[SP] Da-MaSK (Chander's Test 12 remix by josepezdj)

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josepezdj
2,386 Posts
Posted Dec 17, 2012

A Tribute map to Chander.

This started being only a remix of 'Chander's Test 12' PTI map, to which at first I only introduced a few changes in order to allow an alternate ending solution, plus a different way for getting the cube.
But soon I thought of more changes to allow a paralell game based in finding 3 hidden special cubes (easter eggs) that must be used into an optional part of the map, an easter egg's big area, with a very special reward So I put Chander's logo to those special cubes giving each one a different colour, and locating them in different places...

This is a HARD map that "pushes things a little further" from its already hard predecessor, but let me say that no ninja moves or crazy maneuvers are involved though, only thinking with portals! There are a couple of tricky moves that I personally like a lot, and I'm so interested in knowing what the solvers will think!
It's a map based in conversion gel and bouncing gel, and how to move them both by means of orange and blue funnels to finally reach the exit.

Any kind of feedback on the map is greatly welcome.

I sincerely hope some of you will like all containing challenges. I'd suggest to focus first in the main puzzle solution because it is the most difficult (and it might also help to easily reach the easter egg areas on the way).

Good luck and Enjoy!


**FOR THOSE WHO PREFER THE BSP FILE, FOLLOW THE EXTERNAL LINK:

http://rapidshare.com/files/1849011212/ ... %20v1.7.7z**


TEAM:

  • Aesthetics concept and Mapping by josepezdj (upon the PTI decompiled map "Chander Test 12")
  • All 'Black Damask' textures, Chander's logos, all reskinning (cubes, elevator, telescopic_arms etc) and rest of art work by Vanessa Jaramillo.

CREDITS:

  • Skybox by Komaock (who else!?) / skybox colour tweaking by Vanessa

THANKS:

  • Thank you Vane, thank you for your neverending support, kindness, help and availability! Thanks for having all those designing skills I haven't got, you know you are my arms!

  • The map itself is a big thank to Chander so, I guess I don't have to say more... However, thanks Chander for beta-testing

  • Thanks to the forum for the continuous help and support: http://www.thinking.withportals.com


CHANGELOG:

v1.1 = Prevented Sickle's "evil basterd solution"
v1.2 = Prevented Shakky's unintended ninja jumps
v1.3 = Prevented (hopefully) Shakky's unintended crazy jumps , and also Greykarel's really awesome and legit solution, though unintended
v1.4 = Prevented latest Shakky unintended paintings :p and that last crazy jump.
v1.5 = Prevented more of Shakky's unintended moves
v1.6 = Precented blue gel at main area altogether with some other unintended moves
v1.7 = Added more grate to the floor in main area to prevent unintended actions plus minor changes

Click here to download Da-MaSK (Chander's Test 12 remix by josepezdj)

Click here to download Da-MaSK (Chander's Test 12 remix by josepezdj)

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josepezdj
2,386 Posts
Posted Dec 17, 2012
Replied 26 minutes later
Some pictures below ;p

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LoneWolf2056
193 Posts
Posted Dec 18, 2012
Replied 15 hours later
Awesome aesthetics with your distinctive style, I like how incredibly polished everything looks, as expected, insanely hard, apart from a few tricky techniques, the solutions are always ingenious and make you feel clever. I still haven't solved very much of it yet but its great so far.
Just wondering is this the correct way to get the first cube?

EDIT: IMPORTANT, Most likely its a problem with my computer but it crashes and im getting an engine error. I put white gel on the roof to get back to the starting area and every time i go through the portal with the excursion funnel and the cube it CTD's with that error

ED_Alloc: no free edicts

report_entities
"Total 2156 entities (0 empty, 2038 edicts"

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josepezdj
2,386 Posts
Posted Dec 18, 2012
Replied 5 hours later
Cheers LoneWolf!! Thanks a bunch for those comments! And regarding the way to get the first cube, it is completely intended! Good job However it is not really needed to be moving on left-right into the funnel to avoid the fizzler... just try to leave a certain part of the funnel out of the grate that let you later to be able to get up back and that's all

The problem you mention is not on your part. The Edicts are like "slots for entities" and since this map is really big, I have to try to reduce the amount of entities active at a time. Looks like when you're heading to the easter egg big area, an overload of entities occurs. Map is updated now, let's see if that is corrected ;D

Thanks for your input!

EDIT

Thanks LoneWolf for the further confirmation (on steam) that the previous problem is fixed!

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JMAinAZ
1 Posts
Posted Dec 19, 2012
Replied 9 hours later
Well... the map looks great (the little I've seen of it though).
I haven't played Portal 2 in a long time. Thought I'd load it up and try a community map. Maybe I chose one that is too tough for me and I need a "warm up."

I haven't got a clue what to do. I spent 45 minutes running around the room with the blue and orange tunnels below. The best I can do is release the cube into the blue tunnel for a fraction of a second until it gets zapped by the blue wall.

I've looked everywhere. I don't understand how you can access the orange tunnel unless there is a way to turn off the blue floor blocking it. I'm so confused. Can you give me a hint of some kind.

For the life of me, I don't know what I'm missing. Also, at the entrance to the map, there didn't seem to be anything to do at the moment. Unless I missed something up there. The poster above mentioned white paint. I haven't seen Blue, Orange or White paint anywhere.

Need help!
-JMAinAZ

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josepezdj
2,386 Posts
Posted Dec 19, 2012
Replied 2 hours later
Hey JMAinAZ! Thanks for testing my map! Lol I'm sorry you found it randomly and it happened to be for you one of those tough maps!

OK, let me say some brief general hints:

  1. At the entrance part of the map there's a 'companion cube' signage at the front wall... but there are also 3 numbers: I wanted to express by that, that you need 3 'compaion cubes' This is the easter egg big area (there are 3 easter eggs with one "special" cube into each one and those special cubes will be used later on in the easter egg big area). You're right: nothing to do there by now.

  2. It's important to notice that there are 2 really different main challenges in this map: the normal run and the easter eggs mini-game. You can just solve the map dismissing the easter egg game.

This one is for you:

3. Ofc you need the orange funnel to get the regular cube from the dropper since otherwise, with the blue funnel, it'll go directly to the fizzler as you already checked... Use the blue funnel to get the orange one

Good luck!

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sicklebrick
876 Posts
Posted Dec 19, 2012
Replied 12 hours later
First!?
SqT4efD7qYk

Doubt it's intended, but there's no funnybusiness
Loved the remix, pretty nice difficulty, let down only by my impatnience for funnels.
Sometimes I'd be unwilling to try something 'cause I'd have to re-get the orange, or reload from a save, etc... I really hate them. The design is fantastic and I spent ages just running around looking at things. So good!
I hope you make a few more with this kinda stylng. Cheers!

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josepezdj
2,386 Posts
Posted Dec 20, 2012
Replied 10 hours later
WOW Sickle! Your video is pure awesomesauce, mate!

Where to start for? The only intended bit was getting the first cube! And to be frank I liked so much your cannonballish final move that I'm almost happy to have been so careless preventing unintended stuff at certain areas!

There are some really stupid flaws I could have prevented... I guess sometimes, when you spend too much time into a map you become blind to see some possible exploits. I intentionally refused to ask Sickle or Markiu to beta-test the map because they were part of the challenge for me when remixing this map. Chander did a wonderful work with beta-testing but maybe both of us were a bit used to the map ...No will of taking Sickle's merit away here It is very hard to imagine some of those moves!

About the bug with saving the gel on already painted surfaces, well, I'm not sure of how to fix that! That could be an engine bug or maybe that depends on the video settings in each machine because I didn't notice it when reloading my savegames. Let's see if I can find out something because it could be really confusing and annoying for the player. I'd like to know if the rest of players that are playing the map are experiencing the same issue, please tell me

Of course, I will update the map. Maybe today, at the latest tomorrow. About this, since the map is a bit heavy (99MB), and the workshop`doesn't manage the submitted maps too cleanly, saving all different versions of them, I'd like to suggest to unsubscribe the map, then quit the game (maybe restart steam), then subscribe again and run the game again. Maybe manually delete the map once unsubscribed too!

I'm sorry for those who have been making progress on the solution because they'll have to restart from the beginning. I hope I won't need to update it again

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sicklebrick
876 Posts
Posted Dec 20, 2012
Replied 1 hour later
Heheh, can't wait to see MarKiu's solution - he's a lot better with the intended solutions =)

Don't worry about the paint thing btw - it's an engine bug. The paint even works perfectly when you load a quicksave. It happens if the paint was laid down before the demo was recorded, so if I did it in one segment for example, it would all be peachysauce. Anyhoo, not a biggie.

Looking forward to the next one, but I'm wondering if it would be possible to add a button to auto-place a portal on the orange funnel without wrecking the map? I got really impatient noclipping in all the time >.<

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quatrus
1,047 Posts
Posted Dec 20, 2012
Replied 7 hours later
After my 3rd or 4th trip down to the orange portal surface, it got tedious trying to move the white paint around. I can see why sicklebrick used a little programming trickery to re-do it. I'll be interested to see if your intended solution takes so many trips down to activate the orange funnel...
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josepezdj
2,386 Posts
Posted Dec 20, 2012
Replied 3 hours later
Hey quatrus! Well, in order to do the normal run (no easter egg part) I do it in 6 times.

Man, I know that can be a little annoying, but only the first time you go there is difficult, then you can easily use the flipped panel to get out from down there when you are near the surface... so it doesn't really take that long to make the scenario to finish that first part.

Thanks for playing dude! Cheer up!

EDIT

The update is almost finished. I'm still messing around with the gel bug, but I can't reproduce the issue in my pc At least with the bsp version running it via the console and quicksaving: after reloading or even restarting the game the gel is still right there! I will check if it's only a workshop bug, and in that case, I'll release the .bsp too The update will be up later today (if the world doesn't end lol)... This is how it is looking like (only the parts to prevent unintended moves like Sickle's):

EDIT 2

The map is updated now to v1.1

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Shakky
228 Posts
Posted Dec 22, 2012
Replied 2 days later
Broke it. Have to wake up early tomorrow. No time to record the entire solutions but I made a video showing the main stuff so you can fix it. I will take another crack at it later. Got 2/3 secret cube thingies so far. Maps looks fun and I bet the intended solution will be hard.

1iEkR1EHwQw

If you have any questions about that leave them below.

Hah. Josepezdj 0 - Shakky and Sickle 2.

Good night folks!

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josepezdj
2,386 Posts
Posted Dec 23, 2012
Replied 13 hours later
Hehehe... Really good ones Shakky!

Shakky wrote:
Hah. Josepezdj 0 - Shakky and Sickle 2.

Hahaha... OK! let the war begins....

Map updated to v1.2. Guys, you move

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quatrus
1,047 Posts
Posted Dec 23, 2012
Replied 6 hours later
Arrrgh... I have two special cubes and a single chander cube. I've painted most everything I can - except for the surface above the faith plate - just can't see how it is done by an intended route....time for a break....
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josepezdj
2,386 Posts
Posted Dec 23, 2012
Replied 15 minutes later
Thanks for your feedback quatrus, I'm glad you decided to continue with the map. Well, I'll say that there are at least two ways of painting that part intendedly, Chander's and mine. Both are based in the same thing: you need to find a way to keep the gel flowing while you change your portals to move the cube from one floor button to the other
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Shakky
228 Posts
Posted Dec 23, 2012
Replied 1 hour later
Shakky and Sickle 3 - josepezdj 0

dPHLY-Uueek

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josepezdj
2,386 Posts
Posted Dec 23, 2012
Replied 1 hour later
Hahaha... Amazing!

That final jump is bloody brilliant Shakky, though preventable!

Also, really funny video editing! Thanks for the video, mate.

Fix on the run!

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greykarel
225 Posts
Posted Dec 24, 2012
Replied 21 hours later
Yeah, I know this solution is unintended too (Jose told me on steam chat).
I've omitted the initial part with all those tedious going up and down to paint essential parts of the room with white gel.
izMu3Y2iUqU
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greykarel
225 Posts
Posted Dec 25, 2012
Replied 20 hours later
I've got the cake. It was very funny to jump by light bridges around the easter room .

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josepezdj
2,386 Posts
Posted Dec 26, 2012
Replied 1 day later
WOW Grey! Amazing solution!! It's a pity it's not intended because that's true thinking with portals!! I guess we could use that technique in a future tricky map, right?

And btw, congratulations for the cake!!

OK, I've updated the map to v1.3 trying to prevent "Shakky's broke up: Episode II" and also Greykarel's solution.

I think you are very close to the intended (final) moves now... please don't give up!