An introduction to Surface Translation Matrices. (Prey style wall-walking gravity panels).

Click here to download Prey

Click here to download Prey

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This is a little map I've been working on for a while now, based on the wall walking principle. I've tested the hell out of it and it should be pretty stable, but it's really pushing what's actually possible with only source IO and VScript. So you'll have to forgive me if it crashes or stops responding. (In such cases, just type 'kill' into the console and you'll be taken to the last safe spot).

It doesn't use gels like Omnicoder's system but works fairly similarly (if he's not busy changing it again).
Anyhoo, cheers OC for the clue that sparked the eureka moment

Why did you have to release this now? :d

I was waiting to play this on release but now I'm sitting here watching a sunset.
My father went and got an ipad so I can surf internet with this but playing portal won't work.

Just decided to say hey and I will be sure to play this right after I get home.

Lol, I can't feel sorry for you sitting in a beach house by a lake, holding an iPad Shakky...

I can honestly, and without shame, say that I was completely confused for about 90% of this. It was certainly interesting and maybe tomorrow when the confusion wears off I'll be able to say that it was fun. It was so mindbending, my body feels like its floating somewhere near the ceiling. Those are all meant to be taken as compliments, by the way.

I had two problems: the invisible death fizzlers and I would sometimes lose a portal if I transitioned too quickly from one orientation to the other. I'm not sure why you have to rebuild the portals after those transitions, but I assume you have a good reason. Also, I never found a use for the regular cube.

Well, done, sir.

First of all this house is by a river not a lake and the internet connection super slow.

To be honest I'm really happy to be here but I wish I had Portal 2 here with me.

@RogerL
Heh, cheers - looks like it had the desired effect! Took a while getting used to using hammer upside down too >.<

A few people have raised concerns about the deathfizzlers, so I went head and switched them for LP's. They're not as opaque as I thought, so it fits pretty perfectly

Edit:
Ty for pointing out the test cube, I'd forgotten about him!

@Shakky
Build yourself a companion cube out of mud and sun bake it tomorrow. You will be graded on 3 main criteria:
-Demonstration of skill and good craftmanship.
-Creativity and Ingenuity
-Effort, hard work and the overall success of the project.

Well I haven't played it all the way through, but this happened to me:

I got stuck inside one of those "wallwalker" thingys, I don't know what to call them.

I might check this out and complete the entire map, but I have to sleep now. Swedish holiday tomorrow xD

Awww balls.. thought I'd fixed all that... what were you doing at the time?
It's a pretty pic though ^^

The new fizzlers are much better. I got stuck just like Logic did. It was just before the fizzler entrance to the second cube, though it was the first time it had happened to me.

It also reminded me of something I forgot to mention in my last post. I was yo-yoing one of the cubes (in the room just outside the final room) to see if I could get it into the room where you get the second cube (this is before I found the correct way). But every time I transitioned to a new angle, the cube just stopped its yo-yo. Odd behavior, I thought.

Yeah.. there are a lot of quirks like this. Basically on every transition, the entire level is rotated under the player and not the other way around. This has to happen over several steps and frames so stuff like that happens. (I.e. cube is temporarily parented to the level, portals get turned off, stuff rotates, cubes unparented, portals back on, etc...then you have to account for stuff like the player being stuck in walls, manually handling whatever the player's carrying etc.). I tested it on 3 machines and thought that bug had been licked :'(
Anyhoo, I'll take another look in a bit.. that particular spot's been problematic for a while.

Well, its amazing what you were able to accomplish. And I thought the way of getting the laser into the emitter in the final room was very clever. In my first playthrough, since I had three cubes, I kept trying to stack all three in the button room, but could never get the top cube aimed properly and I was starting to get pissed off when I finally decided that that was not what you intended. The final solution actually (and surprisingly, given my state of mind at the time) came pretty quickly.

3rd cube? I found only 2 and that was enough to complete the map.

Anyway nice idea. After first confusion passed that was pretty clear and rather easy.
Here is my final room solution:

Can't wait to see more of that, this idea has really big potential to create difficult puzzle

I think I confused your script:
http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197990738647/screenshot/596974051345730764

Also, the first button also turns on and off the laser in the final room. Is that supposed to happen?

@Jacu:
Hoot, that's the intended way. I'll do a more difficult one when the bugs are ironed out of this =)

@RogerL:
Hah, looks like you have >.<
There's something really messed up with that particular spot that I can't track down, but cheers for letting me know!

Oh yeah.. first button turning off the final room laser.. shame on me, that's a mistake yeah!

Oh, no! Then I solved it in an unintended way. I made one portal right-side up and the other portal upside down to get the laser lower. It seemed to fit the theme of your map. In fact, you could force that solution if you made that wall only one portal high. But if its unintended...

That's actually a pretty smart idea.. never thought of that
So many of these mechanics still to explore!

sicklebrick wrote:
There's something really messed up with that particular spot that I can't track down

I didn't exploit a glitch there, I placed the second cube on a ledge in the next room, which I jumped onto, and then jumped past a transition marker and it bugged me to a position of "reverse" gravity. I spent a couple of hours trying to find some way to exploit that, but found nothing. I can give you more details if you want; the idea might lead to some interesting mapping opportunities.

Aah, no worries man.
Originally, the idea was to allow the player to jump off at any time flipping you back to normal gravity, but it was causing all sorts of problems with having to detect if doing that would leave the player's head stuck in a wall for example (instead, I stuck clip brushes around them :p). That ledge was a last minute addition, so I'd removed most places you could become detached and forgotten about there. Totally appreciating the feedback though

You could've made this easier, my brain hurts D: I ended up just wandering around the whole place, feeling super disoriented and without any clue what so ever what to do. I guessed I didn't try hard enough but walking around in that maze without knowing what's up or down made me sick :S