[WIP] Post-Portal
Allright I did it again, but this time without portals on the floors. In general I like it, though I think the timer on the forcefield in room 3 is a bit harsh.
I'll try to do some challenge runs as well and post some numbers.
Done the portals challenge. Room 1: two portals, can't see any way to improve that. Room 2: four portals (
So that's 11 portals total. Your numbers are 14, 13, 12, which is fairly okay I guess. Though the 14 number is reachable if you can simply complete the level, so maybe it should be 13, 12, 11?
Most of my optimizations happened in room 4. Originally I did that in five portals.
Time challenge. First playthrough: 1:09. Second playthrough: 1:07. No technique changes between the two. Could probably shave a second or two off using the same technique, but nothing major. Your gold/silver/bronze figures seem way off to be honest.
Dammit I'm not just double posting. Quadruple posting for the win.
One thing that I've noticed now that I've done challenges is that some areas can be really hard to hit with a portal and can require several tries to make a portal land. This really annoys me when going for challenges, time challenge mostly of course.
Where?
These are mostly only problems when doing time challenge. Fixing them up would make the level feel more finished though. Nothing ruins the whole portal experience like having to find the magic pixel on a concrete wall that actually allows me to put a portal there.
Most of those problem arise from the currently broken "auto-unportability" that hammer applies. I'll look into it and have it fixed in the next version.
The values for steps and time are the defaults of the bns maker, so I can see why they're inaccurate. 
Thanks for helping me, player1.
on the ball part i did:
I agree. Lucky for me on my first playthrough I noticed the danger of getting stuck, and I spent probably a good minute just watching the pellet bounce back and forth while I worked out the whole sequence in my head. Some people really prefer to dive into a puzzle and experiment with it, and those people are super-likely to get stuck in this room.
I was thinking about it, and it's obvious that making the doors too easy to open from the spitter/catcher side would break the puzzle. I suggest adding buttons that would open the doors, but only after a timer ticked down. This forced wait would likely cancel any advantage that being able to go back to the "button room" might create. Better yet, could you make the trigger that opens the doors also cancel any open portals? (Not sure if this is possible.)
It moves the wall panel in the top chamber closer to the button. In the current map version, it is unnecessary, but espen said he planned to make the floor in the first room unportalable (need a corresponding texture change). If you cannot portal anywhere in the lower part of the chamber, the button and its moving panel are needed.
It does the same thing as the pedestal-button at the top of the moving stairs: it turns off the portal-cleanser part of the field (but the cube still won't go through). I guess technically this lets you set up your solution to this room beginning from either side of the field. Not sure why that's necessary either, now that I think about it. Espen?
I gotta disagree here. I think there's plenty of interest in maps that use test-chamber type elements without necessarily trying to look exactly like the SP game. I do think, though, then when a mapper uses elements familiar from SP, they should use them in the ways the player has already been trained to understand. (Using portalable textures as nonportalable and vice-versa should remain a big no-no, IMO.) But as long as the useful conventions that the SP game established are being followed, I welcome maps with different aesthetics. I really don't think everyone has to copy Valve's design to the letter.
You need it to get back outside so you can portal to the last button. Remember that the floors will be non-portable in the final version (at least that's what I've understood). If not I can certainly do this level faster and with less portals
Oh snap, are you not supposed to put a portal on the floor anywhere in this map? I thought that was just the first room with the reversed gravity. That makes the last part a little harder. Perhaps espen plans on retexturing the floors to fix this.
Certainly.
On the two part where you can place portals on the floor, you will notice it is distinctly lighter in color.