messy, like my map.
nah just kidding, my map aint messy.

How many people are in this so far? Can we make a list?
Plus a small description of how large their piece is going to be and how hard. Just for easier assembly on the end.

Bulska's Addition to this Community Pack:
A long map with medium to hard difficulty. You'll need more brain then reflexes in this map, but bad reflexes won't get you far.

Bulska wrote:
...Plus a small description of how large their piece is going to be and how hard.....

as for me. if i can find the time to do anything. my piece is gunna be small. and medium-to-hard (depending on your skill i guess) i don't want to devote myself to anything large scale for two reasons: 1) i won't finish it, 2) it will be easier to fit into "place"

i'd rather see LOTS of little maps that are appropriately placed in difficulty (ie: easier-to-harder) and progressively getting there, instead of some maps with easy-to-hard built in.

It isn't really easy-to-hard, the map I'm making.

But if you put the difficulty on a graph compared to map progress, it would swing a little up & down.

But overal a fun map to play, not something you could frustate your brains out with. Because you have some simple puzzles along your way to make it more interresting to get from one hard puzzle to another.

Also to settle the mind a bit; If you need to do hard puzzles all the time I get frustrated, but in my map is so that after done one hard puzzle, you have some tiny easier puzzles on your way to the next hard puzzle.

I'll throw in some screenies sometime.
Who all is in this work-together map fest again?

I'm trying I get something, but the orb launcher and doors aren't working.

use the Prefab Package somewhere on this forum.

If you're already doing so, then you've directed the triggers incorrectly. Can happen to anyone.

Portalboat wrote:
I'm trying I get something, but the orb launcher and doors aren't working.

Try fixing them.

I think is a great idea and could be used as a promotional tool for the site. I will be making at least one map for submission, hopefully it lives up to the TWP standards. I've been working on some concepts for chamber_02 that should work well for this project.

As far as submitting VMFs go, I have no problems with that. In fact, I'd welcome some constructive criticism on my mapping technique from some of more experienced members if they chose to do so. I know this isn't a mapping clinic but if someone noticed something I could be doing better it'd be cool to know about it.

Should all the sequences start and stop with an elevator if we're doing small snipets? Or does that mean each piece should be large enough to support the two elevators? And does that mean every BTS should be self encapsulated inside a segment?

Sorry to be pedantic, but trust me projects like this go a lot smoother with ground rules set up ahead of time.

Also, if there is a lot of maps submitted, we could create multiple ways to win and different courses to take.

Good idea, but do make it clearly that there are multiple routes out. Because I don't want my map, or anyone's elses map for that matter, hidden behind some BTS areas.

Holy shit 70 reply's, awesome sauce guys.

I would love to make a couple maps for this, but i definately think the maps should be small, it would make stringing them together easyer and we would have more control over the difficulty levels.

I would be up for making any difficulty lvl of the no portal gun maps (with the auto portals) or some of the easy-medium portal gun maps. Making BTS stuff is what i tend to do normaly so I wouldn't mind doing that. I'll post some screens of some of the things I've made but I'll make what ever type of map we need more of for this

ps. I think the original post/guidelines needs to be updated to include some recent ideas...

Tigger wrote:

msleeper wrote:
This is kind of a planning thread, what do you think would be best?

I think knowing what the "story" we're wanting to tell would be good.

Is this an alternative Portal Story, ala the Portal Flash Map Pak? Are we using Glados, or creating new voices for another AI? Is this just a set of maps thrown together to prove we can map, ala a map pak?

Do we want to put this in the HL2 setting the way the Portal Flash Pack did?

Do we want to make this an early setting ala the Hurricane maps?

Do we want to make this a Post Glados map maybe? One where... the AI is gone, self destructed, post Portal, and things are broken? Maybe every map has some lost power or devices that don't work and the player has to figure out how to escape?

Well, maybe it would only be better to have a large selection of smaller maps. You might have to load more often, but it offers more opportunity for variation. You'd play a map of a different author every few minutes, so in case you get bored of, for example, Hurricaaane's maps, you know you'll switch to MrTwoVideoCards' map once you got through it.

It could slightly damage continuity, but it would certainly benefit gameplay.

I've got a fairly large map T_T

I hope it's not a problem, I didn't know we're gonna prefer small maps untill I already got a long way with my map...

Unless you HAVE to keep it as one level, stick an elevator in it, no one will realise that it isn't two separate maps. and you get to submit the map as one map

My previous post was just an idea, my opinion. I don't think it really matters. We can have both very large and very small chambers. Maybe it's best if we add some kind of length-indicator to the chamber signposts... I'm sure there will be huge differences in lengths, some maps only containing 2 puzzles whilst others contain 10.

Sorry, can't stick an elevator in. In time you get to other rooms, but you return to the old rooms to retrieve items such as cubes and energy balls from it.

I've also came up with something new. Energy Pellet Checkpoints.
You get an energy pellet in a catcher somewhere in the map, the wall will rotate, hiding the catcher but revealing a launcher. There's also a button coming from the ground. Now you can use this to get your energy pellets.

To prevent geting all the way back trough the map if your pellet bounces wrong.

edit:
nevermind, I thought this was a contest, my bad.

I might try and get something in, I don't know, maybe I'm infected with the Aperture Science Infectious Cannot-Be-Arsed Disease :U

This sounds like fun!

I'd love to put something together for this mapping project! I've always liked mapping for Portal - it's a very neat game/concept. (I created gm_portal_challenge way back in the day).

I'll check out the portal pack and see if there's a few concepts I can whip up over the weekend. Hooray!