!! Winner of the ThinkingWithPortals.com contest - 2012 !!

• It seems like you have lost your way to the closed testing area. Overtaken by destruction and beautiful foliage, but no need to worry! Luckily we can run the tests in a emergency and/or even in apocalyptic statements. So, collect your courage and step in and experience yourself with a fun of testing !"

The Corrupted is a single player map which includes four different testchambers, with changing difficulty in a overgrown layout.

Credits:
Brainstone > TWP Poster overlay.
Zivi7 > TWP Ratman Scrawl overlay.
Stimich > Playtesting, bugs, unintended solutions.
Fluppy > Playtesting, improvements, ideas, radio music(Reflection).
Omnicoder > SignMake tool for custom testchamber signs.
And all others who had helped with this.

Change log > v2
- Chamber 3 misplaced labels
- Chamber 3 unintended solution !!
- Some props casts now shadows
- Indicators from laser catcher to fizzler added on chamber 4.
- Exit elevator animation changed/added.
- Endlevel trigger delayed < Caused the "crosshair 0" after endlevel.

Change log > v3
- Chamber 3 deathfield fix

supercontest2012 Pitkakorvaa

Click here to download [SP] The Corrupted

Click here to download [SP] The Corrupted

Wow - great map. Really enjoyed this one every step of the way. Puzzles were great and the detailing was spot on. I did notice in the 3rd chamber which has the 4 different laser elements that it seems that one of them is labeled incorrectly. You have one relay and the catcher marked with a 4 dot panel. Looks like the relay should be the 3 dot?

I think I solved all the puzzles in an unintended solution - for example in the third chamber I removed one portal to quickly move between the switching death field and fizzler before any could affect me - which lead, I guess, to a much easier solution.
Detailing was great - I loved how you made the displacement concrete bts part look. But a downfall was the lighting - In some places you should use light with brightness as high as 5 or even 3. Some parts were really bright - too bright...

Great map for the "destroyed" theme. Moderate puzzles, lots of detail. One of the best "destroyed" maps I've played.

Mr. P. Kiwi wrote:
I think I solved all the puzzles in an unintended solution - for example in the third chamber I removed one portal to quickly move between the switching death field and fizzler before any could affect me - which lead, I guess, to a much easier solution.
Detailing was great - I loved how you made the displacement concrete bts part look. But a downfall was the lighting - In some places you should use light with brightness as high as 5 or even 3. Some parts were really bright - too bright...

Please use spoiler tags.

Well I don't know if I should review this map if I am credited as "betatester, improvements" and my music is playing in the last easter egg room. I really love design of this map, amount of details is really high.

This map reminds me a lot of Patent Pending. 4 chambers, uses of elements and puzzles. Well Patent Pending won last time, so I guess you should take it as compliment.

Here is my walkthrough video (ignore some of my fails):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSN1qQc6k_0

Mr. P. Kiwi wrote:
I think I solved all the puzzles in an unintended solution - for example in the third chamber I removed one portal to quickly move between the switching death field and fizzler before any could affect me - which lead, I guess, to a much easier solution.

Some areas, especially with the faith plate, were highly variable and took many times to work properly

The detailing was pretty nice, although the grates in square beams usually go with wheatley style, not overgrown.

In chamber 4 I could use the funnel to get to the top of the roof decorations and I also completely zerg rushed the turrets, obviously not what was intended

Pretty nice map overall, the third chamber reminded me very much of patent pending's chamber with the laser cube inside the fizzler/death field guarded area across slime

Heh, when I walked into the first chamber, the first thing I noticed was the lighting - it reminded me of the well-lit dilapidated levels from Portal 2, and uhh.. how it was almost summer when it came out, and it's summer now. Summer vibe. That's what I'm getting at. Looks great, lots of detail!
Anyway, I finished the first one pretty quickly and was kinda disappointed thinking it was an easy, small level, but it was cool the way it kept opening up into nice big puzzles. Sorta like several maps without changes inbetween, and really ramping up in difficulty.
It took me a long while to see the portal surface through the ceiling just before the last chamber - leaving me a little impatient by that one, but overall I had a lot of fun Ty!

Here's my playthrough:

PuBfZp3VWCM

Everyone on the third chamber who is solving the puzzle with the lasers by quickly shooting portals through fizzler and deathfield.

# IT'S UNINTENDED !!!

There is logical way to solve it without any kind of ninja movements. And apologies about labels, I thought I fixed them before release but seems like I did it wrong anyway.

Pitkakorvaa wrote:
Everyone on the third chamber who is solving the puzzle with the lasers by quickly shooting portals through fizzler and deathfield.

# IT'S UNINTENDED !!!

Hahahaha. The delay on the fizzler's reset is kind of long, so I assumed that timeframe had a purpose.

I made it because of fizzler/deathfield close and open animations, so they had 0.5 sec delays just because the activation would look more logical. I guess that wasn't good idea after all. :l

My feedback:
Do not read if you are judge!

||This was an extremely polished and beautiful map. Honestly I cannot believe that it was done in 2.5 weeks... anyway.

All the dialogue was put in appropriate places, the puzzles made me think, not perform ninja moves and I was overall happy when I finished the map.
I probably took too long to solve the laser cube test as one of the laser receptacles were wrongly numbered (4 instead of 3) which was a bit confusing, however in the end I walked through the fizzler when it was disabled and placed a portal and quickly walked through just as the force field turned off. (this was probably the most frustrating of the tests and not sure if I solved it correctly).

Some of the puzzles I thought were brilliant like the cube fling / player fling and the repeated use of the funnel in the first area.

The last puzzle I didn't even use the funnel but I still found it better than average quality of puzzle.

If your puzzle aspects were better it would have been absolutely fantastic to me. Well done Pitkorvaa.||

Top-notch map - has a few minor problems though.

Aesthetics
Flawless, full of detail; no complaints. (Was everything really made in the contest's timespan?)

Difficulty
Difficulty was just right, growing as we progressed through the map. If you want a label I'd call it medium: goals were clear, but the means to achieve them needed to be discovered and deduced. The third puzzle got me stuck for a while, forcing me to revisit the map and complete it. I've attached a demo of my solution which I think is intended: I certainly didn't walk through laser beams like others have done!

Gameplay
There were a few irritating niggles. In the third puzzle, the #3 and #4 signs are mixed up causing a bit of frustation. Sniping portals through the laser field to turn on recievers #1 and #2 was a fiddley manouvere. I managed to get stuck by the locked exit door too. Walk over to the exit door via a light bridge and then place both portals inside the exit zone, behind the fizzler; you are now stuck.

There was no indication in the final puzzle that the laser target which disabled the light bridge also disabled the fizzler upstairs - that extra bit of clarity would have been useful. An arrow or some kind of indication to reveal the first panel beyond the laser field to extend the light bridge from might be something to consider also.

The Easter Egg buttons should have done something individually - it needed . I only discovered the first one, but I spent a minute or two trying to work out what they did in the puzzle chamber. Ideally they shouldn't look like a test element: perhaps the underground button or throw switch model would have been more appropriate.
On the whole, though, the gameplay is great, keeping you constantly thinking throughout the map. Here were some highlight moments for me:
* Being encouraged to jump into funnels
* The small break sections between each puzzle to prepare for the next challenge
* Pulling off the Double fling using your cube as a coop partner

Bugs and Mapping Details
* The walkway above the offices had some strange physics going on - I jittered and slid about when I stood on it.
* Needs more func_detail - I looked at a few sections of the map with mat_leafvis 3, and pretty much everything appeared to be a world brush.

Thanks for the feedpack BEARD!. I'll take your advice about improvements and you we're probably first player who solved the third chamber in intended way!
And yes, everything was made inside of the contests timespan. Few people has questioned it too ..

i played the map days ago and my jaw dropped when i solved chamber after chamber, everything perfectly mapped, detailed and lighted.
it bscly felt like the quality of Kiwi's Rapid Effusion multiplied by 3, with the difference that Rapid Effusion looks like a 2 week work, yours doesn't.

i immediately questioned your map being done in 2,5 weeks because i worked non-stop (holidays) on Collateral Damage, i know how tight the time-span really is, what's realistic to get finished in this short time and how difficult the destroyed theme in general is.

i waited for you to make any kind of statement in this thread and now that you did, it still doesn't feel right. i guess i would have to see it with my own eyes in order to believe it...
maybe you're just such a fucking pro

all that's left now is to head over to your workshop entry and give you the well-deserved 5/5

This is a really excellent map, polished to perfection and the puzzles are incredible, though I have seen the cube/self throw puzzle before somewhere.

The only problem I have is that this is an unbelievably excellent map.

Did you really do this within the timespan of the competition?
I can't compete with someone who could accomplish this in just 2.5 weeks!

Then again, I can't compete with a lot of the maps here.

Congrats on the win.

Perfect map, except:

In chamber 3, there are the numbers for the laser relays messed up.
there is twice times 4 dots: On a relay and on the catcher.
so I guessed number four would be the laser catcher, becauseI saw that 1+2+4 turned the fizzler off.
Opposing to that, above the exit door was a four. But the exit was opened by the laser relay, not the laser catcher. That cost me around 10 minutes, because I was trying to do something impossible there. (I though the catcher would open the exit.)

Hope you're not confused.

Oh, and thanks for using my poster.

Great map. I'll provide some feedback when I have time to play it with care. Also, to all those questioning the build time, if you're fast and organized, this is achievable in 2.5 weeks. There are tons of ways to be efficient in hammer, so please everyone just focus his success instead.

I will say that from my initial impression, the map could have used a bit more playtesting in blocking phase before you detailed. The time frame was pretty short, so I understand dropping some playtest time for polish time. Again, I'll get to this time when I have time to go back and play it more slowly.

Congratulations Pitka! You did it! I feel good now, because I helped you with some stuff.

Has anyone found all four easter eggs? If so, you can listen to the song playing in the radio here.