Quote from NeatNit on October 11, 2011, 6:44 pm

HMW wrote:

NeatNit wrote:

I suppose this can be called a spoiler
[spoiler]Sometimes I go through a portal at ludicrous speed and spawn on the other side, no speed or anything. In layman's terms - speedy thing goes in, speedless thing comes out. This didn't happen in places where the speed was useful (like for getting through the square pipe things to the test chambers), which is why I was sure they're scripted. I don't know anything about mapping and not even sure if "scripted" is the right word - I meant that it only works where you hard-coded it to work and not dynamically anywhere.[/spoiler]

Ah, now I see what you mean by "scripted". I thought it was referring to some sort of programming
Because of game engine limitations, the speed gained from the accelerator is not maintained across portals. So I added 'pushers' at designated exit points to simulate the effect. So it is indeed scripted in the sense that it only works in the situations where I designed it to work. (Adding pushers for all possible portal placements would stress the game beyond its limits, unfortunately.)

Interesting. What are the engine limitations? I thought momentum and speed are reserved across portals, so it's stange that when doing this they're not.

HMW wrote:

NeatNit wrote:

Cheating and more stuck-getting
[spoiler]I reached a room where there's a pipe with a ball inside it that holds down a button. There's a button that can rotate the pipe, causing the ball to fall to the other side and let go of the button. You know the rest of the place
I've gotten myself stuck inside a cage above the chamber, and I think this is intended. From here I can do all sorts of things: I can drop a cube down to the conveyor belt (but not myself), I can use a very cool pusher thingamabob using portals and I can basically push from any white wall (YOU ARE GENIUS), and I can place portals on most of the chamber. I needed to get the cube on a button so that I can get out of this limited position. I could not figure out how to continue, as I can only have one cube at a time so I can't have another cube holding down the button to make the first cube fall down to the button. Eventually I resorted to 'cheating' and using physics to fling the box to the button with portals. This allowed me to go out to the chamber again by placing one portal there and another portal where the cubes spawn, but I am still quite stuck. I can't continue, but I can 'cheat' again and go back to a button which makes a lift go down. I can hold the button down, and when the lift is all the way down jump through a portal and stand on it platformer-style. I can even go here with the cube if I want, I am still stuck.[/spoiler]
I'm not sure if giving it another try will help me... Did I break the game somehow or am I just missing something?

Don't worry, I don't think you broke the game.

Infernet89 has made a great video of this map pack. It's speedrun style, but you can see the correct solution for that part. (It's around the 17:00 minute mark.)
There's a tricky part coming up after that, so if you get stuck there, just keep watching

Thanks for that link!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7387-vYAeM&t=17m38s (if the link doesn't send you there automatically, go to 17:38)
Is this the proper way to get up there? Seems pretty cheatery to me :/ (this is what I had to do because I couldn't figure out any other way out of the area)
Also I didn't pass that part the way it was designed and I see now what I was supposed to do. Oh well

Edit: Oh I think I realised what the proper way is!

Quote from HMW on October 12, 2011, 12:07 pm

NeatNit wrote:

Interesting. What are the engine limitations? I thought momentum and speed are reserved across portals, so it's stange that when doing this they're not.

I use trigger_push entities to speed up the player. There are other ways to make the player move, but this turned out to be the most reliable / least glitchy. The only negative is this instant speed loss through portals, which is why I made another trigger_push take over once you exit the portal.

Another screwy thing with this entity is that, while it is possible to rotate it in-game, the pushing direction vector doesn't rotate with it, so I couldn't make just one exit-pusher that moves with the exit portal. I had to make separate ones for every place and direction where a player might get launched out of a portal.

NeatNit wrote:

Is this the proper way to get up there? Seems pretty cheatery to me :/

Ehhh... no. I forgot that he did it that way

The intended way is to [spoiler]re-use a certain thing from the previous room.[/spoiler] I'll leave it at that for now

Quote from skeezik$ on October 13, 2011, 12:36 am

Just finished first run-through; what an experience! A fun and challenging addition to the portal collection. [spoiler]It took me a minute to see the pusher device that everyone has been talking about, but after that the puzzle wasn't too hard. The only place I got stuck and had to watch the speed run video was in the fifth map, second time, the room with the tall elevator and the two fields on the exit.

I really like the novel changes you made in each of the second times through each map. The exploding cubes were especially fun![/spoiler]

Keep up the good work! I can't wait for some portal 2 maps. Will you be focusing on single player or co-op?

Quote from HMW on October 13, 2011, 1:01 pm

Thanks! You did pretty well if the only thing you had to look up was that last room.
That one's pretty out of the box. [/incrediblylamepun]

The map I'm working on now is single player. I haven't played much co-op yet.

Quote from Random on October 13, 2011, 4:00 pm

I thought it was about time I played this one since I remember when you posted screenshots in the showcasing thread.

Absolutely stunning! This map can be truly described with the word epic - it's got a sprawling size, breath-taking detail and scenery, and, most importantly, ingenious puzzles. I may have spent about 3 hours on the whole thing.
You should have seen the grin on my face when I saw how huge the last chamber was And you've got to love those [spoiler]exploding cubes[/spoiler].
While I can't think of any thing bad to say about it, a few things stuck in my mind at the end. It wasn't a problem to me, but if it is for you, in the room with the treadmill, I did not have to use the button that tilted the sphere in the tube. It wasn't until later that I figured out what it was supposed to be for, I could easily push the cube to the button without it. And I'm not entirely sure about those ladders at the end. I didn't even know they were ladders at first (they weren't really used in Portal, except for that broken one). That could have just been me being dumb, I did accidentally overcomplicate a few parts. I felt lame getting stuck at the very end while I was still thinking in terms of flinging.

Quote from yohoat9 on October 13, 2011, 4:17 pm

Hey hmw? What's an average time to beat the whole pack? Because kizzycocoa claims he beat the entire mappack in 2 hours, which I don't believe at all, as I took over 2 hours for the final map alone...

[EDIT]

BTW I love your style, very very diverse and unique, I'm gonna steal some of your style ideas for a map, k?

Quote from Aquanistic on October 15, 2011, 1:18 pm

Wow man, wow. This is by far the best user-made Portal 1 or Portal 2 map I have ever played. The map had such a cool atmosphere, and it felt like a brand new game - the game that should have come between Portal 1 and Portal 2. I loved all of the new elements, and you just felt like a badass when you solved one of the puzzles. I had so much fun with this, and I spent a lot of time playing it. Some of the solutions were quite hard! Thanks for a creative, new, fun Portal map! I had a such a blast playing it that when I wasn't playing it, I was thinking about it in my head. Awesome job man

Quote from Tzupi on October 16, 2011, 2:20 pm

Well, my friend, I just would like to say thanks for this map.
It was a really great one, I enjoyed it really

Quote from HMW on October 17, 2011, 4:12 pm

Again, thanks for all the nice words guys!

Random wrote:

It wasn't a problem to me, but if it is for you, in the room with the treadmill, I did not have to use the button that tilted the sphere in the tube. It wasn't until later that I figured out what it was supposed to be for, I could easily push the cube to the button without it.

Not a problem; it's a creative alternate solution. In fact, for upcoming maps I'm trying to work towards more open puzzles where there's a number of ways to solve them, instead of designing a Single True Solution and blocking off all alternatives. (More like the advanced maps in Portal 1.) It increases the chance for any given player to come up with a satisfying solution that works well for them.

Random wrote:

And I'm not entirely sure about those ladders at the end. I didn't even know they were ladders at first (they weren't really used in Portal, except for that broken one). That could have just been me being dumb, I did accidentally overcomplicate a few parts. I felt lame getting stuck at the very end while I was still thinking in terms of flinging.

The ladders were a bit of a gamble. I would have liked to have used stairs of some sort, but that would have been a lot harder to make. (Remember that any additional parts have to somehow fit inside that central area until the final transformation of the room.)

yohoat9 wrote:

Hey hmw? What's an average time to beat the whole pack? Because kizzycocoa claims he beat the entire mappack in 2 hours, which I don't believe at all, as I took over 2 hours for the final map alone...

That's hard to say. To avoid possible excrement weather formations, I don't want to comment on Kizzycocoa's claim specifically. However, the time of the first play-through for creative-thinking maps like these depends largely on how long it takes one to get the "a-ha moment" for a puzzle, and this can vary a lot between players. There are some places where, if the coin drops at the moment you walk through the door, you'll be out of there in under a minute. However, if it doesn't, and you have to go try different things, it can take a lot longer.