Hi guys, just signed up to post here some gratitude for making these maps, i've spent my afternoon going through maps on the downloads page and most of them have been fantastic, feels like they could be part of the main campaign. Highlights so far have been eco leaf, panelized, crossing the beams, compact compression and indigenous.

Going to try some co op with a buddy later, i was wondering, are there any maps or can there be any maps designed for more than 2 people to play? I imagine some insanely difficulty 4-player map

Thanks and keep it up!

Welcome to the forums Xello! Pretty much as soon as you start mapping yourself, (you will eventually, believe me,) you will learn what a brush is.

I don't think 4 player co-op would be realistic. 4 sets of portals, (8 maximum,) would be a bit of a stretch, and designing challenges that takes 4 people to solve would be very hard to do. The challenges would end up being simple, rarely hair pullingly challenging, or most likely broken, so only 3 people would be required to complete it. A nice thought though! And I guess this is what people originally thought about co-op, so it might be possible. But not on Portal 2. Heavy modification would be required to get a 4, let alone 3 player chamber; far beyond just mapping.

One thing I'd like to point out, is that custom mapping can introduce stuff not in the game. For example; fire/water, bomb catchers, simulated gravity flips, paradox chambers that would be impossible to construct, and pnumatic diversity vents that were pulled from the game.

Well I'm glad you've found the glories of custom, user created content for PC (and mac, I guess,) games!

You mentioned my map I'm glad you enjoyed it.

I think 3-person coop would be pretty cool, if done well. But yeah, it's not currently possible.

Oh i don't think i have the time, patience or skills to make my own maps

I originally was looking for community portal 2 content after playing Portal Prelude and The Flash Version Map Pack for the original portal, are there any large packs like this yet? Perhaps someone could make all the best maps here sort of merge into one several-hour-long pack

Today's highlight has been "Decode" - genius of a map!

Portal Prelude is probably the best mod for portal, (one of the best for ANY game,) I have ever seen. To be completely honest, I would have been just as happy for that to be portal 2.

As I've said before, Portal 2 'killed' Portal in a few ways. For one, it added more light, happy comedy, instead of the dark 'comedy' of Portal. Portal Prelude stayed true to Portal, offering a dark feel to the game. I absolutly LOVE the ending. It's perfect perfect perfect. How you try to stop GLaDOS, kind of do ish in a way, but then 'die'. And then its raining outside, you're thrown on the ground, and you see the gman for an instant before blacking out and credits. The music was brilliant. Portal Prelude had one of my favorite, most emotional endings ever. Period.

If anyone here has never played portal prelude, GOOGLE IT, DOWNLOAD IT, AND PLAY IT NOW! You will NOT regret it.

What Gman? OH you mean Portal Prelude...
That game was awesome, the only thing that pissed me off is they used tts voices on human characters.

Oh damn, I still haven't finished Portal: Prelude. I think I got up to the part when Peter (or whoever had the green subtitles) was introduced, then I gave up soon after. Will have to come back to it though.

I agree very much with the concern that Portal 2 "killed" the feel of the original. As I think I read in some review, the best part of it atmospherically was when you were initially lost in the ruins of old Aperture - in every other part you had some helping hand to guide you.

Probably what I hate the most is the Dennis Rattman retcon. I always thought the "rat-man" Valve continually spoke of was just meant to be a metaphor for the many previous test subjects who had dug crawlspaces at various points. But now apparently he's a schizophrenic scientist who just happened to go on an adventure through like 3 different testing tracks and have a premonition that Chell was the "chosen one" to defeat GLaDOS.

But whatever. I enjoyed co-op.

'ey, thanks!

Prelude was...meh. Yeah, the puzzles were OK, but the difficulty curve was rather unstable and a bit annoying. I thought the GMan sightings were OK if not a bit overdone or unsurprising.

Also, one word: Manhacks. Bad idea.

The hacks were annoying, but kind of awesome in a way. I didn't think it was too hard, besides the part where you have to look behind a piston for a little portla spot. That pissed me off. The guy used tts voice cuz he was russian btw...

Killerblonde wrote:
The hacks were annoying, but kind of awesome in a way. I didn't think it was too hard, besides the part where you have to look behind a piston for a little portla spot. That pissed me off. The guy used tts voice cuz he was russian btw...

French. Not Russian. That and he/the team had neither the resources nor the time to hire a professional voice actor.

And kind of awesome in a way? Well, I guess, but I still think it was a horrible way to implement them at least. I guess the idea was to avoid them with portals--because there's obviously no way to defend yourself against them--but even so it felt a little lame to just rip an enemy out of HL2.

Well, at least GLaDOS put up more of a fight. I also found a "Super Mario Bros" warp room. That was awesome.

MasterLagger wrote:
Well, at least GLaDOS put up more of a fight. I also found a "Super Mario Bros" warp room. That was awesome.

Yeah but you could have Chell find a shotgun in Portal 2 and say she put up more of a fight against the turrets too but it still wouldn't fit.

But yeah, the Super Mario Brothers room was awesome. Has to have been one of the best easter eggs I've ever seen.

I have to admit that the "advisor-ish attack" she used was uncalled for. You know, the one she used to burn all the scientists.

My reaction:

French?

Well, I guess I'll take your word for it... I really don't know where I got Russian from...

GLaDOS in Portal Prelude was a little annoying to beat, (challenging is good, but this was just over the top,) but it had a ceartain charm. When you finally 'won' it really made you feel like you accomplished something, and then she just kills you anyway, and she already killed almost everyone in the enrichment center anyway. That gave it a bittersweet ending, that I loved.

Again, GLaDOS's advisor-ish attack, is just too much. She incaps the player at the end with it.

I have to agree with those who said Portal 2 ruined Portal in certain ways. I replayed Portal after beating 2, and it felt different to me. I was mildly annoyed by the timing-based puzzles that allowed a small margin of error, and didn't like the energy balls as much as all the elements in Portal 2.

Portal is still awesome, but it just wasn't the same for me after playing Portal 2, which is a longer, richer, and less timing-based game. (I know some people like timing-based puzzles, but I don't like having to retry something multiple times when I know what I have to do but just wasn't quick enough).

Portal also had more tricks and glitches you could pull without cheating. For example, knocking down a turret near the entrance to GLaDOS's Chamber so the bullets the turret shoots goes through the Emancipation Grid, hits GLaDOS and knocks down her cores.
The some test chambers also had more than one solution compared to the test chambers in Portal 2.

The entire chamber design was different in Portal 2. In the original, they felt like they had been designed for actual testing, to see how well subjects could operate the portal device and if they could get their head around specific concepts. Then, when you finish all the tests, you get to try out your skills in the "real world".

In the sequel, the tests no longer seem to be testing anything; they're more like puzzles where one has to sit down and think about which order to do things in. Whichever you prefer, I think it was somewhat of a mistake to return to the same format for Portal 2. It really feels redundant after a while.

SPOILER ALERT BELOW: (I'm too lazy to put the black boxes around every little thing that spoils something. If you're on the mapping forums reading about stuff and you didn't beat the games, you know what you're getting in to.)

Portal was meant to be a test; Valve didn't know how people would like the game. The HL referrance they threw it was probably for fun, because they didn't know if the game would be successful enough to bother continuing it.

Portal 2, because of its predecessor's success, was designed to reach as many people as possible. No more blood. No more red screens of near death, a 'cuter' looking Chell, instead of the beaten, weary Chell in portal 1. Humor over dark ambience. Good in GLaDOS over pure evil vs Chell. Lasers, bright lights, and plastic stuff over concrete, metal, and darkness.

Loyal fans of Portal 1 prefer a puzzle game with an unexpected twist storyline, and hugely unexpected tie in with Half Life. Portal 2 fans prefer puzzles, funny lines, and an perfect ending where all is good and you are set free. Portal 1's orignal ending was the best in my mind; you aren't sure if you died or not, you lost your only companion, and you don't know what state the world is in. But you are free one way or another; and that's what's important. In Portal 2, you have your cube, GLaDOS is kind of good 'again', everything is happy and the evil is out in space begging for redemption. (That last bit was actually darker than anything else in Portal 2; I'm suprised people think an immortal robot floating in space, wishing it could undo the damage it did is funny. In my honest opinion, that would be a fate worse than death.)

Anyhow, that's my spiel. It's kind of funny how a whole discussion was started just by a guy saying 'good job mappers!'.