A medium-long map I made for the Portal 2 Summer 2011 Mapping Contest. Contains discouragement beams, blue and orange paint, excursion funnels, turrets, and more. Difficulty: Medium-hard.

File Name: Anomaly.zip
File Size: 10.54?MiB
Anomaly

Was pretty good. I enjoyed the first and second puzzles, the third was a bit of a pain
That last part where you had to put the cube on the laser bridge was annoying. The Cube could bounce, and there was only a tiny bit of room to put it in.The final portal shot was annoying as well, due to lack of seeing.

Bugs: Near the start, the ramp tiles come up. They are a bit bugged if you turn them on and off really fast. Not sure if that's fixable.

A worker's map with clearly cut, operose smoothed chambers. Got to appreciate the highly planned puzzles and enviroments, but don't expect particular enthusiasm in the performance.

I think I broke the second puzzle by portaling the cube from the first section over to open the door. I thought the final room was a very clever puzzle. It's a beautiful level overall, just probably could have used a bit more play-testing.

One word came to mind playing this map: inventive! I really enjoyed all of the puzzles employed, and I think the usage of gel was really interesting. You call the map "medium-hard" and I'm not sure I necessarily agree - but that's not a bad thing at all.

My biggest complaint - and the fact that this is a small complaint should show you how I feel about the map - is the usage of a duo-box dropper in the final room. This never works out and I wound up having to grab one of them mid-bounce to get them free.

Visually, a great example of clean style maps, though I didn't quite get the "Wheatley" vibe. You did a great job texturing and varying up walls, but I still got the sense that the first two puzzles (the first room and the room with the water) were nothing more than boxes. The first room I want to blame on the lighting - it almost seems too well lit. The water room though just felt very flat to me.

Please tell me this is an intended solution for how to deal with the turrets. If so then awesome, I like knowing that I can keep the portal from the first room and use it in the second.

I managed to skip absolutely everything in that big open room by putting propulsion gel along the floor and just jumping over here, reflectocube from the first room in hand. Intended? I didn't even notice the small room with the switch until after I beat the map and I was examining it with noclip.

In summary: excellent entry into the contest, this map is definitely going to do well.

This map was fun and challenging. It would make for a good speedrun map.

Thought the second chamber was the most fun\interesting.

Not sure what the intended purpose was of the Blue gel in the final chamber. The puzzle can be solved without the gel. I am guessing there are multiple solutions, and I found a solution that did not require using the Blue gel.

I tried to find a speedrun for your map;

I did the route in 3 segments, although speedwise it still could be improved.

I first try to open the door as fast as possible, portal to the other side and get the cube there as fast as possible. I then portal the cube through the emancipation grid and solve the puzzle. Followed by smart portalling to preserve the cube. I then portal the laser into the top catcher and from the other side portal it into the lower catcher to open the end door.

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it was fun to play with this map!

May I point you to my thread (post40066.html) which shows a few glitches in your map.

Thanks for the feedback guys, it's good to hear.

A lot of these puzzle skipping solutions would probably have been resolved with playtesting, unfortunately because of time I didn't get the chance to do very much (I had a friend go through it while I watched him in co-op mode). Ah well, I might go back over this map later and see what I can fix or upgrade.

The first room's lighting was probably flat looking because most of it was the plain white inset lights. I wasn't sure what to use, and ended up defaulting to white. I'll try to vary it more next time.

The second room was actually designed around the fact that I was trying to use one of the original game's goo flow maps. It probably turned out box-ey because of that. I stayed up until 2 am one night detailing those walls

The gel dropper in the third room was a last minute addition. I needed a way to get the cube dropper to drop cubes (also a near-last-minute addition, hence the glitchiness of the cube dropping) and having the laser catcher do it was too confusing to my friend. Just goes to show that a good map requires planning.

By the way, I was going to do a more Wheatley-esque style, but by the time I had finished rooms to detail, the contest was almost over and I didn't want to rush it, especially considering it's still new to me. I ended up sticking with GLaDOS clean rather than Wheatley clean.

Very smooth, solid gameplay, though I might complain that the puzzles were a little too easy. They required a fair amount of actions, but not much thought, with the exception being that "oh crap!" moment just when you think you've solved the last one.

Speaking of that last chamber, a little problem arose for me when I accidentally covered the bit of floor I was supposed to sit the redirection cube on with repulsion gel. I had to jump into the grinder and start over, so maybe that bit should be made of an un-gellable surface? (Do those exist?)

Great job overall though.

NuclearDuckie wrote:
Speaking of that last chamber, a little problem arose for me when I accidentally covered the bit of floor I was supposed to sit the redirection cube on with repulsion gel. I had to jump into the grinder and start over, so maybe that bit should be made of an un-gellable surface? (Do those exist?)

Yes, NuclearDuckie, it exists in the form of grates so the gel falls right through without coating the floor.
I agree, the area under the cube dropper should be grated flooring so the cubes don't bounce everywhere when they first drop.

I do think the puzzles are fun, but easy and there are quite a few shortcuts to be found.

Nice map, a little easy but still fun. As others have said there are shortcuts. Pretty sure I only did chamber the 1 the 'right' way.

After going into chamber 2 I used my portal from the first room to zap the turrets with the laser and then bring the cube through to put on the button.

Not sure what the intented solution for the 3rd chamber was, there was 2 laser receivers, blue gel and a light bridge. I didn't even use the light bridge at all. Nor did I use the 2nd laser receiver up high which activates the panels to walk across. I just used the blue gel and bounced over! So I didn't even need the light bridge or panels!


EDIT: OK I just played this map what I believe to be the 'correct' way and it was actually really good, but I noticed how many elements I skipped over! I didn't even realise there were cube dispensers in the 2nd and 3rd chambers, I just used the same cube all the way through. Some emancipation grids between doors of the chambers would easily solve this. Also, the last chamber can easily be cheated by bouncing over the gap using blue gel. Maybe just make it a bigger gap that can't be jumped over? Therefore, forcing you to activate the panel and walk over.

Easy, good size and well done. I noticed that you can skip the last laser sensor (and the drawbridge entirely) with the blue gel. If that was interntional, than you are a wicked person

Third chamber needs some more work. I just blue gel jumped across. I could have brought a cube with me from chamber 2 (no fizzler?) or bounce up and get the two released. Not sure why the upper laser receiver was there, guess it activates the floor drop? didn't need it. You have a lot of nice effects, but dead easy to get around using them. Thanks for mapping....

This map was easy to medium difficulty (more on the easier side). The style was good. Overall, others have posted what I was thinking when I played the map. Thanks for the fun.
Eastward

I'm playing custom maps and record my first time of playing them. So the run is not perfect and may not use only intended ways, but maybe it can let you see how other people may understand the map or you could just enjoy someone playing this map for entertainment.
Anyways, here is the recording:

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(Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvwYgxVcfR0)

Also note the video description for more feedback and my signature for additional project information.

This was a decent map to play, despite the numerous possible exploits. Some things other posters noted haved been fixed (a fizzler before the final room) so you can't solve the entire thing with one cube.
The first time I played the map, I funbled the first cube into the water, and never did figure out how to activate the cube dropper in the second room, so I had to restart, and I never got a new cube in the second room.
If you enjoy finding unintended solutions, this is the map for you! Despite the flaws, it looked good and played well enough to get a 4/5 from me.

Great puzzles. I believe there were multiple solutions and that's good. For instance I did not need the light bridge in any puzzle and also I used the blue paint to jump over the deadly pit in last chamber.
5/5.