Cube Stacking
by pepto_pillz · Uploaded May 26, 2011
File Size: 2.40 MB
Downloads: 1105
Rating: (31 votes)
Description
This test shows players how to redirect lasers by stacking cubes in a excursion funnels. There are 3 separate chambers. GLaDOS speaks in them as well. This may be the finished version. Change Log: v1.8 - Various bug fixes, Added auto saves, and slightly increased the complexity of the second chamber. v1.9 - Added minor details v2.2 - Fixed a chamber exploit in chamber 2 and fixed a glitch in chamber 3. v2.5 - Slightly Increased Performance. v2.7 - Lag Fixed.(Hopefully) v2.8 - Minor Details and Fixes.
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bufutda wrote:
how do you expand a .rar file?
Download this:
http://www.win-rar.com/download.html
then download my map and select open with winrar.
I downloaded wrar400, but it is not a valid application. I cannot click it to select "open with..."
bufutda wrote:
I downloaded wrar400, but it is not a valid application. I cannot click it to select "open with..."
I am not sure what to tell you. You may have to find help somewhere else or watch a youtube tutorial. Sorry 
I have to say I love this map. Challenging and thought provocative Keep up the good work! 
bufutda wrote:
I downloaded wrar400, but it is not a valid application. I cannot click it to select "open with..."
Use 7zip then
I really enjoyed this map. It was very simple yet just thought provoking enough to keep me interested. I enjoyed the learning curve too. Good job!
Inventive and fun, I particularly appreciate the lightning & aural part. One smart map. BTW I used a vertical cube to dispose of the turrets, which got the rest pretty leaky. Also: door to chamber 2 locked me out.
Overall I thought it was a pretty nifty idea. I think the mechanic itself works really well, though you're not teaching it enough. I figured out the funneling and cube combination early on, but I feel that even then the puzzle is rushing just a TAD too fast. I would recommended putting a slight puzzle in-between the two. Thats more of a nitpick I guess though.
Visually I thought the maps we're pretty good. My only issue is the overall size of the rooms. You're doing a lot of back and fourth with those laser cubes moving them around, and doing that in a tight space can sometimes make people a little dizzy.
Other than that it was a very enjoyable map, and I think you got something really going here.
lol, I almost using something similar in my map, killing turrets with redir laser + portal, I just have funnel from one end and a laser from the other and when I send a redir cube in the funnel it continuously laser the sidepath (also makes hard to ride the funnel, needing another cube to hold while travelling), and also got one similar puzzle without a funnel
xdiesp wrote:
Inventive and fun, I particularly appreciate the lightning & aural part. One smart map. BTW I used a vertical cube to dispose of the turrets, which got the rest pretty leaky. Also: door to chamber 2 locked me out.
Ok, so what you mean by leaky is the cubes fall out of the funnel or just fall out the map? or something else? the door that locked you out should be easier to fix.
MrTwoVideoCards wrote:
Overall I thought it was a pretty nifty idea. I think the mechanic itself works really well, though you're not teaching it enough. I figured out the funneling and cube combination early on, but I feel that even then the puzzle is rushing just a TAD too fast. I would recommended putting a slight puzzle in-between the two. Thats more of a nitpick I guess though.Visually I thought the maps we're pretty good. My only issue is the overall size of the rooms. You're doing a lot of back and fourth with those laser cubes moving them around, and doing that in a tight space can sometimes make people a little dizzy.
Other than that it was a very enjoyable map, and I think you got something really going here.
hm.. i think you may be right with that. I think I will add another chamber between the 2 that explains a little more to help make the turret part a little more clear.
Not a bad one.
You can simply skip the 3-4 turrets + two lasers in the last part of the map though.
But i think that's ok.
In part 2,
Alternate solution
you can roll the cube to send the laser up - through a portal on the ceiling and out the other side, perpendicular to the trigger above the door.
Though the laser never touches the trigger, if it is close enough, it will work.
Then when the button is activated, position another laser cube towards the first trigger that activates the blue funnel thing.
When button is pressed, laser activates blue funnel thing. Ride across the room, and out you go
Finally! Im running on a mac so WinRar did not work. I ended up using UnRar for mac and it works perfectly. Thanks for all the suggestions. Great map by the way
Had a play-through of this one. I was glad to learn that it was more than one chamber, the first test was nice.
I'm still not sure what the point was of the funnel in the second chamber as I didn't use it at all.
The third chamber was interesting, but a little buggy for me. One of my cubes ended up inside the funnel machinery at one point... 
The concept of putting a cube in a funnel to shoot lasers as it travels along is one I've been curious about. Neat to see someone else thought of the same thing and implemented it.
I only ended up with 3 mirror cubes in room 3 at one point (I died from accidentally portal-ing into the slime a couple times...) rather than the 4 that spawned during my first couple of lives, leaving the last part unsolvable. I spawned another with the console to finish it. Getting over to that last area was also difficult, what with the lasers and all...
Overall, I enjoyed it. I preferred the first two rooms to the third, but the map as a whole was fun.
I really liked this one. I particularly liked the putting a cube in a funnel to shoot lasers as it travels along. However the map was really laggy on my computer; admittedly, the little sparks at the end of lasers tend to kill my FPS for some reason, and you had quite a few of those.
Will T. wrote:
Had a play-through of this one. I was glad to learn that it was more than one chamber, the first test was nice.I'm still not sure what the point was of the funnel in the second chamber as I didn't use it at all.
The third chamber was interesting, but a little buggy for me. One of my cubes ended up inside the funnel machinery at one point...
The concept of putting a cube in a funnel to shoot lasers as it travels along is one I've been curious about. Neat to see someone else thought of the same thing and implemented it.I only ended up with 3 mirror cubes in room 3 at one point (I died from accidentally portal-ing into the slime a couple times...) rather than the 4 that spawned during my first couple of lives, leaving the last part unsolvable. I spawned another with the console to finish it. Getting over to that last area was also difficult, what with the lasers and all...
Overall, I enjoyed it. I preferred the first two rooms to the third, but the map as a whole was fun.
I know exactly why 3 cubes spawned instead of 4, ill have to fix it today, also, I cant believe I over looked that white wallthat would allow you to shoot a laser over to where you are so you can just use the cube through the glass. and ill fix the cube stuck behind funnel glitch too.
cg5 wrote:
I really liked this one. I particularly liked the putting a cube in a funnel to shoot lasers as it travels along. However the map was really laggy on my computer; admittedly, the little sparks at the end of lasers tend to kill my FPS for some reason, and you had quite a few of those.
I'm glad you liked it. sadly I have no way to disable sparks though.
I don't know why, but this custom map lags quite a bit...
Made a video of it
!WARNING! Spoilers !WARNING!
SmDIy45NleE
meh301 wrote:
I don't know why, but this custom map lags quite a bit...
Made a video of it!WARNING! Spoilers !WARNING!
SmDIy45NleE
well, first of all, that is a old version of the map. this looks like v1.8
:I
because 2.2 doesn't have that wall you used to direct the laser over to that window to shoot those turrets. but I'll see if there is still lag and or optimize it even more than it is now.
thanks for the nice video though
pepto_pillz wrote:
well, first of all, that is a old version of the map. this looks like v1.8
:I
because 2.2 doesn't have that wall you used to direct the laser over to that window to shoot those turrets. but I'll see if there is still lag and or optimize it even more than it is now.
thanks for the nice video though
Damn! You update too quickly :p
meh301 wrote:
pepto_pillz wrote:well, first of all, that is a old version of the map. this looks like v1.8
:I
because 2.2 doesn't have that wall you used to direct the laser over to that window to shoot those turrets. but I'll see if there is still lag and or optimize it even more than it is now.
thanks for the nice video though
Damn! You update too quickly :p
sorry, xD
I like to map, and get it as perfect as I can 
Edit: Btw, I updated again. added a performance increase that should help the lag in most cases.
pepto_pillz wrote:
Ok, so what you mean by leaky is the cubes fall out of the funnel or just fall out the map?
Sorry, I missed that! Forum could use a quote warning. :p I meant that by bruteforcing it in that immediate way, the rest was cheap easy.
xdiesp wrote:
pepto_pillz wrote:Ok, so what you mean by leaky is the cubes fall out of the funnel or just fall out the map?
Sorry, I missed that! Forum could use a quote warning. :p I meant that by bruteforcing it in that immediate way, the rest was cheap easy.
It should be fixed by now in the newest version.
I beat this map the first time, and I got a lot of slowdown. I got through the first two rooms the right way, but I used an exploit on the third. I rolled one of the cubes to point up and used another cube to shoot the turrents through the glass. Like so:
Exploit
cubestacking_exploit.jpg
And I believe iqminustwo said he used the same cube rolling trick to hit the last beam catcher.
Maybe make the glass wall solid, but with windows? I dunno.
I played a second time with the updated map. I'm glad I did. I used a laptop to play, but I didn't get any slowdown. Granted, it is pretty powerful for a laptop. Also, I completed the third chamber "the right way" this time. It was much more satisfying.
EDIT: I should add that, with a bit of skill, it's also rather easy to take out the turrets in the second chamber without using the excursion funnel at all.
bjs0 wrote:
I beat this map the first time, and I got a lot of slowdown. I got through the first two rooms the right way, but I used an exploit on the third. I rolled one of the cubes to point up and used another cube to shoot the turrents through the glass. Like so:Exploit
|| cubestacking_exploit.jpg
||
And I believe iqminustwo said he used the same cube rolling trick to hit the last beam catcher.
Maybe make the glass wall solid, but with windows? I dunno.
I played a second time with the updated map. I'm glad I did. I used a laptop to play, but I didn't get any slowdown. Granted, it is pretty powerful for a laptop. Also, I completed the third chamber "the right way" this time. It was much more satisfying.
EDIT: I should add that, with a bit of skill, it's also rather easy to take out the turrets in the second chamber without using the excursion funnel at all.
not quite sure how to fix the last chambers exploit, without that window, the laser cant go through the window to get to the cube to use to start the funnel and you wouldn't know the turrets are over there unless they could be in shooting sight. Also I don't know why a few people are getting lag, when the maps are optimized with hint and skip, and area portals in between each chamber that only open when the door is open and close when the doors are closed. I also walked around my map with the stress statues in the bottom right corner of my screen and It seems to be stable no matter what I do.
Ignore the unaccounted bar, Its just hammer running in the background.
This is the worse I could get the budget, I looked in every direction in every room, moved things placed portals everywhere, and yet this is the worst I could get it. 30 - 60 frames isn't bad, the human eye cant even see the difference between them.
pepto_pillz wrote:
the human eye cant even see the difference between them.
Yes it can. Watching a video or playing a game in 30 and 60 has a noticable difference for most people.
Here's a few sources, you'll easy find more (with examples) if you Google it.
put fps_max 30 into the console and play for a bit, then change it up to fps_max 60 and say there's no difference
well, in one of those links, it talks about the eyes seeing 24 FPS, and in wiki it says unknown, but I never trust Wikipedia. But I can easily play a game at 30 frames and not tell the difference if it goes up to 60 frames :/
EDIT: v2.7 released...
I did all that is possible to lower the lag as much as possible. There is somethings in my map I absolutely require that cannot be removed or it will break the map and make it unplayable.
I did a youtube of this map too! I goofed up a bit with the turrets and didn't figure out that I should put several boxes in the funnel at a time (as per the theme of the map...) but other than that it was a lot of fun!
H6cq1AkhyzQ
Krem wrote:
I did a youtube of this map too! I goofed up a bit with the turrets and didn't figure out that I should put several boxes in the funnel at a time (as per the theme of the map...) but other than that it was a lot of fun!
Thanks! Enjoyed watching someone actually have commentary on my map
A very inspired concept and well realized. I just wish you hadn't given away the solution to both chambers with the title Good use of other testing variables though, it wasn't all cube stacking, and for that I thank you. You took existing puzzle pieces and found something entirely new to do with them. I just wish there had been one more puzzle. I got all worked up and ready to do one more, then it ended. But hey, "always leave them wanting more" right?
I was planning on adding one more chamber at the end, but I ran out of time before I could finish it.
When I previously said "puzzles got leaky, after skipping that part", I meant a domino effect where an unintended solution makes everything else ever easier.
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:
ydw7G71ttu4
(Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydw7G71ttu4)
Also note the video description for more feedback and my signature for additional project information.
xdiesp wrote:
Inventive and fun, I particularly appreciate the lightning & aural part. One smart map. BTW I used a vertical cube to dispose of the turrets, which got the rest pretty leaky. Also: door to chamber 2 locked me out.
I think what he means is that the rest was too easy once the turrets were disposed of.
And what he means by a "vertical cube" is what I did too : Put a cube close to the laser, then another one half resting on top of the first one. The top one falls right on the laser pointing up. It's then quite easy to lift up another cube and manually point at the turrets through the transparent glass.
pepto_pillz wrote:
well, in one of those links, it talks about the eyes seeing 24 FPS, and in wiki it says unknown, but I never trust Wikipedia. But I can easily play a game at 30 frames and not tell the difference if it goes up to 60 frames :/
This myth is really old! the human eye does not work in a fashion that makes a question like "how many fps can the human eye see" valid. read the link ^^ http://amo.net/NT/02-21-01FPS.html
Anyway the map... loved it especially the very last solution.
This test shows players how to redirect lasers by stacking cubes in a excursion funnel. There are 3 separate chambers. GLaDOS speaks in them as well. This may be the finished version.
Change Log:
v1.8 - Various bug fixes, Added auto saves, and slightly increased the complexity of the second chamber.
v1.9 - Added minor details
v2.2 - Fixed a chamber exploit in chamber 2 and fixed a glitch in chamber 3.
v2.5 - Slightly Increased Performance.
v2.7 - Lag Fixed.(Hopefully)
v2.8 - Minor Details and Fixes.
Screenshots:
File Name: pillz_sp_cubestacking.rar
File Size: 2.42?MiB
Cube Stacking