[WIP] Low Voltage
Hi guys. First off, this is a work in progress currently without any public playable versions, so if it's unfit for discussion, moderators, delete on sight.
It's called Low Voltage, and focuses on an electrically unstable testchamber. There'll be a main room with a few moving platforms, and three or four additional rooms where each one will activate another platform, enabling you to progress further. There will be some BTS action. Also I plan on adding one or two small testchambers intended to teach a fling method I've been working on.
I'm completely new to Hammer as of two weeks ago, but I have a high standard of quality and I believe I picked up Hammer fairly quickly.
That said, this first room took me about 10-14 hours to complete, however much of this time was spent staring at the room wondering what I wanted to do with it, and exploring special-case entities that were used, like sparks and explosions.
(clicks) Image Notes: Turret toggles by button. Indicator strips from turret to switch (not pictured), and each button to checkmarks will be added. Lighting and textures will be improved.
Feel free to comment.
volt
Observation room looks good. Why are the turrent and those cubes, err, floating in the air?
Also, you have the wall icons, but how about some indicator strips?
Indicator strips are coming, I meant to say that in the first post but typed "overlays" instead. From each button to each checkmark over the door, as well as another one leading from the turret to a button that is behind the player, to toggle the turret.
Also, the turret is resting on the cubes, and the cubes are on a ledge that is made of metal grating. It seemed too thin of a brush to make it into one of the concrete textures, so I decided to make it a metal grating.
w00t
Now, this is not design-related, I'm just curious: what's the point of the turret, aside from it trying to shoot you through the glass. Won't it get wrecked as soon as you break that glass with a rocket?
I'm glad you asked, so I can flex my pro-design muscle:
First off, active turrets have different physics applied to them than dead turrets. Active ones will fall over a TON easier than the ones that are dead. While you may be able to put a dead turret on top of two cubes (i havent tested), you can not keep a live turret on top of cubes. It will immediately fall down, no matter how well you place it there.
So, first, I have a nodraw world brush that is placed just above the boxes. This surface is tied to func_brush and when the turret is tipped over, it triggers this brush to be killed.
But then, the rocket still would knock over the turret when you hit the glass. So I built another five nodraw brushes surrounding the turret in the same manner, set to be killed a moment after the glass is shattered.
note: there are more surprises in this room than you can see with simply a picture 
I can't help but wonder...if the turrets (and by turrets we mean the cute white ones that turn you into swiss cheese with 40,000 bullets, right?) have weird living vs dead physics differences, why not just change how they act physically rather than design a level around their weirdness? why not just...make them less weird?
Looks cool so far though, if you ever go public with testing, I'd be glad to mess around with it.
Ehh, I guess I don't know how to change how the turrets react. Here's what I've noticed with the turrets:
When alive they fall over quite easily
When dead they fall over noticeably less readily
When hit with a rocket from the front or back they flip around like crazy
When hit with a rocket from the side they simply fall over
If you care to observe the turrets in an alive vs. dead state, try setting 6 or so turrets up so that they will fall over in a domino fashion, first alive then dead. Or just watch this video.