Solve the puzzles to obtain and place three laser redirection cubes in order to open the door leading to the exit.

This is a decayed style map featuring hard light bridges, gels and lasers.

Bonus: See if you can get into the Rattman den!


(Known bug: Sometimes part of the frame around the glass in one room shows up funny - I don't know why)

Version 1.1 - Fixed some glitches, made some visual changes, fixed light bridge exploit in final room.
Version 1.2 - Just some small visual additions and tweaks. Replaced laser fields with grates.

File Name: sp_crossingthebeams-1-2.zip
File Size: 2.06 MiB
Click here to download [SP] Crossing the Beams

I really enjoyed the map. Not too difficult, but was fun. My daughter loved it. To crank it up a notch you might want to have the button that raises the three tiles in the bridge room timed.

Thanks again for a fun map

Medium map with accessible, non-linear structure yet unfortunately kept down by severely unpolished looks. Style's a wild mix of Decay and Clean, maybe (but I'm stretching it) not intrinsecally evil but given the overbright lightning certainly ending in a brutal salad effect (contrasting details). Again it's the puzzles keeping the thing afloat, simple and catchy.

But if I may suggest, either lock the player inside the final room (now you can just pop a bridge and leave) or have him bring the 3 cubes inside (I couldn't believe it was that easy). Have a tour of the oldie [SP] One in the Chamber and see how the colour look more coherent, despite the intense detail. Bug: the water in the final room isn't lined to the wall, you can actually see its box's border.

Okay map, not alot to say. Framerate is low and like what was said you can place the light bridge to get to the exit. Dunno why there were 3-4 laser cubes when you only needed 2, i guess its needed if you destroy one acidentally.

You know I really liked the style of this map. Sure there are a few things that need refining, but I enjoyed playing it.

Possible glitch in the room before the elevator. I was able to crouch to the edge of the starting platform and point the laser directly at the place it was supposed to go. I didn't have to point it at another redirectional cube.
Otherwise, I liked it. Not too challenging, but still interesting enough.

Thanks for catching the workaround with the light bridge in the last room. Yikes, not sure how I didn't catch that. Easy enough to fix of course. The puzzle in that room isn't meant to be particularly challenging, though. But I might think about ways to add to it a bit.


I had a heck of a time with the visuals, this being my first decayed map. Although I am not sure where I mixed in clean style, aside from a couple of spots where I put a small section of clean tiles on the wall (intending to imply layers of tile that had fallen away over time - but I could certainly remove those few clean ones if that is the problem).


Thanks for playing and leaving feedback.

In the room with the blue gel, I didn't need to use the light bridge at all to finish it. To get the cube, I simply grabbed it from where I was standing when it fell, and to reach the laser, I just leapt down onto the gel covered floor from where the light bridge began, rebounded back up on the other side and climbed over to where I needed to place the cube.
There were also problems with the cube I needed to use to kill the turrets in the other room. I wasn't able to retrieve it should it fall into the water, and when I held it under the orange gel "pipe" (by the way, why wasn't there a pipe?), it retained the same clean appearance, which I found misleading.

However, I did really enjoy the puzzles along with the unusual visual style (particularly the "enclosed" feel I got with the light bridge-climbing room). To the actual gameplay I would only suggest changing the positioning of the autosaves to each time you align a laser correctly. Perhaps the last chamber should be a little more complicated but it felt more like a "closing sequence" to me than an actual puzzle.

As far as the modeling/texturing goes, the details were pretty if clashing at times, but I have to agree that the lighting was sub-par. I'm OK with brightness - in fact I've been hating the onslaught of dark chambers lately; they feel so uninspiring - but the bright lighting of this map seemed overbearing especially when there wasn't really any realistic source for it. Some of the brushes looked a bit plain too.

Version 1.1 is uploading now. It includes the following changes...

-Made some visual changes and dimmed the lights. Hope it looks better now.
-Fixed light bridge exploit in final room and made the door close when player enters.
-Addressed frame rate lag by having gel droppers turn off while player is not in the appropriate room.
-Fixed other issues mentioned in feedback.

NuclearDuckie wrote:
There were also problems with the cube I needed to use to kill the turrets in the other room. I wasn't able to retrieve it should it fall into the water, and

Oh, is that what I was supposed to do there? I was playing one of my daughter's saved games where she had already dropped the cube in the water. I just jumped down onto the platform the turrets were placed on (from the light bridge) and disposed of them by hand.

I thought it was very odd that the orange gel looked blue when it falls on the light bridge.. Not that you have any control over that I suppose?

I enjoyed the level though, the puzzles were fun, thanks! The rooms felt a bit cramped, but that's OK. I expected the final puzzle to be harder with all the cubes lying around (I only needed two).

Hm, you shouldn't be able to jump onto the platform with the turrets. I'll have to check into that.

By the way, v1.1 fixes it so you don't lose the cube if it falls in the water there.

I've checked and the darker ambience is indeed more bearable, see if you wouldn't like these ideas: replace the hub fizzlers with closed\stuck doors (you can portal inside already); replace every single of those unlit lamps props with vegetation (try and see the effect); wreckage in the water. I think the middle test room is the best of the 3 at sobriety (just check the misaligned white textures).

Marise wrote:
jump onto the platform with the turrets. I'll have to check into that.

Imho that's actually an opportunity for getting rid of those red lasers altogether (both sets), red flashing things aren't the best in Decay. Have grids over those white panels, it's not like reaching and pushing the turrets is so less complex than crushing them with a cube.

How did you portal into the test chambers from the central room? I didn't think there were any portal-able surfaces in the central room (not that you could reach, anyway).

I'll have a look at your suggestions for visuals. And thanks for catching the unaligned white texture. I tried to get all of those but must have missed at least one.

By central room, I meant the central laser one: you have to jump and shoot the white panel.

Thanks for the screenshot. But what I am unclear on is where you placed the other portal in order to get in there. In any case, I'll look around the map tonight. Thanks.

Great job - a map I could easily expect to be in the original game, if it wasn't for the gels!

NuclearDuckie wrote:
... when I held it under the orange gel "pipe" (by the way, why wasn't there a pipe?), it retained the same clean appearance, which I found misleading...

That is an existing problem with the engine, not the map. For whatever reason, objects seem to not take anything but the blue gel in custom maps. The only thing that can really be done is to force a skin change to the appropriate cube type.

I've seen objects such as cubes get covered with orange gel heaps of times before this.

If the cube not getting coated in orange gel is something I can fix, I'd be glad to. Unfortunately I haven't a clue how. But it is also not necessary to solving the puzzle.

I liked the map. The puzzles took a bit of thought with the lasers in the last room. Since I was stuck on the first platform I knew the answer had to start from there - tried jumping everywhere for a while though... good map thanks for creating.

nice map but I think you should add an auto save after you solve every room. I solved the two room on the left and then died in the room with turrets. When I respawned, had to solve both rooms again. At that point, I just quit the map.

There is an autosave inside the doorway of each room, so you should not have had to redo anywhere near that much. I even tested it out by killing myself intentionally, and it was fine.

Very odd. I will take a look and see if something got messed up in v1.1 somehow. Thanks for pointing out the problem.

This was a fun map i enjoyed the cube bowling on the turrets but the first time all but one turret got knocked over and I had to reload and it's possible to smuggle the companion cube to the exit but then the grill before the elevator kills it

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:

w49ClSQIq3E
(Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w49ClSQIq3E)

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

Thanks for the video. I enjoyed your alternate solution (in the blue gel room) for getting on top of the platform.

I see it's still possible to catch the cube in there as it falls, which I didn't intend, but I'm going to let that go.

Except for the blue gel part, I enjoyed playing this map. For some reason, blue gel amplifies my spaziness, so it's not your fault. I played v1.2, and the lighting looked alright to me. I never used the companion cube or speedy gel in the turret room. I only used the bouncy gel to get to the first platform, you can portal yourself everywhere else (thank you very much!) The one thing that disappointed me about this map were the dead-simple laser puzzles, especially the final room. Better puzzles would have made this an easy 4,but I'm only giving it 3.