Portal Life [WIP]
Map name: Portal Life 01/02/03
Email: E1025@hotmail.co.uk
NOTE: THIS HAS BEEN CHANGED TO A WIP. Please help by reporting bugs. I shall release patches for the WIP as we go along. Download the main file below!
dload.php?action=file&file_id=150
Thank you!
Are you sure all your pre set portals are fully working, I cant get out of the room with boxes.
Check out my Portal 2 map, Entrapment!
http://forums.thinking.withportals.com/community-releases/entrapment-1-1-1-t2323.html
Which room are we talking about and what area?
Edit: If your talking about the second area, you don't need to take the boxes through the upper area.
I would probably move this to WIP.
Let's start at the pre-beginning:
The line: "image" "Portal_Life01_ico" (in your Portal_Life bns file) should be: "image" "E1025/Portal_Life01_ico". The images lines for the other two maps should also be changed similarly.
Now the maps:
(you should include the node graph files in your rar)
Any time I started having fun with these maps, that fun was thrown to the curb and then stomped on, and it if started to recover, it was shot. Repeatedly. In the face.
Approximately 100% of the textures are misaligned.
You can see the backs of the fizzlers in the 1st room - looks bad.
On my first play though, I ran into a total of 3 game-ending issues (mostly to do with triggering).
A.I. disables if you load a save, disabling all the turrets.
I have NO IDEA what half the buttons do - and yet I beat the thing...
And finally, I leave you the questions I asked myself most while playing:
Portal conventions are messed up - why are their still auto-portals when I'm holding the portal gun?
Auto portals can be made on metal?
Auto portals can sometimes be fizzled?
Fizzlers only sometimes destroy cubes? What?
Missiles only destroy some types of glass?
You can make portals on some glass?
Auto portal emitters sometimes need to explode before they work properly?
The third map doesn't exit out to the portal menu?
I could probably add more, but you get the idea.
That may sound like a lot of negative (because it is) but there are actually some well thought out puzzles in here - the maps just need a lot of refinement.
taco
sigh... You have no idea how down I feel now. Let me explain some things...
"Approximately 100% of the textures are misaligned"
Give examples.
"On my first play though, I ran into a total of 3 game-ending issues"
Go into detail, what is happening? Can you give me some advice?
"Portal conventions are messed up"
Examples?
"A.I. disables if you load a save, disabling all the turrets"
Is this only in the first map?
"I have NO IDEA what half the buttons do"
Examples?
"Auto portals can be made on metal?"
Doesn't matter, it only matters if portal from the portal gun can be made on surfaces
"Auto portals can sometimes be fizzled"
They fizzle when you are done with them.
"Fizzlers only sometimes destroy cubes"
I made a sign saying you can put the cubes through the fizzlers
"Missiles only destroy some types of glass"
the missiles will only break glass you are meant to go through. If you think I'm wrong, gives examples please.
"Auto portal emitters sometimes need to explode before they work properly"
I was doing that fo effect in the second map and at the end of the third. Seeing things all always going wrong in arp-science.
"The third map doesn't exit out to the portal menu"
Yes it does, I put a command there for disconnect. Some thing is wrong here.
"Any time I started having fun with these maps, that fun was thrown to the curb and then stomped on, and it if started to recover, it was shot. Repeatedly. In the face."
This is my main concern, what is runing the experiance, or is that just what you have listed?
I'm getting a rather large amount of lag at parts of the game, my pc isnt crysis level but its definitely not bad.
I'm getting lots of errors in console...
func_breakable (func_breakable) at (-176.000 -3231.500 1041.000) using obsolete or unknown material type.
When I try to get the turret to damage glass, this comes up.
Button problem.
Resized picture 
Check out my Portal 2 map, Entrapment!
http://forums.thinking.withportals.com/community-releases/entrapment-1-1-1-t2323.html
I'm getting lots of errors in console...
func_breakable (func_breakable) at (-176.000 -3231.500 1041.000) using obsolete or unknown material type.
When I try to get the turret to damage glass, this comes up.
Thanks I'll check that out, any other problems you encountered?
Don't feel too down. There may be a number of issues, but most of them can probably be fixed without too much trouble.
Most of your floor/wall/ceiling textured start and end mid-tile.
The first game-ending issue happen in the first map right before going into the room with the huge wall-crushers: if you go right up to the little grate that you are supposed to shoot a portal though to get into that room, you can touch a trigger and become stranded. This can probably be fixed by moving the trigger volume.
The second is in the room with the incinerator that you are supposed to jump into. I just ran into the room, jammed all the buttons and got stranded. My guess is glitched triggers.
The third (which you can actually get out of, though is annoying) takes place in the room with the 2 office rooms that have the energy pellet puzzle in their ceilings. If you portal up into one of the sides and then put both portals in the room, it can be painfully hard to place a portal back into the lower room. To fix this I would recommend making there only room enough for one portal in the upper room.
Nope. Any time there is turrets, if you load a save, they become disabled.
There are numerous buttons that open door or something similar that have no indicator strips, so when I hit a button, all I hear is a beep. It a bit frustrating not knowing what happens.
I must have missed the sign, and since it is a pretty major portal convention, it made the map feel broken.
You also disable the crosshair from showing, but it never gets re-enabled which means that if a player doesn't know the console command to enable the crosshair again, every map they play from then on will have no crosshairs. Very annoying.
Yea, it's pretty much the sum of it all.
Additional:
There are a few times where you use "blocks" of glass (like that one crawling turret puzzle) and it is very hard to tell what is and what isn't glass. I recommend only using glass when it makes sense and always fame your glass to make it more obvious.
In that same room (the glass + turret puzzle) you are using linked pairs of portals while the player has the gun. I'm not a fan of that at all - but maybe that's just me.
When you have recessed floor or ceiling lighting, you should fill the little gap with an invisible brush so that portals don't go below/above the floor/ceiling.
Thank you for your response, I'm working on these issues now.
I didn't have major problems with Portal Life 1 & 2. However, for some reason in Portal Life 1, my fps was on an average of 40. Mainly in the room with all the turrets hiding behind the glass, but I was getting bad frames throughout the whole map. I generally average 3x that.
Another minor problem I had with those two maps was I didn't know when they ended. In Life 1, I reach a room where the walls were closing in and there was a pit you were forced into. I reloaded five times thinking it was a timed puzzle that had a way out. In Portal Life 2, I reached some kind of cafeteria which I assumed was the end, but again, it seemed like it was another puzzle that needed a way out.
Portal Life 3 gave me trouble. First off there are two problems with the textures, right in the entrance of the missile turret room.
These textures are crossing. http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v80/cd_rom/portal_life030000-1.jpg
There is a leak in the corner of that same wall.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v80/cd_rom/portal_life030001-1.jpg
The other problems I had with the map revolves around the third room with the three big red buttons. I managed to strand myself inside of it by porting into it, then shooting the other portal inside. I couldn't get back to where I came from, and I couldn't see any means of proceding. Perhaps you should move the wall out a little further so you can reach a portable wall.
After I reloaded, I managed to strand myself again, but this time it was outside of the room. I ported in, thinking I needed the two boxes from the previous puzzle, I brought them into that room and placed them on two buttons. Without thinking, I went back outside of the room and used both portals. The fizzler turned back on, and I couldn't get back in.
Overall the maps were good, they just need some more work.