Any critics are very welcome please leave a message in the forum if you'd like to but keep in mind that this is our first map (we did not have any hammer experience before).

Have fun and look at the indicators and signs which help you to solve the puzzles!

spliffa & weedbeat

Installation instructions:
1. Use 7-zip to extract the package.
2. Copy mp_coop_strubadur.vpk to your Portal 2 addons folder (\SteamApps\common\portal 2\portal2\addons). If it doesn't exists, create it.
3. In Coop Hub open developer console and type "changelevel mp_coop_strubadur_1".
4. Second level will be loaded automatically.

File Name: mp_coop_strubadur final package.7z
File Size: 11.59 MiB

There was one part, however, where you could get stuck and would have to restart the entire map. The section where you get a cube that's up a stairwell that your partner has to activate. What happened to my partner and I is I put the cube through the broken glass into the next room (like you're supposed to), but then he activated the button again and destroyed the cube. We went on to the next room without me knowing this and we got stuck in that room. The only way out is if you have the cube.

Hope you know what I'm talking about and that it helps.

One tiny little bit of criticism: some white walls could not have portals on them. Sometimes it was a little frustrating.

Other than those things, this was a great, challenging map, with great atmosphere too!

Thx a lot for all the positive responses! Makes me think of doing another level

@G-Money
Now I'm thinking about it your absolutly right! That was one of the last changes we did to the map and unfortunately the intial exit plan does not work anymore due to that.. But I'll try to fix that tomorrow! Sorry you had to replay the whole level in order to get like 40 meters further

There are a few gems of ideas here (the particular usage of glass separation/button puzzles were interesting), but there needs a few tweaks. In chamber two (the first propulsion gel chamber with the crushers), it is possible for one player to portal over the gel by himself by standing on the tilted panel and obtaining the gel.

In chamber four (the introduction of the repulsion gel), the opposing walls are too far apart, causing the player to bounce up at an incredibly slow and tedious way. It became trite after how many times we had to climb it to solve the puzzle.

The chamber after that, with the propulsion gel, is when the map started to shed its weakness. The walls in this room and the room after are 50/50 portalable, despite being the same white textures. If you are going to make a wall non-portalable, make it standard non-white. The amount of gel the player is given is so incredible small that it took us quite a while to cover enough floorspace to operate a proper runway.

If one of the players enters the last chamber, the repulsion chamber, before the previous one is completed (obtaining the cube), then that player becomes stuck. Perhaps use a panel to block off the last chamber so players don't screw that up, or a way to portal back.
The last chamber is the weakest of all in our opinions: it basically includes covering the whole floorspace with difficult-to-spread repulsion gel (turn up the radius on your info_paint_sprayers) and perform a very easy timing puzzle. You might want to consider reducing the open time for the doors so the players have to coordinate more. Also, if a player jumps from the ledge into a portal under the button, they don't even have to use the gel for the first part.

You have some good work here, but it needs tweaking. The aesthetic part of the map, which I haven't really touched on, was very undeveloped - there were old aperture doors, unaligned textures, massive wastes of space, rooms with only one texture, crushers that appeared from nodraw surfaces and dirty glass in a clean style map, to name a few. Look at reference pictures of Valve's maps and try to remain consistent with the styles, because they *don't * mix well together.

EDIT: It occurs to me now that we didn't play the second map. For some reason, it did not load properly for us. We will play it later and I will give the appropriate feedback when I have a chance.

ForbiddenDonut wrote:
A considerably long map that, although lacks visual inspiration, begins with developed puzzles, but unfortunately starts to fall into the conundrum of "less thinking/more execution" puzzle work that occurs when using the gel a lot.

True, I agree that we used the gel a little much. Please consider that the first map is intended to be rather easy and straight forward to solve and then it get's harder until the master puzzle at the end of map 2.

ForbiddenDonut wrote:
There are a few gems of ideas here (the particular usage of glass separation/button puzzles were interesting), but there needs a few tweaks. In chamber two (the first propulsion gel chamber with the crushers), it is possible for one player to portal over the gel by himself by standing on the tilted panel and obtaining the gel.

Thanks for this catch, we will improve this part.

ForbiddenDonut wrote:
In chamber four (the introduction of the repulsion gel), the opposing walls are too far apart, causing the player to bounce up at an incredibly slow and tedious way. It became trite after how many times we had to climb it to solve the puzzle.

Yes indeed, we are aware of the distance problem, will be corrected.

ForbiddenDonut wrote:
The chamber after that, with the propulsion gel, is when the map started to shed its weakness. The walls in this room and the room after are 50/50 portalable, despite being the same white textures. If you are going to make a wall non-portalable, make it standard non-white. The amount of gel the player is given is so incredible small that it took us quite a while to cover enough floorspace to operate a proper runway.

Will consider a texture change for non-portable walls.

ForbiddenDonut wrote:
If one of the players enters the last chamber, the repulsion chamber, before the previous one is completed (obtaining the cube), then that player becomes stuck. Perhaps use a panel to block off the last chamber so players don't screw that up, or a way to portal back.

We missed that one, thanks!

ForbiddenDonut wrote:
The last chamber is the weakest of all in our opinions: it basically includes covering the whole floorspace with difficult-to-spread repulsion gel (turn up the radius on your info_paint_sprayers) and perform a very easy timing puzzle. You might want to consider reducing the open time for the doors so the players have to coordinate more. Also, if a player jumps from the ledge into a portal under the button, they don't even have to use the gel for the first part.

True. But it's not necessarily a bug, in this chamber we wanted to give the players more than one possibility to solve a particular puzzle element (For example: being able to jump into the tractor beam using either the broken fling plate combined with the gel or you can fling with portals.).

ForbiddenDonut wrote:
You have some good work here, but it needs tweaking. The aesthetic part of the map, which I haven't really touched on, was very undeveloped - there were old aperture doors, unaligned textures, massive wastes of space, rooms with only one texture, crushers that appeared from nodraw surfaces and dirty glass in a clean style map, to name a few. Look at reference pictures of Valve's maps and try to remain consistent with the styles, because they *don't * mix well together.

I fully accept this comment, but please keep in mind that this is our first hammer project ever (which means even the first few clicks were made in this vmf ). We didn't follow any of the theme-based Portal 2 designs, our main goal was to develop our own puzzles as we couldn't find any coop maps. In future projects we will certainly put more effort in the design.

We thank you for your constructive criticism!

cheers,
spliffa

As for the styles - it's mostly why I didn't talk about it so much, because it's something that comes with experience with hammer. Generally, you want to make sure that textures are aligned (their square edges meet the edges of the corners/wall edges, doors match their corresponding style (you designed mostly in "Clean," so the normal panel co-op doors or the circular Aperture doors would suffice.

The thing I do (so it may not be the best thing for everyone) is that I spend a good deal of time noclipping through Valve's levels (co-op and single player) and take screenshots of everything to have references from when I start working in Hammer.

It's not something that generally should happen, but it's possible to trap yourselves almost immediately. After getting into the (impressively large) first room, and get both people into the slightly raised glass room, if both people drop down into the first area you're actually trapped, as the only way to get back is to stand on the now inaccessible button. Not sure if there's a reasonable fix to this, but it's something to keep in mind. Also, that laser seems to be rather redundant, as the stairs aren't needed to get up to the faith plate anyway.

Unportalable surfaces which are the exact colour of regular portalable surfaces are bad.

We both came through to the last chamber without having got the cube, but it is actually possible to get it, as the following video shows. It is also possible to get stuck where the cube is supposed to go. I just ran in there (as we hadn't got the cube at that point), and immediately got stuck. I then had to noclip out.

b7BUR-gjV0g

Second map:

I think it was much better than the first map. The first chamber was good, although I got trapped due to crouching while at the top of the excursion funnel. The second chamber was incredibly complicated, but worked quite well. As an aside, I prefer the large numbers to the pre-made and generally used signs with a certain number of dots. The numbers of course allow for a higher number of steps to be used with them, but they're just much more noticeable. Everything was pretty logical, although I found jumping off the platform, hitting the button then going into a portal to be annoying. What are the holes in the wall of the refraction cube room there for? Was just misleading.

Rq832wd-yR8

Generally, I think strubadur_1 is too lenghty for a single map. Even resized, because most chambers are oversized which is the mark of the amateur, it would be worthwile to split in two. You could fit an entire Coop Course of Glados storyline in there, and maybe you'd like to: my point is you have to give a personality to each station, make it worthwile. That's what I mean by purpose, not mere cleaning up with little fixes (still good) but directing them.

Same considerations for strubadur_2: it ranks high in the scale of complex maps, but gets brought down by visual boredom. See how elegantly mp_coop_chickentest_2 pulls it off, using the same compartized structure. Smooth, defined. Compared to that one, yours has all the workings it needs to work awesomely and yet a glamorous inability to sell itself. These surface impressions are hard to shake off, you need to tell the player how good you are: I've got to watch each specific area and know it's there for a reasion, not just see a honeycomb with numbers scattered around. Keep working on it, you've got the dormant beta of a big thing here.

Zelyhn wrote:
Seriously boring and way too easy map, exploitable, uninteresting... Cute you tried to map. Give up now.

Cute you tried to reply on someones map. Give up now.
You think that telling a newer mapper to give up on making maps is a good thing? You don't just tell someone who spent hours and hours making something selflessly to give up on something he is providing to you, for free. Look at xdiesp post... He doesn't just say, this is awful and you suck. He says, this is what was good about this map, this is whats bad, and this is what you can do to improve your map.

baca25 wrote:
Zelyhn wrote:

Seriously boring and way too easy map, exploitable, uninteresting... Cute you tried to map. Give up now.

Cute you tried to reply on someones map. Give up now.
You think that telling a newer mapper to give up on making maps is a good thing? You don't just tell someone who spent hours and hours making something selflessly to give up on something he is providing to you, for free. Look at xdiesp post... He doesn't just say, this is awful and you suck. He says, this is what was good about this map, this is whats bad, and this is what you can do to improve your map.

You're right, of course. I was just so frustrated at this map that a rage outburst made me write this. Anyway, if I am to get into details (objectively) I may not be much nicer... So let me explain. Like many others said, the map is over-sized, visually boring and way too exploitable. All of this could somehow be excused by taking into account that it is his first map, but here is what made me so frustrated: the puzzles are NOT puzzles. I see no complexity in this map, at all. Basically it consists of a collection of incredibly linear button-door systems, where creativity is thoroughly alienated. Therefore no thinking is necessary to complete it. The only hard part is gathering the information. Taken by themselves, not a single "puzzle" in this map is worth giving a second of interest. To be honest it is all the more annoying to see that a large part of the community says the map is complex, while it is only over-loaded and ill-designed.
Bottom the line this map needs to be polished, but that won't make it pretty anyway. I believe a mapper should not undertake any project if the idea behind them doesn't challenge the community (with creativity, difficulty, or ... fun!).

ENin15j-MqQ
(Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENin15j-MqQ)

Also note the video description for more feedback and my signature for additional project information.

Second part:
aaQJ_1-7m2k
(Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aaQJ_1-7m2k)

any ideas how to open this map? we both tried and got the same error.

rinel wrote:
any ideas how to open this map? we both tried and got the same error.

It is because it's a .vpk. They once were meant to be placed in a folder called addons but this method is no longer supported. To still play the map, you have to download GCFScape (https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/GCFScape), open the .vpk-file with it and extract the content. This should give you the map's .bsp-file as well as added custom sounds etc. Next, place these files in the respective folders of your Portal-folder and start the map from the console like you tried to.