I've been wading through some truly awful maps of late, so I need to blow off some steam. Here's a list of the mistakes amateur mappers keep persistently making, to my chagrin.

These are six things everyone hateth, and seven that are an abomination unto the Portal Community:

#7 Him that doth not think of sequence-breaking solutions.

#6 A deceitful level design that offereth unintuitive solutions.

#5 Reflexes that are swift being required.

#4 Minds that devise to leave empty space.

#3 Levels that trap innocent players.

#2 A plain test.

#1 Misaligned textures.

WinstonSmith wrote:
--Bad integration of HL2 concepts. Possibly any integration of HL2 concepts.

Ahem gravitygun.

-Overconfidence in mapping skill
-Unwillingness to learn
-(Improper) use of vertex or model textures

CamBen wrote:
Ahem gravitygun.

I was thinking more "OMFGZOMBIES I SHOULD TOTALLY PUT TWENTY OF THEM IN A TOO-BRIGHT ROOM WITH A METROCOP AND...UH...NON-FUNCTIONAL VORTIGAUNT YES VORTIGAUNT"

CamBen wrote:
would indeed be

You say that as though it hasn't happened.

WinstonSmith wrote:
CamBen wrote:

would indeed be

You say that as though it hasn't happened.

Really? In a Portal map? Pictures PLEASE ... or better, links!

Yishbarr wrote:
Mazes, rollercoasters, bad placed models, wrong textures, 128 hallways, bad optimization, crawling tunnels, useless puzzle elements, trapdoor, no fog, no lighting, no cubemaps, no texture variation.

Yes, those are indeed specific symptoms of mappers taken by the seven sins.

WinstonSmith wrote:
CamBen wrote:

Ahem gravitygun.

I was thinking more "OMFGZOMBIES I SHOULD TOTALLY PUT TWENTY OF THEM IN A TOO-BRIGHT ROOM WITH A METROCOP AND...UH...NON-FUNCTIONAL VORTIGAUNT YES VORTIGAUNT"

I can think of ONE instance where that worked: Anyone remember Hetzchase Nailway? It worked there, but because that mod was already an acid trip, so such a jarring shift in mechanics and tone actually seemed quite fitting.

josepezdj wrote:
WinstonSmith wrote:

CamBen wrote:

would indeed be

You say that as though it hasn't happened.

Really? In a Portal map? Pictures PLEASE ... or better, links!

There was some mod called Portal-Life that just added HL2 ragdolls to all the Portal maps without changing anything. It looked ugly and all the prop_ragdolls made the map start to lag if you shot a portal.

No offense, Seaal, if you're here, but it wasn't a very good mod.

FelixGriffin wrote:
There was some mod called Portal-Life that just added HL2 ragdolls to all the Portal maps without changing anything. It looked ugly and all the prop_ragdolls made the map start to lag if you shot a portal.

No offense, Seaal, if you're here, but it wasn't a very good mod.

O_o

OMG!! MY EYES!!! >.<

RubbishyUsername wrote:
Now that there, with those manhacks, was one of the scariest shits I have ever played with.

Haha, Me? perfectly

yishbarr wrote:
Hetzchase nailway is great, but I don't understand the storyline.

The thing about Hetzchase is that there really is no storyline. There was supposed to be this huge ambitious multiple-universe multiple-storyline plot, and Ian Boswell worked on disparate bits of this, but the Nailway he actually released stitched the parts he worked on together. This had a beneficial (but presumably unintended) side effect: it was completely unpredictable in an extremely engaging way. I kept playing just to see what crazy situation and setting I would be thrown into next.