This is my first ever public release after several years of messing around in Hammer. It's very, very short: pick up the cube, put it on the button, head up the elevator, and you're done. I mainly released it because I want to make sure that there aren't any glaring errors in my mapping technique before I proceed too much further. Feel free to decompile it and look around, if you should feel so inclined. Any and all constructive criticism is welcome.

Download

Screenshots:

Testing now..

Ok.

Good thinks:
World geometry 10/10
Lighting in area with cube and button 9/10

Bad thinks:
Lighting in relaxation-vault is too bright
Strange shadows (example: under second-counter in vault)
lighting in elevator area is too bright and strange line under wall lights there
Some thinks are algined bad, example button.

So I give 8/10. It is that good that you can make real maps, if you ask from me

This map sounds too short for my download. . .

But I will look at your pics and help you from there. The Foor tiles seem to line up nicely to the walls. but the button looks like it is in the middle of a 4x4 tile part.. It should line up. Move it over Also the relaxation vault looks like you clipped in the middle of tiles. While making your map, use the floor as a guide.

Looks very nice, but i found a weird shading going on in one part of the map, i'll get a screenshot when my computer stops trying to kill itself.

I also managed to decompile it, and i gotta say there a one major thing you did that you didn't need to do.

I saw that you covered all the outside and quit a few no visible parts in nodraw... You don't need to do this to a texture if its touching the dark void of emptyness (the black part) or if its fully touching another texture. As the game automatically dosen't render it if it has either of these 2 qualities. If you hadn't done all of that you could of probably saved an hour or 2 of work.

Either you nailed the Aperture style head on, or you vmexed a bunch of Portal maps together. Looks good though.

Kayaia wrote:
I also managed to decompile it, and i gotta say there a one major thing you did that you didn't need to do.

I saw that you covered all the outside and quit a few no visible parts in nodraw... You don't need to do this to a texture if its touching the dark void of emptyness (the black part) or if its fully touching another texture. As the game automatically dosen't render it if it has either of these 2 qualities. If you hadn't done all of that you could of probably saved an hour or 2 of work.

Firstly, you could be wrong. Since the compiler discards these faces anyway, the version you decompiled had already had that treatment. Every decompiled map has it's faces nodraw-ed automatically by the decompiler.

His original vmf may not have been like this.

Secondly, there is nothing wrong with nodrawing unseen faces, whether the compile process will discard them or not. I hardly think it would take several hours to do, and texturing outside faces with nodraw gives you benefits from within Hammer. You can hide nodraw faces so you can get a better overview of the inside of your map without having to zoom too much.

To get back on topic:
I haven't downloaded yet, but it looks okay from the screenshots. Other than the issues mentioned, like breaking up a grid texture midway, you have captured the valve style pretty well.

When I texture, I hide all of my entity visgroups, then "select all" and apply nodraw to the whole level, then begin texturing from there. That's why everything has nodraw on it.

Thanks for all the feedback! I'll be starting the next chamber - a much longer and more complicated one - tomorrow, and hopefully have it done in a few weeks.

@msleeper: Actually, I only decompiled two maps... one of which, I'll admit, was Affinity, because I wanted to see how he managed that fantastic lighting. The other one was test chamber 00 of the original game, to figure out how that #$@! clock timer worked.... it was a doozie. I actually wrote a tutorial on it here. Feel free to add it to the TWP wiki if you think it's good enough.

Yeah, I've done mostly mapping for HL2 in the past and never released anything: I always get scared away from finishing a map when it comes time to texture and light it. Portal's been a joy to map for so far because it follows such a simple texturing scheme.

I played this and must say that it could be a replacement for Portal Test Chamber 00. It is very easy and short. I found only one minor glitch (see the screenshot)

Other than that, I can assure you your mapping techniques are proper and you can make more maps for people to enjoy