A note to newbie puzzle creators: Cutting corners.
Video Here
It was my first map :p
oh please, don't make me laugh
watch as i "solve" this :p
Another Video Here
i actually feel guilty about this
you put all that efford in such a big map, for me not to ever use it.. 
this is what we need to prevent!
Good thing about workshop is you can always go in and tweak things
I think there's a huge difference between alternate solutions and unintended solutions. An alternate solution - that is, a puzzle with multiple ways of solving it while still preserving the integrity of the puzzle itself - really is fine. It's also pretty uncommon for this to be the case, but if a puzzle is designed in a way that there's no one right way to complete it then cool.
Unintended solutions, on the other hand, are definitely an issue of playtesting or designing the puzzle. I think the litmus test for this is asking yourself, "did I skip something". If you can skip a whole section of a puzzle, or the entire puzzle itself, to me that's an unintended solution and something that should be plugged.
A great example is chamber 14 in Portal 1. I consider this to be an unintended solution since you completely bypass the entire chamber. I apologize in advance for the abysmal quality of the video.
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Well at least in portal they knew that you could do that and the challenge maps put it into account that you could do it in 8 steps/2portals/so many seconds.
Yeah but I'm sure that came about after the puzzle was designed. That's the most immediate example I could think of, I know there are others similar, especially in some custom maps.
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The thing is, that map could have easily been fixed if they didn't put a portable surface on the floor there.
People, learn from their mistakes!
Yeah that too. That exploit could be fixed in less time than it takes to read this sentence.
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Also sometimes an alternative solution allows a much simpler solution instead of the clever trick you designed.
These two cases are the things that I try to prevent as much as I can.
I'd add in a third, which is when there's an alternative solution that's either as or more obvious than the one you thought of but which is a chore to perform or relies on luck. I've had feedback in the past that 'the way to get x cube is just luck-based' or 'y fling is really tricky to pull off' when in actual fact it's just that people are doing it in a way I hadn't thought of. Now, to someone who knows my way that might seem like a reasonable alternative solution, but to someone who doesn't it's just a badly-designed map they're gonna rate down and never come back to.
My maps: Double Bill / Jam / Oval Window / Gymnasium / Gymnasium Part 2 / Minimalism (collection) / Resolution
All feedback welcome!
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Always ask soem1 you know to test your maps.
Cutting corners... what i should do before publishing my first map.
I was so used to solve it "correctly" that i didn't cosider that some1 would have solved it in other ways, which appaired right to some1 that didn't know the "proper" solution.
Luckly i had my map tested by a friend so i manged to solve the unintended solution the following day 
Yes, that's a very good point! I've had that happen with my maps on multiple occasions, especially with timed things. Some player thinks of a different approach where the allotted time is just barely enough to do it, and then complain that I'm requiring Nintendo skills 
About luck-based alternatives: the final part of Manic Mechanic has a particularly nasty case of that. If you
(And yes, nowadays I ask a limited number of people to test it before releasing even a W.I.P. version.)
Other Portal 2 maps: Medusa Glare
Portal 1 maps: Try Anything Twice | Manic Mechanic
Heh. After doing my first map, which was horrendously horrendous (there were just 2 portalable surfaces... kinda takes the fun out of Portal), I always made sure that I don't solve the puzzle as I intended it to do.
I try to break it. Everytime that double door opens after pressing F9, I go like, "Hmm, so how can I exploit this thing?"
It sure as hell helps, that simple question.
Funny story. One of the puzzle elements I had was a laser emitter on the ceiling firing to a non-portalable floor below it, and a laser catcher at the wall adjacent to it. My intended solution was a reflector cube passing through two portals that end up at the catcher. I was dissapointed when I found out I could do it with just the portal.
P.S. Is there a post count before avatars and sigs are enabled?
P.P.S. I think high-energy pellets should be on the PTI as well.
P.P.P.S. I registered here cuz I saw the thread about PTI maps, is it stickied? It would be fantastic if it was.
