Hello, first time mapper here.

I made this map a while ago, and now have gotten bored/tired with devolving it. Especially with all the learning that I need to get it to where I want it.

In another words, I've just gotten really lazy.

However, I would like to share with everyone what I have done, and would love to know what your thoughts on my ideas of portal.

In particular, I believe my Emancipation Ball would be an interesting Multiplayer dynamic, since your portals fizzle if you get near/ touch it, and you can't place portals near it. However, the ball can pass through portals, therefore you'll need someone else to carry the ball for you. Could also be a good offense tool, for fizzling your opponents portals by giving them the ball.

But I digress.

PICS:

Please download the map here

http://imaxdvd.googlepages.com/pt_rescue.bsp

Since I don't think I'd be working on the map on anymore, so here is the vmf

http://imaxdvd.googlepages.com/pt_rescue.vmf

Bask in the glory of my terrible map skillz Do what you will with it, some comments would also be nice on improvements of other mapping no-nos.

holy crap man, looks like you got some crazy ass (read: new) ideas man i can't wait to check this stuff out! but you should really upload it to the download database... and provide 2 links if you want. to where it is now. and the new link in the database.

I just LOVE that emancipation sphere!

Unbelivable.You [SUBJECT NAME HERE] must be the pride of [SUBJECT HOMETOWN HERE]. i cant wait!
EDIT:HEy there must be only one cpmanion cube or not?My love is only!ARGH!

OK... My favorite map of all time is Hetzchase Nailway... but yours is really really entertaining me... even without any music or much voiceover, its just so much fun! If this is the quality of your work, i really think you need to do more!

||i love the emancipation theme. first you have to break out of a test, then you break out your cube friends, then you break out of a button test, then you emancipate everything from existence with that ball...... i don't know if you meant for me to be able to trap myself near the cake or way before that in the button puzzle, but i loved fiddling around and dreading all that tedium only to find glados is more helpful than normal sometimes.

i brought all my cube friends with me into the room with that mean ol' emancipation ball... man it even killed my cube it has no remorse!

i got to the turret room and killed all the turrets there, but that pedestal button at the top isn't working at all... i've tried to stand on it and in front of it, which i could, but still, it wouldn't press... so i'm not sure if i've reached the end, a bug, or a mistake of my own... have I?||

iamafractal wrote:
OK... My favorite map of all time is Hetzchase Nailway...

I've been meaning to ask you about that iamafractal. You say that a lot, so I downloaded that map to check it out, but I found it to be unplayable. Several of the map transitions don't work properly, and once you get to the cube incinerator it's impossible to progress any further. How can that be your favorite map?

Ralen wrote:
I've been meaning to ask you about that iamafractal. You say that a lot, so I downloaded that map to check it out, but I found it to be unplayable. Several of the map transitions don't work properly, and once you get to the cube incinerator it's impossible to progress any further. How can that be your favorite map?

the transitions won't ever work if you noclip. its protected against that. everything works great if you play normally.

as for the cube thing... you can get way past that heheh just think outside the er... path...

if its not properly going from one map to the next perhaps you didn't install it right? it works great for me. all 4 paths...

ah yes, I completely forgot to mention, that's the last room before I gave up out of frustration. The button was suppose to open a new portal to another room where you had to navigate a room with the emancipation ball while trying to avoid killing inconveniently placed cubes. But then I gave up with the whole programing of the new button, plus with the trying to optimize the map to maximize framerate only to find everything I do only increases lag and give up out of frustration.

Feel free to steal and develop onto the map, as it's something I don't think I'll get around finishing unless I learn some better (and faster, and easier) mapping skillz.

PS. Don't know if anyone notices, but there are gold, silver and bronze solutions for all the puzzles expect the last one. They are denoted by the three cake panels. the gold one is meant to be the more ninja-ish or harder to get and was hoping to have some sort of point system that effects how easy the last room was going to be, however I couldn't work out how to code that Maybe if someone could tell me how (and how to optimize the map better) I might be motivated to continue

Bosf wrote:
Unbelivable.You [SUBJECT NAME HERE] must be the pride of [SUBJECT HOMETOWN HERE]. i cant wait!
EDIT:HEy there must be only one cpmanion cube or not?My love is only!ARGH!

oh yeah, there are two companion cubes the other is hiding in a dark corner on the lower level of the blue building. There's a bit of metal blocking the way, but that's blow-up-able. Use the lamp if it's too dark

I heart companion lamp

DVD wrote:
ah yes, I completely forgot to mention, that's the last room before I gave up out of frustration. The button was suppose to open a new portal to another room where you had to navigate a room with the emancipation ball while trying to avoid killing inconveniently placed cubes. But then I gave up with the whole programing of the new button, plus with the trying to optimize the map to maximize framerate only to find everything I do only increases lag and give up out of frustration.

Feel free to steal and develop onto the map, as it's something I don't think I'll get around finishing unless I learn some better (and faster, and easier) mapping skillz.

PS. Don't know if anyone notices, but there are gold, silver and bronze solutions for all the puzzles expect the last one. They are denoted by the three cake panels. the gold one is meant to be the more ninja-ish or harder to get and was hoping to have some sort of point system that effects how easy the last room was going to be, however I couldn't work out how to code that Maybe if someone could tell me how (and how to optimize the map better) I might be motivated to continue

there are programmers on here with the necessary skills for sure... shmitz, msleeper, youme, hurricaaa, hedgehog come to mind right off the top of my head. come into the irc... your map is too good to just give up. i think it should be called emancipation. or freedom.

ok. this was really neat and inventive. i even named my sphere, her name is Emily and we are starting a family.
but on to the serious stuff...
||the outside area. although cool and rather well built "looking" it needs LOTS of work. some examples being you can climb on top of the building and that creates lots of visual errors. the "portable" areas seem to have no consistancy, some things you can portal on, some (looking exactly the same) you cannot. and. you can get into the area between the "tank" and the entry to aperture science... and that creates problems... you can also port behind the tanker in that area and move between the rock visuals and get stuck. its weird. but it would probly be fixable. also... Floating glass box??

the million button test although pretty neat i found it annoying as hell dragging all those boxes around. although to appear once in a series of maps might be ok. i think people would become seriously annoyed if this was a reacuring puzzle..

and when i reached the "up-high" button that is in the last room, i wasn't sure if i was done or not. (cuz you hadn't said that was the last room yet) so that was annoying but now i know

also i think i broke the multi-button room... i mean i got through it but i dont' think i did ALL the buttons.

the main thing that made this map SOO fun was that Emily,... er i mean the emancipation sphere.. the possibilities for that in game play is amazing. i hope you keep mapping||

I agree the outdoor area needs work. Also, I could only free one of the cubes from its glass prison. I found it far too difficult to get the rocket trajectories right to free most of them.
Luckily I only needed one cube to pass the subsequent button room (you can portal to the exit after you've opened the first or second door).
I like how the button room self destructs when you trap yourself in that one chamber. Something I've always wondered though, is how do you trigger that sound file in Portal during the course of the normal game?

I agree that the emancipation sphere is really creative. Something I'd like to see implemented with Emmy (which I see you have hints of already) would be to have an impassable room full of turrets, with a track that goes behind or near all of them, so that when you portal Emmy to the start of the track at the top of the room, she rolls all the way down, eliminating every single turret.

||> Ralen wrote:

I agree that the emancipation sphere is really creative. Something I'd like to see implemented with Emmy (which I see you have hints of already) would be to have an impassable room full of turrets, with a track that goes behind or near all of them, so that when you portal Emmy to the start of the track at the top of the room, she rolls all the way down, eliminating every single turret.

that's basically what it already does, if you start the ball in the right spot.||

wow, thanks guys for your input. I'm kinda feeling inspired to continue with the map

I agree the outdoor area needs work, i sorta underestimated the amount of space I needed and so I tried squeezing everything in the tiny box, I think i'll expand it a bit. or better yet learn the 3d skybox thingy.

The idea behind the button room was that while I did want to make it hard, I also didn't want to force people who don't have the patience to do it. You can actually complete that room without liberating any of the cubes.
A minimum of three cubes is required to get silver.
And you need all cubes to obtain gold. You also need to drag all the cubes with you to open the last door and get cake.
Your reward essentially is dependent on how many cubes you where able to liberate, and then use in the button room.
I don't plan to make another one

The self-destructing was a bloody pain to implement, and it's still not perfect, since it an trigger even if you're not stuck, and not trigger if you lock yourself in. You may find them cake panels appear and disappear randomly while doing stuff in those rooms, they were used as a guide for me to know where the room is at trapped-wise. The finished map isn't meant to have them debugger panels, and the whole room is meant to fizzle killing all the cubes.

I thinking about making a Emancipation bomb that GLaDoS drops out of nowhere to intermittently fizzle a large area, but I don't know how to get that particle effects to cover a room without making lots of them.

Sounds like the Emancipation ball is a hit, I think I'll try to make more puzzles with it.

I'll see if I can make it so that a Gold solution for that last room is to not emancipate any turrents (ie only disable them) muhahahaha

DVD wrote:
wow, thanks guys for your input. I'm kinda feeling inspired to continue with the map

Cool. that's what we are here for, to live vicariously inside your imagination. more please

Quote:
the whole room is meant to fizzle killing all the cubes.

i'm glad you didn't do that. i brought all the cubes to the emancipation ball room. you do need at least one to release the emmy, and i'd already gotten stuck in there one time and had to reload your map when i didn't bring cubes. emmy's real mean to my cubes though! i thought at least my companion cube would be immune, but she dies too

Quote:
I thinking about making a Emancipation bomb that GLaDoS drops out of nowhere to intermittently fizzle a large area, but I don't know how to get that particle effects to cover a room without making lots of them.

wow that would be mean if it happened randomly...

Quote:
Sounds like the Emancipation ball is a hit, I think I'll try to make more puzzles with it.

yes please

Quote:
I'll see if I can make it so that a Gold solution for that last room is to not emancipate any turrents (ie only disable them) muhahahaha

heh bring it on...

iamafractal wrote:
i'm glad you didn't do that. i brought all the cubes to the emancipation ball room. you do need at least one to release the emmy, and i'd already gotten stuck in there one time and had to reload your map when i didn't bring cubes. emmy's real mean to my cubes though! i thought at least my companion cube would be immune, but she dies too

oh dear, I was hoping to make it obvious that you were suppose to use the dead turret you find in the room to turn on the switch. So when the ball falls down killing the turret you understand that this ball kills stuff. I placed it in that little hidey-hole is so that you see the turrets inside the room before you activate the switch.

Maybe that picture tile of two turrets shouldn't be on the ground...

DVD wrote:

Sounds like the Emancipation ball is a hit, I think I'll try to make more puzzles with it.

her name is Emily (Emmy for short)

DVD wrote:
oh dear, I was hoping to make it obvious that you were suppose to use the dead turret you find in the room to turn on the switch. So when the ball falls down killing the turret you understand that this ball kills stuff. I placed it in that little hidey-hole is so that you see the turrets inside the room before you activate the switch.

Maybe that picture tile of two turrets shouldn't be on the ground...

it was to me shrug and probly woulda been for fractal had he not dragged those cubes with him...

rellikpd wrote:
it was to me shrug and probly woulda been for fractal had he not dragged those cubes with him...

mayyyybe except i carried the turret over to the ball while it was still in the tube and it got... emmied before i could put it down on the button... and then i was trapped.

iamafractal wrote:
mayyyybe except i carried the turret over to the ball while it was still in the tube and it got... emmied before i could put it down on the button... and then i was trapped.

ah word. didn't think of that.... probly put a trigger in them that doesn't activate Emmy until she's dropped out of the tube?

rellikpd wrote:
ah word. didn't think of that.... probly put a trigger in them that doesn't activate Emmy until she's dropped out of the tube?

huh... i thought i did make it trigger on release.

sounds like I broked something (or Emmy is awfully persistent)