[SP] I Believe I Can Fly

#11 · March 10, 2012, 7:47 am

Quote from zivi7 on March 10, 2012, 7:47 am
From time to time I really enjoy a fly-and-fling-only-map as a change from the tougher puzzles of other maps. This one had the highest heighths I've ever seen in a map - "I believed I could fly", so to say. It was fun!

However, there were some negative parts that in part became very annoying after a while.

In the first room, I'd suggest replacing the old-Aperture-style line on the ground with normal tiles like the rest of the room, just in a darker color. As it is, when you do that last fling - the one in which you come out in an angle - and don't land either completely ON the old-style-tiles or completely OFF the old-style-tiles you cannot place a portal correctly and you have to do everything again. [spoiler]Since you have to do the whole procedure several times[/spoiler], this got very annoying for me.

In the cube room, I liked those lights indicating where to go. This made mid-air-portalling nicely easy. [spoiler]But: When I reached the top for the first time without a normal cube, I found the companion cube there. The first thought "Oh, this was easy" then gets destroyed by the cube burning away and Glados saying "Good job". I understand you want the player to be mocked by Glados there but the "Good job"-line doesn't fit. It is meant to be a sarcastic comment when the player does something wrong. In this case, the player didn't really do something wrong, but Glados is punishing him. Therefore, a simple "Haha" by Glados would be better. Oh, while I'm writing this I'm thinking: Unfortunately, Glados doesn't make an appearance in the rest of the map. It might be better if each room had a small Glados-line or none of them.[/spoiler]

In the room that activates the sphere dropper: After the initial fling, it was a bit too tough to place the portal for the next one through that small hole in the glass. Since the idea is absolutely clear to the player and just the execution is made hard this became very annoying. Same with the next fling: I had a tough time hitting the portal on the surface with the blue gel. In other maps, the authors made it so that the portal could only be placed in one certain place instead of milimeter-accuratly. Maybe this could be a solution for this one, too?

I liked the third room, nothing to complain about here - except maybe the rather long walking distance to the portable areas when you're on the ground.

The finish: [spoiler]While it was okay for me to enter the cube map again to get more cubes into this room I wondered: What if I had destroyed all those cubes in the fizzler before? Is there a cube dropper somewhere to help me out in that case?[/spoiler]

The very last bit: [spoiler]I found the last laser placement obsolete. It just forced me to walk back to the laser and turn the laser cube around. I think after all the action it would be okay to leave this last laser receiver out.[/spoiler]

Ignoring the negative bits I had a lot of fun with the largest flings I had to do till now, 4/5 for me.

From time to time I really enjoy a fly-and-fling-only-map as a change from the tougher puzzles of other maps. This one had the highest heighths I've ever seen in a map - "I believed I could fly", so to say. It was fun! :thumbup:

However, there were some negative parts that in part became very annoying after a while.

In the first room, I'd suggest replacing the old-Aperture-style line on the ground with normal tiles like the rest of the room, just in a darker color. As it is, when you do that last fling - the one in which you come out in an angle - and don't land either completely ON the old-style-tiles or completely OFF the old-style-tiles you cannot place a portal correctly and you have to do everything again.

Spoiler

Since you have to do the whole procedure several times

, this got very annoying for me.

In the cube room, I liked those lights indicating where to go. This made mid-air-portalling nicely easy.

Spoiler

But: When I reached the top for the first time without a normal cube, I found the companion cube there. The first thought "Oh, this was easy" then gets destroyed by the cube burning away and Glados saying "Good job". I understand you want the player to be mocked by Glados there but the "Good job"-line doesn't fit. It is meant to be a sarcastic comment when the player does something wrong. In this case, the player didn't really do something wrong, but Glados is punishing him. Therefore, a simple "Haha" by Glados would be better. Oh, while I'm writing this I'm thinking: Unfortunately, Glados doesn't make an appearance in the rest of the map. It might be better if each room had a small Glados-line or none of them.

In the room that activates the sphere dropper: After the initial fling, it was a bit too tough to place the portal for the next one through that small hole in the glass. Since the idea is absolutely clear to the player and just the execution is made hard this became very annoying. Same with the next fling: I had a tough time hitting the portal on the surface with the blue gel. In other maps, the authors made it so that the portal could only be placed in one certain place instead of milimeter-accuratly. Maybe this could be a solution for this one, too?

I liked the third room, nothing to complain about here - except maybe the rather long walking distance to the portable areas when you're on the ground.

The finish:

Spoiler

While it was okay for me to enter the cube map again to get more cubes into this room I wondered: What if I had destroyed all those cubes in the fizzler before? Is there a cube dropper somewhere to help me out in that case?

The very last bit:

Spoiler

I found the last laser placement obsolete. It just forced me to walk back to the laser and turn the laser cube around. I think after all the action it would be okay to leave this last laser receiver out.

Ignoring the negative bits I had a lot of fun with the largest flings I had to do till now, 4/5 for me. :thumbup:

My Workshop:

[Coop] Aperture Valentine - [SP] Aperture Halloween
[SP] Ram - [SP] Detour - [Coop] Share It!
PTI-Maps: 1 2 3 4 5

#12 · March 11, 2012, 5:51 pm

I'm not particularly good at flinging so this map took me a while.

There was one HUGE thing that made the map much less enjoyable for me. I think it was already mentioned above.

In the first big "hub" room there is a little bit of raised flooring. If you do not land entirely on the raised flooring or entirely off the raised flooring you cannot put a portal there. I was doing the rest of the flinging correctly but did not initially realize this. Thus, I kept trying to place a portal "half on half off" with no success but thought I was just screwing it up, or getting owned by "assisted aim."

Once I realized this, I pretty much had to find a way to get a different height. The way I would have approached the puzzle gave me precisely a height to land me directly on the edge preventing me from placing a portal.

If there were limited ways to place the portal (less portal-able service) then I would see a precise "target" being okay. But with much of the room being portal-able and there are multiple ways to make the other moves with varying velocities... it seems not a very good way to force precision on the player.