My second map for portal 2. A fairly straight forward medium difficulty map, with slightly longer than medium length.
Utilizes moving buttons to create unique triggers.

File Name: Compact Compression V1.2.zip
File Size: 2.96 MiB
Click here to download Compact Compression

nice i like the use of crushers but getting the ball into the slot was a bit tricky

The hardest part was "hey, look up! There are three white portalable pixels up there."
But there was some nice ideas there. Some of them i liked use of crushers, placing the ball, some not.

Map plays nice, but you really need to tell people they need to to go up after getting the first cube, and I didn't see the excursion funnel at first, either. Arrows would help.

Amazing map. I love the part with the numbered crushers. If I could, I would rate this 6/5.

This map has some clever puzzles! Especially the part where you have to do different things with the lasers, and the crusher sequence. "Do I really put it here?... checks numbers... Yes, completely sure of it. Saves game... checks again..." )

I have a few suggestions for improvements:

spoilers
As Metafrank said: add some indicators for the ceiling shaft and the excursion funnel. Most players will never look up unless told to do so by clearly visible indicators at eye level.

For the excursion funnel you can add the player-flying-through-funnel symbol down below, with an arrow pointing upward. (Don't rely on sound; sometimes players may have the game sound turned off.)

For the shaft at the beginning, it may help to move one of the light bridges up to the shaft opening so it's blocking it. Make sure it's clearly visible to players when they first enter the room. Also don't put a portal surface near that bridge, so it is absolutely clear that it's only purpose is to block you from going there, and that you need to shut it off to proceed. I would say that you can then also get rid of the step fling, but that's just my opinion because I hate those things. If you do decide to keep the step fling, hide the white panel at the top better. (That's what infernet89 refers to.)

I also found it tricky to catch the ball with the two buttons. Perhaps set the funnel speed a bit slower or add a trigger_teleport or other mechanism that centers the ball over the buttons when it's close enough, so players don't have to time it so accurately. Just figuring out this part is already good fun; the finicky timing bit ruins it a bit IMO.

Thanks for the feedback! I suppose I could add a few more arrows here and there, but there's nothing necessarily game breaking.
I'm actually surprised it can take a bit to look up, generally when I start feeling like something/a direction is missing, I look up.
The light bridges initially were used to serve as a blocker to an excursion funnel to let you go upward...then I realized that excursion funnels go through them. >_>
They essentially should make a player go 'why are there so many light bridges here? seems like complete over kill, maybe they're trying to block something...' (this case being an infinite loop fling) was the effect I was going for.
The excursion funnel does need tweaking, I figured it was slightly annoying to deal with it as well, but still passable enough.

Quote:
The light bridges initially were used to serve as a blocker to an excursion funnel to let you go upward...then I realized that excursion funnels go through them.

Funny. That was my original idea for the map sp_interception. When I realized that the mechanics isn't working out, I had to adapt the map for another puzzle.

I had problems with my save. I managed to raise one of the crushers enabling me to enter the space under it. When I tried to move the portal, the crusher came down and killed me AND created a save point.. I went into an endless crusher death

I did a gameplay video:

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You can see I struggled a fair bit with flinging myself up in the first room; portal funneling didn't seem to work at all there, so it was a fair bit harder than it had to be.

Also in the first chamber, the "compressed" cube only seemed to activate one half of the light bridges. I could "fix" this by walking up to it and grabbing/letting go until it was sort of sideways. Wasn't sure if that was intentional or not.

The fact that the ball catchers would activate for a few seconds, then deactivate struck me as odd as well.

All in all after I got past the first fling I thoroughly enjoyed this map.

Great map, lots of clever ideas, thanks! Glad I peeked at the spoilers first to tell me to "look up". Crushing the ball took many tries but I had fun.

I just watched the previous poster's video, and it seems I missed out on some of the fun. Instead of flinging myself up, I was able to catch just a few pixels of one of the white walls at the top and just portal up.

Nice map. A bit of a challenge getting the ball in the crusher.. the portal has to be pretty much in the center to get it. After solving, I looked at the posted video.. Simply didn't occur to me to stack the cubes, so I balanced one on top of one of the beacon/receptors

I liked the map - it was fine - had a unique style - The crusher puzzle could have been a little harder - but all-in-all - great work!

I dont get what the point of the light bridged path the faith plate was. And it seemed the player was supposed to do multiple upward flings to climb to the upper part of the chamber, however you can see a little bit of portalable surface up there to just skip all that.

Why does the first cube slide around as if its orange-gelled?

Update posted, fixes most of aforementioned issues.

gurcrist wrote:
I had problems with my save. I managed to raise one of the crushers enabling me to enter the space under it. When I tried to move the portal, the crusher came down and killed me AND created a save point.. I went into an endless crusher death

I am not sure how this is possible unfortunately, the only auto save in this room at the entrance.

I'm also not sure why the fist cube behaves as if covered in orange gel, it could be a glitch with being suspended in midair.
Btw for anyone interested:
During testing I found that it is possible to get the sphere in the clamp to behave strangely as well. If you clamp it and keep the funnel on the ball for a while, then remove it and release the button, the ball should catapult out at a high velocity. More strange bugs with source again I suppose, but it could be used for some kind of catapult puzzle?

Good map. Very creative your custom crushers for the cube and the sphere. Also the puzzle with the crushers and deactivation by the pair of lasers

As many said, in the beginning it's difficult until you luckily find the portalable bit of surface up there, man! Even though I'm with you (it's obvious that you have to look UP to find something because there's nothing else once you get the cube)... but you could signalize a bit more things like that in the map... there's a lack of signals in the whole map.

Anyway, the map is very creative and puzzles are good.

Thanks for mapping

Nice map. I solved the last puzzle by setting one cube on top of one of the laser relays. Not sure if that was intended

Lenghty map in Clean, distinctively immediate and fresh thanks to a couple inventions - the frequently lamented sniping doesn't bog it down that much. Might even be avoided if you turn the trapped cube sideways. Graphically, I can only praise the variety of the wall patterns: pity they couldn't stand out due to the general brightness, especially the crushers area. Much better than your previous!

You might want to check these glitches. Product's fine as it is, but you may want to add: 1) clearer indications of where the exit is in the first chamber; 2) portal placers at the 6 lasers thing; 3) check the wall textures in the crushers room; 4) there's an invisible fizzler for portals only at the cubeplates, seemed like a leftover; possibly a couple turrets to spice it up.

Ah, one of those is the dreadful vertex textures...I must have missed this one while hunting all the ones I had inadvertently placed.

Any tips on the lighting? I tried to modify Valve'z 128 panel to use a 250 bright light, which is closer to the low light settings of others, but it's still too bright?
Where any areas better in lighting than others?

I've considered placing helps for the 6 lasers, but wouldn't they end up interfering with each other and etc? Where is this invisible fizzler? The only thing I put near the cubeplates was a set of invisible barriers to prevent player from going to the base of the shaft, which would be a pointless place to go anyway.

That invisible fizzler is above, at the place with the 2 cubeplates: you funnel yourself up there, get a real fizzler upfront and an entry passage to the left. There's the invisible fizzler which eats portals.

I saw it too bright and washed out but I'm not sure it's actually the lightning impacting that. Let's say the final effect is best at the first room, worst at the crushers. You really did a good job with the different tiles and it would be a pity not to show it: give a look at a map with high contrast looks, see if you like the style: [sp] YinYang_theLAGmaster

Well done, some creative uses of crushers and double lasers. Portal funnel seemed to be off? when I tried to speed fling up the steps - doable but harder than necessary to get portals placed. At the start I got two lasers one time and 3 the next - not sure about the purpose of the far hallway faith plate it can be bypassed. Nice map thanks for creating...

Nice map, but not completely in the intended way: ||I wasn't able to do the infinite loop fling (not enough precision), so I used the barely visible portalable surface up the shaft. I would like you to keep it this way because the fling makes everything harder than it should...

Other than that, I think there are too many getting-stuck scenarios at the beginning of this level. First, if you use the lightbridge to get over the deadly water to the left faith plate, and set two portals (so that you don't have the lightbridge at your disposal anymore), I think there is no way to go. (But then again, I have no idea what this lightbridge is for, so maybe I am missing something.) Second, if you push the button that kills the lightbridges and are stupid enough to shoot TWO portals on the wall nearby, you are stuck. Or at least I think so.||

The numbers-and-crushers part was the best one imho. Totally easy, but there should be more puzzles like that.

Marise wrote:
Nice map. I solved the last puzzle by setting one cube on top of one of the laser relays. Not sure if that was intended

So did I.

arvisrend wrote:
Nice map, but not completely in the intended way: I wasn't able to do the infinite loop fling (not enough precision), so I used the barely visible portalable surface up the shaft. I would like you to keep it this way because the fling makes everything harder than it should...

Huh? That is still there? I thought I updated the version to eliminate that.
I need to add in some portal placements anyway to help with the infinite loop anyway though.

As far as being stuck with the light bridge, I generally try avoiding getting stuck as much as possible, but here there's not much I can do about that.

Edit: Next version up, added some portal helpers to help, along with fixing a few errors. (that invisible portal fizzler still eluded me through multiple editor runs though)

Oh sorry, it seems I was playing with v1.0.

Its a great puzzle but i had lot of trouble finding where to go
I DONT LOOK UP. NEVER
My stupiddity

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:

3WAkYEFnltc
(Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WAkYEFnltc)

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

Wow, what a welcome change from the same-old same-old! The faithplate off to the side of the first chamber had me looking for a way to use it to fling up the shaft. It kept me looking in the wrong place for too long, though. Once I got past the first room, things got much better.

The ball clamp was such a neat twist, I didn't mind the touchiness. There was a physics clip in the laser room that I assume was to keep a cube from getting crushed, but it drove me nuts trying to put the cubes on the platform until I figured out what it was. A simple glass box would have done the job. The crusher maze was another nice twist.

On the basis of looks and puzzle strength, I would have given this a 4. But creativity and innovation needs to be rewarded. 5/5.

Today's randomly suggested map, 4/5 because the second aerial faith plate seems unused and infinite loop jump doesn't seem appropriate at all. Otherwise good medium length easy difficulty map.