xitooner wrote:
If you want to stop it, just take away the vertical portal walls in that part of the puzzle; make them use the floor or ceiling only. That will take out 95% of people right there

The problem with that approach is that it also eliminates 40% of the types of puzzles and flings you can set up, since in most places where you allow two portalable walls, tunneling will break/skip the puzzle.

taco wrote:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't wall walking just advanced-tunneling?

I was referring to this (which doesnt have a realy official name). No I dont think it is simply advanced tunneling:

Quote:
C. Wall-climbing. This is when you repeatedly drop/pickup an object while jumping and facing a wall. If you time it right, a glitch in the physics system will "bump" you vertically up the wall in little increments. You can do this indefinitely unless your fingers give out. There's no controversy here. Every right-thinking person considers this an illegitimate exploit.

Crooked Paul wrote:
The problem with that approach is that it also eliminates 40% of the types of puzzles and flings you can set up, since in most places where you allow two portalable walls, tunneling will break/skip the puzzle.

Frankly, I dont think so. It hasnt bothered ME yet, at any rate. Its simply a matter of how hard you want to work as a mapper to make tunneling not feasible for your map. If you going to insist on placing your flinging puzzle in a place where it aids tunneling and lets the user gain an "unfair" advantage in some other aspect. . . then you didnt think hard enough about what the user is capable of, IMO. Shift the walls around some and make their tunnel not visible/accessible, put in fizzlers in a few key places, reorder your puzzles, etc. Where you place the puzzles may be affected, but not what puzzles are possible.

Crooked Paul wrote:
The problem with that approach is that it also eliminates 40% of the types of puzzles and flings you can set up, since in most places where you allow two portalable walls, tunneling will break/skip the puzzle.

I only fling when a map forces me to - if I can skip it with a tunnel, I do. So far there have been very few maps that actually let me skip anything - it's pretty easy to prevent.

Tunneling: Exploit. Should not be included as a required solution because it's an exploit based on portal travel time. Smart mappers will (if possible) take every effort to minimize the possibility of using this exploit.

Door propping: Exploit. Should not be part of the required solution because it's a bug in the door. Smart mappers will include trigger_push entities which push physics props out of the doors before they close.

Momentum build: Technique. Uses the momentum knowledge we have from Portal and puts it into a new context. Can be part of the required solution if the player is informed about it's presence.

But then again, that's just my opinion.

Crooked Paul wrote:
The problem with that approach is that it also eliminates 40% of the types of puzzles and flings you can set up, since in most places where you allow two portalable walls, tunneling will break/skip the puzzle.

If you say tunneling destroys that many flinging-puzzles, we challenge you to make us one where we can not stop tunneling and still have a functioning flinging puzzle!

Duffedwaffe wrote:
The engine is set to push the player out of a portal link when one end of the link is moved. Obviously, they were aware of the issue and tried to avoid it. If you say otherwise, you're an idiot. End of story.

Actually, If you listen to the commentary they say that they push you out of the portal because they don't wan't you to die whilst standing in it, They wanted to make the player feel totally safe with portals, because if you can be killed whilst inside one there will always be nervous players who dislike using them because you might die.

If you haven't listened to the commentary nodes your an idiot, end of story.

As far as tunneling goes, they must have seen playtesters trying it, and they didn't remove it so they probably thought it didnt compromise the game too much, they probably thought of it as a 'ninja solution' like the nifty fling in one of the early chambers with the upgraded portal gun.

espen180 wrote:
Should not be included as a required solution because it's an exploit based on portal travel time.

By that logic, flinging is an exploit based on momentum.

youme wrote:
Actually, If you listen to the commentary they say that they push you out of the portal because they don't wan't you to die whilst standing in it, They wanted to make the player feel totally safe with portals, because if you can be killed whilst inside one there will always be nervous players who dislike using them because you might die.

If you haven't listened to the commentary nodes your an idiot, end of story.

As far as tunneling goes, they must have seen playtesters trying it, and they didn't remove it so they probably thought it didnt compromise the game too much, they probably thought of it as a 'ninja solution' like the nifty fling in one of the early chambers with the upgraded portal gun.

Oh, I have listened to them. Just because they say that doesn't mean it's the only reason. I mean... they had the same "problem" with Narbacular Drop... You could set a portal while looking through another portal. This exploit was heavily abused. Thus, this change was made where the player is forced out of the portal when another is fired. Didn't work too well, and for some idiotic reason people don't think of it as an exploit. Just because it isn't fixed doesn't mean it's not an exploit. The prop jumping technique still exists, because there was no solution. Maybe there's no solution to this, too. Ever think of that? Perhaps if you were shoved out of the area of the portal altogether it would make it harder to do flings or something. What about placing a portal right before you hit the ground? You would just be flung into the air.

So yes, I'm saying you're an idiot if you don't consider this an exploit.

Duffedwaffe wrote:
So yes, I'm saying you're an idiot if you don't consider this an exploit.

The very fact that you NEED tunneling to get gold on one of the chambers says it isnt an exploit.

However, saying that I don't tunnel myself and unless it is the specific intention of a puzzle or I'm just fucking about on a sandbox level I don't ever intend to use it.

youme wrote:
The very fact that you NEED tunneling to get gold on one of the chambers says it isnt an exploit.

However, saying that I don't tunnel myself and unless it is the specific intention of a puzzle or I'm just fucking about on a sandbox level I don't ever intend to use it.

I'm pretty sure you're supposed to jump in the water there, but whatever. You get my point.

Duffedwaffe wrote:
Oh, I have listened to them. Just because they say that doesn't mean it's the only reason. I mean... they had the same "problem" with Narbacular Drop... You could set a portal while looking through another portal. This exploit was heavily abused. Thus, this change was made where the player is forced out of the portal when another is fired. Didn't work too well, and for some idiotic reason people don't think of it as an exploit. Just because it isn't fixed doesn't mean it's not an exploit. The prop jumping technique still exists, because there was no solution. Maybe there's no solution to this, too. Ever think of that? Perhaps if you were shoved out of the area of the portal altogether it would make it harder to do flings or something. What about placing a portal right before you hit the ground? You would just be flung into the air.

So yes, I'm saying you're an idiot if you don't consider this an exploit.

They could always remove the slight delay from when the portal is shot 'til it hits the target (flying time), or force players to actually walk completely out of a portal instead just 3/4 before you can place a new one.

Duffedwaffe wrote:
I'm pretty sure you're supposed to jump in the water there, but whatever. You get my point.

And would you care to explain exactly how you are supposed to do the gold challenge in chamber 16 (or whichever?) by jumping into the water of death?

I'm surprised so many people think this is an exploit. It seems clear to me that the team knew about it and left it in, and then encorporated it in a solution. I was in the middle of writing exactly what yikkayaya wrote in his last post here, but he types faster than me.

One another note: even though I disagree with you guys, it is still useful information in future map making that people think this is an exploit. I'll make an effort to use as little tunneling as possible, or keep it all to the challenges.

espen180 wrote:
Tunneling: Exploit. Should not be included as a required solution because it's an exploit based on portal travel time.

This is exactly why it doesn't fall into the category of exploit. Exploits take advantage of bugs in the game. Portal travel time is not a bug. It is just another factor of thinking with portals. There is a travel time; therefore it can be used.

The only thing that does bother me about tunneling is that you can stay inside your portal. If you're standing in a wall and you change your portal, it should totally spit you out in such a way that you can't magically step right back in.

From a purely logical point of view, I would consider door propping to be ok too. However, door propping can turn buggy very quickly, with the doors shoving the object into the floor and out of the world, which leads me to believe it's a very unintended way to do anything.

Rivid31 wrote:
One another note: even though I disagree with you guys, it is still useful information in future map making that people think this is an exploit. I'll make an effort to use as little tunneling as possible, or keep it all to the challenges.

We need a poll, for votes only and no comments, to determine what the masses actually think because we all know only those that can be bothered reply to arguement threads like this.

youme wrote:
We need a poll, for votes only and no comments, to determine what the masses actually think because we all know only those that can be bothered reply to arguement threads like this.

Agreed

Rivid31 wrote:
youme wrote:

We need a poll, for votes only and no comments, to determine what the masses actually think because we all know only those that can be bothered reply to arguement threads like this.

Agreed

Done