Hi, this is Metallbox19

First of all, a good day to all of you readers.

I'm currently working on a mod called "Sortal". I'm looking for members, who would like to join the project, which is currently based on the Portal²-engine.

I'm looking for mappers, modelers or voice actors to join my team.

The story of the mod looks like the following:
While Cave Johnson bult up Aperture Science, his younger brother Marc greeds after the power of Cave.
With access to Cave's research, he keeps copying his work. In this process, he's supported by Black Mesa,
who are glad to have found a way to exploit the research of Aperture.
Together with Marc, they're building an exact copy of Aperture- called Aperture²

One day, when Cave had discovered the betrayal of Marc, Black mesa had only one way to maintain the superior technology- they had to shut down Aperture.
So the investors of Black Mesa gave Marc the order to kill his brother, without whom Aperture science could not sustain.
Marc, who was corrupted with power and money, poisoned his brother with highly toxic moon minerals and took the blueprints to the latest Aperture-research: The portal research.
The plan worked out and the Original Aperture-facility was abandoned and began to decay.
Even though abandoned and forgotten, the virtual intelligence in Aperture, programmed to sustain the complex stayed alive.
It kept on working on the portal research. Kept testing. One day, a new, AI-designed experiment ripped open a portal to another dimension and destroyed a big part of the facility.
Marc however, who was working in Aperture² had rebuilt the Portalgun, who had an integrated AI for surveillance-purposes, called GlaDer (Genetic Lifeform and Disk Evolving Robot)

I'll reveal more details of the story for the team.
I have planned several cool features for Sortal, such as Cubes and Fizzler

[yt:1kipgzsa]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yF39iUs84gQ&list=PL3084A17E80959A07&feature=mh_lolz[/yt:1kipgzsa]

Thanks for reading. If you want to join the project, please contact me

http://steamcommunity.com/id/cssknaller17

Just out of curiosity, any reason you didn't just say "oh, this is an alternate-universe aperture"? Is it some detail of the story that'll be important later?

I can see you've got a complex idea going here, and I'm interested to see where the mod goes. I'm too busy with other projects to help out right now, though. Anyway, good luck with this.

Oh geee.....

I'm gonna be completely honest with you ... When I read your message on ModDB when you asked me to join your team, I just ignored it, because frankly - I find your mapping bad. I'm not saying I'm not the best mapper in the world, but at least I've got clear idea of what I want to map and stick to it.

And even in the event, in one of your alternate universes, I'd work with you - I'd feel obligated to fix every single map of yours. Because I'd be ashamed to have my name under maps that have chaotic model and overlays placement, mix'n'matched themes - that are being used just wrong, and crappy lighting. Being somewhat into graphics as well, I'd also have to fix every single texture of yours, because I don't like those either (but some might like them - with a bit of LSD or something) - which would render you the ideas guy.

I'm not saying its your fault that your skills are not great, at least yet, but unless people see you are skillful yourself the odds of them joining your team are... well very limited.

So I can watch this mod, I'd be excited to see you learn, I'm actually even more than happy to point out the mistakes to you and advise you how to improve the overall appearance of your maps, but don't expect any help from me other than that.

Just my two cents.
Not trying to offend you, just being honest.

If you'd want, I'd join as the guy who lends advice over mods.

I must please ask you to reconsider modding. I had the same idea as you, albeit with Portal. Alternate aperture. Lots of new content. But, I crashed and burned from it.

Do not consider it bad, I learned many, many lessons while crashing. But this mod, it sounds like my mod I tried to make.

I'd strongly advise, before even touching modding, having a good few maps as-is with hammer, not the PTI. You may think, like I did, "ugh, I don't care! I want to make this mod!". And trust me, I understand. And people told me to make some starting maps, but I thought that way. Following that thought will not get you anywhere good. I wish I had listened.

Try to make some small maps first. And hey, you could just edit them later to make them part of your testing track, so it won't be time wasted. But don't fall for what I did. Don't make a mod right off the bat. Furthermore, don't cling to the community. Focus on the game, not the advertising. If you focus on the feedback for a high-alpha mod, you will become semi-depressed. That's a given.

At the LEAST, please, Read through my mod experience.

And finally, compare every map you make to Portal 2 maps. Aim for the same quality as them.

Your multicolored fizzler/box combination looks pretty cool, and you have the potential for an interesting storyline. Kizzycocoa and everybody else is right, though, mods are a LOT of work for even a little bit of quality setup.

I suggest making this into a map pack; more people will play it and you'll get better feedback. Also, you can upload it via the Workshop.

I can imagine many puzzles with those... I can't really help since I'm really busy, so good luck!

I would be happy to compose some music for this mod/map-pack and a little bit of testing. I have limited Hammer experience, so I like to think that would help in testing.

I second most of the advice given in this thread except just a couple of Kizzy's points (naturally). Do focus on feedback at every oppurtunity, as much as possible. Of course, be reasonable; don't share every single little change you've made to your maps. Regularly ask a core group as to what they honestly think of what you've done. If you're talking to the right people, the feedback will be generally "That's bad, this isn't great, what the hell's going on here?", but then you have lots of things you can improve on. That's basically all you can do, improve on your mistakes. If you want (often brutally) honest opinions of your progress, make a couple of posts to Thinking With Portals. Some find it too abrasive, but personally I think it's a reality check for a lot of mappers.

Also, keep in mind that the official Portal 2 maps were made by professionals who are among the best at what they do, so don't expect to equal the maps in all aspects in a short period.

However, the rest of advice in this thread I agree with. Good luck

Jomonay wrote:
If you want (often brutally) honest opinions of your progress, make a couple of posts to Thinking With Portals. Some find it too abrasive, but personally I think it's a reality check for a lot of mappers.

I [u:2bobmo99]HIGHLY[/u:2bobmo99] suggest you do NOT do this at any costs.

some things just aren't worth it. this is one of those things.

Jomonay, I'm surprised. you know he is new to mapping in general, as do I. TWP would [u:2bobmo99]rip him apart[/u:2bobmo99] if he went there.

Kizzycocoa wrote:

Jomonay wrote:
If you want (often brutally) honest opinions of your progress, make a couple of posts to Thinking With Portals. Some find it too abrasive, but personally I think it's a reality check for a lot of mappers.>
I [u:akgl3p4u]HIGHLY[/u:akgl3p4u] suggest you do NOT do this at any costs.

some things just aren't worth it. this is one of those things.

Jomonay, I'm surprised. you know he is new to mapping in general, as do I. TWP would [u:akgl3p4u]rip him apart[/u:akgl3p4u] if he went there.

uhh....

He did go there lol. Actually I think he went there first, and they told him the same stuff we are: Do not mod until you've learned well with Hammer. Make it a mappack, and use pakrat to put the custom fizzler content into the map so it can be uploaded to the Workshop. It will save both you and the community alot of grief, arguements and yelling, trust me.

Kizzycocoa wrote:

I [u:1udi8n40]HIGHLY[/u:1udi8n40] suggest you do NOT do this at any costs...
TWP would [u:1udi8n40]rip him apart[/u:1udi8n40] if he went there.

Proof: Thinking With Portals tearing him apart

Kizzycocoa wrote:

I [u:th9nw4uu]HIGHLY[/u:th9nw4uu] suggest you do NOT do this at any costs...
TWP would [u:th9nw4uu]rip him apart[/u:th9nw4uu] if he went there.

I kinda doubt that. There's a LOT more new mappers on there now, and all the older members who were less friendly don't go on as much.

Anyway, back on topic, I wouldn't cancel the mod completely, but it might be a good idea to try and release a couple full-length maps first, just to show you have a certain amount of quality.

Uh. Maybe I missed something, but the TWP thread is pretty much identical to this one. People telling guy not to exceed your grasp and that the ideas weren't original or interesting, so on and so forth. I'm not sure how that constitutes "ripping him apart". Unless anything that isn't unabashed ass kissing and unwarranted encouragement counts. It would be one thing if he refused to acknowledge his inexperience and call everyone "negative", "trolls", and "flamers" who cautioned him not to tackle something as ambitious as a "mod" which there's no such thing as in Portal 2 btw. It's not like we haven't all seen that before.

Though it looks like he hasn't responded to either of these two threads, so only time will tell I guess.

msleeper wrote:
It would be one thing if he refused to acknowledge his inexperience and call everyone "negative", "trolls", and "flamers" who cautioned him not to tackle something as ambitious as a "mod" which there's no such thing as in Portal 2 btw. It's not like we haven't all seen that before.

Though it looks like he hasn't responded to either of these two threads, so only time will tell I guess.

Actually you can make a mod for Portal 2. You can do everything any other Sourcemod can do (replace content, sound and particle manifests etc.) with one major exception of using source code, but no recent VALVe game (save ASW) has given the source code out, so that's not new. Plus Portal 2 has Vscripts which is sort of like Pseudocoding, so it has a semi-workaround for it. You can't substract, but you can add. (See: HMW's Sendificator)