FelixGriffin's Contest Entry - Forcefields and Cubes
Aesthetics
The new field and the red liquid in the cubes looked cool. Otherwise we have clean style chambers, which could have used some more detailing. There was a lot of texture tiling/repititon. In the room with three cubes there was an orangey light but no light source other than the (cool) observation room.
You used vertex textures for the walls between the first and second puzzles. Naughty!
Gameplay and Difficulty
This field is the opposite of the purple field in Atrophication: players are unrestricted but the field is solid to physics objects. Portals aren't cleansed or blocked by the fields. The fields only really served as supports for the cubes, which are certainly the more interesting element. Making the actual act of placing portals a puzzle was refreshing (although PortalCraft does that too) and got me thinking.
There were a few annoyances in the second puzzle. First, the cube button in the second room opposite the door was too close to the wall to place a cube into it. Second, it wasn't clear what the four buttons did - signage and/or indicators would have helped. Third, there's no way to see past the panels because you have to stand on the button (somehow the cubes don't activate it). You have to guess that a portalable surface is on the other side of the puzzle to proceed. More positively, I did like how the player was left to discover how the new mechanic worked on their own.
On that note, I should point out that I only discovered that clicking the cubes placed portals by accident. Another control hint would have been useful.
There were a couple of strange gameplay moments for me. It wasn't clear how close to cube you had to be in order to get it to
I didn't manage to solve the third puzzle - I only managed to pull extra cubes above the uppermost field - but I would love to try it again later. Thanks for mapping.
Bugs and Mapping Details
* There were some full-white textures (signs) that didn't seem to be packed correctly.
* In the first room, "Very not completely bad" should play when you put a cube on the button (i.e. solve the puzzle). Right now it just plays when the button is first activated.
* There was a button in the office which couldn't be activated.
* I could pick up the chairs in the office through the glass.
* I think your script was broken because at one point I was given a (dual) portal gun.
* The laser beams travel through fizzlers but if you get the cube to shoot a portal through the fizzler it fails - not very consistent.
* The lift should have moved faster after the first journey - it simply took too long.
* I noclipped to your second exit and saw error models.
Co-operative: Lightspeed Upstairs Downstairs
Thanks for your reviews and criticism!
I know this is REALLY glitchy, and I'm hoping to release a better version after the judging is over.
There's a second env_instructor_hint which SHOULD say "Fire a Portal at the Cube" when you first open the paneldoor, but it doesn't. I don't know why. :S
You also should have a portalgun, I finally realized why I do but you don't. For me the map is called sp_fg_contest_2012, so you have a portalgun (the sp_ prefix). But I didn't realize that the workshop renames it. Sorry.
The button in the first observation room is locked to prevent an exploit I found at the last moment. You have to come through from the other side.
I forgot that I had used some of Skotty's stuff: the doublesided glass tubes and the fixed signs. I'll pack those in the next version.
Also, if anyone tried to put a cube on the normal button and it didn't work, I don't know why that is either. Each cube contains a trigger keyed to buttons, and each button contains a trigger keyed to cubes, but neither one fires on the round buttons. No idea why.
The beams shouldn't travel through fizzlers, I thought I'd fixed that. Which fizzler was it?
Getting a portalgun from the cubes is a glitch. There's a portalgun which the script uses to fire at the end, but it should be Reserved For NPC. Sorry about that.
And where were the vertex textures? I thought I'd fixed that--in the elevator shaft?
Chicken: are you on a PC? I haven't tested sv_enableholdrotation on any other system, it might not be tied to +attack2/-attack2 but to the right mouse button specifically.
I is on PC, I wouldnt be able to map otherwise.
Also you were meant to have a portalgun? No wonder I thought it was impossible.
I'm going through all of the maps that I played for the contest and post my rating and comments.
It may be a bit out of date if you have updated your map since then, but hopefully it's useful feedback nonetheless.
judging comments
The design of the map itself is pretty bland, with a few dark spots and vertex textures in some places. However, the portal redirection cubes, and the effect when a portal particle travels along the beam, is very nice. The green cube-specific barriers also look good.
The second room, where the new cubes are introduced, is too small in my opinion.
Gameplay: 4
The cubes work pretty well. You have to know that you can rotate them by holding the second mouse button, and that firing a portal at them does something, but all of that is mentioned in the description.
I would like to have seen a better introduction, for example by causing the player to trigger the portal redirection accidentally. (A cube is positioned out of reach on a portal-enabled floor; player tries to put a portal below it to make it fall, instead the portal is captured by the cube and sent to a wall that is not directly reachable from the player's point of view, allowing the player to retrieve the cube that way.)
Difficulty: 3
Very easy, but its purpose is to introduce two new game elements, so that is perfectly justified. Only the introduction to the new cubes could have been better.
Personal score: 3
Oh, and I also suffered from a lack of portal gun, but I put it down to something being wrong on my end, since I did have some other weird problems at the time.
If I were you I would make a new, nice map with this element. (After some bug swatting in the mechanism itself.) It has a lot of potential to make great puzzles!
Other Portal 2 maps: Medusa Glare
Portal 1 maps: Try Anything Twice | Manic Mechanic
Very cool new elements - very bold, fresh, and inventive.
I really love the new intrigue this adds.
On the 3rd room it took me a while to realize that the cubes can be
I also was able to use that great new ability to rotate the cube any which way by holding down the orange portal button and moving the mouse around. And - I
Thank you, HMW and Lifeson! I'm trying to improve it a LOT before I release again, rather than making several smaller releases and spending forever final-compiling, but the new version should be MUCH MUCH better.
By the way, I like the idea of triggering the cube by accident. I'll try to add that as a replacement for the second room, and add another one where you can do something cool with aligning them to redirect something. Maybe redirect a laser using cubes on cube-buttons, then the catcher flips to reveal a portalable panel and all the normal cubes fizzle?
Or perhaps a variation on the first training:
The player can't see the second and third cube. But, after using the cube mechanism the first time accidentally, they will either:
- assume that there's a white wall around the corner and shoot a portal at the first cube, or
- shoot a portal at the only visible cube because, well, why the hell not??
They will then see the fancy particle re-appear somehow behind the glass and put a portal there. Upon entering the room they will realise what just happened, because they see the laser beams from the cubes pointing at each other.
Edit: Darn, it just cuts off the fence at the bottom of the image. Just so you know, there's a fence there to prevent people from snagging the cubes without getting "learned".
Other Portal 2 maps: Medusa Glare
Portal 1 maps: Try Anything Twice | Manic Mechanic
Nice idea! Now that I have the four portal device working I can get back to work on fixing this map.