From the second place of the latest ThinkingWihtPortals mapping contest, comes my first Portal 2 map!

Updated Abril 4, 2012.

Although it is lacking from story, which I might do later. The map is fully complete. It involves Bounce and speed gels, lasers and hard light surfaces. Along with the usuall thinking with portals.

It is of medium/large length, and about medium/hard difficulty. Still, no insane moves are required. Pure Portal basics in weird ways!

E-mail me at eugenio.motanum91 AT gmail.com
You can follow me on twitter @MotanumR
My youtube channel is http://www.youtube.com/user/motanium
And my steam is http://steamcommunity.com/id/Motanum

File Name: slant.rar
File Size: 2.54 MiB
Click here to download [SP] Motanum's Slanted Bridge

I got to playtest this one, it's pretty fun!

You need to come up with some more original names, though. This is like the third "Motanum's Test" that you've uploaded.

Alright, I'll do my best for being creative next time ^^

Pretty nice map. It had some nice tricks that I don't remember were in the game.

But what's with all the laser bending? Couldn't you have placed the laser receptor closer and drop the hidden laser cubes?

Another thing, I loved how you used a slanted hard-light bridge to mess up people who thought they could use the back wall to bridge over... I was one of them lol

Ah, this is a pretty fun map to play! Loved the various mechanisms used- I personally think the hidden thermal redirection cubes were a good addition, mostly because it does require some observation skills, but it's not a "SMALL TINY GRILL" thing- much easier to spot, but it's pretty cool!

Aesthetically, the map is great. Nice methods used to solve the puzzles. No mad skillz required, but a good amount of logical thinking. It's a challenge without being overly tedious. The solutions did seem a little guided (more "Why is this panel here?" instead of "How do I get to the exit?"), but otherwise, great job!

I liked the map overall, but was thrown off by two things that I thought would be more complicated, and it turned out the simple and "too obvious" thing to do was actually the correct solution:


(1) I thought I needed to blue-gel wall-bounce between over the pit in the middle, while first building up speed with propulsion gel. In other words, increase speed with propulsion gel on ledge, jump into blue wall, bounce back and forth over pit, and clear far side with speed boost gained initially.

In the end, all i needed was a small patch of red gel with a blue patch in front of it.

(2) I thought the last jump would be way too far to do with just propulsion gel on the light bridge, so I kept trying to find a way to get a patch of blue gel at the top in order to get extra distance. After a lot of trial and error, I realized that the obvious thing (just covering the bridge with propulsion gel) was good enough to jump across.

This isn't actually a problem, but it does imply (in my opinion) that this map is way too easy and not at all medium/hard difficulty.

That said, this map is absolutely gorgeous. Good work!

Once you get to know it, the puzzle isn't so bad.

Very fun but hard as you over think it alot. I did at the end but it was so simple instead. I speant absoultely ages earching for a cube in the ceiling and also though blue gel was needed for the final jump

nice one. took me some time how the get the gel to the other rooms. but in the end i had fun! 5/5

Luxor wrote:
But what's with all the laser bending? Couldn't you have placed the laser receptor closer and drop the hidden laser cubes?

I didn't want to make a really long indicator light from the beginning until the light bridge, plus, I thought that doing that was pretty cool. I might re-use it in a more complicated way next time. ^^

I think this was the most fun I've had on a custom P2 test chamber so far, well done! I liked that the difficulty came from trying to figure out what order to do things in in order to do, say, move the cube around or put the blue gel at the near end of the pit.

Suggestion:

It wasn't immediately obvious that the first button turns off the fizzler, simply because you can't see the fizzler when you walk over the button. I would suggest rearranging the first room so that you can see the fizzler switch off through the glass.

Zhan wrote:
It wasn't immediately obvious that the first button turns off the fizzler, simply because you can't see the fizzler when you walk over the button. I would suggest rearranging the first room so that you can see the fizzler switch off through the glass.

^^^This.

Also, I found that I overthought it to the point where I too thought a little blue gel was needed for the last jump, because of the segmented ceiling (makes the impression different gels are to be dropped, orange on the runway, blue at the tip).

Also, the back and forth to switch the cube from the button to the lasers got sort of tedious. Part of it had to do with me overthinking the puzzle and going back more than necessary, but I admitted to noclipping a few times when I was sick of backtracking and knew that if I really wanted to, I could feasibly get back without noclip.

However,the first time I realized that you needed to use the paint to get over the first lightbridge area that you initially need the laser to cross triggered one of those great "feel really clever" moments that make Portal fun in the first place.

That's the only downside though, this was a really really hard, pretty well done map. It's not really a downside, but there should be some compression if I'm tempted to noclip around puzzles I've already solved just because it's so tedious.

4/5. Really nice job. Smart use of angled light bridges. I'd never seen anyone utilize a lightbridge for a jump like that at the end, pretty clever! So far the only map I've liked as much as this one was animerunts.

This one seemed WAY too easy, but it turned out to be quite interesting test chamber. Keep up the good work.

Still playing my way through this one, and I like it so far, but I've noticed a pretty big bug: If you place the laser redirection cube under the first repulsion gel dispenser and then stand on the button you end up with a cube that bounces up into the dispenser tube with no way to retrieve it. A cube respawn button would fix this easy enough and I don't think it would mess up any other part of your puzzle.

Dirty50ck5 wrote:
Still playing my way through this one, and I like it so far, but I've noticed a pretty big bug: If you place the laser redirection cube under the first repulsion gel dispenser and then stand on the button you end up with a cube that bounces up into the dispenser tube with no way to retrieve it. A cube respawn button would fix this easy enough and I don't think it would mess up any other part of your puzzle.

I have never thought of getting myself stucked like that! Thanks, if I ever update that map I will make sure I have a way to stop that from happening. A simple invisible fizzler up in the dropper would kill the cube and send back another one! Thank you for bringing this to my attention!

Excellent map!! It's not very long or difficult but it actually took some time for me to work out. A great custom map. Thanks for mapping.^_^

If you're interested, Mr. Motanum, here's a youtube I made about this map. Try not to mind my ignoring the obvious indicator lights from the first button to the fizzler... good job, anyhow!

DXzFcmKiidM

I started playing custom maps and record me playing them. It's neither a perfect run nor do I have to have solved the map in the way it's meant to solve it. I play the maps "blind", that means I've never been in them before and play them for the very first time. I also give a little feedback for the map in the video description.

Maybe you are interested in the fact, that I played your map: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKZQRuWJ7kA

Thanks for the videos! I really appreciate!

It took me a while to solve this merely because of the fact that I crossed the first light bridge part without the blue gel. I then couldn't see how to get over there with the cube but once I started from scratch again it was easy. great map

Excellent map...challenging puzzle - what else is there to say. It all worked and looked good... thanks for creating.

I enjoyed the puzzle on this one. At the last jump, I first tried to use just orange gel, but I died a few times and tried to get blue gel at the end (which I'm convinced is not possible without noclip). I realized that my initial attempt had failed because gel on the bridge is not saved; when the map is loaded, the bridge is redrawn from source to wall.

I also got a bizarre graphical glitch on the four pillars in the starting area:

Console dump
Failed to load $include VMT file ()
Error: Material "maps/sp_mota_test_1/groxkiller/metal/metal_bts_001a_1872_1344_64" uses unknown shader "patch"
Failed to load $include VMT file ()
Error: Material "maps/sp_mota_test_1/groxkiller/metal/metal_bts_001a_2432_1344_64" uses unknown shader "patch"
Failed to load $include VMT file ()
Error: Material "maps/sp_mota_test_1/groxkiller/metal/metal_bts_001a_0_0_-320" uses unknown shader "patch"
Failed to load $include VMT file ()
Error: Material "maps/sp_mota_test_1/groxkiller/metal/metal_bts_001a_-318_-1024_-128" uses unknown shader "patch"
Failed to load $include VMT file ()
Error: Material "maps/sp_mota_test_1/groxkiller/metal/metal_bts_001a_64_-1024_-448" uses unknown shader "patch"
Failed to load $include VMT file ()
Error: Material "maps/sp_mota_test_1/groxkiller/metal/metal_bts_001a_64_-1568_-448" uses unknown shader "patch"
Failed to load $include VMT file ()
Error: Material "maps/sp_mota_test_1/groxkiller/metal/metal_bts_001a_640_1344_-128" uses unknown shader "patch"
Error! Variable "$bumpmap" is multiply defined in material "models/props_bts/beam_castellated"!
Host_NewGame on map sp_mota_test_1
exec: couldn't exec skill1.cfg
==== calling mapspawn.nut
Unable to load sprite material materials/sprites/gunsmoke.vmt!
Unable to load sprite material materials/sprites/bubble.vmt!
info_particle_system () has no particle system name specified!
prop_weighted_cube at (-256.000, 192.000, -365.967) has no model name!
prop_weighted_cube at (-256.000, 320.000, -365.967) has no model name!
PrecacheScriptSound 'music.sp_mota_test_1_lbout' failed, no such sound script entry
prop_weighted_cube at (352.000, 192.000, -365.967) has no model name!
prop_weighted_cube at (-318.205, -1024.000, 335.070) has no model name!
Commentary: Could not find commentary data file 'maps/sp_mota_test_1_commentary.txt'.
1.000: Sending UDP connect to public IP 127.0.0.1:27015
Server using '<none>' lobbies, requiring pw no, lobby id 0
RememberIPAddressForLobby: lobby 0 from address loopback
Connection to Steam servers successful.
==== calling mapspawn.nut
VAC secure mode is activated.
*****
NO GAME SESSION
some features might be disabled
(achievements, stats, UI, etc.)
*****
=======================Trying to run give_portalgun
=======================Trying to run upgrade_potatogun
prop_weighted_cube at (-318.205, -1024.000, 359.070) has no model name!
Redownloading all lightmaps
Dynamic prop cube_dropper_prop: no sequence named:item_dropper_close_idle
From experience, I some of that is supposed to happen (like NO GAME SESSION or calling mapspawn.nut), but some of it might be related. Or I might just need to re-download Portal 2 for some reason.

...I'm still rating it a 5/5.

That is a custom texture, I thought it was a Portal 2 texture, I am not sure how it got to my Portal 2 files without me knowing.

Great map, not that hard but still interesting.

Pretty fun map, Mota, although it was a tad easy/predictable, maybe make Using the blue paint in the room with the parallel wall to wall jump across the pit while holding the cube a viable solution (or the solution) instead? I really wanted to do that.

Sesquiplicate wrote:
Pretty fun map, Mota, although it was a tad easy/predictable, maybe make Using the blue paint in the room with the parallel wall to wall jump across the pit while holding the cube a viable solution (or the solution) instead? I really wanted to do that.

Ive been told that is possible. Might not be a bit obvious but is possible. I think I tried it myself. I'll check what version is up and I'll see if I can get the improved version up.