Yes, I have edited the music so that it fits for looping and since it is .wav file to keep a reasonable size.

I'll be looking forward to see your "simple" way.

Alright, I don't know how the others did it, but the gel just won't redirect from in the funnels. So, I can't do a demo of the simple solution, but I found a way to paint the entrance where the foreign writing is (by going to the dropper, shooting under and then on the funnel and wait till the gel gets there and drop it), and then jump up to the exit using a lightbridge on the big white area with the flip panel. I don't know if that will help any unintended solutions, but it exists.

If the music is looped and that, do you mind if I use the file from the map BSP instead? I'm not exactly sure what you did there.

yishbarr wrote:
do you mind if I use the file from the map BSP

Oh, I'm glad you like it. Sure you're free to use it. I'd only add one technical note: put it in a folder portal2/sound/vo/cavejohnson to keep it playing while player is in a funnel.

Don't know if you will still be interested to know, but I found an alternative solution that allows to bypass entirely chamber 2 and you don't even need to get into the high funnel of chamber 1. It sounds similar to what MarKiu posted in this forum, though he does not say whether he used this to do the bypass. Maybe it is already in one of the videos, but I did not want to look since I haven't found the right solution yet (so, sorry, I did not make my own in case it was pointless).

Basically you do like MarKiu and
paint the ground and a lightbridge to jump back to the entrance area with the Japanese sign. From there (again as MarKiu) you can shoot a portal on the wall with the lasergrid in Chamber 2. But if you shoot that portal on the left instead of the right, you can put some paint in the funnel and bring it to the entrance area, making it fall right after the sign (with the inertia of removing the funnel, just before it hits the wall). You then send the cube in the funnel to reach the pressure plate. Then you use the gel to jump forward and shoot a bridge under your feet from the lasergrid wall, and voila! You can access the last door and the cube is waiting for you.

At that point I expected having to replace the cube on the plate by raising the bridge underneath it, but as it happens the cube was sticking to the pressure plate on the wall even after removing the funnel or bridge. My alternate solution would work without it, but is this an intended feature of those special cubes or a bug? If it is intended, it would be nice for this to be part of the prelude/tutorial.

As for the right solution, I did manage to get the cube to the pressure plate deactivating the last lasergrid, but could not see how to move it without dropping blue gel on it and therefore being able to go to chamber 1 from the exit and back (since removing the cube reactivate the lasergrid blocking the way round). But then that's precisely how I found that alternative solution, so if you do that you don't need to do the rest. I presume there is another way then?

Anyway, I like the map a lot - otherwise I would not wrote about it and still be obsessing about finding the right solution - and the altered elements works well in introduing a new thinking dimension. But the faith plate trick in room 1 is really ninja (not almost!), unless I do it wrong, especially with the placement helpers because for me I could not get enough height out of the gel bounce until I managed (with a lot of luck) to shoot the portals outside the placement helpers (low on the bridg and high on the wall). So in the end I also used the bridge/gel method.

I also had a couple of questions:
- Could you confirm that the right solution does NOT necessitate pushing the cube with the player?
- In the BTS area, I noticed the gel dripping but it does not seem to stick to the bridge. Is this normal or a bug? NB: I confess I was noclipping to check that, since I managed to enter in the first bit but not to progress, I wanted to see if it made sense trying to bring in the bridge. But probably it is not possible to do it in the regular way so does not matter anyway.

Well, it looks like it's high time to fix that flaw with a possible painting the entrance area.

As for the cube sticking to the exit button, it's a clear bug. I had to create a complicated workaround to prevent painted cube bouncing against the button that envolve disable motion for cube. And apparently something went wrong. I can't check it so far.

As for the right solution, you're on a good way. You've done half the work. If you need any hint just tell me.

And answering your questions:
- There's no need in pushing the cube for any task in the map.
- Gel in BTS area is just for visuals and normaly you can't extend the bridge under it. And I've noticed that if gel is flowing verticaly it leaves only a little spot on bridge and nothihg at all if dripping while being dropped from funnel paint bridge properly. Another bug?

And it realy make sense trying to bring in the bridge

Thanks for following up on this since it's already an old map. But not everybody can play them just when they have come out - though I understand why many map makers just move on.

Anyway I finally managed to solve it, though I did had to push the cube with the player a tiny bit to put it on the second-to-last plate since I caught it and mysefl with the bridge instead of funnel (or you have to be very lucky with the rebound). So it still is not the right solution, will look a bit more.

About the BTS area, though, I could indeed use a hint, because the method I used to get in is really ninja and kamaikaze indeed - once in no way to get out without dying. Given the place from where you have to shoot the first portal in, I really don't see how you can do it and stay outside without dying.