V2 and V3 have been added to the file.

A new Single Player Map in the "Clean Aperture" Style. This is my first attempt at this style so any constructive criticism is appreciated.

This test chamber includes:
Ariel Faith Plates
Fizzlers
Lasers
Laser Redirection Cubes
Danger Field
and of course buttons and switches.

Changes in V2:
All turrets have been removed
numbered signs have been removed
Ariel Faith plate launches slower
Fixed Glitch were the door wouldn't open after the button has been pressed.

Changes in V3:
Turrets have been added to the test chamber again.
Some of the Test Chamber's walls have been edited to make the test more difficult.
Timer switch with a Hard Light wall has been added in the pit of the test chamber.
Ariel Faith Plate launches mor accuratly (on some rare occasions the cube wouldn't hit the button.)

V3.1
Fixed glitch where turrets would not shoot
Fixed an exploit (I gues that's what its called) where the Hard Light bridge would pas through Glass

Please notify me of any bugs/glitches you can find. I hope to have a video walkthrough posted soon on my Youtube Channel.

Thanks, and enjoy.
Here is a link to the picture:
http://steamcommunity.com/id/RubyCarbun ... 7019724058

File Name: RBC Test Chamber 2 V3.1.zip
File Size: 6.32 MiB
Click here to download RBC Test Chamber 2 V3.1

the ending was not much of a puzzle but more reactions n stuff the rest was good tho - 4/5

I don't mind the timing as much as I really didn't know what order things were supposed to go in. Maybe it's just me but those numbers really weren't the order that I did things. I eventually figured it out, but it took me a while to figure out which of those rooms I needed to go in first. Were the droids really necessary? 4/5

Great puzzle. I don't think the turrets were necessary though. The timing on the last part was a little tight but not bad.

Yeah sorry I wanted to try to add Turrets the map to start the player off with, just thought I'd try something new that's all. I don't plan on putting turrets in my maps much if at all. If you all want them gone then I'll remove them.

Hawkeye wrote:
I don't mind the timing as much as I really didn't know what order things were supposed to go in. Maybe it's just me but those numbers really weren't the order that I did things. I eventually figured it out, but it took me a while to figure out which of those rooms I needed to go in first. Were the droids really necessary? 4/5

The numbers were in the right order because first the player had to get rid of the Turrets, second the player had to get into the room to drop the Laser Redirection Cube, Third the player had to open up the door to get the second Laser Redirection Cube, and finally the player had to use both cubes to open up the Fizzler so they could get the normal cube. If there is anything anybody can suggest to make it a bit easy to navigate than please leave a suggestion and I'll get on that.

Also I could slow down the launch speed of the Ariel Faith Plate if that would help.

I like that there is lots of stuff to do but overall, it felt too "messy". After each step, I just couldn't tell myself "job well done!". It always felt like it was a hack, or luck. It never "clicked".

For instance, if you follow the official steps, you need to use portals to kill the turrets. Half the time, the portals won't be placed correctly and just miss the turrets by an inch (too low, too much to the right,...). The map geometry and the mesh of the cages, half-hiding the turrets, didn't help.

Then, to go to room 2, you need to place a bridge here, walk it, avoid the turret, kill the turret, place a portal there being carefully not to go in the fizzler, put another portal here, jump. Then later, you have to do it again for the other buttons. Just too many steps for a simple action.

For the laser puzzle, once I solved it, I didn't get the "ah!ah! that is the way to put the reflectors and portals". Maybe I missed the correct solution but mine just didn't feel right.

And so on. In the end, I think the map could be very good but right now, it's missing something to make it click.

I understand why you say that the numbers are technically accurate, but they are nonetheless misleading and confusing. I think the test would be better without them.

I think there's no harm in keeping the turrets, but it's true that they contribute very little to the test as a whole. However, I still found it satisfying to fry them with the laser.

One thing I didn't really like was the huge portal funnel on the laser. Perhaps other people found it helpful, but I really don't like portal funnels (is that the technically correct name for them?) in general, because it limits player control so much. (The exception is flings, portal funnels save much frustration in that regard.) That's really just a matter of opinion though.

Some people were mentioning the time constraint on to open the exit door, but I think there's plenty enough time if you solve it correctly. You should be standing right next to the exit door, and simply fire a couple portals and walk through.

One final "weirdness" is that if you use the light bridge to put a box on the ? button, it lights up but still functions as a timed button, so after a second or two the corresponding light on the exit door deactivates.

Overall, I enjoyed the map quite a bit, with my one complaint being that I felt like I had to do a fair amount of aimless wandering to figure out what I had to do. But part of that is because I kept trying to follow the signs and that just confused me further.

Well, I was just planning on writing a couple sentences, but it looks like I ended up writing a bit more than that. I hope you find my feedback helpful.

Alright I'll see what I can do, because the turrets don't seem to have much of an effect on the chamber itself I'm taking them out completely, I will also slightly decrease the speed of the Ariel Faith Plate and I'll be removing the numbered signs throughout the entire chamber.

As for the problem with the ? button I don't know how to fix that seeing as how I never knew it existed. My best guess would be that the button has two seconds to keep the door open, I'm thinking I messed up there.

Thank you all for the feedback. I appreciate it, I hope I can find a way to make this test chamber a complete success and to find out what I need to do to make it "click".

Oh I forgot to mention the "Portal Funnels" are placed there so that the player can accurately place the laser into the relays. They are only as big as the wall panel they are on though.

Is this a bug?


The door wouldn't open a 2nd time for me (activated it myself the first time by stepping on the faith plate accidentally).

jimmyb wrote:
Is this a bug?

The door wouldn't open a 2nd time for me (activated it myself the first time by stepping on the faith plate accidentally).

Yeah I'm guessing it's because of the buttons delayed reset, I'm working on fix and it will hopefully be fixed in V2, for now you'll just have to reset the laser relays to fix it.

V2 is now uploaded.

Nice map, a bit messy though, like saied others. The puzzles were nice but the timing thing with the last button to open the door is useless, except to get people bored. Too annoying and even enerving when you try it 20times. Some mappers tend to put a lot of timing issues : it's really not interesting and tend to be really enerving. Without this, it's a pretty interesting map. Keep doing like that, thanks.

I haven't played the map fully, but I found this by accident (demo file below):

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/322663/portal%2 ... 02_cut.dem

WTH man. Not gonna say you don't have to follow (bad) suggestions, but yesterday I tried the old version and found no need to warp anything. Actually I came here to comment about some "flawless and operose Clean map, consider any suggestions to it as sidenotes - to make it different at most, not better".

Turrets and signs were good: 1) kill-em-all overtures are used by all without second thoughts (Discouragement Encouragement) and this had the novelty of the encased turrets; 2) as for signs: beginners love guidance because it makes a difference, experts do not and that's one reason more not to care\get offended with them (counterproductive with Wavelet).

Looks are solidly top of the line - impressed by the lightning and smooth ensemble. Surely I could say that I think Infinifling still sets the bar for the ideal short map, but as above we're talking about apples and oranges - this an altogether different approach with its own virtue. Puzzles are hard and complex, all based on trigger states but that's not an argument for lack of variety as Edifice did the same (if only it was explorative): managing on\off triggers to get through the trap network. So yeah, a funnel and a pony would make it less monotone, but whatever.

There was a single problem in my playthrough, as for the rest I would frankly undo all the updates to the layout, which was performance: map lagged quite a bit and had me crashing a few times when quicksaving (I have an old AMD, might have been straining it).

xdiesp wrote:
WTH man. Not gonna say you don't have to follow (bad) suggestions, but yesterday I tried the old version and found no need to warp anything. Actually I came here to comment about some "flawless and operose Clean map, consider any suggestions to it as sidenotes - to make it different at most, not better".

Turrets and signs were good: 1) kill-em-all overtures are used by all without second thoughts (Discouragement Encouragement) and this had the novelty of the encased turrets; 2) as for signs: beginners love guidance because it makes a difference, experts do not and that's one reason more not to care\get offended with them (counterproductive with Wavelet).

Looks are solidly top of the line - impressed by the lightning and smooth ensemble. Surely I could say that I think Infinifling still sets the bar for the ideal short map, but as above we're talking about apples and oranges - this an altogether different approach with its own virtue. Puzzles are hard and complex, all based on trigger states but that's not an argument for lack of variety as Edifice did the same (if only it was explorative): managing on\off triggers to get through the trap network. So yeah, a funnel and a pony would make it less monotone, but whatever.

There was a single problem in my playthrough, as for the rest I would frankly undo all the updates to the layout, which was performance: map lagged quite a bit and had me crashing a few times when quicksaving (I have an old AMD, might have been straining it).

Thanks, I appreciate that, in the updated .rar file I could add the map with the turrets and make the changes to the faith plate and fix the door bug. As for the look I did have maps such as Infinifling in mind when I was creating it, but at the same time I wanted it to be kind of darker.

My main goal in this map was to get the player to stop and think about what should go where and how it should be done.

As for the lag, I'm sorry I don't know what could've caused that, I optimized the map and all but if anybody else gets the same sort of lag problem than I'll be sure to look into it.

I am going to try and make a new (seperate) version of the map with the turrets (I'll call the map name sp_rbc_02_turrets or something). hopefully centering the laser will make the turrets easier to get rid of.

Thanks for the feedback.

xdiesp wrote:
WTH man. Not gonna say you don't have to follow (bad) suggestions, but yesterday I tried the old version and found no need to warp anything. Actually I came here to comment about some "flawless and operose Clean map, consider any suggestions to it as sidenotes - to make it different at most, not better".

Turrets and signs were good: 1) kill-em-all overtures are used by all without second thoughts (Discouragement Encouragement) and this had the novelty of the encased turrets; 2) as for signs: beginners love guidance because it makes a difference, experts do not and that's one reason more not to care\get offended with them (counterproductive with Wavelet).

Looks are solidly top of the line - impressed by the lightning and smooth ensemble. Surely I could say that I think Infinifling still sets the bar for the ideal short map, but as above we're talking about apples and oranges - this an altogether different approach with its own virtue. Puzzles are hard and complex, all based on trigger states but that's not an argument for lack of variety as Edifice did the same (if only it was explorative): managing on\off triggers to get through the trap network. So yeah, a funnel and a pony would make it less monotone, but whatever.

There was a single problem in my playthrough, as for the rest I would frankly undo all the updates to the layout, which was performance: map lagged quite a bit and had me crashing a few times when quicksaving (I have an old AMD, might have been straining it).

Oh Queen of maps, please tell us how you do it? Funny thing is I have seen some of your other reviews in which you told the mapmaker that it wasn't good and you couldn't figure something out and we did it with no problem. Save your "head of the class" attitude for elsewhere. We were trying to give him what we thought of the map, and they weren't "bad" suggestions at all. Just OUR suggestions.

BTW, back to the map,
was that door supposed to stay open when the cube hit it? Because once I figured out that it didnt, I placed a portal near the top of the wall overlooking the catapult and as I dropped I flung it over the wall. I then put my portals back down so that the lasers would go back and walked into the room at the same time. That might have been my favorite part of the map, TBH.

Hawkeye wrote:
I is angry

Save it for a private message, here is where we talk about maps.

xdiesp wrote:
I is smart

I believe I did talk about his map. Something you just failed to do.

I'm not yet reporting you to not bother mods, stop with the personal attacks.

Both of you just stop, please I really don't want any arguing here. Thanks.

Also about the edited version with the turrets, I've been working around with V1 of the map and found that the "cages" get in the way of how the player can move about the test chamber, so I'm thinking that they should explode with the turrets when hit by the laser.

Also I'm centering the laser because Nahor pointed out that the lasers would be an inch off from killing the turrets and that was frustrating. So the file will include V2 and V3 in separate folders.

Excellent puzzle and map execution. The exit door took me a while to figure out. Not sure if it would have been a help with some guidance dots etc... eventually I got everything and then had to use them. Thanks for creating.

V3 has been uploaded and it is the final version I will work on for this map, unless anybody finds any bugs/glitches then I will update it to get rid of them. Thanks for your time, and please, enjoy.

Was this intended to happen? :P



Also those turrets in the corner there seem to fire intangible bullets.

NuclearDuckie wrote:
Was this intended to happen?

Also those turrets in the corner there seem to fire intangible bullets.

No it wasn't I have no Idea what happened and last I checked those turrets did shoot properly, well I'll see what I can do to fix it. Sorry for the inconvenience I literally feel like ripping my hair out right now. I'll have it fixed asap.

Alright I was able to find out the answer apparently those two lights behind the turrets caused them not to be able to shoot properly. Idk why I just know that when I deleted them they started to work normally again.

Uploading new version now.

Loved this map, you must have fixed everything as i had no problems at all with it. Nice difficulty to the map, and about the signs, i had no problems with them, reading topics on other peoples maps, you are going to get people asking for more signs, or pointing them in right direction more, where as other players prefer to have less signs, to make the map a bit more difficult. I think it is just going to have to be the mappers preference.

I hesitate to write any comments -- I feel like there have already been a lot of mixed opinions and that you've been going back and forth w/ this map a lot.

First off, good map! I personally liked the turrets (and that you built cages for them!) and the puzzle was elaborate and challenging. I also loved the ending sequence of having to get all the lasers lined up, then drop the cube onto the faith plate.

The hardest part for me (and where I got frustrated) was that it took me forever to see the portalable surface behind the discouragement field room. I probably spent 50% of my time searching around for the next step before I finally saw it.

I think the sheer number of elements, plus signs for almost all of them, made the subtler elements of the puzzle that much harder to locate. Everything was fairly tightly packed together into one room, by and large, and that probably didn't help.

I wonder if this is what the other posters were referring to when they said it felt "messy". There was a little bit of information overload going on for me.

I think this is a great puzzle, and you've probably done more than enough modification on this guy already, so I think it's fine the way it is. But perhaps a little bit more "room to breathe" when you have this many things going on might help future maps.

Just my opinion, of course.

Great job! Definite 5/5!

Wow, this map was fun to play. I enjoyed solving it. My +s and -s. + was the design was very nice (style, lighting, and various levels(rather than a flat room). - design was the discouragement room with the portable wall set back into the room and could only be seen by being in the corner. The red laser did the hide and seek effect. It was shear "dumb luck" in me seeing it. As I was figuring out how to exit the room and get pass the turrents, I started out the room and immediately the turrent started killing me so I jump straight into the discouragement beam, and as the player was dying, I then saw the portable wall. Therefore, it was shear luck I decided to die via discouragement lasers rather than turrents. +s, once I was able to get the first cube, it was payback time for a couple of turrents--nice touch on that. For me it was a plus and minus in trying to get the portals lined up so I could run out the door, plus it was a skills drill, - was failing the first go at it (since it required quick speed with mouse and keyboard.)
Eastward
P.S. Thanks for the few hours of "I going to beat this game...."
P.S.2 Keep the turrents, it added to the satisfaction of getting rid of them as the game progressed.

Very good map. 5/5

My way:
http://www.multiupload.com/UIEOJ6EAC8

Playing this might just give the exact same feeling as a little teenager girl beeing gang raped then cheered by her family "welcome to adulthood !".

Design is too messy. Exploring the puzzle is a pain. Every attempt to understand it ends up with instant, unescapable death.

Then you might say, "hey buddy !" "try again/harder/have a better look/whatever !" "this is really rewarding".

Here, this is the feeling I am talking about.

Concept of the map might be good. I will never know because you put a lot of effort to discourage me to even look for it. You won, I deleted your map. IMO you should rethink the puzzle design in a way that will make people want to beat it.

Jam wrote:
Playing this might just give the exact same feeling as a little teenager girl beeing gang raped then cheered by her family "welcome to adulthood !".

Design is too messy. Exploring the puzzle is a pain. Every attempt to understand it ends up with instant, unescapable death.

Then you might say, "hey buddy !" "try again/harder/have a better look/whatever !" "this is really rewarding".

Here, this is the feeling I am talking about.

Concept of the map might be good. I will never know because you put a lot of effort to discourage me to even look for it. You won, I deleted your map. IMO you should rethink the puzzle design in a way that will make people want to beat it.

I'm sorry you didn't like the map and I'll admit it wasn't my best in terms of design however I never wanted to "discourage" anyone at all. I see that you deleting my map as a failure for me, not a win, again I am deeply sorry you didn't like the map.

Now, that made me suspicious... I thought 1.0 was restored, didn't see this one 3.0: he's right, the difficulty is off the hook there - if you don't plan ahead every step, you're dead (I knew the solution already and still found it hard). Unless you want 3.0 as an hard mode of the map, tbh rollback.

It's all right if you focus on taking out the turrets before anything else ...

I found a way to prevent the storage cube from flying through the fizzler like normal. You might want to make the trigger_catapult's area larger:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/322663/portal%202/rbc_02_fixme.dem

Hi, I do not understand that owes have to make at the beginning ?

Anybody can put a video ?

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:

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

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

Not evident. It is the 1st time when I find a painful map to arrive at the end.

Hello.

This great map, give it a difficulty of 7 / 10.
I can see the VMF gustria (if you do not mind) to learn a few things.

A Greeting.

well done! it took me forever to complete the first step, i didn't see the portable wall behind the death field...

really a great map

Great map, same as your two other maps.

Another great map (I played v. 3, with turrets). I like the way the solution evolves, finding multiple uses for multiple elements.

However, finding the solution was difficult, because of the poor visibility of a couple key elements (the portal material in the back room, the cube dropper in the side room). However, the clues were there (laser grille instead of fizzler, a sign on the wall.)

I'm tempted to ding this map one point for tight timing on the high fizzler. However, since there is no death or reset effort involved, I won't. The timing on the turret block wasn't a problem, but getting into position to place the portal was hard (a bigger platform to land on would help). The final maneuver wasn't a timing problem, but a portal placement problem. In particular, the portal on the back wall kept ending up high, causing the laser to hit the bottom of the pylons.

Altogether, those little issues added up to keep this map at just 4/5 from me.