Hey guys, check out my new map "Maybe Black Mesa". Its can be pretty difficult and previous experience with custom maps is definitely helpful! Hopefully you all find it fun, though.

You can get it http://forums.thinking.withportals.com/dload.php?action=file&file_id=176

Basically it's you going into the reverse engineering department of black mesa, where they are clearly ripping off aperture equipment, and stealing back the portal gun while trying to escape.

Be aware that it shares many textures and models with HL2 so you may have to have that owned and installed to play it. If you are having trouble in that area, i appologize but it was the only way I could pull off the look.

Ok, so I've finished playing through - I really liked the concept of the map and where you were going with a bit of original story; unfortunately, the execution of the map was annoying/frustrating at times.
There are quite a few places in the map without portal bumpers and where you can put portal under props and even where you can have portal partially floating in the air.

While the look of the map is decent, it suffers from misaligned textures, poor cubemap placement, etc.

When you have to go though the ceiling in the elevator, you should probably make it more obvious that the top panels are movable (maybe put one on a slight angle).

The doors of the elevators should always open and close together, not individually.

You shouldn't have to be so close to a door for it to open (esp. annoying when the object you are holding is bigger than the triggering range).

The energy pellet puzzle was annoying as crap to figure out. It took me some time just to figure out what my goal was. You can't see what the button is doing (and there are no indicators at all). You have to crawl to go up and down to and from the button. The rooms that electrocute you would make a lot more sense if there was water on the floors. You can get stuck between the two button-operated doors if you put both portals in that room while you are in it. Etc. Etc. Etc.

The walls in the final room moved too fast and there was too much stuff in the room. All the little things got in the way as the walls pushed them.

as for the concept, 100% win. execution was lacking. Fun map, except for the damned energy pellet crap. turrets were fun (i like turrets too much haha) and the custom voices were nice. i loved the ending, that was phenom. it took me 2 tries to get outta the trash compactor... you NEED portal bumpers. A LOT. a few more things i'm leaving out though. nice map.

This was my first map i ever made, so I am definitely taking these criticisms and digesting them fully for any future maps I make. It was difficult to make everything super obvious and keep with the whole "black mesa / not holding your hand" theme. Things like The button opening the doors not being so obvious was something I tried to remedy with audio and visual clues, but is obviously still lacking. As for cubemap placements, textures, entity work, etc, I'm sure with any future maps I will be a little more confident in what I'm doing with that.

Sacuur wrote:
Things like The button opening the doors not being so obvious was something I tried to remedy with audio and visual clues, but is obviously still lacking.

Yeah, without indicator strips, it would probably help if you could see the door from the button - even if if you were behind a grate/glass/etc.

taco wrote:
Yeah, without indicator strips, it would probably help if you could see the door from the button - even if if you were behind a grate/glass/etc.

very nice job. pretty orriginal concept. could use some work (basically the parts that have been listed) i'm gunna play through it again before i make more comments. but first off the only things i want to mention here are

||the fling/jump in the area with the acid water, and the really tall ladder (where the bottom is broke) and you have to angular fling/redirect into that passage in the wall. that was pretty hard to manage

and someone mentioned that the trashcompacter was too fast.... i didn't think so. i had plenty of time to complete it. i do agree that there is too much trash in there though :-/ How did everyone beat this part? ME: I put a portal on the lowest spot. (in the water) and one on the ceilng. then went through the one on the ground, (fell out of the ceiling) then placed another portal on the upper ledged portable area while falling through the "water" portalable area kinda like trying to do a terminal velocity, but only 1 iteration

and again. i have to disagree with taco on the elevator having movable panels. it seemed intuitive... all elevators (especially in movies) have those panels. and there was a graphic pointing up if i remember correctly

i thought the engergy pellet puzzle was pretty fun/neat but they are right. if you (incorrectly) use the portal that you are using near the switch you can get stuck but then you will die. so i guess its not a HUGE problem. but typically its a good idea not to trap your players.||

but anyway i'm gunna try to replay this so its fresh in my mind if i have anything else to add

Played it again and remembered another thing that bothered me - ladders.

If you are going to have ladders, either make them usable or have them break when the player touches them.

taco wrote:
Played it again and remembered another thing that bothered me - ladders.

If you are going to have ladders, either make them usable or have them break when the player touches them.

agreed: i tried for about 10 minutes to climb the damn ladders before i said efit and just flung into that damn access tunnel

rellikpd wrote:
agreed: i tried for about 10 minutes to climb the damn ladders before i said efit and just flung into that damn access tunnel

lol. I thought people would kinda try em once and realize it doesn't work. Dam, o well. next time.

And taco seems to abhor the map for some reason. hah. That's ok in my book, it can be very frustrating and things he is pointing out are valid. Anyway, here's a "solution video" to it that i put together. You can see how I did the trash compactor. I'm sure there are alternate methods to do things
http://youtube.com/watch?v=7AVWlIVPL78

Nah, I don't abhor the map. I actually really like the story elements and general concept and flow of the map. I just think that there are a number of things that could be edited/fixed to take it to the level of "wow, what a great map".

That's is my speed run, don't open it if you don't want spoilers

http://it.youtube.com/watch?v=iUvU_mIuwZI

ha i was just kiddin' taco. and dam, thats some clever stuff on the speed run. especially using the first area to get momentum out of the ele, and just how you pulled off getting into the maintenance shaft to begin with had some amazing portal shots. good job

rellikpd wrote:
if you (incorrectly) use the portal that you are using near the switch you can get stuck but then you will die. so i guess its not a HUGE problem. but typically its a good idea not to trap your players.

Heh, i fell off the map there

JLipimpski wrote:
Heh, i fell off the map there

i got stuck IN the map (like between the top and bottom part that says "over here" (near the switch)

rellikpd wrote:
i got stuck IN the map (like between the top and bottom part that says "over here" (near the switch)

yeah i know, thats where i did that too... can't you portal out of there? i forgot rather or not you can.

JLipimpski wrote:
yeah i know, thats where i did that too... can't you portal out of there? i forgot rather or not you can.

i can't really remember. i think i was able to place a new portal and get out.

yea that's a hard glitch to work around. but rather than cutting the whole idea, since i wanted an area to be solvable legit with tunneling, and not the kind that requires you to duck back into the portal real quick which can lead to many deaths, I split up that little ceiling area so if you mess up and shoot the wrong portal, which can easily lead to death in that area, you get stuck but can just portal under yourself and survive if you're fast enough. It's actually somewhat of a forgiving thing.. considering when you shot the wrong portal to begin with you'd be falling into the electric floor anyway. It gives an extra shot and moment of thought before you fall out. ha. That's looking on the bright side of things, for ya. haha.

I'm going to try not to be brutal, but I'm going to be honest.

An enjoyable puzzle is difficult to figure out, but the execution itself should either be simple or require a little bit of practice to actually perform.

A frustrating puzzle, on the other hand, is one that is fairly simple to work out but requires a large amount of work to actually carry out.

Your map, based on the two chambers I actually got to (the first one where you get the portal gun and the one right after it with the slime on the floor) before I gave up in frustration, contains quite a lot of the latter, I'm assuming, at least since the frustrating solutions seem to be quite obviously intentional. May I suggest you do a little research on game design, or at least practice trying to make puzzles where the difficulty is based on figuring out what to do, instead of on how mind-bogglingly aggravating you make it to actually place portals in the correct spot.

savagegreywolf wrote:
I'm going to try not to be brutal, but I'm going to be honest.

An enjoyable puzzle is difficult to figure out, but the execution itself should either be simple or require a little bit of practice to actually perform.

A frustrating puzzle, on the other hand, is one that is fairly simple to work out but requires a large amount of work to actually carry out.

Your map, based on the two chambers I actually got to (the first one where you get the portal gun and the one right after it with the slime on the floor) before I gave up in frustration, contains quite a lot of the latter, I'm assuming, at least since the frustrating solutions seem to be quite obviously intentional. May I suggest you do a little research on game design, or at least practice trying to make puzzles where the difficulty is based on figuring out what to do, instead of on how mind-bogglingly aggravating you make it to actually place portals in the correct spot.

really, suck less. I had no problems at all with this map, really enjoyed it too.

One of the biggest problems I have in flinging puzzles, is when you first jump in vertically, then fly out upward in an arc, and then you have to shoot another portal ahead of yourself to fall through (on an angled surface, relatively) and fly back out at an even bigger arc... the problem is, when I'm flying at an angle, I can never place the ahead portal so that I fall right through it, i always bump the sides and lose momentum.

So, apart from that one room with the fling into the access shaft which frustrated me to no end, I'd have to say this map is quite good. The original voices were a nice touch as well. Have you considered using a speech-quantize program to make yourself sound more like GlaDOS?

yup. it can be a tough fling sometimes. definitely a tough map. Sorry this map frustrated some people. You should have seen how hard the jump was when I originally made it... lol. As for the voice thing, I did consider many options, but in the end, i didn't want it to sound like GlaDOS and settled on what it is. Similar to the old voice in HL1 that came on over the loudspeakers in black mesa.

User has been banned for this post. --msleeper

well, just finished it.
I had problems with the electric room. I blew the electric boxes up, as the "X"s were indicating, and just a fizzler in the room turned off, but not the electricity. I didn't know what to do next, I tried more things, but with no luck; so I skipped this part over
I liked the idea and concept of this map, it is original. And the end was amazing
I had problems understanding the voices. I think subtitles would be essential.

Oh, you're supposed to Rocket Turret the electrical boxes? facepalm

Anyway, it's a very cool map, and I LOL'd at the hallway that resembled the Death Star Detention Block, complete with garbage compactor. Which I flooded with Storage Cubes via the console. Which made the game lag so much that after I got through the tunnel, GLaDOS was stuttering: "He-he-hel-l-llo-o-o-o, a-a-a-nd-nd-nd a-a-aga-ga-ga-gain, we-we-we-welco-co-come to-to-to th-th-th-the-e-e-e-e En-En-En-Enric-c-c-c-cme-cme-cme-cme-cment-nt-nt-nt C-C-Cent-t-t-ter-r-r-r-r." (You needed to hear it to get it.) The map itself didn't lag; my flooding it with cubes lagged it. Good job making it, although a lot of portal shots were next-to-impossble.

Didn't care for this one. It wasn't that hard I just don't care for the BTS maps.