This is Hopeless ! It's a long map composed by 5 chambers, and a special end

This map is less harder than my previous map, sp_lovetrip, but not too easy. Now, you will find checkpoints on each hard section.

I wish you a good enrichment

File Name: sp_hopeless.zip
File Size: 14.67 MiB
Click here to download Hopeless

And some screenshots :

Seems to be a problem in the first chamber? I can't get enough speed up.The O gel doesn't get you just barely high enough to portal the angle plate and then it dumps you gel coming down/if you O off the angle plate you also end up in the goo. If noclip up higher, I drop back and fling to B gel area - Bgel the flat surface and then cant fling far enough to get the cube?

Sorry second chamber, I went fast thru the first.

I liked the length and the diversity of the puzzles but overall, I find the map "messy". When I solve the puzzles, I'm rarely sure that I did it correctly.

The room I liked least was room 3 because it's purely timing and aiming skills.
Then room 1 was only slightly better but there wasn't much of a puzzle and it's not clear what the correct way to solve it is.
Room 5 has a good puzzle but it lacks direction plus you pretty much have to die before you can find the solution.
Room 4 was alright but much of a puzzle.
I like room 2.

your problem is strange, there are 3 different ways to make this jump over goo to get the cube...

The "safe road" is like on this screenshot :
http://img402.imageshack.us/img402/3951/gelsolution.jpg

quatrus wrote:
Seems to be a problem in the first chamber? I can't get enough speed up.The O gel doesn't get you just barely high enough to portal the angle plate and then it dumps you gel coming down/if you O off the angle plate you also end up in the goo. If noclip up higher, I drop back and fling to B gel area

After placing the portal on the angled plate, I just walked through the portal to get on that plate then jump from there into a portal below to get the momentum to fling across the acid pool

quatrus wrote:
Bgel the flat surface and then cant fling far enough to get the cube?

Use a orange + blue combination

Excellent! Very creative, I specially enjoyed the rooms 2,3 and 5.
And the end is... special

Thanks for mapping awesome maps! 5/5

Here is my video of the way I think it's supposed to be?


UQFW4CP1F74

Thanks all for the tips....appreciated.

LeBreak wrote:
Here is my video of the way I think it's supposed to be?

Yep, it works ! But in the first chamber, i prefer my hard way like on video :

DYNgI4TGLeE
Yeah i know, I'm a real masochist on portal...
Thanks for your comment

Awesome map! Love the dramatic ending! My only problem is, if we had been on the moon the whole time, gravity would have much less than it was. Maybe that could be solved by placing a sign near the end elevator that says something like "Warning! Artificial gravity ineffective above this level!" Just an idea

Fantastic map! Great level design! : )

Great map. Very hard and lots of detail. Solutions were never easy and made you feel like you accomplished something when you got through. Love the ending too.

Ok, tried the first part about 11 times, never even got close to making it once. I know what to do, but it seems "hopeless" to actually do it. Nothing like the real maps in the game at all.

I liked it overall. Nice job, and nice ending.

Btw, there is a way to get the cube in chamber 2 without using the orange gel for a running start. That's the way I initially figured it out.

Ah I appreciate the ninja moves, but you shouldnt have to die every time you mess them up. The length was great. Lot of very diverse puzzles. The part where bounce on all the pillars with blue gel was a bit frustrating due to me drifting and ending up not going far enough or missing the gel spot. trigger_catapults would be nice on that part. Awesome ending. The funnel/crusher/light wall part was a lot of fun and a nice original puzzle idea. Nice work.

A great map I'd say. My favorite chamber is the fourth one, followed by the third and fifth. Completing the map requires a lot of skills as well as accurate timing and quick action, and is based on trial and error. In the fifth one, I tried many ways to guide the beam into the receiver under the exit and fell into the acid for at least twenty times before finding the right way to do that.
But nothing in this world is perfect. Sometimes I really had trouble finding the solution, and sometimes, even if I knew clearly what the solution was, I had trouble solving it(e.g. using portals to gain the box a high speed and use it to open the door in room 2 is a bit annoying because the box can't always fall smoothly through the portals and keeps jumping out.). Making a map which is difficult but not frustrating is an art, and is a skill all mappers need to master.
In general, it's a good map. The ending is excellent. 5/5 to you!

Some Difficult for me but awesome!

If it wasn't for the complex chamber 2, this would be like playing Dragon's Lair: press X not to die, on a 1 second notice. Why descending into such cheap tactics when you've shown you can build proper puzzles? Much more people would then get interested in your work.

Technically speaking, the classic Clean layout gets undermined by some poor skinning. Cool finale.

I jumped up to the slated panel by: running between 2 portals on gel, placing one on my feet and jumping, entering another made higher on the front wall

This game started off so good, but then quickly went south, totally hopeless. I made it to the room in which one obtains a cube, maybe room 2. After obtaining the cube, and in order to get out the exit door, the cube has to free fall between two plates. As one backs away, they are suppose to fire a portal which causes the cube to intersect a laser beam bringing down the sheild and fire another portal so the cube will fly upwards and hit the button. After 20 tries, spending large amounts of time getting the skinny portals perfectly aligned, drop the cube to get it free fall, I gave up. Since the portals are so narrow and the cube so large, the cube easily catchs the sides of the portals. This alone destroyed the fun factor. I found myself, sadly, just exiting the game...for now.
Eastward,
Q? Does these plates have portal helper on them?
P.S. I plan to play this some other day when I'm ready to work for NASA--like Apollo 13 mission when they had to stop the CO2 problem...
P.S.2 I can hear the CEO's voice now. "This large square thingy needs to fit through those small holes. What? Your fired, goodbye, the parking lot."

Ok, I just saw a previous post (youtube) that showed a solution to the free falling cube in room 2. I noticed that the person did not walk backwards towards the door (as the design suggests--all the open glass pointing towards the exit door), but walked sideways. The second subliminal suggestion, that cause me to want to walk backwards, was the button being upside down gave the "feeling/impression" that one would be on a timer before the exit door would shut. So somehow as I walk backwards towards the door the portals are getting skinner causing the free falling cube to easily hit the sides of portals(frame shift...or something?) I stopped the video...now to try the sideways walk and to continue on to room 3.
Eastward,
P.S. New found hope. +

Yes, yes, this will be my last post for this map. As I mentioned before, I was going to try walking sideways in room 2 and fire portals as I go rather than backwards towards the door. It took two tries. Wow, the portals had to be "dead on," again, losing the fun factor.

Anyhow, room three was fun, but one has to die at least 10 times to solve the puzzle. The puzzle was hard, not in terms of problem solving, but in shooting portals within 2 seconds in a 2 to 4 degree window of opportunity. Room 4, which looks like a hallway, was really relaxing and fun, for me of course. Now room five, I'll need to see how others solved it, but I'm guessing I solved it with a method not intended... I was on the beam and shooting a portal while jumping sideways (losing the beam that was just under me) so that I landed at the foot of the stairs and the portal behind me had a laser beam going through it. I will not go any further for those who wish to solve it on their own.

Like those who posted before, the ending of this map was awesome. Rather than 5 out of 5 it's a 10 out of 5 (best ending to a custom map so far.) I found myself sitting back with a big huge grin, even a quick chuckle. + Nice rewarding finish for all the grief you caused me!

Eastward,
P.S. I look forward to playing another difficult map made by you...---...

Thanks for your full opinion

I'm aware that this map is very difficult, you will need to die a lot to finish it ! but I think it enriches the satisfaction of the player when he performed a hard test chamber... and the ending is a little reward after this achievement (or not )

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:

Z9ST9AXTeCs
(Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9ST9AXTeCs)

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

The puzzles vere enjoyably difficult and complex. Quite unusual and welcome. There are some problems with some portable pannels in the last chamber though - took me a while to figure them out. More please.

Liked the ending. I completly missed the third laser cube in the last chamber and completed it with two. Watched the video to see how to do that chamber and was kicking myself for missing the third cube. Would have been much easier. Enjoyed the map. keep up the good work.

Best Map Ever, Spent forever on this and forgot to go to sleep. Fantastic Ending and super challenging puzzles. I ... Have been enriched!

Has the potential to be a fantastic map, but there were too many things that just wouldn't work right. The pointy-shooty bits were extremely hard; I abandoned my controller almost immediately, even though my wireless keyboard is a little bit flaky about sending keystrokes every time. But I won't downgrade a rating just because of a high skill level requirement; let the ninjas have their fun!

Blue gel/pillars: your way is way beyond my skill level, but it is not hard to get gel where you need it before the final fling. This was an ideal puzzle, because ninjas can enjoy flying through it, while the rest of us can take our time yet still make it.

Orange/blue/cube: not hard to figure out, but the terrible behavior of the cube in the portals made it a royal pain. I could not get the auto-accelerate to work. I then dropped the cube through the floor from the slanted panel shelf, but the cube lost momentum so quickly that wouldn't work. Shouldn't the cube maintain its momentum in a yoyo?

Funnel/smashers: too ninja for me. What bothered me was you should have been able to loop through the angled portals until you hit the high portal, but once again, the momentum was lost on the first trip. A trigger_catapult on the left-hand angled portal would allow non-ninjas a chance.

Funnel/smashers/lightbridge: I didn't see the lightbridge at first because you enter the room looking down. You used faithplates to start other rooms, why not this one?

Lightbridge/laser: Three reflectocubes times multiple portal surfaces = many choices, yet unlike many laser puzzles, not overwhelming. The lightbridge needs an info_placement_helper; I kept putting my portal above the bridge. The cube that falls on the lightbridge kept falling off; perhaps you could lower the dropper? Those two problems made this a very frustrating experience, instead of the "Damn, I'm proud of myself" moment it could have been.

Nice touch on the ending, but it took much too long to get there, and then it didn't disconnect.

This would have been 5/5, but there are too many fixable problems, so just 4/5 from me.