It's just another day in the Perpetual Testing Initiative. Until something forces you to take a detour. Luckily, the way ahead is not too difficult.

This is a WIP because I hope to add more details and new chambers on the "detour" as I learn more about Hammer.

Hope you have fun with this! Be sure to drop me a line of feedback here or on the workshop.

Click here to download Detour

Click here to download Detour

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Screenshots





Changelog
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Update 1: Thanks to some helping players I was able to fix some minor issues and some bigger ones. The most notable ones:

• The elevator rubble looks better now. The problem was that it started in the void and therefore had no light on it. The flippanel in the end had a similar issue that's fixed now.
• The "black-out"-room now has hinting sunbeams that hopefully help to find the way more quickly.

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Update 2: Improved the behaviour of the blackroom-physboxes and the look of the water.

Update 3: Fixed all known unintended solutions for the final puzzle. Completely new transition to the final puzzle, including a brief ratman sidestory.

Minor Updates 4 and 5: Fixed a misaligned linked Portal door and a texture that was supposed to be black. Got the Cave Johnson quote playing again.

Update 5: A trigger_push should prevent the cube/sphere-balance-solutions now. Added some dustpuffs in the elevator and at the breaking wall.

Update 6: Added physics clips for the debris at the main puzzle. Fixed goo leaking into blue funnel box.

Update 7: Fixed that the Cave-Johnson-line would play again after reloading from the autosave-trigger at the main puzzle.

Update 8: Turned off the auto-PTI-music and added specific background music tracks for the starting chamber and the main puzzle.

Update 9: Fixed an unintended solution for the main puzzle. Thanks to BEARD! for finding it.

Update 10: Fixed some small issues, made it so that the player has to tear down the crumbling wall on his/her own and reworked the destruction at the main puzzle, including a small extra step in a broken observation room.

Update 11: Fixed an unintended solution. Thanks to Chickenmobile for the find.||

Wow, man, I wondered what you were up to spending so much time in Hammer! This is really impressive, especially considering how recently you started getting to grips with the program. Absolutely loved the elevator scene and the second room in particular is looking pretty sharp (the first still has that dull PTI lighting I'm starting to really get sick of, though).

That said, I did have some issues, which you can see in these demos I made:

detourdemos.zip

detourblind is my blind run (obviously) but you'll see I get the plain cube in the second chamber in a bit of an unintended way.

detourbug is a nasty bug I encountered that completely blocked my progression to the second room.

detourunintended is a good example of why you have to be careful with physboxes in your maps - here I use them for an unintended solution, but they could just have easily rendered the whole puzzle unsolvable.

EDIT: P.S. for screenshots, you can use the console commands "r_drawviewmodel 0" and "crosshair 0" to remove the portal gun and crosshair.

Nice idea, not perfect though, but it's a WIP I know... I only have time to wright some of the problems I found right now...

• I find it annoying that I have to do the same awkward jump twice in the first chamber
• Some pipes by the broken elevator can be walked through (just add some playerclips)
• There is an area to the right of the observation room in the first chamber where you can go through the wall
• The fact that I can't progress to the next chamber was disappointing since I like the transitions between different styles of maps
• The second chamber can be solved without the lightbridge (by funneling to the last cube and grab it perfectly)

Logic wrote:
- I find it annoying that I have to do the same awkward jump twice in the first chamber

Do you mean the momentum-gathering thing? If you get up to one of the cube platforms you can just shoot a portal under the cube on the other one from there....

El Farmerino wrote:
Logic wrote:

• I find it annoying that I have to do the same awkward jump twice in the first chamber

Do you mean the momentum-gathering thing? If you get up to one of the cube platforms you can just shoot a portal under the cube on the other one from there....

I... Didn't think of that xD Ok, you can do it that way, but if you fall off the edge you're bound to do it all again.

True. I'm not a big fan of the mechanic in the first place, to be honest. Makes me feel kind of queasy...

El Farmerino wrote:
True. I'm not a big fan of the mechanic in the first place, to be honest. Makes me feel kind of queasy...

Yeah. There is a reason Valve didn't put anything like it in the singleplayer campaign.

Thanks a lot for the detailed feedback, guys!

||> El Farmerino wrote:

That said, I did have some issues, which you can see in these demos I made...

Thank you very much for those demos, they really help a lot.

The way to get the normal cube you and Logic (and in the meantime two other playtesters) found is indeed unintended. I'll move the dropper and the exit door one block further, that should do it, hopefully.

Many thanks for the debris solution! I personally love to see physic objects that can be funneled etc. But, yes, it's a bit "dangerous" in this case, allowing unintended moves. I'll just turn these debris-boxes to normal brushes again.

Currently, it is also possible to balance the laser cube on the sphere in the blue funnel and activate the lightbridge that way. It is tedious to set up, but still possible. I'm not sure how to get rid of that yet. I was thinking a clip "spike" in the middle of the funnel could help making the sphere too "wobbly" to use it that way.

I was hoping that I totally fixed the physbox bug you found, it never happened again on my tests. But I am not really happy with this room, anyway. I think the "fall through floor physbox"-transition is getting too old by now. Also, like you and others encountered in their playthroughs, it is a bit weird to have an invisible portal_cleanser and the invisile physics clip there.

Instead, I'm thinking about having a wall crack open, leading to a horizontal transition, through a totally broken testchamber and its fizzlers, towards the final puzzle.

Logic wrote:
I only have time to wright some of the problems I found right now...

You only have to do the jump once, indeed. But yeah, you could forget that or fall down and then have to repeat the same move again. I think I'll make just one ledge instead with both cubes on it.

Thanks for finding the pipes and the wall piece. There are clips but they were obviously not big enough.

Logic wrote:
- I find it annoying that I have to do the same awkward jump twice in the first chamber
- The fact that I can't progress to the next chamber was disappointing since I like the transitions between different styles of maps

To me it was the other way around and gave me the general idea for this map: I found it disappointing to solve PTI-chamber after PTI-chamber with the same transition: solve a 1-minute-chamber, ride the same old elevator, solve the next 1-minute-chamber. So the general idea of this first room is: A puzzle that's totally easy for experienced players (in fact, it might be even too easy: one playtester thought that was the puzzle, wondered a bit about the elevator and then closed the game because he thought that was it). Then, when you approach the elevator to continue to the next cheap PTI-chamber, you get the "surprise" that it's not over yet instead.

Logic wrote:
Yeah. There is a reason Valve didn't put anything like it in the singleplayer campaign.

Personally, I like the jump. Experienced players see it and pull it off right away - hence the idea to present an easy chamber that I just described. New players don't know about it and have a new experience (that's what it was for one of the playtesters). That it's not in the single player is a killer argument.||

Thanks again to everyone who provided demos and feedback here and on IRC. It helped me a lot to improve this with a new update.

Fixed all known unintended solutions for the final puzzle: Balancing the lasercube across the room on the sphere doesn't help anymore. It's no longer possible to grab the normal cube from the orange funnel. The debris can't be stacked anymore.

There's a completely new transition from the blacked out room to the final puzzle. It's a brief ratman sidestory now. You'll understand it when you see it. A fizzler and a physbox-breaking trigger eliminate the earlier confusion about why it's not possible to carry debris/cubes to the final puzzle.

Played it through again and finally found the intended solution, and all I can say is this - that was awesome. Really had me thinking for a while, but it's one of those facepalm kind of puzzles where it has really been staring you in the face the whole time. Like the new transition too. I still think Logic has a point about the second cube maybe being an irritant in the first room if you don't get them together, but that's a pretty minor issue - even the first time around I blasted through that room in no time. Excellent map.

I agree with El Farmerino - the intended solution is awesome....sick in fact. Great Puzzle!

Awesome map my friend. I liked a lot the 2nd chamber! It took me some time to figure out but the aha moment was amazing. Congratulations for that! It's difficult to build puzzles with that aha moment!

Thanks for mapping mate!

I recorded a video:

P1R0Cud2zN0

Very nice map! Had me clueless for a little while in that second chamber until I thought about the bridge portal surface. Well done

Glad it turned out so well now after its initial buggy start. Thanks a lot for the feedback!

I'll implement a fix for the still possible sphere/lasercube-balance-solution next. It is tedious to pull off, but still possible. But a trigger_push that only pushes the sphere will prevent it completely after the next update.

Why have you deleted some parts of the top wall? Now the orange funnel and the sphere are not needed anymore :O

Nevermind, I see it now. I'll get that wall back in, thanks for pointing this out.

I've made a quick video of that unintended solution.

KDzkA0SrUic

*Ahh you found out by yourself... Here's the video anyways.

Fixed now. It was pretty stupid to remove that wall, thanks again for pointing it out.

I did find a few thighs you might wanna look at:

SOME STUFF I FOUND
||- Once you've reached one of the cubes in the first room you can just place a portal under the other one (intended?)

• There is another pipe that you can walk through by the broken elevator

• The elevator-frame is a bit darker than the rest of the broken elevator

• The discouragement-field-emitter is not properly lit (the one in the corridor before the dark testchamber)

• Overuse of the sparks on the different signs in my opinion. I'd scale it down a bit
• The wall that breaks down in the first chamber can be picked up by the player (probably intended?)

• The wall-parts have an odd shape (intended?)

• Is it really necessary to have 2 rooms to simulate the "testchamber breakdown-effect"? World portals are bad m'kay?

• If you enter the second chamber and look back you can see the world portal closing and "blurr" appearing

• I'd also say that the broken wall model on the triange-like sealing-part dosn'r really fir in||
  There might be some awkward descriptions here. Just ask me if there is anything that you don't understand.