My second Portal map and contains puzzels designed for weighted companion cube use.
The Official Release of the Winning Map of the November Mapping Contest. All Puzzles work 100%.

Thanks to the whole ThinkingWithPortals Community for voting, help and critic!

              Official Release Version Changes:

• added an image in the bonus map selection screen
• added new gravity effects and indicators (special thanks to MrTwoVideoCards)
• added one additional autosave
• added proper use of func_portal_bumper where needed
• changed extraction folder (!)
• changed the layout of the 5th test-room a little
• changed some triggers ,so players can (hopefully) not lose their weighted companion cube
• changed the position of some decals
• changed .bns file
• changed readme file
• fixed the invisible door bug in the last test-room
• fixed an error with a model that would appear in the console
• fixed one door getting black on open position
• removed visible nodraw textures

            ThinkingWithPortals Mapping Contest - November 2007 Requirements:
            1.) Player must be given one, Companion Cube in the map.
            2.) Each puzzle must require useage of the Companion Cube to be completed.
            3.) At the end of the map, the player must be forced to euthanize her Companion Cube before being able to finish.
  

Download:

dload.php?action=filefile_id=130

Screenshots:

&&

Community spotlight updated.

Thanks , feel free to add comments, votes and criticism

Good work, and congratulations on your victory.

As for the map... the WCC fling puzzle is still my least favorite part. I don't entirely hate it, but it seems to me like the button seems like it's too far away, and unless you place you portals perfectly, with masterful timing, getting everything where it needs to be is borderline luck. Unless I'm completely missing something about the map, this one seems way off the difficulty curve.

Also, I had a problem with the WCC "falling" off of the buttons, i.e., if the cube is on the edge of the button, it will often randomly bounce off, creating general havoc for the player. In the aforementioned puzzle, this was especially annoying - we finally manage to couple cube and button, only to have the door slam closed milliseconds before we fire a portal, forcing us to repeat the process. Definitely not map breaking, but if you plan to update again at some point, this could be something to fix.

Now that I'm done pointing out my problems with this map, the good things: the anti-gravity fields are great, and the new particle effects are a great addition. You made great use of them, to the point where they never felt overused or redundant - every puzzle had a unique way to defy gravity to reach out goals. Using the WCC as an elevator was especially cool. I remember hopping on, wondering if this would actually work, and then slowly rising up through the shaft. Awesome.

The non-anti-gravity puzzles were good as well. They didn't feel as well thought out as the rest of the map - very standard "get X from A to B" type stuff. Not that it wasn't fun, and given that it wasn't the main feature of the map, it's forgivable, but still, for all the innovation you brought in with anti-gravity fields, I expected more than simply putting a button on the ceiling.

Overall, I loved this map almost as much as I loved my Aperture Science Weighted Companion Cube. Excellent puzzles, great new ideas, and high caliber map design make it a solid map in all respects; being able to make an infinite portal loop where the cube is forever falling up makes it a clear winner.

I look forward to playing this updated map, but in the contest version I never figured out the fling puzzle. I eventually realized that I could pass that part by: placing a portal on the ceiling and falling through onto the ledge of the window up there. I could walk along the ledge to where I could just drop the cube and have it float up to the button.

I'd be interested to see a video of the intended solution to that puzzle.

hm i'd like to do a video of my map , but i have no idea how to make one o.0
any help?

I loved it! Anti-gravity was great, wcc was lookin' good as usual. I see people had problems with the wcc-fling. I certainly did not, didn't anybody think to get the wcc going at terminal velocity? When done right, that is the coolest part of the level, except maybe the wcc elevator.

Good job, keep mapping!

MrCow wrote:
hm i'd like to do a video of my map , but i have no idea how to make one o.0
any help?

http://youtube.com/watch?v=Gq4jS4cNnHA

Here ya go

hey thanks a lot ^^
funny to see how other people play my map.

here's how i do it:
1. room quite the same
2. room you made a portal to reach the button, i stand on the cube to reach the button
3. room you fling with the ceiling and the floor, i fling with the wall to reach the button
4. room we just hop the cube the same way
5. room you place the portals exactly right to fling the cube, but you make it complicated to get through the door, you can just shoot a portal through the door and don't have to fling up there
last room is the same again ^^ nice

That was a fun map to play. Nice job! and grats on winning the November contest. Nice use of anti-gravity and switches.

I voted for this map not because of the neat reverse gravity effect, but because it made me feel like the Compaion Cube was a required part of the journey, and as someone else said in the voting thread, it felt like we were partners through the map.

For the fling room I did a trampoline portal placement and had my cube floating inbtween the portals so when I came down I "kicked" it into the anti grav fields.

For the WCC fling I just put a portal on the ceiling where the "x" was, a portal on the wall panel you're supposed to fling from and just jumped and released the cube into the anti-gravity field. No terminal velocity required.

By the way, I loved this map. Some of it was very intimidating at first, but once you figure everything out it's pretty much sublime. The anti-gravityness wasn't obvious at first (I thought, in the first room, you had to throw the box into the switch while running through the door, using a portal. I wasn't aware that a gravity field existed. That could be made a bit more clear.)

Other than that, this was most excellent.

Edit: Oh yeah, and the WCC elevator...genius.

First off, this was a very well and cleanly built level, not to mention fun. However, I'm fairly confident I didn't beat a single puzzle the way it was meant to be beaten.

||I had the portal text and sounds turned off, so except for visuals, I had no interaction with the game. I just looked at the gravity thing and somehow knew exactly what it was as if it'd been in the full game and it was just second nature to know it's function....good design on your part i guess.

then, for the majority of the rest of the game, i portaled through portals in a very sneaky-like fashion, totally circumventing some door based puzzles. (a la speed runs of the beginning of level 19)||

but over all, fun, I enjoyed myself

Excellent map, I enjoyed it a lot. The visual flow made the puzzles more intuitive.

excellent map man, totally deserving of the award. No complaints from me at all

PRetty cool stuff you have, and i belive i just realized something, technically what me and Mr.Cow have made isn't Anti-Grav, Its just simply applying force towards an object, in a certain direction. Anti-Gravity is where the Objects mass, and total weight become 0.

So with that said, Hooray for 1/2 anti-gravity!

Yes, in this case it would be reverse gravity.

Great map, I enjoyed it a lot.
When I understood that I should return to the first room to get that damn cube and bring it two or three rooms after, I was like "damn, I knew I should have taken it with me from the start".
I also liked that last room when I tried to put that cube into the incinerator and noticed that the cubic hole on the glass pane was way too small to pass it. Man, I tried to force it into every possible angle before realizing that there was a concrete ceiling above the incinerator.
Well done !

NykO18 wrote:
Great map, I enjoyed it a lot.
When I understood that I should return to the first room to get that damn cube and bring it two or three rooms after, I was like "damn, I knew I should have taken it with me from the start".

Most custom mappers try to adhere to the sandard that if its a companion cube the player needs to bring it with them through the map, use it to solve most if not all the puzzles, and then be forced to euthanize it before stepping onto the elevator at the end. Also, that whole idea was the theme of the monthly contest that Mr.Cow's "cpm_wccmap" won first place in.