My single player entry into the mapping contest.

v2:Fixed broken overlay, added water mist particles.

File Name: sp_bridgeovertoxicwater2.zip
File Size: 4.83 MiB
Click here to download Bridge Over Toxic Water

Some more images of the map.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3290231/portal2/botw.jpg
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3290231/portal2/botw2.jpg
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3290231/portal2/botw3.jpg
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3290231/portal2/botw4.jpg

If the bleak brown appearances push you away from this, you're missing on some fun. Puzzle's difficult and satisfying, spanning the entire room. Could just use a visual straighten up: leave the browns, deal with the badly cut props.

Thanks. I agree that the visuals are less than stellar. I'm not terribly experienced at Hammer, and had little time to make the map. If there is a map pack made with entries from this contest I'd gladly spend more time on the map, or even open it up for anyone else willing to help me with it.

I tried to lean from Valve's examples when making the puzzle, combining easy steps with a few hard ones, so the player can progress easily most of the time while still having several "A-ha!" moments.
Also, revisiting older steps of the puzzle several times, each time with a new tool or point of access, to make the chamber fun to explore without getting lost.

It is a difficult puzzle which needs trial and error, as well as a lot of logical thinking. The button which can convert the light bridge from horizontal to vertical is special. At first I don't know what to do and how can I use the double angled portal surface in the middle of the water. Finally I decided to have a try and jumped down from the lightbridge and surprised myself by landing on the other side. Thanks for mapping and keep going!

Quite an underrated map here to be honest. The puzzle kept me consistently interested, and I as well loved the horizontal/vertical bridge switch (though at some point the button didn't work right and I had to go back and mess around with the cube holding it down).

The only problems I had were that the double-angled jump could be unforgiving sometimes when you messed it up, particularly when you were under pressure from the cube dropping onto the button, as you would soon no longer be able to stand on the bridge, and also that I didn't notice the staircase forming near the button until I'd wasted much time getting back there via other methods.

This is of small note, but I liked the triggering of music within the chamber; I felt it worked well to complement the player's progress. However towards the end I noticed one track playing over the top of another, which came off weird sounding.

Overall it's challenging and rewarding map, even without the most spectacular visuals. (Oh, and I loved the hidden den.)

Thank you both for your feedback.

The entity I/O setup for the bridge rotation is kinda hacked in. You aren't supposed to be able to actually parent the bridge emitter to anything else (Though I think Valve does do it in one of the coop maps). As such it can be fairly buggy, which I hope to eliminate.
If people want I can make a simple .vmf with just the bridge rotater entities in it.
There are flingers on the double-angled jump, so it should theoretically always put you in the right spot. The whole thing is an in-elegant implementation of what I wanted, and I'll probably remove it and replace it with something else entirely in a newer version.
Doing the jump while timed because of the cube is a bit more difficult than I wanted, hopefully I can make it easier/lower the penalty for failure.
You can probably tell what elements were added at the eleventh hour, the stairs and music being examples.
If someone could link me a guide for how to properly do the "generative" music in Portal 2, that'd be awesome. I wanted to have the music only play in certain areas, or to fade from one song to the next when you progressed, but didn't have time.

For aesthetics, what would people like to see? Keep it clean, make it destroyed, old school Aperture?

I think considering the huge pool of water you have here, you could get away with a destroyed-type theme, making out that test elements have sunk into the result of leaks/floods over time (similar to Wavelet's design).

I like your use of the old Portal 1 panel textures, but overall you'd probably want to get away from the brownish hues.

Very nice, complex use of light bridges and FPs. Everything worked fine for me. Thanks for mapping.

Finally got around to isolating the rotating bridge part.
You can download it here.

thanks for this really great map. beautiful level design, a lot of details and animations.
The puzzle was pretty hard. I enjoyed it !

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:

6j-ViNNnR6Q
(Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6j-ViNNnR6Q)

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

Oh wow, that video was incredibly helpful!
One question though.
Did you figure that the way you were getting the cube off of the moving platform wasn't how you were supposed to do it, and you were just trying to do it to prove it was possible?
That combined with just throwing the cube up there completely changes how the chamber works, I didn't even think of that!
Basically you skipped all puzzles involving the bridge.

UberSprode wrote:
Oh wow, that video was incredibly helpful!
One question though.
Did you figure that the way you were getting the cube off of the moving platform wasn't how you were supposed to do it, and you were just trying to do it to prove it was possible?
That combined with just throwing the cube up there completely changes how the chamber works, I didn't even think of that!
Basically you skipped all puzzles involving the bridge.

Glad you like it

It was the first possible way that came to my mind, I did not think of other ways as it worked out within the first few tries.
About the throwing the cube onto the button - here I was pretty sure it's not intended like this, but as far as I remember I've been up there before and was too lazy to go all the way again, so I just threw it up there.

Geezus man. Beginning was hard as f*(k. I thought about an hour or more how to do sth on this map, especially how to get cube - Knowledge of physics in this game is really needed if you want to get it. After I did that, rest was easy.

But I must admit - veeeeeery challenging map.

Don't let the plain brown wrapper fool you, there's a pretty nice toy inside! Well thought out puzzle without only slight acrobatic skills required. I liked how as you progress through the puzzle, you discover you have to go back to other parts. The path you might take the first time could be drastically different from a later pass. Solid 4/5 from me.

Great map
took me a half hour to figure out

i didn't notice the stairs next to the button at the beginning area
better make them a different colour or something

keep up the great work