UPDATE: beta release on page 4!

Original Post:
thought Id post some pics to show my progress on my map.

this is the first map ive ever done, so bear with me.

I haven't tweaked with the lighting yet, haven't built cubemaps, and the puzzle is only half done. and I've used combine shields in place of the fizzle particle effect until it is released.

let me know what you think

I'm designing it to challenge myself...

For instance, in order to test a new leg of the puzzle, I have to move the info_player_start because the puzzle is designed so that you have to do everything sequentially, with little to no pauses. so if you mess up it resets. If I didn't move the start for testing, it would take a long time to test it because I would have to get everything before it perfect to even get there... lol

Also I keep adding new ideas, I'm going to add a combine ball puzzle to it, which originally wasn't planned.

If you look at the right side of the first screenshot, you see other glass walls like those one the left, but its completely empty over there, I haven't gotten around to building that stage of the puzzle...

I felt I needed to post something, as others are already releasing maps. I spend a lot of time working on texturing (which is only in placeholder stage at this time) and fine details. I want to map to look awesome

as you can see in the first picture, as soon as you enter the room, you see first the button, then the door, lastly the cube up high in a glass observation room.

then on the left, is a square hole in the glass, with overlays of a 1dice dot, with an arrow pointing to the hole, right next to that is a pit you can use for thrust.

it is extremely linear, but sometimes you have less than a second to realise what you need to do and to do it, before it resets. but then you can take another go at it.

roger federer wrote:
sometimes figuring out what to do next is part of the puzzle.

True, however I'd prefer seeing a puzzlerooms goal quite quickly after a look around and then figure out how to get to it rather than having to first figure out which one of 5 ways I'm supposed to go. I think that with good level design figuring out where to go can be quite fun but personally I can feel very overwhelmed if I start on a map with holes and buttons everywhere without any hints as to where I'm supposed to go.

And for your first map, great work!

I'm very eager to play this one

the file size has gradually increased to 4mb, it started at like... 100k or something I forget, it gets bigger as I add stuff...

but I have a new problem, I was tweaking a new jump, and when I recompiled it, HL crashes when I try to load it, I've tried recompiling, restarting... same thing. I can load other maps just not mine...

anyone have any thoughts on that one?

Make sure that you have all of your models in your mod directory, as well as all of the materials.

4 minutes is NOT a good compile rate.

Myne is 3mb and is 33 seconds so i have no idea what you've done.

More than likely you would have hundreds on leaks.