My contest entry.

OK so yeah the name may not be all that great, but it's based off the fact that this test revolves around the Hardlight bridges as shield walls. This Test Chamber is in the Overgrown style.

The player has one Portal at the start and uses Momentum for the most of the test chamber.

This test chamber involves:
Momentum
Laser Walls
Fizzlers
Hard Light Bridges
An Excursion Funnel
Thermal Discouragement Beams
Ariel Faith Plates

Please tell me of any glitches you may see while playing this map, and good luck to everyone in the contest!

V2:
I moved the Faith Plate to a better out of the way location.
Added indicators for the large hard light wall in the second room.

V3 (About F***king time right?) :
After Peer Review the game always made the player start with a dual Portal Device, now that's fixed!

I made the chamber have better lighting I redid EVERY piece of lighting in the chamber because when I made this map it just looked a bit off from what I wanted.
I added some minor details to some areas such as tide lines to the hazard liquid in the aerial faithplate room and updated the water texture as well.

I updated the environment to give the map that final touch it needed. env_tone_maps make the map very very very pretty lookin' if I do say so myself.

Here is an updated picture of the chamber:
http://steamcommunity.com/id/RubyCarbun ... 8361732080

Please enjoy this map as much as I did making it. It really is my best piece in my opinion.

File Name: Blue Walls V3.rar
File Size: 4.32 MiB
Click here to download Blue Walls

This one was huge, but I finally solved it.Very good puzzle and asthetics. But somewhere in the middle I dropped my laser cube into the acid, which meant I would have needed the tractor beam again, which meant I needed to restart the whole level, but luckily there was an autosave. well done.

Very nice level. I enjoyed the size of it all without it being overwhelming. What was the Excursion Funnel for though as i never needed or thought to use it at any point in the level?

Same as your previous: splendid map. I had forgotten how good these looked, among the dreadnaughts imo. Gameplay is a little acid in the beginning, but you get the hang of it and most importantly get the chance of using most P2 mechanics (gels aside). That might be the real forte of the map, its completeness.

bmaster2000 wrote:
What was the Excursion Funnel for?

During the 1 portal phase, I used it toclimb from the bottom shaft to the door which opens above when you click the button.

What a professionally designed and aesthetically pleasing map. I felt like you used many of portal one's puzzle methods and intertwined them with portal 2's elements, which made the map feel fresh and interesting. Forcing the user to use one moveable portal was also a neat quality.

My only qualm was that, due to the size of the chambers, it was difficult to determine what exactly each button did. It'd be silly to have an indicator stretching across the map, but when the sign next to the button shows the picture of removing a hard light wall, and your map is full of hard light walls, it can be a little confusing.

That was all, though. 5/5. Keep up the great work.

Thank you all for the great reviews I'm making a V2 that will have indicators coming from the buttons in the second room and moving the first faith plate to the left a bit in the second chamber.

Again thanks for the reviews, I appreciate them more than you may know!

Edit: V2 is now released!

Top notch map - you've got a good eye for detail
Initially I found the map a little confusing, but it got better and better as I worked out what everything did. But like your other map, I really enjoyed the open nature of this one, and it felt fun to explore new parts of the puzzle.

The first part of the puzzle took me a little while to get the hang of what everything did. Being forced to one portal really put an emphasis on how to work out the puzzle.

The second part of the puzzle had me completely stumped until I worked out that you had to use the aerial faith plate, then turn in midair onto the timed lightbridge (that wasn't immediately obvious for me)

Here's a demo of my initial playthrough if you're interested (don't mind me messing around half of the time... sometimes I like to try out things).

Overall, this is a fantastic well-designed map and I'm looking forward to more in the future!

Great Map.

Very funny and challenging map. Great detail level, a fantastic atmosphere with the music very well chosen. Very clever puzzles and overall a very thought map.

Thanks (again) for mapping! I really enjoyed your 2 maps.

More please!

Hey!

Really, this is a brilliant and powerful level that you have created! Amazing how you made me play it and sill enjoying it. Well, I want to be honest - I?m stucking 5 cm before its finish. How on earth is it possible to get the last cube to its place where it has to be set on the button? I?ve tried so many things without success...

I also wanted to watch the .dem that got posted here, but I couldn?t find how to. Will someone help me to get this level solved without cheating? :p

Many thanks!

Orange.hh

orange.hh wrote:
Hey!

Really, this is a brilliant and powerful level that you have created! Amazing how you made me play it and sill enjoying it. Well, I want to be honest - I?m stucking 5 cm before its finish. How on earth is it possible to get the last cube to its place where it has to be set on the button? I?ve tried so many things without success...

I also wanted to watch the .dem that got posted here, but I couldn?t find how to. Will someone help me to get this level solved without cheating? :p

Many thanks!

Orange.hh

what you do is After you get the Dual Portal Device you place two cubes on two of the buttons at the end. Then you place a Portal on the white tile above the laser disabler button and place one portal under the Excursion Funnel. Jump through the Portal grab the cube on the laserwall button and place the Portal that's not under the Funnel and there you go you've got all three.
I don't really know if I explained that very clearly. But if you still need help I could post a video walthrough for you on my Youtube Channel.

Thanks to everybody for the great feedback! I appreciate how much you all like the map.

Okay, even though I generally prefer the 19** style look, I have to say this is certainly one of the best maps I have seen so far.
Visuals are very well done and the puzzle was quite challenging (I kept getting trolled by the fact that the bridge was on the wrong side of the blue portal, boggled my mind).

Only having 1 placeable portal available most of the time was a very neat thing to do, and you used that very very well.

It was a little hard for me to deduce what the laser-related puzzle did, I'd say you should make that more obvious but I can't think of a clever way how that would be done.

So overall: very well done job all round, can't really find any point to criticize at all.
Keep up the awesome work

Thank you, I made the bridge on the wrong side on purpose to avoid people using it to their advantage. Also believe me I tried as hard as I could to make The laser puzzle's goal as obvious as possible. By adding the symbols and making the indicator checkmarks visible from the main room, to sum it all up I did everything I could think of, I'm Glad you like the map though I spent all but two days of the contest time working on it then the last two taking advice from the people here.

RubyCarbuncIe wrote:
orange.hh wrote:

Hey!

Really, this is a brilliant and powerful level that you have created! Amazing how you made me play it and sill enjoying it. Well, I want to be honest - I?m stucking 5 cm before its finish. How on earth is it possible to get the last cube to its place where it has to be set on the button? I?ve tried so many things without success...

I also wanted to watch the .dem that got posted here, but I couldn?t find how to. Will someone help me to get this level solved without cheating? :p

Many thanks!

Orange.hh

what you do is After you get the Dual Portal Device you place two cubes on two of the buttons at the end. Then you place a Portal on the white tile above the laser disabler button and place one portal under the Excursion Funnel. Jump through the Portal grab the cube on the laserwall button and place the Portal that's not under the Funnel and there you go you've got all three.
I don't really know if I explained that very clearly. But if you still need help I could post a video walthrough for you on my Youtube Channel.

Thanks to everybody for the great feedback! I appreciate how much you all like the map.

Oh, dude - life can be sooo simple
Many thanks for your assistance. I?m a little bit ashamed and felt blamed for getting this level so far and got stuck so close to its finish. And this was really somethimg that I should have found. Hehe...

I?m really looking forward to further chambers, man

Very nice & climatic chamber. And very challenging too.

The only problem for me was: how to get an item from the tube which indicators goes behind broken glass & how to turn off HLBs that blocks access to the subchamber with faith plates. There was a little problem for me, because HLBs indicators goes through broken wall and I thought that there must be some button in this room with the field, which I overlooked during the game.

And yes, I solved both problem, but I have to admit: I use noclip in this case Don't get me wrong... I thought that HLB comin' from the lock at the celiing is the only thing there & nothing else, so I don't feel the need to checkout what's up there. I was walking around the chamber through 20-30 min trying to solve this mystery. After switching noclip to on, I saw that behind the broken glass room has also some buttons, so I leave it immediately & start to continue thinking with one portal and switched noclip to off ;] / My bad.

But the rest of the map was easy peasy ;]

Well, I liked this map pretty well, but I got rather frustrated at the end. This is arguably my own fault though.

First I should explain that I got most of the way through the map(almost to the point where you get the second portal device and then real life intervened and it was a couple hours before I came back to it...

Anyway, I forgot I had received a second lens cube that was on the far side of the 3 light bridges in chamber 2. So I grabbed the regular cube, disabled the laser grid in chamber 1, got the second portal device and went back down to get the 1 lens cube I had remembered leaving. I get those 2 cubes up to the three floor buttons at the end and think maybe I can stand on the last one and shoot a portal through the exit door, but there's nowhere to shoot. So I went looking for a third cube(still not remembering that other lens cube) and left the other 2 cubes on the floor buttons. I found the last cube but couldn't get it because the light bridges were back on. Then I realized that the laser grid was on too with the 2 cubes behind it and I had moved the portals so I was completely stuck...now that I think about it I guess I could have used the cube droppers to get new ones, but I didn't want to redo that much of the map when I thought I was so close to the end. I reloaded from a save and did finally complete the puzzle. I just feel that this map is too unforgiving for certain mistakes, such as collecting the cubes from chamber 2 in the wrong order.

Okay moving on, I apparently wasn't thinking with portals clearly for a moment because at first I missed the obvious way to get to the funnel room and used an odd method involving the light bridge and quick timing.
First I placed a portal here:
http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/558662295706337469/8BA706FE34E594B182CFBD986A308F647A02D3E2/
Then I jumped down by the orange portal and activated the bridge. I quickly jumped through the portals to that grated ledge area and moved the blue portal like this:
http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/558662295706335575/B78E611A95F69A471D8E50111410E186AFA9DC04/
Then I jumped onto the bridge and ran to the ledge of the funnel room before the bridge went away.
I felt pretty silly when I wanted to get up there again and saw a far more straight forward method.

When I launched this map and came to first room I was like: Holy crap this is gonna be hard as hell, but when you find out what you need and where is that thing what you need it goes by itself. I really enjoyed this map, it was designed very very well, and puzzles in this map were awesome, at first it seems very difficoult, but as I said, when you find out few thing you'll find out another and another based on the previous and it isn't even hard, it's just about thinking and taking things together, also indicator light helped me too. So,I will say, this is the best custom map I have ever played. Congratulations RubyCarbuncle, you are really amazing mappper, and I'm sure this took you a while to figure out, I mean puzzles in this map. 5/5! If you will read this can I ask you how long were you doing this map? Including figuring out.

Dom44 wrote:
When I launched this map and came to first room I was like: Holy crap this is gonna be hard as hell, but when you find out what you need and where is that thing what you need it goes by itself. I really enjoyed this map, it was designed very very well, and puzzles in this map were awesome, at first it seems very difficoult, but as I said, when you find out few thing you'll find out another and another based on the previous and it isn't even hard, it's just about thinking and taking things together, also indicator light helped me too. So,I will say, this is the best custom map I have ever played. Congratulations RubyCarbuncle, you are really amazing mappper, and I'm sure this took you a while to figure out, I mean puzzles in this map. 5/5! If you will read this can I ask you how long were you doing this map? Including figuring out.

Well the map took about 2 weeks to finish up completely, as for how long It took me to figure out how to map for the better part of a year I had been messing around with L4D's L4D2's and Portal's SDKs, So i have had mapping experience before hand. Thank you for your kind words and sorry it took me so long to respond to you.

I thought I had played all the contest entries long ago, but I definitely missed this one. Awesome looks, a moderately difficult puzzle that had me flying all over the map and enough length to give a real sense of accomplishment when finished. An easy 5/5.

Great map I must admit. But, as I read here, I had it much more easier because my portal gun was able to fire the orange portal right from the start (any idea why?). However, it was pre-placed in the bottom of the pit... but I was still able to place it anywhere else. I guess I solved the 1-portal phase all in unintennded way

Yay, portal gun!

IIOgZ-kI6GU
(Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIOgZ-kI6GU)

Okay, so I was able to shoot two portals from the beginning. Came here and was surprised that I was supposed to have only one. So the whole part with lasers turned out to be completely unnecessary. Weird

The gun having the ability to shoot two portals is a part of the DLC coop update. In the update, maps with certain names or phrases in their names start differently. For instance, put 'sp' in your map title and you'll spawn with potatos and two portals. Since this was made before the update, it wasn't made with this in mind. He could probably update the map and fix it though.

I see, thanks for the explanation. I'm a little bit late for the party then. I didn't notice before that Mek two posts up already had the same issue.

I've been meaning to update this map because of the update trouble, so I'll get to doing that soon,however I'm going to recreate the map entirely from scratch and get optimization working for it so as of right now this map is going to be put on hold for some time.

V3 (About F***king time right?) :
After Peer Review the game always made the player start with a dual Portal Device, now that's fixed!

I made the chamber have better lighting I redid EVERY piece of lighting in the chamber because when I made this map it just looked a bit off from what I wanted.
I added some minor details to some areas such as tide lines to the hazard liquid in the aerial faithplate room and updated the water texture as well.

I updated the environment to give the map that final touch it needed. env_tone_maps make the map very very very pretty lookin' if I do say so myself.

Here is an updated picture of the chamber:
http://steamcommunity.com/id/RubyCarbun ... 8361732080

Please enjoy this map as much as I did making it. It really is my best piece in my opinion.

HEY! I played again one of the best maps I have ever played, and still it's soooooooo awesome!!
Yeah I didn't enjoy it as much as when I played it for the first time, but still.
I really love this map.
Immediately after I played it again and recorded my solution, here it is:

mZzhJse4SKM

Thanks for the updated video. I'm glad to see you still like the map.

Wonderful map. The aesthetics were magnificent and I loved how the puzzle could seem so much simpler than it looked when I entered the massive chamber. I didn't see the panel I was supposed to use with a bridge to block myself, so I was hitting myself with the cube in midair. Other than that, I think I did it all intentionally. Your maps are some of my favorites, so please keep mapping. Please feel free to point out anything else I did wrong.
Blue Walls Blind Playthrough
http://www.youtube.com/watch?1&v=JiN6w1VGl2E