Quote from uXs on March 24, 2008, 12:54 pm

I just finished this map, and as it's still in beta I feel obligated to give some feedback (Warning: this is going to be long.)

Also: SPOILERS !

First room: in general, I'm not really a fan of ice (I'm sorry, I meant Aperture Science Frictionless Surfaces) on floors. It never feels very realistic, especially not when you can jump and change direction in the air. That said, not being able to change direction at all would suck even more. Anyway. I didn't really get the point of the first room. Most of the stuff in it seems fairly useless.

I "solved" it by using the cube. The game glitched on me when I was stuck in the corner with all the turrets firing at me and it shot me right through the tunnel into the second room. Apparently I was supposed to use sliding momentum to get through there ? I don't know. Maybe it would be better if you removed everything that's not necessary (cube, balls, turrets in the open), really forcing the player to use the intended solution.

Second room: I think I wasted an hour trying to figure out what to do. I'm not really sure if you can make what to do any clearer though. The abundance of number signs were a bit confusing. There were multiple signs with the same number so I didn't know what the fuck. Maybe I'm just thick.

Anyway, eventually I figured out what the "wheee" sign meant, and I was able to fling myself to button number one. As an aside, the "cube-friendly" fizzlers were very confusing. Portal trains you that all fizzlers will destroy everything that you try to get past them, so I never even tried to do that. I only discovered that some of them aren't supposed to destroy the cube by reading this board.

I then figured out how to get to button 2 almost right away, but then spent half an hour trying to get past that fucking turret. If you change anything because of this post, let it be that you remove the damn thing. (Now I'm thinking that you may be able to get past it by using a cube, but there's a fizzler in front of it so I thought you couldn't.)

Eventually I got past it, and was very dissappointed that my nemesis the turret didn't get disintegrated when I shoved it through the fizzler. (Note that, despite this evidence of a non-destructive fizzler, I still didn't get that they weren't supposed to destroy things. I thought it was just a bug in your map.)

Next was the ball race (I liked the "race the ball" sign), which wasn't very hard to figure out, and only slightly harder to do. Pretty fun, don't change it.

All in all, I think I solved all puzzles the way they were intended here. You don't need to change any of them, just try to make it a bit more obvious what to do, or at least try to remove conflicting signs. Perhaps remove the "1" sign from the first room, and put on the "whee" slide somewhere.

Then I portal tunneled my way to the exit. I used the jump from where the ball race starts, and out of the angled wall to the exit.

Next, I think this section was called "breaking the rules". I don't think I broke any rules here though, save for maybe some tunneling. As for the large horizontal fizzler with the acid pool below it, and the wall that angles down, I stood on top of the cube and shot a portal above it into the ceiling on the other side. Then I just walked through.

Overall, pretty cool section. I got through it pretty quickly. Much faster than through the first part, because I always knew where to go. (As said before, I spent most of the first section walking around, doing nothing.)

Last section. Didn't take me too long. Clean, clear map, I liked it. I got to the part right before the elevator fairly quickly, put the cube on the button, and then spent a bit of time wondering how to get to the other button. I managed to get on the wall above the fizzler that's there, then tried to get to it by just jumping in and out of a couple of portals on the floor far below. Oddly enough, while I started the jump a fair bit higher than where I wanted to go, that didn't get me high enough by far when I came back up.

Eventually, I jumped on the camera on the right, and from there on to the platform. (Is this the intended solution ? It seemed too conveniently placed not to be.) Push button, get through portal, get through door. Then drop another portal to retrieve my cube, and finished.

So, summary:
* The first room has too much crap in it that you don't need.
* The second room could use clearer signage.
* Fizzlers are supposed to destroy cubes - if you absolutely need one that doesn't, you have to make it very, very obvious. Give the field a different effect or color, or make it spark so that it's clear that it's a bit broken. If possible, make the game throw a cube through it (and make sure that the player sees it !)
* The "whee" sign is cool, but you should probably try to make it look more professional. I don't want to say that it looks drawn by a 3-year old, but it does.
* Turrets shouldn't be in places where you are flinging yourself to, pushing you back out again.

Good map, I'm looking forward to the next version.

(Edit: forgot to say that while full-floor ice is annoying, the slides themselves are cool. So I liked the second room. The first room, not so much.)

Quote from xitooner on March 27, 2008, 2:58 pm

Azkoyen wrote:

I just finished xi_totc_betav002, it took me about 5 hours from start to finish, and I enjoyed every single moment of it. It's a fantastic map, and extremely challenging. I freakin loved the race in room two, although I spent at least an hour trying to get to the highest switch. The race itself only took a few tries once I'd found the correct route to the high switch.

Thank you very much xitooner, I hope you continue to make maps like these.

Thanks for the compliment. I've been so busy at work I havent even gotten to check in here for a month to see if anyone was still playing this. . .nice to see you are. I sure hope I get a chance in the next month to two to add those last 4-5 puzzles I have planned, so I can get this to release. . .

PS: As often as I play-tested this map, I got really tired of most of the challenges after a while; the only one that still holds any real interest/fun for me now is the "race".