http://www.brainygamer.com/the_brainy_g ... truth.html

This is an article which I think every Portal level designer should read, particularly those who introduce new puzzle mechanics in their maps.

For those who don't know Jonathan Blow he is the designer of "Braid" which is, in my opinion, a competitor for Portal/Portal 2 as one of the best puzzle games.

Great article!

I agree, Braid was phenomenal, and Jonathan Blow is an interesting guy to listen to about game design in general.

I'm just wondering what he means by "truth". It's level design...

I hate to be negative about stuff like this, but he should have simplified parts 4 through 7; I don't understand what the heck is typed. Essays, articles, etc. should be easy enough for a 12 year old to understand. Complex and fancy words are a turn off to a person reading the article, essay, etc.
And part 6 seems to be just re-stating parts 1 and 2!
Please don't bother to explain this to me...

Vordwann wrote:
I'm just wondering what he means by "truth". It's level design...

He probably means the Platonic Form of truth.

Vordwann wrote:
I'm just wondering what he means by "truth". It's level design...

He probably means for people not to use world portals in their maps.

Hah, part of me wishes Valve had read this actually. Particularly the parts on Completeness and Compatibility of Mechanics. What I felt Portal 2 was lacking, after introducing puzzles based on each of the mechanics, was some climatic mixture of everything the player had learnt so far into one or a few end chambers. Co-op did this a bit better, but in single player I guess they preferred just to spontaneously catapult you into the finale.

Lagger, the middle points are basically about how developers should test their games to figure out how "neatly" mechanics fit together, and what their limitations are - or create "boundaries" if there are too many problems. For example, a clear limitation in the Portal games is that you can't place portals on moving surfaces (except in one instance but it was rather constricted).

NuclearDuckie wrote:
Lagger, the middle points are basically about how developers should test their games to figure out how "neatly" mechanics fit together, and what their limitations are - or create "boundaries" if there are too many problems. For example, a clear limitation in the Portal games is that you can't place portals on moving surfaces (except in one instance but it was rather constricted).

Well, that's okay. Thanks for clearing that up for me. Still, the article could've had some parts to be defined a bit more simply. Also, like I said/typed earlier, that part 6 re-states parts 1 and 2; to me, that is kind of a waste of space.

MasterLagger wrote:
Essays, articles, etc. should be easy enough for a 12 year old to understand.

Or, here's a better idea. 12 year olds shouldn't be trying to make maps or puzzle games.

Wow, this article really helped me think of some maps.
P.S 6) does not restate 1 & 2, instead telling us to make them combine/ interact

msleeper wrote:
MasterLagger wrote:

Essays, articles, etc. should be easy enough for a 12 year old to understand.

Or, here's a better idea. 12 year olds shouldn't be trying to make maps or puzzle games.

There are the pointless essays that are meant to be understood by 12-year-olds. Then there are the essays that actually have some useful application to a business or process that you actually have to be intelligent to understand. I'm 15 myself. I'm releasing my first co-op and singleplayer map next month hopefully because although I've been here a long time, I havn't made anything I thought was good enough to release until now.

msleeper wrote:
MasterLagger wrote:

Essays, articles, etc. should be easy enough for a 12 year old to understand.

Or, here's a better idea. 12 year olds shouldn't be trying to make maps or puzzle games.

I was talking about essays and articles in general, not just essays and articles specifically about mapping. Take the word "Orthogonality" that was used in the article for example; it has many definitions depending on the subject. When relating to computer stuff, "Orthogonality" guarantees that modifying the technical effect produced by a component of a system neither creates nor propagates side effects to other components of the system. Whereas in the article it states: "Orthogonality of Mechanics - Ask yourself: does a potential new mechanic add interesting new consequences, or are these consequences mostly contained in the mechanics already present? Blow cited Ikaruga as a game whose mechanical limits serve it as well as its possibilities." Do you see where I'm going with this? If a map is "Orthogonal" then testing elements would not affect other testing elements meaning that testing elements would be completely independent from each other. And since Portals are used as the main testing element and are used for other testing elements, Portal 2 maps can't be Orthogonal.

NuclearDuckie wrote:
Hah, part of me wishes Valve had read this actually. Particularly the parts on Completeness and Compatibility of Mechanics. What I felt Portal 2 was lacking, after introducing puzzles based on each of the mechanics, was some climatic mixture of everything the player had learnt so far into one or a few end chambers. Co-op did this a bit better, but in single player I guess they preferred just to spontaneously catapult you into the finale.

I remember one of the reviews saying at launch (and then my playthrough confirmed) that Valve didn't really learn from Portal 1. Each new gameplay element such as the Hard Light Bridges and Excursion Funnels were used in turn and each one was generally used in a single group of chambers and then occasionally put in ones later on. The endgame lacked a section where all of the test elements were used together instead of just the occasional faith plate or the occasional light bridge. They lacked a climactic test finale as it went from logic puzzles to (a suprising) endgame which generally followed simple puzzle design.

MasterLagger wrote:
I was talking about essays and articles in general, not just essays and articles specifically about mapping. Take the word "Orthogonality" that was used in the article for example; it has many definitions depending on the subject. When relating to computer stuff, "Orthogonality" guarantees that modifying the technical effect produced by a component of a system neither creates nor propagates side effects to other components of the system. Whereas in the article it states: "Orthogonality of Mechanics - Ask yourself: does a potential new mechanic add interesting new consequences, or are these consequences mostly contained in the mechanics already present? Blow cited Ikaruga as a game whose mechanical limits serve it as well as its possibilities." Do you see where I'm going with this? If a map is "Orthogonal" then testing elements would not affect other testing elements meaning that testing elements would be completely independent from each other. And since Portals are used as the main testing element and are used for other testing elements, Portal 2 maps can't be Orthogonal.

He was going for the most basic definition of orthogonal, i.e., an orthogonal mechanic would add a new independent "dimension" to puzzles rather than take an existing mechanic and extending it. The added "exclamation point" cubes in Blue Portals are an extension of "get cube from point A to point B", but it is not an orthogonal mechanic because you could essentially do the same thing with a normal cube and floor button. Faith plates are an extension to flinging but don't add much to puzzles other than convenience.

I think you're reading too much into some of the language used. It isn't intended to be difficult to understand. For example, I see you got that definition of orthogonal from half-way into the Wikipedia page for orthogonality. The first line of that Wikipedia page defines orthogonality just fine for the purposes of the article.

I heard this term used in my math class which made me kind of suspicious of its use in the first place. I guess it depends who's reading it. Still, I feel that there could have been a word or phrase that could be used to simplify it, or at least he could have elaborated on what he meant by Orthogonality (if it was used correctly, I don't think that "...vary independently, they are uncorrelated, or they are perpendicular." is accurate).

the article wasnt meant to be step by step instructions on how to make a puzzle, it was supposed to be a discussion of the broad ideas behind puzzle creation. you dont need to analyse every line of the thing.

Spam Nugget wrote:
the article wasnt meant to be step by step instructions on how to make a puzzle, it was supposed to be a discussion of the broad ideas behind puzzle creation. you dont need to analyse every line of the thing.

I realize that, I just have this thing about when people use long complex words or phrases to sound "smart" and possibly being used wrong.

Sometimes people use long words because they are the most appropriate words to use? Just hypothesising...

That's true, but I feel that the Orthogonality of Mechanics description was more related to "Cause and Effect." In fact, I think "Cause and Effect" would have been better to use since the description tells about the consequences of a mechanic being used.