A Wheatley-themed map containing an introduction and a test chamber with a medium difficulty, possibly more difficult for newer players. Please not this is my first published Hammer map.

UPDATE: version 1.2:

-Fixed an exploit by adding a fizzler in the puzzle part of the map

-Fixed the problem where Wheatley and GLaDOS' animations would sometimes not play (Glados still occasionally has problems)

-Other minor bugs

Click here to download Circuit

Click here to download Circuit

This map has a very nice little puzzle in it. And everything seemed to work okay. But I didn't like the design; someone more knowledgable than me can point out some specifics.

Nice short map and puzzle. thanks for mapping.

Thanks for the feedback people.

If by design you mean aesthetics, well...I definitely need to practice on that part of mapping, I don't think I exactly nailed the theme, but I got it pretty close. (this is my first map after all.)

Yes, aesthetics is a better word for what I meant. The layout and theme-related elements were fine. In any case, I would never downrate a map only for aesthetic reasons, especially not a map from a first timer.

Interesting map for a beginner I liked how you catched up Wheatley's spirit dynamically breaking and mixing the chambers!

There some things to point out for a possible improved future update All related to that "design" that you both were talking about:

DETAILS
||1. If you ever see a weird and intense shadow on a wall behind a prop, it is caused by that prop's mesh. This can be easily prevented by setting to YES the prop's property "Disable Shadows".

1. There are also some brushes that show shadows casted on them (like in the beginning room), maybe because they are not world brushes but brush entities, try to add more lighting near them or check out if they are overlapping with any other nearby brush.

2. There are misaligned textures, and for this I'll suggest you to ALWAYS make sure that in the face edit sheet, the "Texture shift" values are multiples of 128 units (128, 256, 384, 512, 640, 768 and 896) for the 32x32 units tiles; multiples of 256 (256, 512 and 768) for the 64x64 units tiles; multiples of 512 for the 128x128 tiles and so on...

3. In the case you need to scale any texture and make it smaller size like you did, don't do it with those, since the detail becomes too repeated and ugly; try to use this technique the lesser possible, and only as a way to break the monotony in a given part, not as a general habit.

4. Grates look better with a surrounding frame. For this, you can make it out of brushes yourself (usually better in order to make it according to your desired width and length) or using some of those squarebeams you used in the map.

5. Talking of that, check out that there are a space between the grate brush and the "ground" brush in the piston hole. And there, don't use the skybox as bottom texture

6. I'd suggest you to use a tile thickness of 8 to 12 units, less units look a bit odd and unrealistic. Also try putting a squarebeam behind each tile if the player can see its back or even the side of the tile... again, for the sake of realism

7. Even though the usage of the skybox is not bad, it looks odd when the player continually can see the plain blue-ish skyox behind an opening in the chamber. Also, try to add "something" at the openings edges in order to avoid the blandness of it, for example near the cube dropper, that opening is completely square-shaped, if you add some random brushes around the opening, it will look like a more realistic chamber-breaking, the way it is now could lok more like a window hole... indeed you should have added a glass there instead Also, in the first little room, when that brush breaks the wall, the opening is too even, and that brush looks a bit weird... could you change it by a vactube prop for instance? I think it would look better

8. In order to place the laser emitters and catchers properly, you need to make a hole for them on the walls

I know all of this would be more explanatory including pictures Let me know if you need any

Well, I think I don't forget anything ||
The puzzle was really good though I enjoyed those touches of thinking outside the box, and some of the mechanics. Thanks for creating!

Thanks for playing, I will take all of these into consideration for my future maps.

Dr.Toaster Waffles wrote:
Thanks for playing, I will take all of these into consideration for my future maps.

I pointed all that out for this map because I really think you could improve it and leave it as a much more outstanding map than it is now! Truly Cheer up man!

josepezdj wrote:
Dr.Toaster Waffles wrote:

Thanks for playing, I will take all of these into consideration for my future maps.

I pointed all that out for this map because I really think you could improve it and leave it as a much more outstanding map than it is now! Truly Cheer up man!

Sorry, let me rephrase that- I will take everything into consideration for future updates and future maps. The only thing I think I will find difficult to redo is texture alignment, as you saw I did sort of try to align some things but I couldn't really get the hang of it, now it's just very messy.

Dr.Toaster Waffles wrote:
The only thing I think I will find difficult to redo is texture alignment, as you saw I did sort of try to align some things but I couldn't really get the hang of it, now it's just very messy.

OK, let's start by that then! Follow these steps one by one!

||1. Open your map and choose one of the 2D viewports, for instance the TOP view one.

1. Make sure you zoom out enough so you can see your entire map.

2. Select all that you can see. Left-click in one of the corners, hold the button and drag your mouse pointer to the opossite corner, the way that you draw a rectangle that encompass your entire map... and hit Enter. You'll notice that you have selected everything in your map

3. Open the Face Edit Sheet while everything is selected and introduce the following values:

4. Texture Scale: 0.25 for both, X and Y.

5. Texture Shift: also 512 for both, X and Y (512 units is common multiple for all textures' tile size).

6. Hit 'Apply'... Voil?||
   This made that ALL the textures in your map are aligned *only if* you did use the grid to build your map on

Well, thanks for the suggestion, but it didn't really align anything...

Also what do you mean by building on the grid?

Dr.Toaster Waffles wrote:
Also what do you mean by building on the grid?

I sent a pm to you in order to avoid all this offtopic spamming on your map's thread

Just played it; as I said on the workshop page, it's a good start and especially the main puzzle is very nice.

Jose already covered most of the things you can do to improve it, but let me add two more things:

1: try to get rid of the huge box surrounding the map, and make sure that all world brushes are aligned properly so they don't cause leaks. This may be a lot of work but it really pays off in terms of looks and performance. (Right now, the entire map is always drawn regardless of what room you're in, because it's not optimised.) Hammer's "align to grid" option may be able to help you out a bit. Try it with different grid sizes so it takes care of as much of the map as possible, so you have to do fewer things manually.

2: As for texture alignment, Jose's method should work fine after the brushes themselves are aligned to the grid. When you do this, in addition to the position and scale, make sure that the angle is set to 0 degrees and click on either the "world" or "face" boxes, regardless of whether they are checked or greyed out already. That should take care of most of the textures; the rest you'll have to fix manually.

Oh and lastly: make a backup of your vmf file before making any big changes. You'll thank yourself later

I hope that you find the time to improve this map. It is worth it.

I'm late for the party and most things I was about to say have already been said but here goes.

It's pretty good for first puzzle. It has flaws mainly visual ones before the actual puzzle room but I liked the puzzle itself. The map has a lot of leaks and ways to get out of bounds also. You can just go through the holes in the puzzle room and get outside the map.

Here is a solution exploiting the way the map is not properly sealed:
PrAlJzgxXnM

I trust Jose has given you some good advice but if you need help I'm happy to provide some.

Good puzzle but there is a lot of room for improvement mapping wise.

Thanks for notifying me about that...I was extremely hesitant to put the introduction in in the first place, I knew it was visually lacking, but I decided to put it in anyways because I thought it would be fun to toy with the player by mixing the chamber so it was impossibleand because I knew I could make it cleaner later.

I need some people's opinion here, though; I am considering remaking the whole map so that the textures are completely aligned and so the detailing is much better. Would this be a good idea? I started making this map when I was much newer at Hammer and learned much through the process so it would probably be much faster. I have everything so compact in this version that I would have to redo a lot of things to re-size all the walls, floors, etc. So would it be faster for me to just redo it?

I personally would recommend you do that. I had a same kind of situation with my second map. I entirely remade it and learned so much in the progress. Ultimately I never ended up releasing it because as I finished it I felt the puzzle wasn't up to my newer standards but I can say that the experience was very helpful. Atleast for me.

PS. As for blocking my out of map move in the first room. Always have a brush below your door.

josepezdj wrote:

...
4. Open the Face Edit Sheet while everything is selected and introduce the following values:

• Texture Scale: 0.25 for both, X and Y.
• Texture Shift: also 512 for both, X and Y (512 units is common multiple for all textures' tile size).

...

Actually, you can't simply shift all the texture 512 units. That will just make the misaligned textures move 512 units. They will still be misaligned. You have to align each face to its neighbor separately. Also, 512 is NOT the best number to use. You have align each face based the face's size and shape. That is often NOT 512 units.

offtopic >.<
||> protoborg wrote:

Actually, you can't simply shift all the texture 512 units. That will just make the misaligned textures move 512 units. They will still be misaligned.

Well, no, a misalign texture should have already weird values like 66 or -328 or whatever... Entering the value 512 for both axes should do, but ONLY IF:

• you already built up your map following the grid guides (as you should)
• you made brushes also sizes according to general mappers habits >.<

Try it

protoborg wrote:
You have to align each face to its neighbor separately. Also, 512 is NOT the best number to use. You have align each face based the face's size and shape. That is often NOT 512 units.

You are wrong. ALL textures in the game have an image size that's power of 2: 64x128 / 512x512 / 1024x256 etc. All textures fit perfectly to brushes with a 'normal' size... For example, 32x32 hammer units (the smallest tile in Portal) is 128x128 'real' pixels, ok? Just make brushes with a size multiple of 32 hammer units at the 3 axes... actually, keep 32 units as thickness for all of your walls, ceiling and floors... Normally, Portal2 textures files for tiles are 512x512px or 1024x1024px size ALWAYS. You can use them to texture whatever brush that has 32 units as multiple in its size, and use 512 units at the Face Edit Sheet 'Texture shift' feature, and you will see that I'm not wrong.

I've made a quick (and ugly) map with a variety of textures where ALL of them are shifted at X:512 and Y:512... please check out if there is any misalignment.||