[Tip]Making a Hard Puzzle
First of all you need to know the steps to pass your map, I'm going to put an example for explain it better.
If you have a cube, a pit, a funnel and at the end, the button that opens the exit, you only need to go through the funnel with the cube and put it on the button. But... If you wanna do it harder what can you do for it? You need to prevent the player to go through to go to the button, or to get the cube or to go to the funnel. For example, you can make an emancipation grid in middle of the funnel, now the cube cant pass it. What do you need to pass it? Deactivate it or jump it.
Now you can make a new element in your map to do it, a button, repulsion gel to jump it... And if you wanna do it harder, now, you need to activate the funnel, and you need a new room for it or a new mechanism.
I think, if you repeat this every time you wanna make it harder, you'r gonna make it hard.
Example steps:
1 http://puu.sh/uV7f
2 http://puu.sh/uV7w
3 http://puu.sh/uV82
4 http://puu.sh/uV8a
And more... Remember to test every time you finish a new mechanism.
Hope it helps 
Seriously though, you need to actually have some portal surfaces. I've found that by using almost all white, you can make very challenging puzzles because instead of thinking how the mechanisms fit together, you suddenly have to think about all the possible different space-warping permutations and find which one is correct.
I now design by several rules:
- Always show the exit at the start- Provide access to all the puzzle elements at the start or at least show them- Use as much white as possible, metal only where necessary and for style choices
mZLY wrote:
I like to use mostly black, non-portalable, surfaces for the most part. Add the white panels which are necessary to complete the test and then throw a few more white panels in to a) make the room look nicer and b) act as a decoy and make the player think about their portal placement. If you use too many white surfaces you end up with a test that's easy to exploit.
I agree completely. The more white surfaces, the more ninjas will come your way! On the other hand, too less white panels may give too much clues to the player about the way in certain areas...
And I like black surfaces o.o, hard puzzles with mostly white are more harder.
THE best option to make your map is to use unique solutions:
for example:
looking at the image already tells you the solution. (I've seen this one at least 10 times in the last 50 pti maps I played)
(from gladoscube's advanced gel 01)
Here it's a lot less obvious that you have to fling. Although the angled panel will most likely grab your attention. After you got the required elements it makes sense.
This is an unique solution and it's also not immediately visible.
A series of obvious actions to get to the obvious fling is not the way to create a harder puzzle. You will need to think outside the box.
@youme: Provide access to all the puzzle elements at the start or at least show them
Personally I prefer to show the player the test element when he/she needs it. Often people need it twice in my map so it doesn't make it more easy.
A puzzle with: a laser, a cube, a hard light bridge, blue gel, orange gel and some fling parts is very overwhelming if you start in a room with that all. If you break it up in smaller pieces it's a lot easier to handle for the player while not necessarily making it easier.
Darkylight wrote:
I'm not asking help in this post o.o, I'm giving you an idea for make hard puzzles.And I like black surfaces o.o, hard puzzles with mostly white are more harder.
They are not trying to help you, they are simply adding things to this thread.
One thing about your main post. That's not precisely the way to make a hard puzzle. The funnel is completely useless in the final version, making it silly to even have it on the map. You can't just confuse player by adding a ton of unnecessary elements to the room.
Darkylight wrote:
I'm not asking help in this post o.o, I'm giving you an idea for make hard puzzles.And I like black surfaces o.o, hard puzzles with mostly white are more harder.
I got you already, I only wanted to share my opinion related to hard maps content... indeed I think mZLY only wanted to compliment your tip with his/her own point of view.
About your tip, it's much appreciated. I suppose more or less, all of us that likes hard maps do the same... it is all about making the chain of events more difficult in each step. But anyway, I think the key is not right there but in making use of a puzzle element in a way no one did before.
It can be used effectively to make an area you can't pass, but it should be rarely used as punishment for executing a manoeuvre incorrectly. The same with deadly lasers.
If you have a difficult fling to make and just dump people in water if they make a mistake and it takes them more than one or two attempts, they're just going to quit.
As far as avoiding white because people can find clever solutions, that's a pathetic excuse! That's why we playtest maps and remove solutions when people find them. The only difference with the PTI is that now regular players are playtesters too. (Provided they're decent enough to leave feedback, players that don't can jog on)
youme wrote:
Also of note: Water doesn't make things harder.It can be used effectively to make an area you can't pass, but it should be rarely used as punishment for executing a manoeuvre incorrectly. The same with deadly lasers.
Well put. If I die in a map I want it to be because I did something stupid, not because I failed to pull off the thing that I actually was meant to do.
On a more general note, I don't think 'complex' necessarily equates to 'hard'. A puzzle can have a lot of elements to it but still be completely straightforward, and I think a lot of mappers (certainly on the Workshop) tend to make puzzles that are more confusing than they are hard. As a general rule of thumb, I like to always give the player some idea of what they're trying to do next, in terms of 'get that cube over here' or 'get the lightbridge up there'. Exploring is fine for a short while, but spending 20 minutes wandering around a huge map trying to work out which bit you're supposed to attack first is not fun, it's a chore.
I've nothing to do right now, so I might just explain the puzzle-making process for my latest map on the off-chance anyone's interested (Gymnasium, it's in my sig). If you're going to read all this you might want to play it first as a) I'm totally about to spoil the whole thing and b) it'll be really difficult to understand what I'm talking about:
Brace yourself:
||I started off wanting to make an orange gel puzzle, because I like whizzing about. However, as LP pointed out above, most of these are really obvious, so I wanted to do something different. The usual ways of painting a surface are either:
a) directly, with portals beneath the dropper, or
b) by carrying the paint over with a funnel and dropping it from there.
I wanted to find a third way, so I decided to fling the paint. The problem is, it's actually very difficult - putting it in an infinifling just fires it at the wall like a bullet - and the best I could think of was to hold it in a vertical funnel before dropping it through a portal to ensure a nice even spread.
Fine, so I do need a funnel, but I need to prevent simply carrying the paint over in it. The solution to that was a timer. I also need a goal for the puzzle, and so I could double this up as the door timer! Sweet. Now I have to set about making things a little less obvious....
My usual schtick is to add a small preliminary puzzle to introduce the test elements. For my paint fling to work I need quite a tall chamber, so a big hall with a fling seems the obvious choice. I start off with a fling from dropping out of a funnel, but the part of me that wants to re-use everything starts thinking about that paint... I end up making a chamber that requires a run-up through a portal and a couple of high-speed flings (was actually a major pain in the arse to get all the distances right). I make it so that the funnel is used both to gain access to the paint in the first place and to spread it on the runway. I also have a fizzler to stop the player getting to the second part without the fling, but this needs to be switched off so they can use the funnel for the solution.
Now my puzzle's pretty much complete, but after nixing all the unintended solutions I'm left with very little portalable wall left, and I'm worried this'll make everything too obvious. I really want to have a load of useless walls around the runway to the exit, but this presents a problem - it would be possible (albeit arduous) to keep sending paint through the funnel and painting it in increments. I need some way of stopping the funnel from ever reaching this room, though I'd like to be able to use paint in there (even though it's useless) to distract the player....
After a lot of thinking and many stupid ideas, I come up with the double switchable fizzler idea. There are two requirements:
- The switch must be behind the second fizzler to prevent the funnel being used in the room
- The gel must also be behind the second fizzler (or the whole thing is pointless anyway and it might as well be a permanent fizzler or black walls).
The problem with this is that I still need to bring the gel to the funnel for the solution, which is impossible now! I was tempted to throw the idea away, but I kept thinking a bit more. I needed a way to activate the switch and be on the other side of the fizzler. A timed button would do the trick, but that would be dull and obvious. A little more thinking and I came up with what I have now, which is actually my favourite part of the map!||
I guess the point of this long and no doubt quite dull post is that you shouldn't throw away ideas just because they don't work right away. Often my workarounds for various problems end up being the best parts of my maps. I've frequently thrown away my original idea because an exploit was more fun, and indeed a lot of the puzzles in my next map will revolve around ways I found to break this one. My favourite thing about mapping is that it involves at least as much problem solving as actually playing the game!
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So I have to get the cube out of here but building simply a couple of fizzlers that alternate their status (while one opens, the other closes) is too easy, I only make the player sit down and wait for 2 secs... Hmmm that's stupid!
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Ok, which elements do I still have in the map which are reacheable in any way? a funnel and a white floor panel... Great!
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So I'll make the player have to think out of the box and figure out that he has to bring here the funnel and funnel the cube out!
The point is: it's sometimes easy to make a map harder by simply forcing the player to use some puzzle elements that, under certain circumstances could be reacheable and useable. It gets harder as further those elements are or you make the player believes he is all done with them!
Using every puzzle element at least twice is my basic concept for every map I make.
I was thinkig about making a video tutorial on how to make challenging puzzles.
There are a lot of tutorial on using hammer or the new puzzle creator but I couldn't find any that actually shows how to create good puzzles. Since mapping became very handy and easily accessible for everyone why not sharing the experience I already made and helping others to make well conceived puzzles. There are a lot of things that can be tought. Like elaborating a basic idea, combining puzzle elements and using them in a different way or simply the desing of your map. For exaple I noticed that a symmetric design takes away a lot of that confusion and disorientation el farmerino was talking about.
I think I'll give it a try next week since that will require some time. I'll let you know if I make progress and will post here.
marKiu wrote:
I think I'll give it a try next week since that will require some time. I'll let you know if I make progress and will post here.
Marc, I'm SO looking forward to it!!!! It'll be very handy to all of us!
Since I have relatively more experience now, I'll give my two cents' worth:
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One can take a logical puzzle and implement it using buttons+cubes, fizzlers, death fields and logic gates. So based on the limit of applicability, one may take as hard a logical puzzle as one may please (for example the standard grid puzzles).
Translating and implementing such puzzles in terms of a Portal 2 map are quite hard though.
(Logic gates can be made using combinations of lasers, catchers, flip panels, etc. There are already good examples featured in the workshop) -
Properly disguising the solution is really important in my opinion. I don't exactly know any fool-proof method of doing so, but mainly this should vary from map to map.
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Finally there are "tricks" or unconventional use of various testing elements. There are even tricks that only involve portals and using the structure of the map to one's advantage, which are even harder to see. These are generally not easy to figure out, but not hard to come up with. With this in mind, one can then build a map centered on these "tricks".
I think this has already been mentioned, but I'll repeat that whatever be the puzzle, it should have a "fair-play" solution - no hidden things, and preferably no hard-to-notice aspects (by this I mean there should be no such things as very hard-to-see portalable surface, etc at a large distances). Of course, good puzzles will have hard-to-notice aspects, but they will still be in plain sight. All relevant portions of the map should be clearly indicated.
One can also (and generally should) combine the above 3 points to increase the difficulty.
Hopefully this will help those who wish to make challenging maps...