Retrieve your faithful companion cube, and make your escape, at a price.

File Name: Cube retrieval runV2.zip
File Size: 5.16 MiB
Click here to download Companion Retrieval Run

This wasn't fun at all.

At first try, i've destroyed the first companion cube, and it didn't respawned at all, so i've tried to continue without that, but it was necessary.

Jump on tiny platform trying to not fall, is not fun.
Repeating the same 20s music in loop, is not fun.
Quicksave don't save the position of blockers of lasercube is totally NOT FUN. Especially for the fact that you can die a lot of times, and when you place the companion cube on the "funnel-button" on the wall, if you reload you lose the cube because it will fall in the goo (and don't respawn, of course)

To reach the semi-final door i've used the floor portal-loop glitch, can't manage another way to do that.
Then, finally i've reached the final door by jumping at the end of orange gel. This is a mechanic that i don't like at all, but this time is a personal fact.

Ultimately, the non-linear look of all the puzzle makes it really hard to understand what to do.


Yeah, i'm not a judge, just a random player who don't liked your map, but forced himself to finish it. Sorry if that comment looked too rude.

On the contrary, I actually liked the map up until the point where the quick-save causes the lasercube blocker to reset, ruining the map. The only solution is to save at that point and do the entire rest of the map in one single run.

I think you did a good job with making a map with a "menacing" feel. Jumping puzzles weren't much fun though. Losing the ability to save made the map go way downhill from there. I don't think you did the "no-save" thing on purpose though. Maybe it's just a bug in Portal.

Also, as mentioned, the music got really annoying after awhile. Also, for a complex map like this (especially one where you can't save), I would really recommend including a solution demo file so we can see how it's supposed to be done without risking death.

Well, I really liked it. Seriously, I found it very very clever. Really challenging puzzles from the very beginning. It's true that sometimes it's had to jump on tiny surfaces.. and the savepoints don't work as they should. Though overall I got impressed by this map.

Very curious! Real sense of vertigo!

And, Infernet89, about the semi-final door reaching, you should have travel through the funnel to where the companion cube presses the red button; then, from there you place a portal on the below plattform further and the other portal on the same plattform but closer while you are falling down... this way you will easily reach the upper semi-exit-plattform that's how I suppose it's intended to be solved.

Thanks for creating this map!

Thanks for the critiques folks. I know it wasn't the most polished it could have been, and I didn't know about the quick save glitch. Honestly I'm surprised its where its at since I've never opened up hammer and knew next to nothing about some of the functions. Theres actually another issue in the map that I've no idea how it occurred. I never used the quick save function, so I wasn't aware of that problem with that part.

I won't lie, the map does have some major issues (the no-save is a new one). I knew very little at the start of the project (never mapped), so I'm at fault here (still don't know a whole lot). I'm glad that at least some of the things worked, though I'll remember to ditch the bg music next time. I'll try to fix the funnel issue when I can. Otherwise, I'll probably start from scratch again and think of a better way to implement things.

@infernet89 - you actually can solve the map without the first companion cube. I just wanted to see who would try to bring it with them the whole way through.I just used the regular weighted storage cube, if I ever dropped the companion. You reminded me of the GLaDOS quote in how she describes the human's thoughts regarding a particular co-op map "Too deadly".

Again, thanks for the review. I'll do better next time to kill you('re displeasure towards the map).

-W2021

I liked this. To be honest I thought it was going to be bad when I saw that the entrance door wasn't even fitted into a circular hole, I was surprised! And very happy. I'll admit to using godmode because it was quite easy to die, but I enjoyed the puzzles, it felt sort of keep-moving-y, you know, sort of like when you're
legging it away from GLaDOS with Wheatley in Chapter 3/4 (can't really remember) of the actual Portal 2 single player. I think it was the similar music that did it. Liked those panels you jump on and the next on comes up, stepping stones style, loved it. And that floor button that was just beyond the first crusher, I didn't get why it turned on a Hard Light Bridge that was just below it. And the turrets, not the ones you had to slide past with the gel, but the ones lower down. I assumed they had to be blocked with a Light Bridge, but, apart from some mild avoidance (checking they couldn't see me from the distance I was at, darting round corners quick etc.) I never had to do anything with them.

Point is, on the whole, I liked this a lot. Just make it a tad less easy to die, that's your only significant problem with it, and, well, it's not really a big one. I found it was easiest to die right at the beggining, dunno if I'm alone there or not. Final note: I couldn't get the hang of jumping at the end of the propulsion slide thing to get to the ledge and the exit, I think putting a bit of repulsion at the end would have been the best option.

Basically, I enjoyed it, great map.
I'm looking at the date you joined, 6th June, am I right in thinking that like me, you signed up to TWP here to enter the contest? I did that, and found it a very nice mapping help place.

Unfortunate mix of difficult platforming action and game breaking glitches, also plagued by abominable looks as needle-like ledges entirely skinned as floor (this isn't Quake).

When you specifically engineer a map to require extra care from your players, you should call yourself up to the same standards. By making it less of a kick in the groin visually, but more importantly by ensuring the puzzles are air-tight.

Losing a cube in water or anywhere, spells getting stuck. First puzzles become impossible should the cube on the laser be portaled where it's not destroyed: at that point, it will be your thrown cube being killed every time. And it isn't exactly logical that the first catapult sends the cube to a different place than the cube's. The wall behind the funnel machine can be portaled to: yet at least this doubles as a shortcut.

I gotta say, this wasn't very good. The puzzles were vague, the targets on the walls everywhere were confusing (couldn't figure out what half of them meant) but the WORST part was the damn jumping "puzzles."
Seriously, forcing the player to jump carefully across narrow platforms or up stairs that are poles 8 units thick (especially while holding a cube) is just annoying and tedious. I seriously just noclipped past them after falling the first few times, rather than waste time trying to get to the place you are obviously supposed to go.
I got enough of that action playing Zombiemod Counterstrike Source. Also, Halflife and Halflife 2 were all about that kind of thing. But not portal. Portal and Portal 2 are about using... portals to solve puzzles, not jumping around. This map had barely any use of portals at all.

1/5
sorry this isn't a Portal map. Maybe Halflife or CSS ZM, but not portal.

I love the concept, and I really want to finish this, but there are problems...
Since this is quite a complex level, that requires a few quick-saves, I have noticed upon restart to last save point, that any button-stands that I have pressed, default back to before pressed, along with the step-point activation's. Which means that the lasers turn off, boxes are re-covered, tracter beams decativate (causing me to loose my Companion Cube that was in the tractor beam), floor panels go back to hiding (which since I auto saved there.. woops.)
The buttons or things I activated at times weren't clear, and confused me to a sense of "what did I/it just do?".
The only other thing besides those, is that some of the walk areas are a bit unclear.... (though that does add a challenge that is fun).
I really do see potential in this level that you've made, and I would love replay this, nice work so far anyway!

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:

0btSzoZsmvE
(Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0btSzoZsmvE)

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

Wow, time to dust this thing off. Spent a lot of time this past week finally fixing things so they stick and adding quick save brushes to places, as well as new areas. Still haven't worked out how to get textures that don't have the sharp edges yet, but this is a learning experience for me. Should have something out for it soon.

The textures are made to be at measurements of 64, 128 and 256 (etc.) units. So if your walls are not exactly on those measurements then the panel tiles will not mesh up. It took me a while to figure that out, I didn't notice it for my first few maps. But the ones i'm doing now religiously take this line.

Anyway, surely you should just start a new map with all the new stuff you have learned instead of trying to polish up an old level that, quite frankly, might not be worth resuscitating.

Wanderer2021 wrote:
Wow, time to dust this thing off. Spent a lot of time this past week finally fixing things so they stick and adding quick save brushes to places, as well as new areas. Still haven't worked out how to get textures that don't have the sharp edges yet, but this is a learning experience for me. Should have something out for it soon.

I liked very much the puzzle that were challenging, however if you are working on this map again, I would recommend to first focus on fixing the save issues and giving the possibility to get back cubes when you loose them, before adressing the aesthetics. I did manage to finish the map but had to restart a couple of times and also redo the whole sequence of getting the funnel working over and over because of dying on the last jumps. This was a tiny teeny bit frustrating. But the map is worth it.

The Irate Pirate wrote:
The textures are made to be at measurements of 64, 128 and 256 (etc.) units. So if your walls are not exactly on those measurements then the panel tiles will not mesh up. It took me a while to figure that out, I didn't notice it for my first few maps. But the ones i'm doing now religiously take this line.

Anyway, surely you should just start a new map with all the new stuff you have learned instead of trying to polish up an old level that, quite frankly, might not be worth resuscitating.

Normally, I would have, but the case with this map is that I just didn't understand the tools at hand. After playing with them some more and going further into their depths, I realized a lot of my mistakes were simple ones and implemented them fairly quickly, such as why the telescopic arms weren't holding their positions(looking back, I realize that that was a rather foolish thing to over look, so I apologize for that folks.) Now not all of the map was bad, since a few folks seem to enjoy it, but I understand what parts were absolute crap after opening up the map again and trying it, so I stream lined those and adjusted them a large amount so it wouldn't cause so much rage (the jump segments above the laser grid). I'd rather fix the noob mistakes on this map first and see if I'm moving on a better track, before starting a new nightmare.

Long story short, I'm stubborn. None the less, the map has been updated finally, and it can be accessed from the download link on the first post. I made a small change log to kind of cover the major updates to the map, though it probably would be more entertaining to play the map once to get a feel for it.

as a note, you can go about opening the exit in a few ways, I just figure that carrying the cube with you the whole time adds much more challenge to the map.