[PTI] [SP] The SuperAmazing WonderCube!
Behold, the SuperAmazing WonderCube! Capable of sending out lasers, hard lights, funnels, and a cube, all while providing access to blue and orange gels!
(Some assembly required.)
This map had some interesting things going on, and it was certainly complex enough. In my opinion, too complex for the size of room it's in. And the rather artlessly added world portals don't help. They make a mess of the graphics, leaving artifacts of images all over the place. They shouldn't be placed so close together. And with so many elements, the indicator lights run into each other and so they become useless. The speed gel isn't needed, since you can just portal above the button and so get to it in plenty of time.
I appreciate that you tried to make a complex puzzle with some new elements in it, but, in this case, more of a good thing isn't better.
Rrgh, put this up and then discovered I needed to get rid of the restarting trigger thing, should I ever use hammer again I'll try and remember to fix that before publishing. Fixed now, sorry.
I don't control where the indicator lights go; literally the only thing I did in hammer was make the world portals. The program is way too complex and messy for me to figure out how to do much of anything else, honestly. Would you suggest I try using symbols to represent every connection? Because frankly I think that would have been way more confusing. But even that aside, I don't agree that they're entirely unhelpful as they are, since it's usually clear what's been turned on when one of them is orange and the others are blue.
I'm not really sure why you imply the need for a correlation of any kind between a chamber's complexity and its size, but if anything I would think fitting more puzzle in a smaller space would more likely be a good or at least neutral thing than a bad one.
As for the appearance of things or "artless"ness, I can't really say much about that because I design test chambers thinking "make an interesting and challenging puzzle" rather than "make it look pretty". In my opinion, if it works properly and the appearance is functional and not distracting it doesn't matter how good or bad it looks. The entire point of the level was arranging the world portals in a cube like they are, so I hardly think I could have changed that even if I did think it made things look distractingly bad (and personally, I don't).
Quite an accomplishment to squeeze all this into one smallish chamber. I had a hard time trying to figure out what to do next, and then a lot of things were turned on and stayed on - so I guess only required activation.
The multiple cubes spawning under the glass, had me really confused, but I went with it. One of them allowed a portal to be placed under the glass (? found by accident) and onto the bridge which allowed my solution of the puzzle.
I also had a lot of "shadows" popping up everywhere, I think associated with flashes of the world portals in the center? If I moved they went away...
Still I did reach the end of the puzzle and didn't get stuck anywhere, just lost quite a few times. Is that a good puzzle - not sure - at least everything was straightforward.
thanks for creating.
I used the word "artless" as a kinder, gentler word for "crude, clumsy"; I wasn't asking you to make your map more beautiful.
I would suggest that you don't find the indicators confusing because you made the map, and you already know what everything is connected to. To turn the indicator yellow requires activating it, but why take the time and effort to activate something unless you know what it is going to do. In some maps, it could be bad to activate something in the wrong order.
You said you recently joined TWP to advertise your maps, get more people to play them and get more feedback on them. This is what you are getting. You release a map on a site that has people that produce the best Portal maps there are, and there is a pretty high standard here. I said I thought there were some good things in your map, I just think, like all of us, you have some more things to learn. Properly implementing world portals, for you, is one of them.
I'm not responding because I dislike your criticism, I'm just trying to explain why I went with the design decisions I did, why the map ended up looking like it does. I do appreciate your comments and I'm sorry that didn't show the first time, I tend to get overexcited about things I made sometimes and I'm trying to work on that.
Honestly, this is the first time I've ever tried using world portals (well, technically second, but my first serious attempt was way too ambitious and wound up with a bunch of touch errors because there were too many things trying to collide). I was eager to try them because impossible geometries and whatnot fascinate me a bit (I'm a fan of Antichamber for instance), and I could hardly think of a way to use them that wouldn't end up with a bunch of graphical errors if those generally come from placing them nearby one another. My next few maps will probably be like the ones before this one, that is, made in puzzle creator 100% because I actually know what I'm doing there. I realized after your comment that I could easily have fixed the two-button hallway with a higher ceiling and laserfield, but honestly I don't want to go through the whole cycle to remake the map to fix that since at the moment I know no other way to do it than to remake the map in puzzle maker, then put all of the world portals back in place in hammer (which would take at least a few hours of tedious work for me to get done)..yet another reason I'm going to stick to puzzle creator the next few times I make maps, at least--much easier to fix errors like that.
I do generally try to make it impossible to activate things in the "wrong order", or better yet avoid the existence of a wrong order to begin with. I've even made a map or two where a bunch of triggers could be done in whichever order the player pleased and, as long as they were all done, the map would be finished. Actually, I have a question: Could I submit a slightly older map that's been on the workshop for a while to the download section? I don't want to flood this place but I would like to put up a few of what I feel to be my best.
The cubes with the hard light to permanently activate something was a trick I saw used (I think in the better think twice series that's up here?), and thought had some merit; I don't know why the cubes double-spawn sometimes, but I assure you I'll be going back to my standard cube-dropper-cube-button bit the next time I need to do that if they're glitching up that badly.