It's all about the panels.


My first map! Yay! Not sure If I'll try to make more, but the process was quite fun. Even though now it appears to be quite lame

v1.1: Added a bunch of autosave points, extended funnel reverse time, added a ticker. The map is still pretty simple though!
v1.2: Blocked mr Xdiesp's solution (I hope!)
v1.3: Continuity fix.
v1.4: More blockage, mr Tyronis3 found an updated way around.
v1.5: More freedom, map now can have multiple solutions!
v1.6: Minor tweaks and a new version number!

File Name: sp_panelized.rar
File Size: 715.81?KiB
Panelized

Is there not supposed to be a starting elevator? You probably should also spawn the player with the portal gun, instead of having them fall on it.
The first room was incredibly easy. I hope it was meant to be easy.
The second room has stumped me. I thought I had it figured out:

So you start by going over to the section where you have the slight floor tilt on one panel (which seems useless; does it come in handy later?). I put a portal through the circle window, a portal on the wall behind me, went through, and put a portal at the same height right where the panel lifts, press the button, and jump through the portal behind me, while falling, I can hit the button. That turns on the light bridge. So I jump down onto the light bridge. Then I put a portal near the top button, a portal nearby, and jump through it, press the button, fall down onto the panel that comes out, press the cube button, put a portal on the gravity thing and another so that it hits the cube and picks it up. I throw the cube into the stream against the direction, and press the button to change the direction. As soon as it gets through the portal, I put another portal at the same height, but between the platforms. This is where I'm confused. It's incredibly hard to judge when the cube is right beneath the grated portal surface, and when I put a portal there, it's hard to hit the button fast enough so that it will pick the cube up. When it picks the cube up, it's very hard to tell when the cube is high enough to be pushed across the room by the portal surface above me, and I haven't been able to yet. Then I shudder to think how insanely difficult it would be to use the final grated portal surface to imperfectly judge when the cube is above the cube holder thing. I hope that the holder thing would also make it possible to get over to the door.
If you could at least lengthen the time on the button that changes the direction, that'd be great. I could probably deal with a few attempts of trying to judge distances.
I don't know anything after the second room. For all I know, that's the end.

The first room was a warm-up for me, to figure out panels, binding, animation, so I didn't think of any puzzle there. And generally, I just wanted panels, lots of them

Almost always I was able to place a portal on the grated ceiling surface and push the button before the cube is killed (it won't be killed until fully submerged). Timer on the button could be longer, but as soon as the funnel reverses with the box close to the ceiling, funnel portal from the side will catch it. And the big panel above that box socket is there to 'catch' the box and there's a vphysclip that almost always puts the box where it should be. Guess there's too much 'almost always' in this

How do I spawn the player with the gun?

Anyway, when I tested, the gun bounced around the floor a bit, so I thought I should say 'Chell tripped and dropped her portal gun into a vacuum tube and had to follow it' to cover it up

Edit: There is no starting or ending elevator.

You can either do the transitions instance or spawn the player and have the portal gun entity right on top of them when they spawn.

Ok, I beat it now.

I found that I could sort of cheat the timer on being able to reverse the direction by pulling the cube all the way up to the portal to the gravity beam (right after it's dropped), but changing the portal as soon as it got to the little ledge. Then I'd wait for the button to be pressable again, put the portal back where it was, push the button, change the portal to the one that pushes it to the first grated portal surface, and wait. It made it much easier, and in some cases, actually possible. Yeah, the button really didn't go up fast enough sometimes. If you leave in that workaround, it might actually make it interesting. But you can take it out if you'd like. Ok, then once it got up, I usually could time it right to push it over to the last grated portal surface. I guess the time I posted about here was a fluke. As for your cube falling in the right spot:
1st try: Fell in, triggered momentarily, but that was enough.
2nd try: Fell in perfectly.
3rd try: Completely missed it somehow.
4th try: Fell in perfectly.
If those are good enough for you, OK, then. But PLEASE put a save in before you do whatever it is that could change the results. It's bothersome to go through that several times.
And put other saves, in, too.
I had four tries because I didn't know what to do with the faith plate. I didn't even realize I could move the light bridge the first time, and just assumed I would be moved to it or something. You should make that specific panel movement more obvious. The subtle shift downward is overpowered by enormous movements everywhere else around the room.
Actually, to beat it, I put a light bridge through the grate on the ceiling, which bumped me down, where I put another horizontally below me (thanks to the surface from the cube gravity pushing surfaces). In hindsight, that wasn't really necessary, was it?
Still, I'd try to give the player an indication of exactly where you're being launched to.
All in all, I'd say it's really good for your first map. I've looked into making maps and it's really difficult. The precise timing you put into it must've made it a real pain for you. Unfortunately, it also made it extremely annoying since there were no saves.
The first room was pretty good for your first usage of panels. If that's what you were showing off, well, it worked. It was just there was a large disparity in the difficulty between the first room and the second. Usually you see either a buildup in difficulty, or a consistency. So, an easy starting room either sets the precedent for a slightly harder second room, or another easy room.
Good work on the cleanliness. I didn't see any bleeding or anything, and everything seemed all nice and lined up.
The tubes were okay, it was kinda fun falling in the last one. I'd make the player spawn with the portal gun, though.

Microchamber more than comfortably reminiscent of a Doom wad, aka small rooms abundant in sliding walls. Aside from what pioneered what, the problem is these crowded enviroments should support a navigation-based puzzle: but there really isn't the space to do anything more than squeezing through the only way out. Add in the shaky manifacture and you aren't left with much to play with.

It's worth noting that usually, first timers actually sin in the other direction: gigarooms, oversized chambers. This one should really take a bite at that: more breathing room - which would also make the layout shifts more noticeable.

Relative dimension in Hammer is usually difficult for beginner mappers to grasp until their third or fourth map.

It took me a while to get the hang of it. That's why I wrote this tutorial.

Not much in the way of puzzle, but nearly impossible to time properly. longer by one tick would help.. and a ticker on the reverse would help too..

Szieve wrote:
Not much in the way of puzzle, but nearly impossible to time properly. longer by one tick would help.. and a ticker on the reverse would help too..

Agreed. I won't found any elegant way in the funnel and cube part, reverse timer is too little. I just throwed the cube in the horizzontal funnel on the top of the room, and done only the "last" part of "driving the cube".

BTW, using makeshift solutions brings you to areas which are heavily bugged: the cubeplate is surrounded by invisible walls to make the cube drop easier, but now very difficult to deposit manually; and you can fall behind the panels close to the funnel, which has no escape.

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After looking around YouTube I tested my map with this re-portalling trick, and it can get so bugged I guess nothing can help. Better leave this one ;P

And thanks for showing me around, this was a valuable lesson.

Found more bugs similar to xdiesp
I'll post them in a sec.
You shouldn't try to protect your map against engine glitches like reportal. It's not your fault that reportal exists, so why should you have to adjust your map to prevent it?
Mappers should just try to prevent map bugs and exploits, not prevent engine ones.
I think you should continue work on this map, it's a very good one.

EDIT: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9KocTtK ... tube_gdata
There's the vid

Hope this v1.3 works. I'm getting brain damage here :>

Next time I'll invent proper puzzle, I hope.

Another little bug I found: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fj3Wvdmd ... tube_gdata

I don't think there are any more helpful bugs left in this map after this one.

Are you sure you updated to v1.4 correctly? I downloaded it but nothing seems to have changed. What was the 'blockage' you said you added?

No really visible changes. Hopefully your previous extra solution was blocked Unless I confused the files...

SiaCreations wrote:
No really visible changes. Hopefully your previous extra solution was blocked Unless I confused the files...

I did the exact same thing I did before and it worked fine.

Different approach now: instead of blocking everything I didn't like, I allowed more freedom. The map should be more flexible and any way of getting back to the elevated area is good.

Well i got back to the top with the cube and found i could not get it onto the button due to an invisible box around it. I eventually by standing to the side managed to find a hole to slide it into resulting in panels folding down and trapping me. After this i stopped sorry guess theres still more bugs to iron out but i like the idea of a single chamber changing to new puzzles.

Speedran it in 63 seconds http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLPCwx8Y ... tube_gdata

I found that it was quite dark and I would suggest turning up the brightness. Also, maps usually look better with an arrival elevator. And as everyone has said, timing the cube and tractor beam jump is frustrating to do, making it longer would help. Overall, good for a first map.

That speedrun looked fun But judging by the big portalable wall, it's still version 1.4 at best. Something went wrong... hope it works now, the latest version is 1.6.

And I like it dark here. Elements don't hide in the dark, so I guess it's just personal preference.

I really want to try something new now!

I thought it was a very good first map. Yeah the timing was a bit tight but still doable. Everything worked even though it took a few tries to get the cube moved. Well done. Thanks for creating.

This is the first map i played that blew me away. Great work. I especially like maps like this and Zimbardo where people fit so much puzzle into just a single chamber

I enjoyed playing this map, because the changing layout kept making me rethink things. I agree with others that it was too dark, and I'm going to ding you one point for tight timing and obtuse angles (the large turns to get from one target to the next eat time that would be enough without them.) But the puzzle was interesting enough that you started from a 4, ending up with a 3.

Pretty nice map, I like how everything kept changing. This is how GLaDOS builds them: dynamic!

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