Greetings everyone!
I just finished this co-op map and want to share it with you. I'd appreciate some (constructive) criticism and opinions.

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About the map:
The main objective is to bring a cube from one room to another - with certain obstacles of course . With clever use of the lightbridge and some flinging it should not be a big problem.

Difficulty: I'd say it can be challenging to figure some things out, but not impossible.
Overall: hard

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Changelog:

v1.3a:
- made a minor fix to a fizzler-brush in the last room because it could unintentionally destroy your cube

v1.3:
- made some bigger changes to the map design to achieve the desired puzzle solving path
- fixed some textures

v1.2:
- adjusted the map design to remove an unintended solution
- fixed a missing sign ("square" on the wall by the tractor beam)

v1.1:
- fixed a bug where the cube could get unintentionally destroyed
- aligned some textures and added a new sign


Have fun!
-peat

File Name: mp_coop_cubeget1.3a.rar
File Size: 1.17 MiB
Click here to download Get that Cube

Amazing map, we took about half an hour to solve it!
I recorded our run and will upload it as soon as I can.

Apart from one "fuck you developer!"-moment it was just awesome! That one moment could be a bug, it destroyed our cube for no reason You'll see in video

Thank you very much. I know about the weird fizzler bug, i think it has to do with the fizzler being directly behind the wall where your portal is. I'm going to fix it . Looking forward to your video!

Fantastic !
It took us about 30 minutes to solve it as well, and yes, the bug destroyed our cube too

This is a very satisfying map.

very nice map but we are sure we solved it in an other way you expected cause we didnt need the portal place 1 and 2 and did never get in that area top where you can fall down on the button in the small chamber.

Thank you Sulfaras. I think i know how you solved it. You just didnt put the cube in the tractor beam, right?

Edit: This solution has been removed.

Headache-inducing puzzles!
Here's what we did:

Get the cube.
Transfer cube to large, faith-plate room.
Push the button.
Get the bridge portaled.
Portal bridge to door.
Put another portal near the portaled bridge, and jumped on it while going out.
DID NOT USE THE HIDDEN CORRIDOR AT THE TOP!

Unfortunately there was a problem with the upload yesterday. You should try v1.2 (now it's the right map file) if you want some more (intended) headache .

Excellent, surprisingly intricate! Taxative on grey matter more than teeth, because the solution seems always around the corner. This one's a keeper.

edit
Peat: might have found a bug. If we throw a cube to the upside-down button, above the funnel, it lowers a panel outside (and onto a button). But if we remove it, the aforementioned panel doesn't reset.

My coop partner and I had a lot of fun playing this map and thought it was one of the best unofficial coop maps so far, and if it was issue-free probably the best.

The issue is that we think we found another unintended solution because we didn't use the excursion funnel (your previous post implied we should) and did several things which we felt awkward about. Here's our solution:
Solution
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My one big suggestion would be:
Suggestion
If the awkward jump-through maneuver that we did is intended, make it so that there is a portalable wall above (instead of to the side of) the light bridge portal's wall. This way you can fall onto the bridge instead of jumping sideways through the portal to it. You can disregard this suggestion if this technique is unneeded or the real solution requires the walls to the side.

@xdiesp: Thank you for mentioning this. I'm going to look into it as soon as i can!.

@Mevious: Thank you very much for your input Mevious! I hate to admit this, but obviously there are still some logical flaws left.

Yes, the intended solution involves the excursion funnel, but i would say the way you bypassed it is an acceptable alternate solution, because the main point of the funnel is to force the players to do the maneuver where one player makes the big jump and is blocked by the lightbridge so he can access the upper tunnel.

The jump-through maneuver at the end is as intended, but i always thought it felt a bit "unnatural" to do this. I think i'm going to implement your idea.

Anyway: I very much appreciate your video. It gave me another point of view and was very helpful. I will work on another version as soon as i can.

P.S: I loved Portal Pro .

peat,

I think I've played just about every co-op map available on this site at the time of this writing, and this is hands-down the best in my opinion. A nice difficult challenge, no shortcutting that you missed, lots of thinking-with-portals with very little reliance on ninja reflexes. Unlike several other user-created co-op maps that could be 90% done by a single player, this also had a nice heavy mandatory call for teamwork. This was really one of the most satisfying maps I've ever played. Voted 5/5. I'd give it a 10 if I could! Looking forward to anything you create. Thanks for the amazing map!

First of all: awesome map! This really kept my friend and me busy for quite a while.

We came across one annoyance though. In the last chamber, we had a problem with the big fizzler farthest down the chamber. The fizzler looks like it's divided in three levels, with the upper extending to the walls of the chamber. When we place a portal on the portable wall at the left and go through it with the cube, the cube is emancipated which is quite annoying.

I believe the fizzler brush doesn't stop at the side of the wall but continues to the chamber wall. This would explain why it has no effect on portals placed on that surface but does collide with the cube. I don't know Hammer so I may be completely wrong at this, but it sounds logical to me that the cause would be something like that. I think you need to split up the fizzler brush so it doesn't go through that wall.

Other than that, we really enjoyed this map and I'd love to see more maps like this.

First of all: Thanks for your appreciation!

@Calculator: Yes, you are absolutely right. The fizzler brush continues through the wall and this may very well be the reason for this behaviour. I encountered this problem once in my map but not in this place. Seems to be a weird engine thing, because logically (in the logic of portals at least ^^) the cube never touches the fizzler. I'm going to make a hotfix for this as i understand that it can be quite annoying to lose the cube this far in the map. Thanks for finding this.

If you are interested: I'm already working on a map for the Summer Mapping Initiative, so be prepared .


Edit: already hotfixed!

Hi, very nice map.
We loved to solve it!

This is our way: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJoyGaf3l6Y

Great map, 5/5!

Couple of minor aesthetic suggestions: my friend and I thought the cube should be a companion, since it's so central to the entire puzzle, and the exit should be an elevator and not a little green room.

My friend and I took an age on this room because we couldn't work out the correct maneuver; I did think of trying to get one of us in a "holding pattern" while the other set up the light bridge to stop the long-distance fling.

INSTEAD... we pulled the cube off the ceiling button and placed it on the edge just above the water, so that we didn't have to use the ceiling passage to turn off the emancipation grid.

But for what it's worth, I think it was a great map anyway. I wish that other people wouldn't mark their maps as "hard" when they're pushovers.

Brilliant map, very clever.

Me and my partner took quite a while to solve(thats a good thing). Our solution was not elegant.

To get the box in the first room across the big emancipation field we have one player hold the box above their head and jump the box over. The 2nd player would catch the falling box.

Also...we did not use the light path to stop our trajectory of the big jump(because we didnt think of that solution) we just steered in the air to hit the model of the emancipation field

Overall a great puzzle. 5/5

Not fun at all. Spent almost an hour trying to figure it out and never did finish it; too frustrating. Plus if you loose the cube, its a pain to get it again. Needs to give you a cube again on the main floor after losing it once.

All the videos I see of it are different from the version we played. The version we played seems impossible to be frank.

Would like to see a video solution to the newest version.

I dont know why it was so hard for us to figure out, we can usually breeze passed most coop maps. But we were scratching our heads for ages trying to do this one and it frustrated us so much we just stopped.

I'm sorry to hear that Pm@c. The map is supposed to be hard and the comments so far have told me it's not too difficult. The solution postet by KipEE (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJoyGaf3l6Y) is pretty much the way you're supposed to solve the map, apart from some unnecessary maneuvers. The current map version 1.3a is designed slightly different than the one in the video, but the puzzle mechanic doesn't change. I just had to change it to eliminate some unintended solutions.

I agree with you though that there could be some kind of checkpoint that respawns the cube upon loss.

Thanks for your input.

peat wrote:
I'm sorry to hear that Pm@c. The map is supposed to be hard and the comments so far have told me it's not too difficult. The solution postet by KipEE (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJoyGaf3l6Y) is pretty much the way you're supposed to solve the map, apart from some unnecessary maneuvers. The current map version 1.3a is designed slightly different than the one in the video, but the puzzle mechanic doesn't change. I just had to change it to eliminate some unintended solutions.

I agree with you though that there could be some kind of checkpoint that respawns the cube upon loss.

Thanks for your input.

Its just that when you try to do certain things to figure out the puzzle a dozen times, and it always results in the cube dieing, well, getting that cube a dozen times becomes realllllly repetitive and frustrating.

{SOAP} Pm@c wrote:
Its just that when you try to do certain things to figure out the puzzle a dozen times, and it always results in the cube dieing, well, getting that cube a dozen times becomes realllllly repetitive and frustrating.

May i ask where the cube dies all the time? The only thing i can imagine is the first room where it can fall into the water (although this should not happen more than once or twice), but once you get the cube from the dropper over the water it is pretty much safe unless you try some weird "fizzler-bypass-trickjump" if you know what i mean. The whole map is designed to be solved in a clear and "cube-safe" way if you do it right. Or do you mean it gets destroyed where you would not expect it to get destroyed (this happened before due to bugs but should be fixed by now)? I'm really curious because this is the first time i hear this.

I mean it gets destroyed when we try to do certain things with it (like trying to jump it over the first or second fizzler). Basically just experimenting on how to solve the puzzle.

But basically it does not matter how you kill it, what matters is that if the cube gets killed, its a giant pain in the ass to get it back.

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:

_PgTK_uWbd4
(Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PgTK_uWbd4)

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

For us, the map was awesome. Good thinking, but nothing impossible or requiring some weird movement. Good logic! We stopped for a while on the putting bridge from ceiling part but that was because my friend was just putting it wrong. Everything except that was fun, moderate difficulty - easy anough not to get frustrated, hard enough to satisfy. 5/5

My friend and I have been burning through tons of coop maps, but this was the first one that stumped us; we got the cube to the button, but we never figured out to use the two numbered platforms to create portals to bring the lightbridge over. We did still manage to "complete" the map though! If you place portals on platform #1 and the wall behind it in just the right spots--I think we did the top right corner on the platform (when looking down from the nearby ledge) and the lower right corner on the wall (when facing the wall)--and then jump into the first portal at just the right angle, you can launch yourself to the exit without touching the cube at all.

I had thought that we needed to hit the button up there to get the lightbridge portals into position, we knew we needed that as a wall there. After not really figuring out how to deal with the switch properly, my friend pointed out that we had technically figured out how to get to the exit--we had spent quite a long time on the map at this point, so we took the easy way out.

I'm not sure if you're still tinkering with this map, but I thought I'd let you know about this issue just in case it was something you'd be interested in fixing.

real

Excellent coop map. Provocing and creative. We had quality time with that. Many thanks.

Obviously not a perfect run, but just wanted to show the path we found. Could easily shave off another 5 second with this path by doing it better, but it's as good as a 2nd try will get.

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This is the worst part about being a speedrunner... You can't even play maps normally anymore, you only see ways to cheat all over the place ):

EDIT: We've actually found a better path that cuts off at least 10-15 more seconds.