Quote from JackSafari on December 10, 2010, 9:51 am

Here is a youtube video of where I am stuck http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osg9Ki4vBsY

Is there a youtube walthough of this contest map?

Thanks!

Quote from JackSafari on December 10, 2010, 10:55 am

I've since tried to get the turrets to shoot out the class windows, but have not been successful. As expected, turret shots don't break the type of class windows in that room, only rocket lunchers break those glass pains.

Quote from Amran on December 10, 2010, 11:05 am

JackSafari wrote:

Overall impressive map. I have not been bored. It has been fun and challenging. I've liked about 90% so far. More feed back comments when I finish the map.

I believe I am stuck in the same chamber as the previous poster. I've solved the chamber over 3 times, each time differently, and I can't figure out what needs to be done next. I've a fairly advanced player, and it rare for me to get stuck in a map. I don't use noclip (unless there is a bug) to solve puzzles. In this case I need some hints.

Thanks

Stuck chamber: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9465221/Afterburn.jpg

You might need to stack a few things to get up there. May require backtracking to the previous room.

Quote from JackSafari on December 10, 2010, 12:06 pm

Amran wrote:

JackSafari wrote:

Overall impressive map. I have not been bored. It has been fun and challenging. I've liked about 90% so far. More feed back comments when I finish the map.

I believe I am stuck in the same chamber as the previous poster. I've solved the chamber over 3 times, each time differently, and I can't figure out what needs to be done next. I've a fairly advanced player, and it rare for me to get stuck in a map. I don't use noclip (unless there is a bug) to solve puzzles. In this case I need some hints.

Thanks

Stuck chamber: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9465221/Afterburn.jpg

You might need to stack a few things to get up there. May require backtracking to the previous room.

....Man, I can't beleive I didn't think about that. It is so strange, every once in a while I'll just overlook the obvious. Nice job! You stumped me with something that I normally I would have been able to figure out. It is hard because there is no hints that the main door won't open and the player should look else where. The problem is not whether or not hints are needed in this specific chamber, its my uncertainy about trusting an unframilar designer to be fair. Sometimes a designer will throw in something he thinks is a cool new design, but requires the player to suddenly do something extremely hard and tricky without any advance notice or training. Because I have encountered many unfair design tricks, I tend to be leary when I get stumped in a chamber.

Quote from Amran on December 10, 2010, 12:22 pm

JackSafari wrote:

Amran wrote:

JackSafari wrote:

Overall impressive map. I have not been bored. It has been fun and challenging. I've liked about 90% so far. More feed back comments when I finish the map.

I believe I am stuck in the same chamber as the previous poster. I've solved the chamber over 3 times, each time differently, and I can't figure out what needs to be done next. I've a fairly advanced player, and it rare for me to get stuck in a map. I don't use noclip (unless there is a bug) to solve puzzles. In this case I need some hints.

Thanks

Stuck chamber: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9465221/Afterburn.jpg

You might need to stack a few things to get up there. May require backtracking to the previous room.

....Man, I can't beleive I didn't think about that. It is so strange, every once in a while I'll just overlook the obvious. Nice job! You stumped me with something that I normally I would have been able to figure out. It is hard because there is no hints that the main door won't open and the player should look else where. The problem is not whether or not hints are needed in this specific chamber, its my uncertainy about trusting an unframilar designer to be fair. Sometimes a designer will throw in something he thinks is a cool new design, but requires the player to suddenly do something extremely hard and tricky without any advance notice or training. Because I have encountered many unfair design tricks, I tend to be leary when I get stumped in a chamber.

I actually got stumped for a while by the same thing in Portal Prelude just the other day. The player was required to return to the previous chamber and bring a cube back with them, but it slipped my mind as a possibility.

I'm a little worried that it's not apparent enough from those who've gotten stuck in this room though. There was formerly a hint which had been removed in favor of not holding the players hand too much, but perhaps it would have been better to retain that. Another choice might have been to have the door visibly malfunction after being closed, and use a pair of buttons in that chamber which could have jogged players memories to bring the cubes with them. It's a shame I didn't know these flaws before release!

Quote from JackSafari on December 11, 2010, 12:07 am

Amran wrote:

I'm a little worried that it's not apparent enough from those who've gotten stuck in this room though. There was formerly a hint which had been removed in favor of not holding the players hand too much, but perhaps it would have been better to retain that. Another choice might have been to have the door visibly malfunction after being closed, and use a pair of buttons in that chamber which could have jogged players memories to bring the cubes with them. It's a shame I didn't know these flaws before release!

I finished the entire contest map and overall I had fun it found it challenging. It would be cool to see an official walk though at some point to see how you intended to solve some of the chambers. A couple of the early chambers I didn't like as much because how I solved them required some hard moves and I did a "save game" a few times to complete the puzzle. I feel if manual "saves" is required, then either I am over looking a more basic solution or the designer has made the chamber too difficult. I am pretty skilled, and a few of the early chambers had some narrow timing, and in one chamber I had to do a crouch jump far too many times and I stopped having fun until I completed the crouch jump. I should clarify, I'm pretty good at flings and crouch jumping, but that combination has become a pet-peeve of mine because it is so over used (and abused), anytime it appears in maps over the past 18 months. I recommend using it sparingly and don't tweak crouch-jump-flings so that it takes a nearly perfect attempt to succeed. I, and most other players, don't have fun repeating a crouch-jump-fling several dozen times just to get one good one.

I enjoyed how individual chambers had several lays to the puzzle, requiring the use of several different puzzle solving methods; in some cases, a rather obvious puzzle was made more challenging. (ie two cubes to bring the lift down, but having to remove one to get the lift to go back up). The details that went into the puzzles was well beyond what I expected.

The level of complexity wasn't ever beyond my reach, yet I can easily see how typical players would get stuckfrustrated very early, and most likely quit or use noclip. These chambers really are best suited for advanced players who have a lot experience with advanced portal techniques (Portal Tunneling, advance flings, advanced puzzle designs, etc). This is not a criticism because I think these chambers are well designed for advanced players. I had a lot of fun playing nearly all of the chambers, and didn't mind being stumped temporally as I tried to solve the puzzle. It really is too bad that Portal doesn't have "hint" system that a player can turn onoff when he gets stuck, if hidden hints could be embedded, advanced maps like these could be played (and enjoyed) by less skilled players without designers feeling pressured to include obvious hints that make the game less challenging for skilled players.

Quote from Whysopro? on December 11, 2010, 10:18 am

Isn't their a way to print a small amount of text under the crosshair? Like "Press Mouse1 to shoot Blue portal"

Couldn't you use that function with some buttons? EDIT: Or after a certain amount of time?

EDIT2: Yes game_text and point_message could be tied to some buttons or a timer of some sorts to give hints when requested or needed.

Quote from msleeper on December 11, 2010, 3:46 pm

I think the better solution would be to just make the puzzles themselves more straightforward. Numbering, color-coding, and so on are all in-world ways to tie things together without having to knock on the fourth wall with a very annoying game_text.

Having it be on a timer is a bad idea too, because you might want a hint after a couple minutes, other people will gladly try shit for a long longer before wanting it handed to them.

Quote from Whysopro? on December 11, 2010, 7:24 pm

Hmmmmm....I has idea.

At the start of the map a timer is made with 20 minutes. It takes the player 8 minutes to solve the first one, so they are awarded with an open door and 4 minutes are added to the timer. (btw player does not see any of this) So if the player takes more then the 4 minutes the timer will be decreasing steadily.

That's where you add another timer for each puzzle with times based on how long you think it will take the player. This will guarantee that if someone got close to a hint LAST puzzle...it wont show up in the middle of solving the NEXT one, until needed.

So what does this mean? An efficient hint system based on how well the player is doing in the whole test, and how well they are doing in the current chamber.

Smarticles? I think so...and it will be in my campaign.