This is my map for the October contest. It has three puzzle areas, but with a slightly different approach. Find out what happened in the previous Chamber 16!

Download here or here.

Extract from your <steamid>/portal/portal directory, and load the map up through the Bonus Maps menu.

Screenshots:

I really liked this. It had a coherent theme and the puzzles were satisfying to complete.

There were some weird stuff though. Like the ball on a chain thingy. I spent 15 minutes playing around with it trying to do something with it (and got killed several times) and in the end just completed the chamber without it. The buttons in that room were weird!

yeah the ball on the chain was very annoying, a very good idea, but it can kill you and bounces around in wierd ways... took me a while to finish that part, think I did it right... put box on middle button, crossed chamber, used portals to make the ball shoot around and knock the box off the button, then portals to make the box fall onto the other button. I spent a while just trying to fling to the platform, stopped on the other side... after getting frustrated with the damn ball

my advice, is if you plan on using the ball on rope thing more in future maps, begin with a "learn how" chamber for it, like the first chambers of the single player.

Nice! A ball & chain, eh? Very unique.

Please consider uploading to myaperturelabs.com.

Thanks for creating great Portal content!
Nick

nickworks wrote:
Nice! A ball & chain, eh? Very unique.

Please consider uploading to -snip-

Thanks for creating great Portal content!
Nick

You sound like a frickin bot.

Cmon man don't advertise, even if you don't intend to.

Tis a very awesome map though. Review coming soon.

Not a bot; I'm quite fleshy.

Advertise? I just thought the map should added to the collection at mAL for community review.

Sorries.

Although, something else to keep in mind: TWP and mAL have an alliance, With a big link to TWP on the mAL homepage.

One thing; I downloaded this 1-2 days before official release, so sometging may have changed since I ran it. . .

Very fun all the way around; it was all extremely inventive. I liked how everything was in the portal puzzle/level theme, and yet you got to step outside the typical portal level for a while.

Loved the piston puzzle; some nice inventive portal use there (at least I had to do something I've never had to do before!) I'd love to compare solutions sometime on this one; I have to wonder if what I did was what we were expected to do.

Getting across the chasm. . ..a good flinging puzzle and it made excellent use of stuff "just lying around". I liked how there were all these things present that MIGHT have been part of the solution (grates, etc) and I had to check-em all out. My only possible issue being that the portal-thru-portal technique I did use to get my portals seems to almost REQUIRE a slo-mo mod; I tried without it and it resulted in 15-20 minutes of retries with an eventual success that I can only describe as "darn lucky". Maybe my reflexes are just not what they once were. . .or I did this in a non-expected way.

On the 3rd puzzle, I finally dismissed the tethered ball as irrelevant and figured out a workable (but hard) fling. I worked with the ball for a while though and could see how it MIGHT be used (I see a spoiler that said they did it that way) but I judged that as simply too random/untrustworthy, because the tethered ball was VERY violent when disturbed. Maybe I was wrong; must go back and see.

My most memorable moments in this map were both excellent:

- Fooling around. . .made one portal for techered ball to fall into. . . then ran all the way back to grate near the 2nd puzzle end, and shooting the second portal down thru the grate into the room below. I stretched that energy line for a good 300 feet through walls and everything! And then noclip down to see the ball trapped in the upper corner of that room, vibrating wildly. I just had to laugh!

- Me in the portal, having one portal covered by piston, and watching that last piston coming right at my nose. . .priceless.

Loved the map. Played the WIP of it, and couldn't get past the second chamber. Final release is much much better. Well done.

When I got to the "ball and chain" part, I quite litterally said "...What the *&!% is that?"

After about 3 or 4 minutes of screwing around (and killing myself once), I beat it the same way that Artesia described already.


Looking forward to future maps from you

nickworks wrote:
Although, something else to keep in mind: TWP and mAL have an alliance, With a big link to TWP on the mAL homepage.

Doesn't mean you should go posting your link around.

The signature is enough.

For every link he posts, I'll post 2 at his site!

nickworks is cool in my book.

it's truly official now.

We're cross-posting.

i like the map, though manny bugs.
and the goals of each puzzle where hard to figgure out.
try to avoid adding new gameplay if we hadent have a intruduction of it yet... example: i tried like 10 min's to get past those pistens, and then i discoverd i needed to go back i gave up.

exept those things i really liked it.

I'm making a note here: HUGE SUCCESS.

Generally, it's chock-full of inventive, challenging puzzles. Great use of textures to create areas that look good and make sense in the game world.

I would love to hear a description (or see a .DEM) of how to get past the tetherball room with a fling.

Here's how I got through the map: First I spent way too long trying to fling to the passageway at the top of the broken lift. Then I noclipped up there and saw that it was a dead end. Only then did I search more thoroughly and realize you can go underneath the lift. Duh.

Loved the ball-catcher puzzle with the sideways pistons in the middle. It makes you use a technique I call "leapfrogging," where you place new portals to get to new areas while always leaving one end "anchored" because you know you'll have to use it again.

To do the fling in the room with stacked pallets, I portaled up to the highest square platform and shot a portal through the grate to the wall in the other room. Then I jumped back to the main platform where the pallets are stacked, which was really hard but possible. (I had to bunny-hop from the top platform to the one just a notch below it, bunny-hop again immediately and crouch in the air to make the landing. Then I placed a portal on the slanted surface, jumped through to the other room, put a portal on the floor and (sure enough) flung out of the 45-degree pallet up to the top of the room. Very difficult but satisfying!

And I did the tetherball the "approved" way. Used the cube to activate the lift, then used portals to make the tetherball knock the cube off the button, then more portals to move the cube to the other button.

All this plus Challenge modes -- sweet. Great work, Shmitz!

In response to people saying they actually did something with the piston area:

I didn't actually use portals in that spot. My puny mind just said Hm... I bet if I time it right, I can run straight through. And I did.

msleeper wrote:
nickworks is cool in my book.

I never said I wasn't cool with him - but IMO advertising other sites shouldn't be appreciated.

Crooked Paul wrote:
I
I would love to hear a description (or see a .DEM) of how to get past the tetherball room with a fling.

Heres what I did (hopefully this is still possible in the final version; I downloaded it a day or two before release:
Put cube on button to keep door open. Stand on other button (or use cube befor putting it on the other button) and wait for the moving platform to get to just the RIGHT spot; take cube off/jump off. Fling to land on platform, and then hop over to ledge. The nice thing is, since its mud down below, you dont die if you slide off the platform, etc. Just portal back and try again; tether ball not needed.

Quote:
To do the fling in the room with stacked pallets, I ...

Doh! Didnt spot that; gotta try it that way. I did this:
Place portal on vertical plate near slanted surface; place other portal on low platform directly across goo. JUMP IN portal. In the split second you are over there and before you fall back in, you can pop a portal on the upper wall while over there, and you'll be thrown back out when you return. Very difficult without slo-mo, but possible. I did it both ways. . . .eventually. Then move the 1st portal to the slant, hop through, and the rest is easy after that.

xitooner wrote:
In the split second you are over there and before you fall back in, you can pop a portal on the upper wall while over there, and you'll be thrown back out when you return.

That sounds like "tunneling" to me. Let me get it straight: (I'll use portal colors for clarity.) You put the blue portal on the vertical surface near the stacked pallets, and the orange portal on the low platform across the goo. You jump into the blue portal and while you're popping up out of the floor from the orange portal, you shoot an orange portal high on the wall in the room with the unused hydraulic poles. Since you're still partly in the first orange portal on the floor, this "pops" you back out the blue end, near the stacked pallets, but now you have the orange portal where you need it high on the wall in the other room. Is that right?

Yep; "tunneling", "portal-thru-portal", I've seen a few names for it. Tunnelling sounds good to me.

Definitely one of the most advanced and well done maps I've played so far. However, the ball and chain thing got me. I spent maybe 30 minutes playing around with it but I just couldn't figure it out. I finally gave up and read spoilers to find out how it works. Perhaps you need to make it more obvious or give us a tutorial on how to use it. Other than that, I tried the second jump puzzle a variety of different ways that almost worked.

I can't wait for the next series ;0

Here's what I did: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0FD_xCoYR4

I didn't get the tetherball either

one thing I would like to suggest, to everyone actually but I noticed it in this map...

When making stairs, or anything you step up on, make an angular player clip brush. it makes it feel a lot smoother.

Shmitz, were those the intended solutions for those puzzles in that youtube video? (Except the tether ball, of course)for the piston part i failed to think with portals and just ran through them, and for the flinging I used tunneling, didn't even notice that grate there just curious.

Rivid31 wrote:
Shmitz, were those the intended solutions for those puzzles in that youtube video?

Essentially, yeah, the first two were more or less "correct". There's a quicker way to do the first one, if a little riskier, but if you're not going for any of the challenges, his way is just fine.

Also, I must really suck at jumping, because he pulled off some jumps I always failed at. -_-

Shmitz wrote:
Also, I must really suck at jumping, because he pulled off some jumps I always failed at. -_-

Other than the tetherball room?

Lorithad wrote:
In response to people saying they actually did something with the piston area:

I didn't actually use portals in that spot. My puny mind just said Hm... I bet if I time it right, I can run straight through. And I did.

Same with me both ways with not portal, died once or twice but it seems more fun than using portals there...

I thought the ball thing is just to not allow the ball to leave a certin distance so I tried to use portals to keep it in the distance but still push the button. but
everytime I tried it killed me

After using god mod to not get killed I tried some more till I gave up :O

Anyway, really awsome map.

Made a small update to the map, mainly to get it compiled with the updated SDK, but also a few other minor additions/changes.

personally i found it to be easier once i got to the energy ball to just run straight through the pipes than to use portal tunneling

I actually did the second challenge a different and possibly quicker way than I have seen described in this thread...maybe its somewhere else, I haven't really looked.

I spent a long time in that area and couldn't figure anything out until I happened to look down into the green goo and noticed that the floor under the goo could hold a portal. At first I thought "NO WAY", but I tried putting portal1 on the slanted tile and portal2 in the goo and then took the plunge...I almost made it. Quickload, look around, and find that there are 2 vertical platforms with wheels attached that you can jump onto from the slanted tiles. So I got that extra little height, replaced the portals, and flung myself up to the ledge...only to find the last room to be even more difficult!

So given the "under maintainance" theme of the level I just thought maybe that room normally had a walkable floor, but a pipe got busted and it flooded. Basically, once I figured out how to fling through the goo I thought, "Hey good puzzle, it totally fits the theme."

So, Shmitz, did you mean to make that a possible way of getting through that challenge?

Shmitz wrote:
Made a small update to the map, mainly to get it compiled with the updated SDK, but also a few other minor additions/changes.

Meh you ruined my shortcuts!

Anyways, I had to spend some more time in the big fling room to figure out what was needed. In the end it made a lot of sense (since I had to use more of the geometry) and it sorta introduced the concept of a flying portal-in-portal if you will which I hadn't tried before.

I don't like the tetherball room though. I hadn't actually solved it using the tetherball before so now that I had to it was just kinda annoying since the bounce was pretty unpredictable. I mean I could still just reset and try again, but it was timeconsuming and ultimately unsatisfying :S

Adair wrote:
So, Shmitz, did you mean to make that a possible way of getting through that challenge?

No, I think you found a good example of why we can't entirely abandon our noportal_volumes that we had to use before the SDK update. After removing them from the map, I didn't think to recheck the floor of the goo-pit.

Still, pretty neat idea, and you were able to pull it off. I might leave it in there for now, until I make a sequel and have to update this map to include a changelevel.

Actually, I managed to cross the mud-pit in the tetherball in another way than anyone here has mentioned.

I did not use the ball, or jump down to the platform fram the wall, I found two places in the mud (one on the starting side of the room, and one on the other side) which was portal-able. So I just jumped down into one and barely managed to land on the edge on other side of the room. I completely ignored both the platform and the ball, placing the cube only on the door-button.

I guess that was not a valid way of solving the final puzzle?

yikkayaya wrote:
I guess that was not a valid way of solving the final puzzle?

Was that with 1.0 or 1.1? You can find the version number in the text file in the zip if you're unsure.

Oh, sorry. It is fixed quite nicely now.

I really enjoyed this map, it's very well put together and the final puzzle is very interesting - if a bit unorthodox.

I was just wondering, how did you made the mud in the last room behave like mud?

i dont know how he did it but its in level 17 of the single player in the huge turret room, you could always decompile that and find out for yourself

mappers only take issue when someone steals brush work, entities are not looked down upon

taco wrote:
I was just wondering, how did you made the mud in the last room behave like mud?

The texture is nature/mudfloor004bs. It's not tagged with the portal keyword.

lol I couldn't even get passed the first one because I tried to go up the lift. I guess that doesn't work.

I'll give you a review when I finish it lol

My video card sucks and I couldn't finish the map because of it. Also~ The piston puzzle made me want to kill you. No offence.

Just finished it. I like everything except the ball-and-chain thing. It was just too awkward to do. I spent 10 minutes trying to hit the box. Didn't like that part. Other than that, it was quite fun.

I saw earlier that someone posted that in order to beat (I wish the areas had names) the big place...after you're done with all the piston junk and you've activated the first energy ball receiver, a door opens and leads into this place with all the stuff sitting around, the acid pit, and the three pillary type things...with the bigger hollow area behind all that which I can only assume is a place put in so you can build up the proper momentum....but anyway, my first point is that whoever it was said they employed a bunny hop technique to get from the three pillary things back to the main area with all the stuff on it.....I'd give a lot to see a video of any proof of bunny hopping at all in portal....the character you play as is so physically limited, I got the feeling that trying a bunny hop actually slows everything down....

but anyway, I've been picking away at that area for a while now, and I can see ways to beat it...but I can't be sure...and it could also just be a total lack of skill on my part...I've been having a hell of a time slamming into walls only to lose all of my motion potential....

(I don't know how the mouse-over font changer thing on this forum works, so, if you want to figure this out on your own, don't read this next part)

I've had some small luck with doing a move that's kind of like a pogo jump....I'd get myself into the big hollow area away from the acid pit, and I'd portal high up on any wall, portal to the floor, and then fall gently through the higher portal (duh), then i'd shoot my "high wall" portal somewhere else and then my motion potential would be preserved as long as I didn't thunk on the floor right next to a portal, so what I ended up doing was ....pogo portaling my way back out of the hollow area, then VERY quickly portaling onto the 45-degree ...thing? whatever it was...and fell through with a good deal of power, but....just barely didn't quite make it....seeing that this way could actually work, but realizing how nuts it was, I thought there had to be a "right" way to solve this part...and I sure as hell wasn't seeing it...or atleast I lacked the skill to act out my other ideas...I wish I could see this tethered ball everyone seems to be talking about...

is there a console in the source engine in which I could write in some noclipping? the challenge of the level is nice and all...but there's only so much failure I can take in a given night :p

VolumetricSteve wrote:
I'd give a lot to see a video of any proof of bunny hopping at all in portal....the character you play as is so physically limited, I got the feeling that trying a bunny hop actually slows everything down....

Forwards bunny hopping was fixed in the HL2 engine I think. But constantly jumping does allow you to move at an overall higher speed than if you're simply moving without jumping, since there's no sprint button in Portal but jump movement is basically sprint speed.

I think the bunny jump reference you may have stumbled on here was a reference of my video of the initial release version where I could bypass part of the acid room puzzle by simply jumping from the three pistons back to the place with the slanted thingy. It wasn't a bunny hop, just a well timed normal jump (not even a crouch jump). Shmitz changed the positions of the three pistons to rule out that maneuver.

VolumetricSteve wrote:
(I don't know how the mouse-over font changer thing on this forum works, so, if you want to figure this out on your own, don't read this next part)

[ spoiler ] this is how the spoiler tag works (without the spaces of course) [ /spoiler ]

VolumetricSteve wrote:
is there a console in the source engine in which I could write in some noclipping? the challenge of the level is nice and all...but there's only so much failure I can take in a given night :p

There is, but I don't know what it is. This video might help you: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IdjsnrD3YQ

To open the console you have to open the options menu, go to the keyboard controls tab, and click the advanced settings button to enable the console(I think that's how its labeled, but if not just poke around and you'll find it). Then, when your playing or in a menu, just press the ~ key (next to the 1 key).

to no clip first turn on cheats by typing:
sv_cheats 1
then turn on no clip with:
noclip

VolumetricSteve, another method to get up to that ledge over the goo is to put a portal on the slanted tile and then jump off into the goo, but shoot a portal under the goo to fall into, you won't make it on the first try, but if you shoot another portal under the goo to fall into then you should make it on the second shot. You may have to back away from the wall just a bit to fall into the second goo portal.

Thanks to you guys who helped! Now, having seen the rest of it, I can say the level was very well put together, but at the end of the level , I actually couldn't get the cube to fall off the button correctly, the physics would always go insane and make it fly forward somehow...

It was a fun level though, I actually remember poking fun at Valve when Portal first came out because they lead into every puzzle so much, and really did a lot of the "solving" for the user.....and now in this level, I wish there'd been a little bit more to go on..maybe I'm just slow on the uptake but this was pretty challenging, I thought, in comparison to the regular Portal levels.

I liked the design in this one though, there was clear attention to artistic detail, as well as incredibly sneaky ways to get around doing certain things....

This is no fault of the level designer, but I always have and always will hate the way the acid looks in this game....when I start making levels...i'm turning it into...something else...really..just anything that doesn't look like bloody vomit would be fine by me, and it's not that it's disgusting...it's that the game had an opportunity to make something really bad for the player look really cool...and they totally ignored it, and made it the dullest ....most barfy looking thing they could...I'm thinking something brighter....maybe like the lava from the Descent series if anyone remembers that...but..ugh...what gives....

Back to the level in question, I liked the size of it, I like being able to make long jumps and end up somewhere really high.

Overall, cool level, I would have just done the last part differently because havok doesn't like vector addition through portals too much i guess, so while the player has cognitively solved the puzzle, the physics are just being wonky.

Played this map when it came out and loved it, but replaying it today I found something I never noticed.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=Y9JJgQx3M_8

I deserve cake.

haha, very nice, i highly doubt he expected people to do that

Ryanocerous wrote:
Played this map when it came out and loved it, but replaying it today I found something I never noticed.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=Y9JJgQx3M_8

I deserve cake.

Awesome, I knew there was a way to fling up there.

You got to see my beautiful hat, and yet you still want cake? People can be so demanding.... ;P

All in all, a pretty good map. Had a problem jumping over the junk (acid pool) at first, but eventually got over it.

User was warned for this post, do not bump a thread that is 6 months old!

How are you supposed to do the big room with the three pillars and the grate where you can shoot a portal to the other room ?

I used portal tunneling to get a portal high up there, but I don't think that's the proper way ?

Sometimes I wish I had never discovered tunneling, it makes some things way too easy.

iirc portal tunneling through a floor portal is the intended way.
It is also possible to complete it without tunneling, if you don't like that trick