Quote from quatrus on January 28, 2012, 1:50 pm

An outstanding creation using energy balls. I am amazed by your "almost" able to solve misdirections in 18 and 19 and then the even easier real solution. After getting 18 with a little help, 19 was easier as I looked for the intended solution.
The collaborators in this mod (credits) is a list of the most creative map contributors I enjoyed in Portal 1.
Back to Portal 2 now, thanks.

Quote from msleeper on January 29, 2012, 4:03 am

rossman231 wrote:

Rock Paper Shotgun has published an article about Rexaura.

Shame they don't link here.

Quote from Mek on January 30, 2012, 3:37 pm

I just got to chamber 16 (will leave the rest for later...). You can see the bugs I found in the attachment.
For me, the hardest was chamber 09 because I thought the orange portal gets fizzled too but it does not. Figured it out by watching the walkthrough video There were so many elements... a real mind-bender.

Quote from chimera201 on February 1, 2012, 9:03 am

Downloaded from moddb v1.0
Hard to believe that you made the design,mapping and even the music all by yourself.
Took me about 5hrs to finish the campaign
I guess i played all chambers the intended way. I had no problems solving 18 & 19.
The level of difficulty was high mostly because of timed puzzles.
But in the end i was a little disappointed. I thought that you must have made a bts area after 19.
I didn't pay much attention to the dialogues but who were the 2 announcers?
Anyway great mod:5/5 Loved the music and the new elements

[spoiler]I see that you live in Seattle. That is close to Valve. Your mod is as good as your proximity to Valve. I'm also 24 & just started mapping [/spoiler]

Some bugs that i found:
a line inside the portal. Maybe a textured side surface:ch 16:1
blue reflections in goo:2
Maybe source's problem .White area. ch 19:3 4

Quote from Mek on February 1, 2012, 3:58 pm

I have finished now (if it can be called that...). I had trouble figuring out the harder puzzles because there were those little pieces missing. After watching a video I though "I didn't think you could do that". And, when I saw particular part of a chamber I was like "wtf is that good for". Plus, to reiterate, timed puzzles suck and everyone knows that. Please, DO NOT make any timed puzzles anymore. I lost my patience on chamber 19 and noclipped.
On the positive side, what I really liked were the earlier chambers, the music was great and speech was almost indistinguishable from the original. Keep up the good work.

Quote from rossman231 on February 1, 2012, 5:08 pm

Mek wrote:

Plus, to reiterate, timed puzzles suck and everyone knows that. Please, DO NOT make any timed puzzles anymore. I lost my patience on chamber 19 and noclipped.

I've heard this complaint a lot about Rexaura and every time I hear it, it baffles me. No step of any puzzle in Rexaura requires tight timing (you typically have about a 5+ second window for most of the steps that actually involve timing), and very, very few puzzles actually involve timing. Most of the time, I suspect people are coming up with solutions that they assume involve timing, but don't require it, or just have the solution completely wrong. Most steps of most puzzles you either have infinite time to set up (don't forget that if the ball is going through two portals back and forth, it will continue to do so for all eternity), or a really long time to set up. Nearly every one of the "timing" elements is shooting a portal at the right time, but again, you have infinite time to prepare yourself and get yourself ready, and the actual timing window for when you need to shoot the portal is large. On top of that, you nearly always have both a visual and audio cue to tell you when to do it. The example that you gave, Chamber 19 is a perfect example of this: no step requires tight timing (I think pretty much all of them give you 5-10 seconds) and every step you have infinite time to look around and figure out what to do next.

What really gets me is that both Portal 1 and Portal 2 have a lot more instances where timing is much harder, e.g., shooting a portal while flinging, which is not only difficult as a timing challenge, but you're also trying to hit a moving target. I've never heard people complain that Portal 1 and Portal 2 have too difficult of timing challenges.

EDIT: I forgot to mention this when I originally wrote this post, but I actually agree with your general point that timing-based puzzles generally suck and should be avoided. Also, quick saving and loading can save you a ridiculous amount of stress when it comes to having to worry about "timing" something that if done wrong would cause you to restart the whole or part of a level.

Quote from Random on February 1, 2012, 8:03 pm

rossman231 wrote:

I've heard this complaint a lot about Rexaura and every time I hear it, it baffles me. No step of any puzzle in Rexaura requires tight timing (you typically have about a 5+ second window for most of the steps that actually involve timing), and very, very few puzzles actually involve timing. Most of the time, I suspect people are coming up with solutions that they assume involve timing, but don't require it. Most steps of most puzzles you either have infinite time to set up (don't forget that if the ball is going through two portals back and forth, it will continue to do so for all eternity)

Very much agreed. In fact, one of my favorite things about this mod was that I never felt like the solutions were strained or difficult to execute. The puzzles seem designed so you don't have to time much, beyond obviously making sure the pellet has already gone through a portal before you remove it. I think Mevious took the worst thing about energy balls and made it a non-issue.

Quick edit: Was the solution for the bonus chamber 02 supposed to require timing? It wasn't as bad as I remember, but it was more than the main game. I guess that's why it's a bonus.
Oh yeah, and getting the cake in chamber 14 was great.

Quote from fred on February 2, 2012, 10:39 am

Hello Mevious,

great mod, but i think i need your help (or hints) for getting the cakes.

11 was easy, but im still trying to solve the bonus02, arrrrgh....

14 was really hard to find, but now i can't get back to the hidden room because the door to the first part of the chamber is closed. Help please ....

18 i searched everything but couldn't find anything unusual. Any hints where to search ?

many thx

Quote from Mevious on February 2, 2012, 7:12 pm

Everyone, thanks for your feedback.

Mek wrote:

I had trouble figuring out the harder puzzles because there were those little pieces missing.

Hm, pieces missing? I'm not sure what you mean. Are you talking about the visual bugs you posted earlier? Can you specify?

chimera201 wrote:

The level of difficulty was high mostly because of timed puzzles.

Mek wrote:

Plus, to reiterate, timed puzzles suck and everyone knows that. Please, DO NOT make any timed puzzles anymore. I lost my patience on chamber 19 and noclipped.

I don't know what you guys were attempting, but none of the solutions require any more "timing" than any of the early levels (e.g, rex_02, rex_04, rex_05, rex_07, rex_08). If you were fine with the timing of those levels then you should have no trouble performing the final ones. If you want to be more helpful, provide the steps you were trying to perform that led you to your frustration so that I can make it obvious that it's a dead-end for future players.

Here's some hints about the bonus chambers and secrets:
bonus chamber 2 solution
[spoiler]Bonus chmaber 02 does actually require some good timing (hence why I removed it from the main set of levels). Bounce the ball off the door once, open it to let the ball through and then close it as you run to the platforms. You'll also need to shoot another portal as you run to the platforms.[/spoiler]
chamber 14 secret hint
[spoiler]Once the door closes you can't get back in. The trick is to keep the ball alive so it won't respawn and destroy the box.[/spoiler]
chamber 18 secret hint
[spoiler]If you are standing at the platform and look across the goo pit, you'll see an open section in the wall on the right. The button which activates the platform also closes that wall. I'll leave it to you to figre out how it's done.[/spoiler]