
e.g. Instance is called observationroom4, projectedtexture inside instance is called project1. You can activate the projected texture by putting observationroom4-project1 -> TurnOn.
It's not that a random video plays but the monitors are all black and the rooms are dark.
Plus I've tried both methods to trigger the observation room, the room -> instance:relay;Trigger and the room-relay -> trigger but neither work.
I hate instances and maybe I'm doing something entirely wrong. Can someone look at the map so that they can see what I mean? I'll replace the elevator instances if that is really the source of the video problem but the projected texture problem bothers me the most.
I can't check your map right now because I'm not at my computer, sorry... if no one helps you out in the meantime, I'll check it later at home.
About instances, you shouldn't hate them because they are extremely helpfufl, overall if you are making a mod: you can set them up and then add them in every map of your mod withouit remaking them once and again for each level; and any change you introduce into them will be present into each of your maps. Also, an advanced use of instances allows you to have variables that you can set up in the instance's properties dialog box each time you use them, but with all possible happenings packed into the instance... like the cube_droppers for example, and this is awesome.
There is one thing that can help if you really don't want to deal wit instances: collapse them:
1. Select the entity (/ies) you want to collapse
2. Go to Tools > Instancing > collapse > Selection
But I strongly recommend you not to do, you can just edit them: open the instance's properties dialog box and head to the left bottom corner where it says "Edit Instance" and click it. Now you are into the instance. First thing I recommend you to do is to save it under a different name to keep Valve's instances intact. Now just mess around and check each entity into the instance. Check their names and I/O to find out how they work. This way you can search for any possible logic_relay not being triggered and causing your lack of lighting in the elevator for example.
Normally the elevators have an env_projectedtexture parented to the elevator prop that lights up your way to the elevator shaft. But there are also several light_spot and light entities. Some of them are named and they're set to start initially dark (check their flags) to be later turned on by means of logic_relays. Here you can change whatever to set it up your way anad to control the name and I/O of each entity (be sure of what you do in order not to cause more bad than good ). However, I think there must be a trigger brush right where the elevator prop is that turns the lights on as soon as the player is spawn in there and he triggers it.
In order to trigger a logic_relay inside an instance, apart from the method Chicken said above, you can also add an "@" prefix to the name of the entity inside the instance. Say for example that you have a logic_relay that turns your projectedtexture and some other lights on called "relay_lights_on", well, just name it "@relay_lights_on" (again, check its inputs/outputs in order to not cut any connection it has to other entities into the instance, ok?). Now you can trigger that relay from outside the instance if you want including in your output: Target entity name "@relay_lights_on" > Trigger
I hope this helps you somehow
useful tools and stuff here on TWP [spoiler]
[/spoiler]
If I remember correctly the videos in the standard PTI-elevator will only show when the map is uploaded to the workshop. When testing locally, the screens stay black.
Hmmm... really? That is a good information zivi 
That explains many things... I had no doubt though regarding the videos, I know they work for the PTI maps because of that script modified with the DLC2
useful tools and stuff here on TWP [spoiler]
[/spoiler]Except I'm not using the PTI elevator. I said I replaced all of those instances except for the observation room and some buttons.
Has anyone looked at the map yet to confirm that the I/O isn't working to turn on the observation room light?