I believe this is the intended solution for Part 1 but am not certain.
It is straightforward so maybe.
I have not yet done Part 2.
Thanks for waiting to post up so we had a chance.

SUPAtUt3aaE

I don't think so. I had a similar solution (see my video above) and it was not the intended one. Also it is difficult to get the cube oriented just right. Doesn't feel right. Must be an easier way.

Some other thoughts/predictions:

||1. The purpose of the narrow slit with the arrow must be to shoot a floor portal from this direction. Probably the one below the laser. This means it is important that the floor portal is oriented from this direction as otherwise you would not need go all the way around to this side to do this. The only purpose I can find of a floor portal of a certain direction is to have a cube bounce through two floor portals and deactivating fizzlers. One circumstance that speak for this is the fact that there are two floor surfaces with lasers on them. Why are these not grates? Because cubes need to go through them!

1. The existance of the big upper fizzler indicates you want to keep your portals. Why? Probably you want to keep a pinned cube against the grate when you reach the upper area. Or some other dynamic situation like cube bouncing between two portals. If nothing is lost going through the fizzler, why bring a second cube up in the first place? The only other explanation is if you need to bring three cubes up this way.||

You may be right - I was trying to do it without jumping up to the first ledge because he kept trying to prevent that in successive versions. The see-saw thing (which you were first to post) made sense to me because of his "Kerplunk" map where he made use of that. Also that glass cutout ledge seemed to suggest that by raising you up just high enough for the cube drop to then reach the sensor.

Quote:
I was trying to do it without jumping up to the first ledge because he kept trying to prevent that in successive versions

... and now in version 1.10 I think I finally found a simple way to do this. The only change is that the first fizzler ledge is slanted inwards so it should be near impossible to get a cube to stay up there and definitely not to aim it. Now I think we're back to zero working solutions discovered so far.
Headshot! Welcome!

Found an interesting portal bug which obviously isn't meant to be used. I guess it's well known. If you set up the funnel to suck you downwards under the fizzler stack you'll bounce against the glass a bit. Not a big deal until you portal away from the funnel, then you get flung upwards some random height. Usually well past the first fizzler. I'm not sure it can help to break the map though. I tried fixing with playerclip but it made it worse. I could just use another discouragment field if absolutely necessary...

A solution to part 1 of version 1.10 (part 2 not solved yet) :

TJFsjkOl3ls

http://youtu.be/TJFsjkOl3ls

How close is this to the intended solution (if it isn't completely different)?

The intended solution is quite different really. I'm quite sure you would know it immediately if you saw the intended one.
Great to see that someone is still playing the map though after a couple days of silence! I guess Jonatan is traveling now..

I will be back next week. Please don't release the solution yet.

Version 1.11 is a available which blocks Xtreger's latest approach. This was a difficult one to fix actually. Removing the glass ledge was easy of course, but it was also possible to stack 4 cubes near the button and get sufficient height near the laser. The new hanging vent is a bit weird but seems to do the trick. At least, I spent ages trying Xtreger's method on v1.11 and couldn't manage it. Possibly I'm just not quick enough.
Edit: well I managed to use Xtreger's method once now, and will make some tiny changes to make it harder/not possible.
Jonatan: don't worry I'm not releasing anything until someone solves it.

ur download doesnt work atm... pls add an alternate

marKiu wrote:
ur download doesnt work atm... pls add an alternate

We are aware of this issue. msleeper will look into it when he got time.

I'm still working on the intended solution. The map was still pretty easy to break though using this:

not_the_intended_solution
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2012-01-28_00002.jpg 2012-01-28_00003.jpg

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This was somewhat doable without hours of trial-and-error due to (1) the cubes being up near the wall and therefore remaining in the alignment you give them, (2) being able to see the target clearly up close in order to aim precisely, and (3) their being stacked 3 on top of a portal surface, so you can immediately portal all three at once to near the door; they all fall through and emerge next to the door together so you can drop them in before the door closes.

That said, I'm still working on the intended solution and I've got some ideas about how it might be done.

Now (v1.11) that you've blocked the yoyo through the laser portal, there's only one way to get the laser on cubes in the fizzler stack (call then dests), and that's to have the cubes pass through the laser in the funnel(call them sources).

Rejected hypothesis 3
Put four sources in the funnel path, the last pointing toward the funnel portal. This will hold the laser on while you stand on the button. However, I can see no way to turn the fifth dest toward the second and third targets.
Rejected hypothesis 4
A variation on prior R.H. #2. Place 3 sources in the funnel path facing the funnel portal, spaced to intersect the laser as 2 dests rise, bottom one pointed toward last two targets, top one pointed to first. Stand on the button. The top dest gets both through the first fizzler (I can do this far). When the top dest hits the second fizzler, jump up off the button to save the bottom dest while the top dest disintegrates (I can do this too). The problem is that there isn't enough distance from the funnel to get the second and third sources to intersect the laser while the bottom dest rises, and even if there were, the 3 sources fall to the floor and aren't facing the portal when the funnel picks them back up. I have tried to shorten the funnel off time by edging off the button and back on, but this is too erratic.
Rejected hypothesis 5
Place dests side by side under stack. The idea was to have the sources pointed slightly to the side of the portal, first hitting one dest, then the other. It won't work because when the funnel picks up the dests, it squeezes them together so they are pointed 180 to each other, not at the targets.
Working on
Stack the dests slightly offset, aiming the sources slightly off to the side. I have successfully hit the bottom cube this way. My problem is I can't quite get it to hit each dest in sequence. I thought this wouldn't work at all because the funnel would pull the dests into the center, overlapping them again, but apparently the dests stay stuck together enough to remain offset. And I still have the problem that there just isn't enough time for the sources to hit the dests as they reach the higher targets.
If any of this helps someone else find the solution, great!

Ruien wrote:
I'm still working on the intended solution. The map was still pretty easy to break though using this:

Thanks a lot Ruien. I should be able to fix this in a few hours when I get off work.
KennKong, glad to see you're still working on it!
Good luck everyone. Maybe the weekend will finally put this one to bed.

Just a tiny update here to fix Ruien's exploit. The only change is to the hole in the glass near the wall portal. Thanks again for that. We found about a dozen similar problems. I'm sure some kind of weird cube-stacking solution still exists but you can be sure it is totally unintended.
I would love it if I could make the cubes breakable. If you stack a certain number together, it would break/fizzle the one on the bottom... is it possible?! Almost all the unintended solutions would have been automatically blocked by this behaviour.

Any bright ideas?

I struggled in the same way as KennKong - coming up with "hypotheses" and trying to think of various ways they can be performed.

I strongly feel that only one cube is to be placed beneath the fizzlers, facing the mid and top receptors, and somehow get some other cube to activate the bottom-most receptor. All of this, in such a way that immediately after the receptor's activation, the laser is redirected along the vertical through the fizzlers. I could be wrong though...

Guys I can only encourage you to keep sharing your ideas. I've been writing an article about the design and concept to post together with the solution video when someone manages to solve it. It includes a list of credits for everyone who has revealed a piece of the puzzle. It has quite a few names on it already.
13 days now. I think we're getting close!

In a nutshell the solution is mostly constrained into a pattern described by Xtreger. I discovered this myself independently relatively quickly, but coming out with a consistently-working solution is the problem. I have been using a method very similar to Xtreger's video shared earlier, except it does not require stacking boxes or anything like that, and works in 1.12 - so this might be the intended solution. However, I can't quite get it to work - the timer on the first fizzler appears to be literally between 1/10 and 1/5 of a second too short, despite how many times I reload the save and try to get the timings right. It seems with just a tiny bit more perfect timing, it would work though - but the intended solution must work at least 80% of the time, so maybe I'm still missing something.

Essentially it's really simple: need_20_more_milliseconds
Place two sources next to tractor beam base, place third source on black rim of the portal surface nearest the glass structure with a hole in it. Take fourth and fifth cubes to top platform next to button, and place portal under laser and on top platform portal surface. Align laser so that you can see it intersect the first laser catcher vertically, crouch and shoot portal at exactly this orientation. Now stand on 4th box and drop 5th box to gravitationally oscillate between the two portals. Take the 4th cube and place it below the stack pointing in the direction of second and third laser catchers. Now walk over and stand next to button facing the portal surface place. Crouch and shoot another portal exactly perpendicular to the wall, and this will align the oscillating box to hit the first laser catcher. Now, aim at the target behind the glass and save the game (F6) - now wait for box to emerge on laser side, immediately place a portal in the glass hole and then again right away above the fizzler stack, and simultaneously move to stand on the button exactly as soon as the laser activates the first laser catcher. As far as I can get, the box gets about 75% through the bottom fizzler on its way up by the time the fizzler turns back on.

Okay, maybe this is the wrong approach. But the fact remains that it's necessary to somehow get 4 cubes in the tractor beam at the time that the dest cube rises past the first fizzler. This seems to constrain the solution to some sort of oscillation, because the box must end up back in the tractor beam, but cannot start there (unless it's somehow possible to have a steady-state solution with the 4 cubes stationary with one aiming the laser at the first laser target. I don't think that's possible).

There are some other observations:

1.) You can easily hold a single cube directing the laser by crossing the tractor beam - one portal below laser, other portal at back behind glass hole, and stand on the button. If you could get 4 cubes in here and one aimed at the first fizzler target, then you could switch only one portal to above the fizzler stack and might be able to shave off that last 20 milliseconds. I just haven't found a way to aim the 4 cubes in this configuration in a reliable manner.

2.) If you place a portal behind the glass hole, and a second below the laser, you will notice that the first target is clearly visible at an angle in the portal. If you could shoot the laser into a portal from anywhere at the right angle, and have it emerge from behind the glass, it would be relatively easy to hit the first fizzler target.(

3.) I have attempted to combine #1 and #2 above, so that the 4 cubes are sitting in the tractor beam and held in position by the crossed tractor beams, and then trying to aim the laser down into the portal on the floor to emerge from behind the glass and rest upon the laser target. Then I would only need to move one portal and it would immediately begin to raise the dest cube. But I also haven't found a way to reliably aim this either.

Ruien, it's no accident that you don't quite have enough time to execute this method. As I said after Xtreger's video, it is unintended and I would "make some tiny changes to make it harder/not possible".
In testing, I also found the same improvement to Xtreger's method as you: aim first through the hole in the glass and then at the ceiling. Anyway, it's not the way forward.

Thanks to Ruien's observation #2, I was able to solve this finally, with a caveat.

If this isn't the intended solution to the first part, I'll eat my shorts!

EDIT: I removed the video because the official solution has been posted, and even though the first part was "right", the rest of it was garbage.