File Size: 11.67 MB
Downloads: 2371
Rating: (23 votes)
Description
Here it is release version 2.0 of Wheatley's Gel Chambers (formerly known as Untitled Gel Puzzles) (STILL needs a better title!) UPDATES: Changed Music to ch8 music changed boxes to monster turret boxes (except in area 2 because the monster boxes aren't affected by gel) fixed panels in area 3 added a TON of signs and marks to help you along fixed a visible nodraw surface hope you like it better this time Style: Wheatley (except I used normal boxes) Difficulty: Hard Size: 3 Chambers Pace: Medium also: there is a cool ratman's den secret mapmakers room between between chambers in the BTS areas, like on OSTCSA. See if you can find it =) Focus on using blue gel with lightbridges in ways not seen in any of the valve maps or any of the community maps i've played, and a chamber centered around the clear gel. I intended to haev actual Wheatley lines in this.. I recorrded some new ones myself and wanted to try them out on the map. But they wouldn't work. I could load them into hamemr and play them but when it came to the map I got an error saying the sound could not be found on disk or something like that. I looked this up on the forums and they say you need to package it into a .vpk. I know how to use the .vpk tool but I don't know how to actually impliment it in the game, whether I need to package it with the map and all or whether I can have a standalone .vpk with just the wavs. So, for now it uses Game_texts to help you on your way.
Comments
Sign in to comment.
If there is any map that has truly nailed that Wheatley flavour it is this. I was disappointed that the music was not the classic a4 labs song, the cubes weren't frankenturrets and the game text was actually sort of annoying, but other than that (and slightly poor optimisation) this map was amazing.
I even went into noclip after I finished the map so I could examine the vastness of the labs and you cracked the theme in a way few maps other than Infinifling and several others have.
Top notch mapping, look forward to more.
Visually complete with animated sequences to boot, it's the evolved and matured Wheatley style already seen in CG-Oversized Test Chamber Storage Area - that work on the vistas paid off. 
The presentation's only dent lies in Wheatley's messages, not voiced or terribly catchy: possibly, custom voiceovers with your own core or more characterization might work. Was that innuendo with the "I've been rough with this room"? 
That might be a way.
However, I think the ground's shaky with the puzzlework: each chamber is about navigating one, small room which doesn't give you the proper tools to finish it - if not later, by a chain of events (spawning platforms, doors, bridges). Paired with the rigid script to follow, it's like being piloted blindly: you just get content with progressing by the moves, without the long run in mind. Difficulty is indeed high, but much of it comes from hard jumps and a couple gimmicks: the lightbridge especially, but infiniflings with gels aren't that known either, and I think there's a jump on a live lightbridge in the first one.
Imho, it would be a good idea to add: exit signs on the opening of chamber 1 part 2; samely, one apparent exit for chamber 2; gel signs for the pit and strong implications of lightbridges being there in chamber 3.
EDIT Bugs: you can get stuck behind the wall, if you portal yourself to the upper slated panels you use to set the lightbridges straight; the Wheatley monitor in the same room is not solid.
After playing this and then watching the solution demos I'm surprised by how many of the puzzles I did solve with intended solutions. I would have guessed that about half of what I did was unintended, but in the first 2 chambers nearly 100% of the solutions I found were the same as in the demos. The stuff that was different is negligible, such as a slightly different fling to get somewhere, but the outcome was the same.
I did have some trouble in Chamber 3 though:
For some reason I couldn't make the fling that gets you to the faith plate and cube. I swear I tried several times the exact same fling as in the demo, but would always fly out from the angled panel too low to hit the faith plate. Maybe I coated too many surfaces with blue gel. I don't know if that can mess up a fling like that or not. Anyway I eventually used the reportal glitch to get a little more height and then easily made that fling.
Also in Chamber 3:
I didn't use blue gel to reach the exit. I moved the portals around so that I could walk up the angled light bridge. Once I was up near the exit I figured I needed to get on top of where the light bridges crossed, but I couldn't figure out how. I tried to jump to the exit from where I was on the side of the crossing bridges, but the gap was too narrow. So I finally tried to jump and move a portal while in midair and that got me through the exit door. I can make a demo if that description wasn't clear enough.
The most annoying Portal 2 map pack yet. I just wanted it to end already, which is a shame because the Oversized Test Chamber is one of the best Portal 2 maps out there.
The second chamber made me impatient trying to have the gel shoot in the right angle in order to bounce to the button. By that time, alot of the place was covered with the blue gel sent you bouncing all over if you didnt make the jump right or were to close to a painted wall. ARGH. Also, the same track on loop made me crazy. This specific track gets on your nerves if it plays all the time.
The last chamber also got to me. The jump in order to get to the faith plate is too tough to pull off with no particular reason. For some reason my bounce came short. The bit with the light bridges also gave me troubles. I had a bug where the blue gel stopped dripping and when you quick-load, the light bridges are no loger covered with the gel eventhough they were when i saved.
The puzzles are cool but too much gel painting that made me unsure which surface to paint and if i can get the gel coming out in the right angle, with the portal being placable in only one way and me bouncing all around the place.
xdiesp wrote:
Visually complete with animated sequences to boot, it's the evolved and matured Wheatley style already seen in CG-Oversized Test Chamber Storage Area - that work on the vistas paid off.
yeah the actual Wheately lines I had come up with were much more punchy and catchy with a bit of Cockney rhyming slang thrown in... but In order to get ANY of it to fit into game text I had to cut it down a LOT. Like I said in the blurb, I couldn't get the custom sounds to work on the map, dont know how to do that properly
xdiesp wrote:
However, I think the ground's shaky with the puzzlework: each chamber is about navigating one, small room which doesn't give you the proper tools to finish it - if not later, by a chain of events (spawning platforms, doors, bridges). Paired with the rigid script to follow, it's like being piloted blindly: you just get content with progressing by the moves, without the long run in mind.
honestly, I know what you mean. Problem was, earlier versions started out with a much less rigid script as you say, with all the elements more or less present and a lot less flipping panels. Problem was, playtesters kept using incorrect solutions with more "options" present, and I had to make all these scripted doors and triggers to compensate.
xdiesp wrote:
Imho, it would be a good idea to add: exit signs on the opening of chamber 1 part 2; samely, one apparent exit for chamber 2; gel signs for the pit and strong implications of lightbridges being there in chamber 3.
Okay on the signs, but the lightbridges in 3 were meant to be a surprise =/
xdiesp wrote:
EDIT Bugs: you can get stuck behind the wall, if you portal yourself to the upper slated panels you use to set the lightbridges straight.
those panels are for painting the lightbridges that come out of the floor. I was forced to put them in at the last minute because I realized noone would figure out that you can PAINT THE BRIDGES FROM BELOW. Since you can get stuck, I Can put a grating over them.
Saturn wrote:
The second chamber made me impatient trying to have the gel shoot in the right angle in order to bounce to the button. By that time, alot of the place was covered with the blue gel sent you bouncing all over if you didnt make the jump right or were to close to a painted wall. ARGH. Also, the same track on loop made me crazy. This specific track gets on your nerves if it plays all the time.
you mean the upper part of the first chamber? Okay, you're right, that music is kind of annoying, ill do two things one: change it to the propper ch8 theme and two: have it fade out after a few minutes.
So you really didn't like the bounces up the blocks to the switch that knocked the panels off? you think it would be a good idea to just remove the big blocks entirely and just have the upper part of 1 be the bounce out to 2? cause I am starting to hate that part too =/
Saturn wrote:
The last chamber also got to me. The jump in order to get to the faith plate is too tough to pull off with no particular reason. For some reason my bounce came short. The bit with the light bridges also gave me troubles. I had a bug where the blue gel stopped dripping and when you quick-load, the light bridges are no loger covered with the gel eventhough they were when i saved.
Im not sure what the trouble was for the bounce to the faithplate. Did you watch the demo of how I did it? remember the second bounce after jumping straight up off of blue gel is slightly higher so you can get some extra velocity that way. You have to put your "out" portal on the checkered wall, not the angles one
also this is a known bug of the paint going away from lightbridges after quickloading. I am not sure how to fix the blue gel stopping after quickload either. If you press the buttons again it should start them back up
Saturn wrote:
The puzzles are cool but too much gel painting that made me unsure which surface to paint and if i can get the gel coming out in the right angle, with the portal being placable in only one way and me bouncing all around the place.
i'm not sure what you mean by this
CrazyGuy wrote:
. Like I said in the blurb, I couldn't get the custom sounds to work on the map, dont know how to do that properly.
have you tried this?.
as it says here :
You have to create a VPK file and put them into the "portal 2\portal2\addons" folder, if you do not have that folder, you have to create.
To load a VPK file is the same as a .bsp "map sp_bablabla"
sorry foy my bad english
Great chambers overall, shame about the no-voice and the music, but really good. Only one problem: I couldn't solve chamber 3 and the demos aren't working for me. Could you post the solutions on youtube perhaps?
If not, I got to the point when you get the cube to activate and open the Conversion gel, and after that I've tried everything. i think the problem is I get stuck or rather stop my momentum on the diagonal panel, I just can't get through. I've tried getting momentum in the netted shaft before portaling myself through the diagonal panel on to the faith plate, but that only get's me to the cube dispenser. NO idea how to get to those far-away cieling emancipation grills. 
Very difficult chambers, 1 and 2 were challenging. Chamber 3 was very difficult, particularly the surprise light bridges - getting up there was just a trick - not difficult. Getting from the light bridges to the exit door seemed impossible from below the cross - had to noclip to end.
glitches: you can end up behind walls and trapped in several places in Ch 3. You can also get trapped in the pit if you put white on the wall and get into it (dumb...I know). The texture exposes the cube drop and area around it from the cube drop level in Ch 3 - just aesthetics.
You have created a masterpiece map, but unfortunately it still needs a little cleanup work. Still an excellent map set. Thanks for creating.
quatrus wrote:
Chamber 3 was very difficult, particularly the surprise light bridges - getting up there was just a trick - not difficult. Getting from the light bridges to the exit door seemed impossible from below the cross - had to noclip to end.
I thought that last chamber would be pretty hard. Remember, there is a reason there are TWO lightbridgess instead of one. And a spoiler, use the panels directly above the lightbridges to paint them with bounce gel. See if you can figure it out from there. If you can't ther eis a demo file with the solution on it but another poster said it didn't work, so I may need to re-record them and post them later
quatrus wrote:
glitches: you can end up behind walls and trapped in several places in Ch 3.
several places? I thought the only place that was possible was after revealing the lightbridges, portalling through the angled panels above them. Are there other places? because Im sure I clipped them all off
quatrus wrote:
You can also get trapped in the pit if you put white on the wall and get into it (dumb...I know).
you should be able to easily get out of pit by portalling the panel that flips down over it. But if you are saying you conversion gelled the walls of the pit, put a portal on the wall of the pit, took the box off the button THEN used the portal to go into pit, I guess you are stuck although I Can't imagine why you would do this =/
but this is noted I can make an escape trigger down there if anyone ever does this
quatrus wrote:
The texture exposes the cube drop and area around it from the cube drop level in Ch 3 - just aesthetics.
not sure what this sentence means.. what texture what cube drop area?
quatrus wrote:
You have created a masterpiece map, but unfortunately it still needs a little cleanup work. Still an excellent map set. Thanks for creating.
thanks for testing and thanks for the comment! much appreciated
CrazyGuy wrote:
Saturn wrote:The second chamber made me impatient trying to have the gel shoot in the right angle in order to bounce to the button. By that time, alot of the place was covered with the blue gel sent you bouncing all over if you didnt make the jump right or were to close to a painted wall. ARGH. Also, the same track on loop made me crazy. This specific track gets on your nerves if it plays all the time.
you mean the upper part of the first chamber? Okay, you're right, that music is kind of annoying, ill do two things one: change it to the propper ch8 theme and two: have it fade out after a few minutes.
So you really didn't like the bounces up the blocks to the switch that knocked the panels off? you think it would be a good idea to just remove the big blocks entirely and just have the upper part of 1 be the bounce out to 2? cause I am starting to hate that part too =/
Saturn wrote:
The last chamber also got to me. The jump in order to get to the faith plate is too tough to pull off with no particular reason. For some reason my bounce came short. The bit with the light bridges also gave me troubles. I had a bug where the blue gel stopped dripping and when you quick-load, the light bridges are no loger covered with the gel eventhough they were when i saved.
Im not sure what the trouble was for the bounce to the faithplate. Did you watch the demo of how I did it? remember the second bounce after jumping straight up off of blue gel is slightly higher so you can get some extra velocity that way. You have to put your "out" portal on the checkered wall, not the angles one
also this is a known bug of the paint going away from lightbridges after quickloading. I am not sure how to fix the blue gel stopping after quickload either. If you press the buttons again it should start them back upSaturn wrote:
The puzzles are cool but too much gel painting that made me unsure which surface to paint and if i can get the gel coming out in the right angle, with the portal being placable in only one way and me bouncing all around the place.
i'm not sure what you mean by this
- Yeah, the upper part. I wasn't able to get the gel on block #2 so i could jump to the button, so i thought i have to do something else like jumping and bouncing and somehow steer myself to the button platform.
I wouldn't hurry to make the changes because it doesn't seem anyone else was having issues in this part and all my frustration was a result of not realizing you can put the gel on that spot.
Overall a great map.
BUT (and this is a Big Butt !!) . . . the exit in Chamber 2 is not explained well at all.
The 2nd line of text from Wheatley says the Exit is "near the button where I intended it to be".
Yet the exit is all the way on the other corner of the room from the button and way up high.
I would have not guessed in a million years that I had to fling myself out that exact window, one football field across no-man's land, and onto a stairwell that is nowhere in sight.
Not one clue about that other than an X in the ceiling and floor. I wasted 2 hours - then finally watched the demo, which is Demo 1, not Demo 2 even though I was in the 2nd chamber. Go figger.
Would have been great if not for that.
I enjoyed this map quite a lot. I've just uploaded my initial playthrough of it. All of my thoughts and suggestions are in the video and description. I also find a couple small visual mistakes in the map during the video.
Anyways, thanks for mapping.
vdqUtUQk2eY
I have addressed several issues outlined in previous posts and uploaded an updated version. Check out 2.0 if 1.0 was giving you too much trouble.
lifeson99 wrote:
Overall a great map.BUT (and this is a Big Butt !!) . . . the exit in Chamber 2 is not explained well at all.
The 2nd line of text from Wheatley says the Exit is "near the button where I intended it to be".
Yet the exit is all the way on the other corner of the room from the button and way up high.
I would have not guessed in a million years that I had to fling myself out that exact window, one football field across no-man's land, and onto a stairwell that is nowhere in sight.
Not one clue about that other than an X in the ceiling and floor. I wasted 2 hours - then finally watched the demo, which is Demo 1, not Demo 2 even though I was in the 2nd chamber. Go figger.Would have been great if not for that.
thanks for testing! alright, well I added a lot more signs to indicate the exit. And it IS still chamber 1, it is just the upper half of chamber 1. Chamber 2 is the one with the ramps that are already painted.
Blaizer wrote:
I enjoyed this map quite a lot. I've just uploaded my initial playthrough of it. All of my thoughts and suggestions are in the video and description. I also find a couple small visual mistakes in the map during the video.Anyways, thanks for mapping.
Thanks for testing!
Watching your video, overall you didn't seem to see several things I put in to help like signs. And in area 2 you didn't seem to notice the switches until much later. Were they that hard to see?
Also I see you had a LOT of trouble getting to the first cube in area 3. Most others I talked to had trouble here too. In the new version I didn't change it that much, however, for the next version im thinking of a much easier way to get up.
I added a lot more signs and a few more indicator lights to better guide the player in the future, since in the video you said you had no idea what you were supposed to do a lot of the time.
I figured part of the fun of this was figuring out what to do, but it may be a little too hard in a bar chamber so like I said, more signs
Well, I played V2. I can see you addressed a lot of the problems with the first version. You even made my solutions to the first and third chamber not work... so I had to figure out the intended solutions. In the first chamber, I still didn't realise you were supposed to stand on the X to shoot the portal to the light bridge to get it at the correct angle. I was shooting it from the opposite side of the chamber... and ended up using trial and error. I don't really like the idea of this fling...
Two problems with the third chamber. You can shoot a portal on the wall behind that weird thing that's dripping water that you added. Secondly... the intended solution is a little hard to do... even your demo of it has a little difficulty. That jump when you're on top of the two angled light bridges to the exit door... it's a bit awkward.
CrazyGuy wrote:
And in area 2 you didn't seem to notice the switches until much later. Were they that hard to see?
I think my main problem was that in the front half of the chamber, the buttons are obscured by the metal things in the ground. You can only really see them from the back half of the chamber with the paint. Is this what those metal things are intended for?
Blaizer wrote:
And in area 2 you didn't seem to notice the switches until much later. Were they that hard to see?
I think my main problem was that in the front half of the chamber, the buttons are obscured by the metal things in the ground. You can only really see them from the back half of the chamber with the paint. Is this what those metal things are intended for?
They are intended to make it impossible to use the speed gel to run from in front of the buttons up to the second cube. Also, they are there to stop you from pressing them from the "ramp" side. You think I should add indicator lights from them to the box droppers? I left the indicators off f them because I didnt want it too cluttered with them, so I could I guess put a sign there too. I don't make things intentionally hard to see. But you did walk past them a coupple of times on the button side with them going right through your main viewscreen, thought you'd have seen em
CrazyGuy wrote:
But you did walk past them a coupple of times on the button side with them going right through your main viewscreen, thought you'd have seen em
Hehe. Guess I was overwhelmed by all the other fun stuff in the room.
Still think you should fix the jump in the last chamber to make it seem like the intended solution, though.
Nice use of gels in new ways (as you had intended). Great attention to detail and decor too. Fun map
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:
M0SAErmFZpU
(Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0SAErmFZpU)
Also note the video description for more feedback and my signature for additional project information.
Are we supposed to use the stand-on-a-lightbridge-and-shoot-portals-to-raise-the-lightbridge-higher-and-higher trick in the very first room?
Because I am not sure whether it counts as a cheat.
No hints please, just an answer to this question. Thanks.
pretty damn good map. I especially like the whole speed up the gel thing, that was clever. overall i didnt find this map too hard, except for the ninja lightbridge fling at the end. really good aesthetics, its nice to have a nice veiw from the chamber, there are too many maps out there that just chuck in a couple of random boxes and figure thatll do for a view outside the chamber. This was good. slightly dissapointed though at one point, when leaving chamber two, to the right of the catwalk where you land there is another that looks within jumping distance. i tried it and it was. unfortunately i fell straight through and died. might want to look at moving that (or making it solid and having it lead to an easter egg or something) but yeah i really liked this map.
I really enjoyed the looks and gameplay of this map. I played v2, and didn't have much trouble figuring out most of the "tricks" needed. I generally have problems with bouncy gel, but was able to avoid most of it. The bounce off the angled lightbridge was a neat trick. In the second chamber, I was annoyed by the player_clip blocking the button, but was still able to fling over it (like I said before, I don't get along with bouncy gel.) I haven't watched any other playthroughs, but I think my solution(s) to the crossed lightbridges weren't intended. The first time, I offset the portals (I was somehow able to defeat the info_placement_helpers) so that they didn't intersect. The second time, I just refired my portals while pressing against it. The brief moment the bridges were down was enough to push through and end up on top.
Sure, this map has its annoying features, but the overall attention to detail and creative puzzles are impossible to ignore. 5/5 from me.
When you autosave during that jump with the repulsion gel to the broken rail if you don't solve it the right way, you can't finish the map
Here it is release version 2.0 of Wheatley's Gel Chambers (formerly known as Untitled Gel Puzzles)
(STILL needs a better title!)
UPDATES:
Changed Music to ch8 music
changed boxes to monster turret boxes (except in area 2 because the monster boxes aren't affected by gel)
fixed panels in area 3
added a TON of signs and marks to help you along
fixed a visible nodraw surface
hope you like it better this time
Style: Wheatley (except I used normal boxes)
Difficulty: Hard
Size: 3 Chambers
Pace: Medium
also: there is a cool ratman's den secret mapmakers room between between chambers in the BTS areas, like on OSTCSA. See if you can find it =)
Focus on using blue gel with lightbridges in ways not seen in any of the valve maps or any of the community maps i've played, and a chamber centered around the clear gel.
I intended to haev actual Wheatley lines in this.. I recorrded some new ones myself and wanted to try them out on the map. But they wouldn't work. I could load them into hamemr and play them but when it came to the map I got an error saying the sound could not be found on disk or something like that. I looked this up on the forums and they say you need to package it into a .vpk. I know how to use the .vpk tool but I don't know how to actually impliment it in the game, whether I need to package it with the map and all or whether I can have a standalone .vpk with just the wavs.
So, for now it uses Game_texts to help you on your way.
[img]http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a383/zCrazyGuy/portal2%20screenshots/2011-07-28_00003.jpg[/img]
[img]http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a383/zCrazyGuy/portal2%20screenshots/2011-07-28_00004.jpg[/img]
[img]http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a383/zCrazyGuy/portal2%20screenshots/2011-07-28_00005.jpg[/img]
[img]http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a383/zCrazyGuy/portal2%20screenshots/2011-07-28_00006.jpg[/img]
File Name: CG_Additional_Ch8_TestsV2.zip
File Size: 11.67 MiB
Click here to download CG - Additional Chapter 8 Tests v2.0