pl_fling

Portal Bonus-Map created by Clemens


Description

This is my first and probably only portal map.
It may not be perfect, but I think it's very well tested and fun playing.

The map is focusing on jumping and "flinging".
It contains one or two ideas I haven't seen in other maps so far.
I tried to make all the jumps very fair and not too difficult.


Screenshots




Note

I posted this map some time ago on another site.
I wanted to add more detail to the map before posting it here, but never found the time.
So I just publish it here as well.
If you already played the map, no need to download it again, it's the same map.


Download

http://forums.thinking.withportals.com/dload.php?action=file&file_id=321


Installation

1. Extract the files in the zip file
2. Run Portal
3. Import the bmz-file from the bonus map list
4. The map (pl_fling/pl_fling) appears in the list
5. You can delete the bmz-file now


Have fun

Very nice map. The flinging puzzles were well set up: not too easy and not impossibly hard. I'm not very good at flinging tricks, but i was able to complete this map without cheating.

A couple of points:
- Put some screenshots in your post! This makes it a lot more attractive to other forum members and increases downloads.
- One thing often overlooked by first time Portal mappers is the func_portal_bumper. You need to put one of these in any place where a concrete surface is flush with a metal surface, otherwise it is difficult for players to place portals there.
- Are you supposed to use tunneling with some puzzles? (Where you shoot a new portal and quickly step back into the old one before it closes.) I used it in the second room, to get back onto the raised platform after jumping over the fizzlers and in the large room with the slanted platform on the floor.
- You can improve the appearance of this map a lot if you do a better job with lighting. Right now the lighting doesn't seem to come from anywhere. Most of your walls are metal, so the most logical thing to do would be to make square holes in them, just like you see in Valve's maps. Texture the back of the hole with lights/white001 and you have a light. (No separate entity needed.) You probably need a lot of these, as the metal textures are quite dark and don't reflect a lot of light.
- Sectioning off areas with refractive glass is a cool idea, so you can sort-of vaguely see what's on the other side. Although sometimes it's difficult to see the shape of the glass. (E.g. the tube you enter through.) Setting the glass in a window frame would help here.

So, overall, the gameplay is good. Work on the appearance some more and you'll have a very entertaining and challenging map.

You're right, I forgot the screenshots, I added them.

Thanks for all your hints on improving the map. I didnt even know about the problem with concrete walls next to metal ones, I never noticed the difference till now. I really might implement some of the ideas, as they dont seem to take too much time.

About tunneling:
Actually, you are not supposed to use tunneling. Too bad you can, the room with the slanted platform on the floor (second image) has a very tricky solution. I thought I eliminated any other way to solve the room.

That's a lot of metal. Would it really hurt to make some of it concrete (at least parts where you couldn't used it to trivialize the puzzle)? I think that's one thing that a lot of people mess up...they almost hold our hand too much. If you look at Valve's maps, there is a lot more concrete walls versus metal ones. This forces us to evaluate the puzzle more instead of knowing where we have to put portals from the second we walk into the room.

Hmm... Those screenshots don't look promising with all those metal walls. You might want to divide those wall brushes a bit and generate an artistic pattern of sorts. You might also want to add cube brushes that either stick out to add some actual depth.
My second map (still in progress) features a chambre with some rather unique wall patterns to make it way more spiffy than just the flat metal walls I started with. I even used the shiny flat metal texture (shows plain black in Hammer) in bars to divide some of the patterns and put that more depth into it.
Also, try 'deleting' part of your walls to show a bare metallic surface like in the BTS areas. It'll add character like you won't believe.

I don't think I can make too many walls concrete instead of metal without allowing different and more easy solutions. But actually, one or two possibilities come in mind. I think I will walk though the map and reconsider every metal wall.

Well you can always make any lowest height, ground level walls concrete because that will very rarely yield an advantage for a puzzle. But going through and decided on each wall (maybe even each 128x128 section) if it can be concrete or has to be metal is probably the best way to go about it.

yeah i had to tunnel to do the last puzzle. al in all it was a great map though.
also in the room with the slanted wall propped on the florr and the tiered platforms on the other side of the glass, I think i found an uninteded solution. if you put a portal on the slanted piece, and at the top of the wall opposite you can then do a cannonball (jump forward into the near edge of the portal while crouching) and get enough momentum to come out the top and go through the one on the floor again and drop down the chute. i couldnt figure out the real solution.
also i'd like to say, that despite others' responses to it, i really liked the copious metal walls. it gave it a slightly more oppressive atmosphere that i feel fit the rigidity of the puzzles. or i could just be spouting gibberish, i dunno. but i liked them either way.

Too many boring metal walls. If you're gonna have them metal, make them different. Have some stick out and have some with light in em.

Hm .. it seems you can solve most of the puzzles with tunneling and cannonball. Maybe I'll add some text at the beginning to encourage the player to not use tunneling because I dont think I can modifiy all the puzzles to prevent it.

@ again:
You're right, your solution for the room with the slaunted platform was an uninteded one. Maybe I can move the slaunted platform and the wall a little further away from each other. In case you want to know how you were supposed to solve the room: Get on the second floor and put a portal (blue) there, then down to the slaunted platform and the other one here. Now get back to the second floor and put the blue portal on the first floor. Jump though the portal and put the orange portal on the wall you are jumping towards, so you pass right though it. You are now standing on the first floor and have a portal on the wall above the exit. Sould be easy now. Maybe you have another idea how to prevent your solution.

@ CabooseJr:
I put some lights in the wall of the tall room. Then I got tired of adding them, thats why they aren't spread thoughout the map. I'll try to add some more.

i figured it had to be something like that. but i got frustrated with it, i think i was to do it from the very top all the way down to the floor, and that was too fast, i didnt think to try that. very cool.
and yeah, moving it further away should work fine. as long as it doesnt mess up the real solution. i dont know, i've never made maps.

Clemens wrote:
Hm .. it seems you can solve most of the puzzles with tunneling and cannonball. Maybe I'll add some text at the beginning to encourage the player to not use tunneling because I dont think I can modifiy all the puzzles to prevent it.

It's usually very hard to prevent people from tunneling, so i wouldn't bother with it if i were you.
BTW, here's my (rather clunky) solution for the slanted platform puzzle:

1. ||Put a portal on the slanted platform, then jump from the second floor all the way down into another portal on the floor.||
2. ||Move a bit forward while falling, then move backward just before passing through the portal, so your trajectory is a bit more horizontal when exiting from the slanted platform.||
3. ||Put a portal on the opposite wall so you fly through it (yes, i got the hint from the fling sign on its side) and exit again from the slanted platform.||
4. ||If you keep the move-back key pressed down all the time, you get a more vertical trajectory when emerging from the portal for the second time, so you can steer backwards over the wall and into the hole.||

I tried your solution today and needed quite a few attempts.
I like it, it's a very interesting solution since you don't need both floors.

While trying your solutions I came up with another one:
1. same
2. same
3. use the other portal
4. You exit the portal on the floor and fly into the air. When falling again, get through the same portal you just exited (of course you can place it somewhere else). You should have enough speed to reach the exit.

Clemens wrote:
[...]it's a very interesting solution since you don't need both floors.[...]

So if you ever decide to make an advanced version of this map, you can leave out the lower floor.

This is the kind of puzzle i like: zillions of different solutions, and they're all hard! It's sure an inspiration for my next map, which will have some fling-oriented sections in it.

I haven't played this yet, but why do half of the portal maps start with pl_?

It just makes it sound like a tf2 payload map.

I probably named it that way, because, as you say, half of the portal maps start with pl_.
I didn't know about tf2 payload, so I didn't expect it to be misleading.