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[SP] Heavens Gate

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Awesome Map!

All three roms with absolutely perfect puzzles!

First I thought that room 3 will be the hardest one as I saw it. But with a bit thinking and some luck it was the fastest room of all 3 for me.

I had no bugs in the map. Everything worked for me!

At least 5/5!
Well done!

My solution for Room 1.
EzIwGAj1wLs

vitalnova wrote:
My solution for Room 1.
EzIwGAj1wLs

wow wtf... that timing with the last funnel... T_T i can't do it lol

WOW marKiu.... just WOW!

This set of puzzles is simply impressive. How fresh and creative design my friend. Chronologic was a real masterpiece in my humble opinion, and with this one, you are beginning to be recognized as one of the best puzzle creators. Congratulations! :notworthy: In my personal ranking, you have gotten up sooo high (near Chander).

To be frank I simply can't imagine how the fuc** can you figure out this stuff in your mind, how can you draw this twisted but clean puzzles and make them so tight (solution wise)... but mate, I think you are damn good doing this!. :thumbup:

And also the main hub with the number-passwords thing to enter each door is brilliant, so creative. Door 1 is easy,

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About the second door, well,
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. And the more difficult calculation was the 3rd door
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OK, so here you have my video solutions to map 1 and 2 (I hope that you like them!):

sDUt44Yep_k

Puzzle 1:
Well, sooooo dizzy! I spent like 4 hours to come to the conclusion

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. I think is very complex to design such this puzzle, I admire your capability. It's so twisted to make a puzzle envolving 8 world_portals! The result is awesome, very clever.

Puzzle2:
OK, this is by far my favourite! THIS IS A PURE PUZZLE, no lasers with impossible angles, no extreme ability maneuvers, no more repeated heavy stuff... just the player, the logic, and the portals! BRILLIANT. Like a good mathematics problem. In fact somehow it reminded me to the Hanoi Tower problem (it has some similarities...) It took me several hours (I think 3-4 hours aprox.) but I enjoyed SOOO much, God only knows how many different approaches I've tried; I went from the begining to the end like a thousand times... And I swear this puzzle is my current personal number one!

Puzzle 3:
Well, I've been playing like half an hour to this puzzle, and man, maybe I'll try tomorrow, I'm really tired (surely because the other 2 left me exhausted)... it's 5 a.m. here in Spain! I will go to sleep now.

Thank you so much for mapping!

PS: I liked how you corrected those little bugs from earlier versions... I wouldn't like to talk about some of them I found in order to not stain this post that I want it to be encouraging! 6/5 for you marKiu! I'll send a pm maybe with pics, k?

ImageImageImageImageImageuseful tools and stuff here on TWP :thumbup:
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here is my walkthrough for the 2nd room by cube throwing technique

I'm sorry for the 'long' video because I am a beginner at throwing so I hope you forgive me :notworthy:
sorry for the video quality I have a slow GPU and a slow internet connection
Didn't upload it on you tube but on my account on 4shared

http://www.4shared.com/video/l7WGHMKv/Portal2_Heaven_Gate_2nd_room_c.html

!!!

I start in making maps on Portal 2. How do you make maps difficult? This map is very difficult. Do you test several maps before validate to the solution?

I just wanted to say that this map was incredible, mainly because of puzzle 2. However, the design behind puzzle 1 was really amazing when you understand exactly what's going on and how you had to design the timing perfectly in order for the

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to work out perfectly. And all that with world portals.

Puzzle 2 though is really where this map shines. It wasn't even extremely difficult, but it makes you think with portals and uses some very elementary puzzle elements in a great way. The "aha" moment for me was when I finally thought of

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. I could go on for a long time about how this section in many different ways is the essence of a map done right.

Puzzle 3 took me about five minutes on my first run though but the room design was still quite cool and very much unlike other portal maps I've seen.

This is probably my favorite map to date, and it's clear you put a lot of work into this balancing the elements and trying to make it challenging, entertaining, and elegant.

Edit: PS - I just watched the solution by josepezdj and I had solved the two puzzles in exactly the same way. I didn't realize the solutions were so well-constrained (good work).

Portal 2 Engineer - A map designed to make you think.
marKiu wrote:
@szieve
thanks man...happy that u liked playing it.
Have u played v1.1 or v1.0? is the glasswall still disappearing in v1.1?

i tested alittle bit more with the numbers and i see ur point there. im currently fixing it and upload v1.2 soon. thanks for feedback.

Have not played 1.1 will go back and see.. :)

again thanks guys!
makes me really happy that u like my work and give me that incredible feedback!

@vitalnova
thanks mate. as i said before there are three known solutions for room1 and u had one of them. well done and thanks for the video.

@josepezdj & ruien
thanks guys. i almost feel a little bit ashamed here because of all the positive feedback :D very happy that u like it.
u guys used the second solution for puzzle1. actually the intended third one is a combination of 1 and 2 but i cant block them so i decided to let everything as it is right now. they are pretty much the same either.
the solution for room2 is completely the intended one, well done.
for puzzle3 i must say i got inspired by an old tomb raider game. i dont know which part it was but u had to move 4 statues but only 3 were moving when u turn one of them. actually the whole tomb raider and myst series have a big influence on me. this is why i designed the map like a big treasure room with the three diffrent puzzles. i could have put one room after another but i like the fact that the player is always making progress and have a lot of "aha" effects. it looks complicated at first sight but once you get familiar with the mechanics everything is quite easy and fitting together.
if u liked this map and have not played Laser Encounters by Wanderer2021 u should definitely try this one. still one of my favorite maps and a perfect example for a theme or story map. its not just passing three rooms and step back in the elevator.

btw josepezdj you found another glitch how to see the password for room2... ill upload another version soon where i try to fix that. im not that cruel and show you the password only for 0.1 sec :D

@abdoo2
thanks for your video. u made me laugh when u said that ure a beginner at cube throwing :D i think cube throwing on a target should not be used as a puzzle element because of the randomness in execution. i tried this like 20 times and was only able to hit the button once so i guess u did a pretty good job there. congratulations! level up...ur now average at cube throwing :D
let me see if i can block your solution without putting an ugly wall or a glassbox infront of the buttons.

@Raph67
well this is hard to explain. i have played almost every singleplayer map posted in this forum and this helps a lot with "thinking with portals". (what a great name for a forum btw...someone should definitly create one) im familiar with all the puzzle elemets and this may sound a little nerdy but i wrote them all down. for example a fizzler can be passed but it destroys objects and kills your portals. water is an obstacle that kills you and objecs if you touch it. you can walk on a lightbridge but u can also use it to block something and use it as an obstacle like i did in room2. the cool thing is now you notice that a lightbridge is the only thing that can block objects and the player but allows to shoot portals. and a lightbrige is rarely used in this way. i did this for every puzzle element in kind of a chart. then u start to think of a little sequence or let me call it a chaincombo. for example we have water and a lightbridge over it. we have a button that deactivates the bridge and a cube. now we place the cube on the bridge and if we stand on the button the bridge deactivates and the cube drops into the water.It gets fizzled and we get a new cube. Now what is the benefit of doing that? u could have just threw it into the water and we had the same effect.well its the position of yourself. u are able to be not even near the water and still kill the cube. so lets add more stuff... we look at the chart and see that a cubedropper can be used to fling a cube by placing a portal under it. so lets try this. we put the bridge button into another room. when we press it the cube drops, gets fizzled, respawns, and falls into our portal and gets flinged into a location we havent decided yet. but we need the cube to activate or deactivate something. so we look back at the chart and see that cubes can activate buttons or deactivate lasers. so we could let him fling out of the ground and deactivate a laser while reaching his peak. or the cube could land on another bridge that we activate right under him when hes in the highest position. :blah: i could probably talk forever now but u should get the idea what we are doing here. we have quite a nice little combo just by combining the abilities that are given by the puzzleelements in portal2. the basic rule here is the more stuff i add to my combo the more complicated it gets. more variables = higher difficulty. the problem is if i add more variables ill get many unintended solutions. and i want only my chaincombo to open the final door or deactivate a fizzler or something like that. and this is really the hard part in making difficult puzzles. denying all the other solutions. for example in our little combo we could have just threw the cube in the water and let it fling. to prevent that we need to devide our two rooms with a fizzler. but then we cant portal in the other room. so we could use the bridge button to deactivate the fizzler. so when we stand on it the cube drops into the water and respawns. we have a small lapse of time to shoot the portal through the fizzler under the cube dropper while standing on the button and let the cube fling. :blah:
after u finally managed to create your chaincombo and fix the unintended solution u need to hide it.
this is really important. use the design of your map to hide the solution. for example use our lightbridge for something completely obvious so that the player get distracted to use it in the way we did. let em think the bridge is only there to pass the water.
well this is my method of creating a puzzle like room2 or chronologic for example. and we made this little combo in just a few minutes by looking at the chart and combining random stuff. now imagine doing this for a couple of weeks. i could probably recreate heavens gate in a few days but it took me more than a month to do it. so most of the time im just thinking or testing instead of actually "working" in hammer. and this requires a lot of effort. and i really mean a lot. but i should probably stop now before the scrollbar gets to small to click on it :D

My Maps-1-2-3-4-5-

My PTI Tests-1-2-3-

I really have mixed feelings about this map. It is obvious that a lot of work and love and attention to detail went into making this map. For example, I like the way the squares light up on the password island and I like the beveled edges on the "windows" in room 1 that make getting onto them easy. I thought the whole password system in the main room was very clever. And the puzzle in room 2 was very nice.

But I don't understand why you hid the password to room 2 -- that just seemed silly. And I didn't understand why you used reflector cubes for parts of your map that had no lasers. And even though I've completed room 1 three times (admittedly, through no fault of my own, I did it once with the assistance of a portal gun), I still don't think I could describe how I did it (even the vids of the playthroughs show how confused the players were). And room 3 was just boring (press a button, walk to another column, press another button, walk to another column, press another button, maybe press it twice just for the sake of variety). It took some time to figure out which column to walk to and which button to press, but it was not very Portal-like.

Like you, I like something different, and, like you, one of my favorite maps is Laser Encounters. But, honestly, I would give this map a 3/5, not because it needs more work, but because it is too inconsistent. But what do I know, I couldn't even finish your Chronologic map.

@rogerL
again thanks for your feedback. im happy that u noticed the little details i added.
ive uploaded a new version where the password for room2 should finally work properly. i have to admit that this was very silly by me and like you said before i should definitely test more before releasing the map. ( u can just noclip, grab the portalgun and see what i did there)
the puzzle1 was indeed very confusing but that was exactly what i wanted it to be. i enjoyed watching the videos and still see them beeing confused performing their solution.
the criticism for puzzle3 is very similar to the others.its too fast, random and boring. this was rather a challenge for me getting the mechanics to work instead of playing and solving it. as i said i wanted to create something diffrent and theres always a risk that people wont like it. i try to make it better next time.

RogerL wrote:
But what do I know, I couldn't even finish your Chronologic map.

u know a lot! u know if u like or u dont like it. the best thing you can do is telling me that so i can evolve myself as a mapper and hopefully create a map that u enjoy. so your opinion is very important for me. i would be happy if u give feedback on my future maps aswell.

My Maps-1-2-3-4-5-

My PTI Tests-1-2-3-
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