This is the first part out of 2 of a mappack made in a personal style and with a subtle little story that I hope someone will appreciate. There is one common element through the pack, the bounce gel. I've intentionally splitted the mappack in two mainly because of workshop limitations, but also in order to make a distinction between two difficulty levels.

This first part is called "The Adventure" because it contains the beginning and the end of the story. These are challening puzzles along 2 maps where I've tried to be innovative and to use not very common mechanics to move the gel around and use it to reach the exit. I've focussed this time into making clear & clean chambers, showing the elements straightly and avoiding distractions; I really hope I eventually achieved it. I've tried my best to design these puzzles for the average player, meaning that no ninja acrobatics are involved in any of the solutions or high-skilled maneuvers. Despite that, some flings and quick moves will be needed... and LOTS of thinking with portals and logic is required all the way through. There's an increasing difficulty level throughout the pack, but all of them are solvable with *perseverance*, and logic... of course.

Obviously a solution video will be available, but not for a while.

Personal Note

I know my maps are more difficult than the average, but I would like to ask everyone to don't underrate the map only because you cannot solve it, I think there are more variables to take into account than just the difficulty level before rating, and also I encourage everyone to ask for hints before giving up ...Anyways, I beg anyone who is willing to give a negative rate to the map to at least post his/her reasons, because comments are immensely helpful for a mapper to help us to improve from map to map, and I DO take comments very seriously to improve and develop better stuff each time... and please think that we only map for fun, we're not paid at all for this, so comments are our only real reward

Credits and thanks

• First of all, as always, big and special thanks to my dear friend Vane... for being there every single time I come up with a new project leaving our mod aside temporaly, for helping me on the design of many custom elements, and for believing in me unconditionally. And also for a detailed and valuable feedback after testing all the chambers while she is still a portal player beginner. You're just too awesome!
• Thanks to Greykarel, Headshot and Srs Bsnss for beta-testing and supporting this project offering me useful advices to improve the maps.
• Thanks to Sickle for helping me out with my poor vscripting!
• Thanks to Komaock for the Skybox texture.
• Thanks to Rimando Nillo, Jr. for the awesome "Dancing juice" font!
• Thanks to Fluppy and Requiemsoul for the last minute pre-release check!
• Soundtrack by josepezdj (made in Reason 5.0)

Saving

There are a few checkpoints already in the map that will save your progress and a pop-up message will let you know. I made it so the progress is always saved in a file called oxygen01*. This way you can reload it by typing on the console load oxygen01* without erasing any other previous savegame.

Of course you can still use F6 to quicksave the game... but that would erase previously saved files, as you know.

Changelog

• 2014/06/14 - v1.0: First release
• 2014/06/18 - v1.1: Increased map-1 gel dropper height, allowing more time to perform the required tasks / Added a system in map-1-dot1 to break the gel blob if it gets stick to a bridge without breaking / Added grate to the water pool in map-2 / Added some glass floor in map-2 to cut some unintended moves / Added escape routes in map-2 to avoid possible entrapment / Made all the soundscapes softer and lower.

Click here to download Oxygen Station - PART I: "The Adventure"

Click here to download Oxygen Station - PART I: "The Adventure"

But seriously, you've made everything so pretty that those laser fields are quite odd visually. I don't need to tell you how awesome the map is despite of this massive huge inexcusable insignificant flaw. Great map.

It just fits all in, the music, the textures, models, was really awesome!

10/5

But getting the first cube was driving me nuts already due to the needed fast moves that failed a dozen times. I don't think I'll continue any time soon to protect my nerves - especially if the map is going to get harder from there.

I think these environments combined with purely logic puzzles like Mevious' Employee of the month stuff could be really successful.

@Neco: Thank you my dear friend for such a nice comment! It makes me really happy. I hope to know soon about your progress on the puzzles

@Toncica: haha... you must know that I was so tempted to make the lasergrids greenish or blueish in order to make them match better in this environment, but I didn't eventually want to in order to preserve the known scheme and avoid confusion I could give it a think and replace the lasergrids with glass walls... maybe in another future version.

@Zivi7: Next update will include a higher gel dropper, that will add more time to perform the tasks in map 1. I hope that you wait up until I can release it later today (or tomorrow at the latest) and give it another go! Anyway, well-noted with thanks your suggestion of "pure logic maps Mevious style" into this environment... I wish I'd have Mevious puzzlemaking ability! :p Don't we all? But the sad truth is I that haven't got it! I'm only me! I get you point though.

And as usual your maps look superb with amazing custom content!
5/5

Probably only affects people who habitually bhop.

@Lp: Thanks gal! I'm happy to hear that you managed it eventually! I cheer you up to try chamber 2, I think the mechanics in there are very fun, although the final move is hard to find out (not to perform)

@quaternary: thanks for pointing that out, I can make the elevator starts going downwards from a lower point and that should fix it. Cheers!

The music track is really nice, the way it changes as you move through the map. I think it is on par with the music in the main game, in that it's not really a problem to have it play continuously in a loop. I did need to turn the sound off briefly at one point in order to really get my think on, but overall it was very pleasant. You did a great job with that!

There are only two small issues I noticed:

1: Chell doesn't have a walking animation, probably because of the model switching. You can get around that by setting the model multiple times with a short delay in between. (I use 4 setmodel calls with delays of 0, 1, 2 and 4 seconds.)

2:
When a paint blob oscillates between portals, it gradually looses momentum. With cubes, you can prevent that by first launching them with a catapult. That changes some property of the cube that enables it to oscillate indefinitely. Maybe that works for blobs too; just putting a very weak trigger_catapult below the dropper might do it.
I managed to get through most of by myself except for the last part of room 2. I had a couple of ideas, but all of them require special quantum relativity entanglement... I'm going to give it a rest now, and wait for the a-ha moment to occur naturally

aU8Q6YuzdQc

Toodles and good night!

(Marvelous map btw. So beautiful and so much fun)

HMW wrote:
1: Chell doesn't have a walking animation, probably because of the model switching. You can get around that by setting the model multiple times with a short delay in between. (I use 4 setmodel calls with delays of 0, 1, 2 and 4 seconds.)

Well, I tried several approaches for this to no avail. At first I thought that it might have to do with the moment I fire the SetModel outptut, since the player just "comes from" a prop_vehicle_choreo_generic, I changed in v1.1 the moment to SetModel to 0.50 secs after the player has already got off the vehicle, but it seems not to be working properly. Thanks for the suggestion, I'll try it out

About your second suggestion, well, I don't think it's needed much more time to be able to perform the moves for the puzzles since v1.1 and also everything has been developed considering that loss of momentum on the blobs. I tried the mechanics to look natural and never thought of tweaking the physics... and reading you're almost done with the map, I think it hasn't been such a big deal? Noted your suggestion with thanks though!

HMW wrote:
I managed to get through most of by myself except for the last part of room 2. I had a couple of ideas, but all of them require special quantum relativity entanglement... I'm going to give it a rest now, and wait for the a-ha moment to occur naturally

I'm SO glad to hear, man! Keep on trying and good luck! Don't hesitate to ask for a subtle hint for the final move

@Shakky: Hahaha... AMAZING VIDEO!! Didn't expect anything less from you, my friend. Loved your version of the intro!
With regards to those little shortcuts, I'll check out how to fix them... for chamber 1 is easy, that was a stupid carelessness on my side and a proper playerclip will do :p For chamber 2, all shortcuts are fairly easy to fix, except for the triple jump is more difficult to prevent since distances are already set to make possible the final move, but you can ninja it do it by air-strafing... I'll think about it...

@quatrus: Cheers for that progress! I'm glad to read the far you got already! For that final step, look for portalable surfaces once you have the cube pressing the ceiling button with the funnel

Cheers! Thanks for playing guys!