Estimated Difficulty: Hard

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The layout of the room and the obstacles seems a bit haphazard. The fail-state water is always a bit annoying. A few things (like the ceiling fizzlers, the faith plate) don't seem to do anything, and I'm not sure why there's both a fizzler and a laser grid blocking the excursion funnel. I don't think you can shoot through a laser grid anyway. All it serves is being another side of the little starting that instantly kills you if you step too far.

That wall-jump up to the second switch is probably my favorite part of the whole thing, but even that seems vaguely like a clich?.

The faith plate and ceiling fizzler were intended to be relevant and now are with my most recent edits to the map.

Thanks for the feedback.

JustaLackey wrote:
You actually can shoot through laser grids.

You're right. That makes sense then. Given that you have the light bridge on that side of the doorway. Personally, I would have put the light bridge outside that opening and used 90 degree retracting plates to block it off instead of the laser and fizzler combo, but this is purely aesthetic.

JustaLackey wrote:
The faith plate and ceiling fizzler were intended to be relevant and now are with my most recent edits to the map.

Those are some really nice improvements!

Now the faith plate is part of the puzzle, and the timing shots to get the light bridge under you as you fall are surprisingly easy (I got it on the second try).

I still don't understand what the horizontal fizzler ceiling is doing that the vertical fizzlers crossing it can't do. The only purpose they seem to serve is to help you fall once you're up to speed when you're running up the orange gel on the diagonal light bridge. I don't understand why the vertical fizzlers cant do this job, they are right there, like a single tile away from where you hit.

Still, I suppose that's more of an aesthetic gripe than an actual issue with the puzzle.

I like the changes to the puzzle for the second button as well, they bring the whole left side of the chamber together. Now there's a reason for going down to the bottom other than accidentally falling, the space at the top behind the glass is brought into the picture by having to actually stand on that side of the hole... it was good, but now it's even better.

What I still don't appreciate is the placement of black and white tiles. There's a theme of constriction and lack of freedom in the way the chamber is laid out. The way the blue gel is sticking out on tile from the rest of the floor sort of funnels you in one direction. The way there's only one white tile to use in the "basement" section makes me feel like I'm being told what to do. Same with the ceiling tiles in the faith plate corridor. There might as well be a big neon sign saying "place light bridge HERE", and while it may not add any difficulty or functionality to the puzzle to make the entire ceiling in that corridor white, I think it would give the player a sense of deciding where to place the bridge, rather than being told. Again, this is another thing that is mostly aesthetic and / or affecting how a player experiences the test rather than how he completes it.

As a whole though, nice map. I like the puzzles.

Death water is still annoying.

Quote:
I still don't understand what the horizontal fizzler ceiling is doing that the vertical fizzlers crossing it can't do. The only purpose they seem to serve is to help you fall once you're up to speed when you're running up the orange gel on the diagonal light bridge. I don't understand why the vertical fizzlers cant do this job, they are right there, like a single tile away from where you hit.

When I first designed the map I had anticipated more vertical lift in the final jump and made the fizzler in response. When I discovered that there was no vertical lift, I decided to keep it in cause I thought it looked cool.

So yeah, aesthetics.

eviloatmeal wrote:
What I still don't appreciate is the placement of black and white tiles. There's a theme of constriction and lack of freedom in the way the chamber is laid out. The way the blue gel is sticking out on tile from the rest of the floor sort of funnels you in one direction. The way there's only one white tile to use in the "basement" section makes me feel like I'm being told what to do. Same with the ceiling tiles in the faith plate corridor. There might as well be a big neon sign saying "place light bridge HERE", and while it may not add any difficulty or functionality to the puzzle to make the entire ceiling in that corridor white, I think it would give the player a sense of deciding where to place the bridge, rather than being told. Again, this is another thing that is mostly aesthetic and / or affecting how a player experiences the test rather than how he completes it.

You have no idea how much I agree with you! After actually thinking up a puzzle, this is easily the next hardest step. What can I make portalable and what can't I? What breaks the map and what makes the puzzle too predictable?

I have a very good friend who I sit down at my computer and have him play my map. He is excellent at finding the most annoying ways to break my map, so it is him you can blame for all the black tiles (or at least a good portion of them).

The difficulty with that lower room was that if I did not restrict the players in the way that I did there would have been a LOT of ways to solve it. More than I would have liked, whose solutions I think would come easier than the one that I made. I really do try to make as much of my maps portalable as possible, but it's just a constant struggle.

I should probably just make maps where the positioning of your portals isn't super important, but that would mean I'd have to stop using gels and I love them to death. Also, I think those types of puzzles are harder to think up...

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Death water is still annoying.

So don't die,

JustaLackey wrote:
When I first designed the map I had anticipated more vertical lift in the final jump and made the fizzler in response. When I discovered that there was no vertical lift, I decided to keep it in cause I thought it looked cool.

So yeah, aesthetics.

That's fine.

JustaLackey wrote:
The difficulty with that lower room was that if I did not restrict the players in the way that I did there would have been a LOT of ways to solve it. More than I would have liked, whose solutions I think would come easier than the one that I made. I really do try to make as much of my maps portalable as possible, but it's just a constant struggle.

Well, it's not that big a deal. I'm sure most people will care more about the gameplay than the looks.

JustaLackey wrote:
I should probably just make maps where the positioning of your portals isn't super important, but that would mean I'd have to stop using gels and I love them to death. Also, I think those types of puzzles are harder to think up...

It's possible to combine the two, you don't have to restrict yourself to having an entire chamber gel-enabled, so to speak, or having no gel at all. I'm sure there are plenty of ways to incorporate both into your chambers. There are plenty of fun ways to restrict the player without having to resort to black and white tile placement, even in the PTI. Fizzlers make really nice dividers, especially coupled with toggleable obstacles like moving plates. With time and practice we'll all get better at finding creative ways to give tests a little extra flare and challenge.

JustaLackey wrote:
So don't die,

But I want to be able to figure out by trial and error what does and doesn't work. I want to step on to a faith plate to see where it goes without losing all my progress. What the water in many places does is severely punish the player (by resetting all progress to zero) for interacting with the interactive elements of your chamber. You're inviting someone to jump on blue gel, and then punishing them for jumping on it and landing in the water. To me, that does not make sense. But if that's acceptable to you, then you should leave it that way, it's your decision how you want to encourage the player to play your map, and what cues you give him, and mostly it only affects how they feel about the map.

Personally I feel that it's possible and desirable to achieve a mechanism where failure sets you back only one or two steps in the map, rather than all the way to the beginning.

As an example from this map, in the faith plate corridor, if you replaced the water with a pit covered by a fizzler, failing to nail the skillshot at the first button would result in having to portal back up to the faith plate, then portaling back to the light bridge to put a portal on that, and then going back to the faith plate to try again, instead of having to stare at a load screen and listening to Cave and then doing that whole orange gel thing again before getting a second try.

But that's just my opinion.

Another alternative would be to show the player where a faith plate leads. If memory serves, there are a few chambers in the vanilla game where a cube spawns on a faith plate, which shows you exactly where it goes, and whether it will kill you to step on it.

You could also place the target on a wall instead of on the floor, so that it become more visible.