File Size: 44.09 MB
Downloads: 5912
Rating: (14 votes)
Description
Level created for Thinking With Portals October 2010 contest following the reveal theme. Update Uploaded a new release (1.01) that fixes a bug which prevented some players from completing the level. A video walkthrough can be found on Youtube here: Part1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZYwHEUisF8 Part2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjKF-wOYSgI
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Oh well, this is a visually very nice map. But so hard I couldn't finish it, it got me bored. I am sure it's just me, and others will have great fun in this.
Can't believe you used portal standing as an intended solution 
Mek wrote:
Oh well, this is a visually very nice map. But so hard I couldn't finish it, it got me bored. I am sure it's just me, and others will have great fun in this.
Boredom is definitely not what I was going for, but I admit that some puzzles need more iterations and there just wasn't time to continue refining things under the deadline. I do figure the difficulty isn't too bad, especially in comparison to a number of user maps out there, but it's certainly geared more towards the advanced chambers at times. 
I did include a bit of a cheat that allows one to bypass the first half of the level pack right up to where things start turning towards the reveal. If you've given up on things and just want to skip around, you can place these portals on these surfaces and wait for the intro VO to end to see what I mean. Though as I said, this does skip a good 50% of the level pack.
Mek wrote:
Can't believe you used portal standing as an intended solution
Guessing you're referring to the room after the first level load with the portal standing. It's just sort of a safe area to show players that that trick is possible. It was formerly necessary in later puzzles, but is now no longer needed. Still handy for one of them though!
I agree with the boredom problem, after just a short portion of the map I had to quit, just too difficult and frustrating, also I found that the puzzles were very very random, not at all did they seem like they belonged where they were put.
[edit]
BTW, the mapping was very good, just the puzzles were too hard.
This map was great! I love how you managed to cram every...little...bit of puzzle into these tiny tiny rooms! Good job it's like a maze in there.
I spent a hell of a lot of time on the energy ball puzzle with the cube bouncing.
Nice lights, nice setup, NICE PUZZLES, nice map! =)
Whysopro? wrote:
This map was great! I love how you managed to cram every...little...bit of puzzle into these tiny tiny rooms! Good job it's like a maze in there.I spent a hell of a lot of time on the energy ball puzzle with the cube bouncing.
Nice lights, nice setup, NICE PUZZLES, nice map! =)
laughs Thank you! That's another one of those aforementioned puzzles that needed some reworking I'd say, as it can even give me some trouble at times. The wall on the left hand side can hinder lining the cube up with too much ease.
I had fun piecing it together and intertwining the rooms so that they all fit or doubled back. Next time I'll definitely need a stricter overall plan though. 
Huge puzzles and very difficult. Like others I got tired of trying some of the solutions and no clip to the objective. There seemed to be little direction in several of the chambers - definitely need to give some thought to numbers or something helpful. Very Hard. I stopped at the room after using the cube to knock down a energy ball into a catcher - it was just too much. I'll go back later.
You put a massive amount of work into this map - I can't believe I'm saying this - you should have gone for shorter and a little more organized....
I'll rate it if I ever finish....but I think it needs more work...
Arrgh. I got through to the boss battle in A-3. At the end of A-2 I knocked out the turrets in the room with energy balls and the door didn't open? Had to noclip through to activate Autosave for A-3.
End battle was OK - had to noclip again to get up to the second button post - I assume there is a way to fling up there from the control room..
This was quite a map, you must have worked on it for a long time. Could you go through again and organize it with numbers or something to guide players and make it easier. Some of the flings are very difficult if you don't know the gimmick...portal peeping, hop-ups(?) etc.
Still visually a very nice map - thanks for entering it into the contest...
quatrus wrote:
Arrgh. I got through to the boss battle in A-3. At the end of A-2 I knocked out the turrets in the room with energy balls and the door didn't open? Had to noclip through to activate Autosave for A-3.
End battle was OK - had to noclip again to get up to the second button post - I assume there is a way to fling up there from the control room..
This was quite a map, you must have worked on it for a long time. Could you go through again and organize it with numbers or something to guide players and make it easier. Some of the flings are very difficult if you don't know the gimmick...portal peeping, hop-ups(?) etc.
Still visually a very nice map - thanks for entering it into the contest...
Sounds like you skipped a section there, the door you mention never actually opens back up, and you need to go through another BTS area to get behind it. (Starting by going behind the extended/slanted wall panel) This whole map could have used some proper Q/A and iteration, but at least it shows the importance of having time to do so with future projects.
There is a way to fling up from the control room too, wondering if you tipped the third turret over in the main room? (This should probably be on a timer as opposed to relying on the player disabling the turret.)
Thank you for the feedback though, these are things to keep in mind! I do like the idea of adding in numbers as reference as well.
Overall impressive map. I have not been bored. It has been fun and challenging. I've liked about 90% so far. More feed back comments when I finish the map.
I believe I am stuck in the same chamber as the previous poster. I've solved the chamber over 3 times, each time differently, and I can't figure out what needs to be done next. I've a fairly advanced player, and it rare for me to get stuck in a map. I don't use noclip (unless there is a bug) to solve puzzles. In this case I need some hints.
Thanks
Stuck chamber: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9465221/Afterburn.jpg
Here is a youtube video of where I am stuck http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osg9Ki4vBsY
Is there a youtube walthough of this contest map?
Thanks!
I've since tried to get the turrets to shoot out the class windows, but have not been successful. As expected, turret shots don't break the type of class windows in that room, only rocket lunchers break those glass pains.
JackSafari wrote:
Overall impressive map. I have not been bored. It has been fun and challenging. I've liked about 90% so far. More feed back comments when I finish the map.I believe I am stuck in the same chamber as the previous poster. I've solved the chamber over 3 times, each time differently, and I can't figure out what needs to be done next. I've a fairly advanced player, and it rare for me to get stuck in a map. I don't use noclip (unless there is a bug) to solve puzzles. In this case I need some hints.
Thanks
Stuck chamber: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9465221/Afterburn.jpg
You might need to stack a few things to get up there. May require backtracking to the previous room.
Amran wrote:
JackSafari wrote:Overall impressive map. I have not been bored. It has been fun and challenging. I've liked about 90% so far. More feed back comments when I finish the map.
I believe I am stuck in the same chamber as the previous poster. I've solved the chamber over 3 times, each time differently, and I can't figure out what needs to be done next. I've a fairly advanced player, and it rare for me to get stuck in a map. I don't use noclip (unless there is a bug) to solve puzzles. In this case I need some hints.
Thanks
Stuck chamber: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9465221/Afterburn.jpg
You might need to stack a few things to get up there. May require backtracking to the previous room.
....Man, I can't beleive I didn't think about that. It is so strange, every once in a while I'll just overlook the obvious. Nice job! You stumped me with something that I normally I would have been able to figure out. It is hard because there is no hints that the main door won't open and the player should look else where. The problem is not whether or not hints are needed in this specific chamber, its my uncertainy about trusting an unframilar designer to be fair. Sometimes a designer will throw in something he thinks is a cool new design, but requires the player to suddenly do something extremely hard and tricky without any advance notice or training. Because I have encountered many unfair design tricks, I tend to be leary when I get stumped in a chamber.
JackSafari wrote:
Amran wrote:JackSafari wrote:
Overall impressive map. I have not been bored. It has been fun and challenging. I've liked about 90% so far. More feed back comments when I finish the map.
I believe I am stuck in the same chamber as the previous poster. I've solved the chamber over 3 times, each time differently, and I can't figure out what needs to be done next. I've a fairly advanced player, and it rare for me to get stuck in a map. I don't use noclip (unless there is a bug) to solve puzzles. In this case I need some hints.
Thanks
Stuck chamber: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9465221/Afterburn.jpg
You might need to stack a few things to get up there. May require backtracking to the previous room.
....Man, I can't beleive I didn't think about that.
I actually got stumped for a while by the same thing in Portal Prelude just the other day. The player was required to return to the previous chamber and bring a cube back with them, but it slipped my mind as a possibility.
I'm a little worried that it's not apparent enough from those who've gotten stuck in this room though. There was formerly a hint which had been removed in favor of not holding the players hand too much, but perhaps it would have been better to retain that. Another choice might have been to have the door visibly malfunction after being closed, and use a pair of buttons in that chamber which could have jogged players memories to bring the cubes with them. It's a shame I didn't know these flaws before release!
Amran wrote:
I'm a little worried that it's not apparent enough from those who've gotten stuck in this room though. There was formerly a hint which had been removed in favor of not holding the players hand too much, but perhaps it would have been better to retain that. Another choice might have been to have the door visibly malfunction after being closed, and use a pair of buttons in that chamber which could have jogged players memories to bring the cubes with them. It's a shame I didn't know these flaws before release!
I finished the entire contest map and overall I had fun it found it challenging. It would be cool to see an official walk though at some point to see how you intended to solve some of the chambers. A couple of the early chambers I didn't like as much because how I solved them required some hard moves and I did a "save game" a few times to complete the puzzle. I feel if manual "saves" is required, then either I am over looking a more basic solution or the designer has made the chamber too difficult. I am pretty skilled, and a few of the early chambers had some narrow timing, and in one chamber I had to do a crouch jump far too many times and I stopped having fun until I completed the crouch jump. I should clarify, I'm pretty good at flings and crouch jumping, but that combination has become a pet-peeve of mine because it is so over used (and abused), anytime it appears in maps over the past 18 months. I recommend using it sparingly and don't tweak crouch-jump-flings so that it takes a nearly perfect attempt to succeed. I, and most other players, don't have fun repeating a crouch-jump-fling several dozen times just to get one good one.
I enjoyed how individual chambers had several lays to the puzzle, requiring the use of several different puzzle solving methods; in some cases, a rather obvious puzzle was made more challenging. (ie two cubes to bring the lift down, but having to remove one to get the lift to go back up). The details that went into the puzzles was well beyond what I expected.
The level of complexity wasn't ever beyond my reach, yet I can easily see how typical players would get stuck\frustrated very early, and most likely quit or use noclip. These chambers really are best suited for advanced players who have a lot experience with advanced portal techniques (Portal Tunneling, advance flings, advanced puzzle designs, etc). This is not a criticism because I think these chambers are well designed for advanced players. I had a lot of fun playing nearly all of the chambers, and didn't mind being stumped temporally as I tried to solve the puzzle. It really is too bad that Portal doesn't have "hint" system that a player can turn on\off when he gets stuck, if hidden hints could be embedded, advanced maps like these could be played (and enjoyed) by less skilled players without designers feeling pressured to include obvious hints that make the game less challenging for skilled players.
Isn't their a way to print a small amount of text under the crosshair? Like "Press Mouse1 to shoot Blue portal"
Couldn't you use that function with some buttons? EDIT: Or after a certain amount of time?
EDIT2: Yes game_text and point_message could be tied to some buttons or a timer of some sorts to give hints when requested or needed.
I think the better solution would be to just make the puzzles themselves more straightforward. Numbering, color-coding, and so on are all in-world ways to tie things together without having to knock on the fourth wall with a very annoying game_text.
Having it be on a timer is a bad idea too, because you might want a hint after a couple minutes, other people will gladly try shit for a long longer before wanting it handed to them.
Hmmmmm....I has idea.
At the start of the map a timer is made with 20 minutes. It takes the player 8 minutes to solve the first one, so they are awarded with an open door and 4 minutes are added to the timer. (btw player does not see any of this) So if the player takes more then the 4 minutes the timer will be decreasing steadily.
That's where you add another timer for each puzzle with times based on how long you think it will take the player. This will guarantee that if someone got close to a hint LAST puzzle...it wont show up in the middle of solving the NEXT one, until needed.
So what does this mean? An efficient hint system based on how well the player is doing in the whole test, and how well they are doing in the current chamber.
Smarticles? I think so...and it will be in my campaign. 
It would be very possible to implement a few different types of text/hint systems, but I agree with Msleeper that the best solution would be to iterate on the design so that direction is better pointed out by elements in the game world.
Got up a pair of walkthrough videos for the entire map as well, they can be found at the following links: (One of these days I really need to figure out how to encode Youtube videos that retain better quality..)
Part1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZYwHEUisF8
Part2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjKF-wOYSgI
Amran, Thanks for posting your walk through. That is pretty much how I did it, there was a few quicker methods I over looked.
I've played through it a second time and got stuck once again in the room with the slanted door. Oddly enough, this time the slanted door is shut and I can't find the trigger. I don't even know how I triggered it the first time, it just was already in the open position the first time. After a player has completed the game, do you have things setup so that the second playthrough is different?
Here is a demo of that section: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9465221/afterbu ... Closed.zip
To get past this problem, here is what I did: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9465221/afterburn-Shortcut.zip
Is this short-cut part of your design, or just something I found because I couldn't find the trigger to the slanted door?
Thanks
Quote:
but I agree with Msleeper that the best solution would be to iterate on the design so that direction is better pointed out by elements in the game world.
Hmm...I get what you mean. Even changing the direction of a few spot lights can change where the player looks during a level.
JackSafari wrote:
Amran, Thanks for posting your walk through. That is pretty much how I did it, there was a few quicker methods I over looked.I've played through it a second time and got stuck once again in the room with the slanted door. Oddly enough, this time the slanted door is shut and I can't find the trigger. I don't even know how I triggered it the first time, it just was already in the open position the first time. After a player has completed the game, do you have things setup so that the second playthrough is different?
Here is a demo of that section: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9465221/afterbu ... Closed.zip
To get past this problem, here is what I did: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9465221/afterburn-Shortcut.zip
Is this short-cut part of your design, or just something I found because I couldn't find the trigger to the slanted door?
Thanks
Admittedly, I'm not very familiar with playing demos in Source, but every time I reach a certain tick in both files (a few seconds from the beginning) the game crashes. Not sure if there's a common problem known for this, or if I'm just unlucky.
By the slanted door, are you referring to the the one that you need to climb in behind to continue? It should be open from the beginning of the level, and only close once the first rocket turret is activated. If you had used noclip and accidentally set it off, that could be the explanation. Or I could be thinking of the wrong door. I am curious about both this, and the shortcut though!
I didn't use noclip during this playthrough, and in general I avoid using noclip because it takes all the fun out of playing. I am more likely to just quit playing before I use noclip.
I will make a video of what I am talking about as far as the slanted door not opening and the shortcut I discovered because the slanted door wouldn't open. If not for the problem with the slanted door, I wouldn't have found the shortcut. Which I think you should leave in because I think it kind of cool and obscure. The shortcut is not a glitch.
Here is my video of the chamber with the slanted door that won't open along with the shortcut
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6To13qEA-40
JackSafari wrote:
Here is my video of the chamber with the slanted door that won't open along with the shortcut
I have this exact same problem and I defiantly did not noclip, I spent like an hour in the room before I just gave up and quit because I did not know what to do.
Think I may have just found the culprit:
[Image removed: Fixed the bug]
In the second room with the lightrail, do not pass through a portal on this wall. Doing so seals a section later in the map preventing progress, as well as triggers other elements that aren't meant to be activated until later.
I guess this might mean requiring a recompile and reupload, argh.
[Edit: Uploaded a new version that should be fixed]
Krogglidor wrote:
JackSafari wrote:Here is my video of the chamber with the slanted door that won't open along with the shortcut
I have this exact same problem and I defiantly did not noclip, I spent like an hour in the room before I just gave up and quit because I did not know what to do.
If you didn't want to restart, you can noclip through the closed panel on the right side of the room. (Though some things will be broken, the blast shield will likely already be down, and the turret active.) Or you can use the trick below and skip right to the companion cube room from the beginning:
Quote:
I did include a bit of a cheat that allows one to bypass the first half of the level pack right up to where things start turning towards the reveal. If you've given up on things and just want to skip around, you can place these portals on these surfaces and wait for the intro VO to end to see what I mean. Though as I said, this does skip a good 50% of the level pack.
Another update, I uploaded a new version of the map (1.01) which should have this problem fixed. Thank you to JackSafari for bringing it to my attention!
Interesting shortcut. I tried it and it worked. The slanted door was open when I took that shortcut.
However, if I do play the entire map getting to the chamber and the slanted door is closed again, I don't mind taking the shortcut I found as demonstrated in my video.
As a side comment... In a steam forum two days ago I posted a humorous example of what I wanted to see in Portal 2, which was a shortcut that took the player from the very start of Portal 2, to the very end of Portal 2, thus speedruns would be under 10 seconds and be separated by milliseconds (8.753, 9.743, 9.757, etc)... I did so as a commentary against "Out of bounds" play because I think OoB play takes all the fun out of the game, thus if "anything goes", lets just have some really absurd speedruns that skip the entire game.
Quote:
lets just have some really absurd speedruns that skip the entire game.
Amen!
Without any intent of getting personal, I just want to say, I absolutely hate the chamber with the two timed lifts.
Its example of hair splitting timing and every step needs to be dead on perfect or the player is forced to start all over from the very start of the chamber. I got very frustrated because I would get to the second lift many times and I would be half second too late. As a player, I really really hate chambers that are designed so that only a perfect run is successful, anything less than perfect results in failure and a complete reset of the chamber. It's no fun failing over and over and over when there no other option than to do everything perfectly. And if on subquent runs I still find I need to do manual saves just to get through a chamber, then I tend to consider the chamber has been over tweaked in terms of difficulty. And with other maps, I have wondered if the designer thinks a good design is when the player fails (and is frustrated) over 80% of the time.
During my first run through of this chamber (two timers, two lifts), I was a few attempts away from quiting the entire map because my thought was that there were going to be more chambers as hard or harder, and I would be spending my time trying to beat timers over and over, all set so a perfect chamber run was absolutely the only possibility.
I don't mind difficult options when its not the only option. In Portal, I've spent hours in a single chamber perfecting near impossible moves, but there were always easier options if what I was attempting had a 98% failure rate.
Lol It's like playing Super Meat Boy. Man that game is so CRUEL! The levels are so small but I see my friend die 99999 times before completing it. 
Whysopro? wrote:
Lol It's like playing Super Meat Boy. Man that game is so CRUEL! The levels are so small but I see my friend die 99999 times before completing it.
Yeah... I have seen far far worse when it comes to games that go way too far in making the game play difficult for the player. Generally it is just a bad design: "if you can't figure out what to design next, just make the next levels impossiblity hard, and neive players will think it must be cool because it is impossible"
Some comedian wrote:
Video games are quite harsh, I mean, it is the only medium in which if you are bad at it, it refuses to allow to continue through.No movie or book will cut through the middle and ask you what are the themes involved or to explain why inception might just be possible
Quite funny stand up comedy :p
Can get the video if you guys want it
I played this map, and found it was quite good, apart from some design flaws . For example, in that chamber where you stack two cubes to get to the bts area, I had brought one cube with me and then eventually gave up after about an hour, as stacking 2 cubes is usually a bad idea. In the "final boss scene" thing, it was quite confusing as to what had to be done, as it was not made obvious.
I enjoyed it, though.
This map. Just.... wow. So... just... I loved it.
The puzzles were challenging (which is saying something coming from me). I just got so caught up in this map, it was like I was playing portal for the first time all over again. And it was looooong, which I am so grateful for! Not only was it long, but it was consistent! Not like some maps that seem to drag out forever, this one continually engaged me. The looping twisting layout of the chambers and the non-linear feel to it was just so much fun.
Only one puzzle really gave me too much trouble, and that was the one where you have to get the cube up to the raised button, and the platform in the center goes into the floor if you're standing on it. I ended up being able to just throw the cube up to the button without portals at all.
The turrets popping out of portals in the floor genuinely surprised me, and really made the map stand out. The ending was spectacular.
This is definitely going down in my books as one of THE single best Portal maps.
Can anyone tell me why most of the textures don't load for me with this map?
I get purple walls and bright white mirror like effects, and big "error" sings everywhere.
Thanks guys, I was trying to use it with Portal 2, all good now, moved it to Portal 1.
I loved this map - love a challenge also loved the maze-style and all the details put into it. Only bad thing was the precision needed sometimes (like jumping into a portal instead of falling to reach needed height) but i guess thats a matter of taste.
Big thx for all this great work you put into this
Just finished it. I LOVED the ending. I'm sorta new to the site. How do I rate this masterpiece 5 stars?!
Level created for Thinking With Portals October 2010 contest following the reveal theme.
Update Uploaded a new release (1.01) that fixes a bug which prevented some players from completing the level.
A video walkthrough can be found on Youtube here:
Part1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZYwHEUisF8
Part2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjKF-wOYSgI
File Name: contest1010_Amran_Afterburn.zip
File Size: 44.09 MiB
Click here to download Contest 1010 - Afterburn