Quote from KennKong on May 5, 2012, 10:21 pm

I finally made it into the funnel room. The laser angled down from near the ceiling keeps turning off after a while. The puzzle looks like Encode turned sideways, but I'll never get it set up in time if that laser is going to keep going out. Is this intended? Because I'll give up now if it is.

EDIT: I think I know what's going on. I had the same problem with Xtreger's map Dispersed. Every time you interrupt a laser beam that has been redirected through a cube, the cube bounces a little. You bounce it enough times, and eventually it will lose its aim. Fortunately, in this room, you can just nudge the cube back on center if it starts to get off target.

Quote from grayarea on May 5, 2012, 10:53 pm

Yeah it's a bug in the game engine I'm afraid KennKong. I did take some steps to reduce it, but couldn't eliminate it. As you say, quicksave often and you might need to occasionally go back over to re-center the cube's aim.

Quote from RogerL on May 6, 2012, 12:50 am

grayarea wrote:

[spoiler]The idea with the angles for activating the ramp sensor came to me while pre-testing Xtreger's first map. In that case I used a cube, and marKiu also found a variation of that while playing that map. Just playing around, I accidentally found that you could do it without a cube as well. I wanted to disguise the fact that there would be no cube, so I added a fizzler sensor for the ramp room which was meant to be impossible to hit. Xtreger found a way to open it of course, but it didn't lead to a solution, so I kept it in for camouflage value.[/spoiler]

Crap crap crap crap crap crap. I knew I recognized that from somewhere and that the deactivate-fizzler-receiver was just a red herring. I kept thinking that it led somewhere because with the same angle you can activate the laser power-up receiver from behind the fizzler. Even though it didn't seem to buy you anything, like a fool, I spent hours trying to make something work with that.

Nice to see you back, grayarea! Test subjects abound. Etc.

Quote from sicklebrick on May 6, 2012, 3:19 am

grayarea wrote:

So far, every single player has come up with a different method for performing the stack. Here's another one I found for stacking the cubes directly to their final place:

Haha, that's the coolest one. I loaded the map just to give it a try >.<

It's pretty cool how there seems to be a few variations on everything, but no real map breakers

Quote from greykarel on May 6, 2012, 9:29 am

Hi, grayarea. Awesome diffucult map. I can't beat it. But that's not the point.
I've managed to activate the light bridge by unintended way due to one bug. The laser beam
can pass trough the fizzler model.

[spoiler][/spoiler]
I hope it'll help you improve your map.

Quote from grayarea on May 6, 2012, 10:41 am

Thanks greykarel. You're in good company. I got into mapping after failing to solve all the difficult maps, starting with Jonatan's Seven Gates and onwards. It's making an honest attempt that matters, I think.
I probably wont change this map again, but I will fix my fizzlers for the next map so cheers for the bug report.
@RogerL: thanks for playing again. I guess I can't use the "dummy fizzler sensor" trick too many more times. It certainly is an effective way of creating doubt and misdirection.

Quote from Xtreger on May 6, 2012, 12:06 pm

That's brilliant how you activated the laser again after going up, Jacu!
I got up there by briefly activating the ramp in the same way as you did... But in the initial version it wasn't possible to reach the spark button once you'd got up. After spending a lot of time on that I had to resort to the standard method.

Quote from KennKong on May 6, 2012, 6:28 pm

Woo-hoo! I finally made it! The only part I couldn't get on my own was getting the first cube upstairs. Between your map "Encode", and Xtreger's map "Dispersed", I was all schooled up for the last room.

I'm not in the mood for searching through the hours of blind run recordings to find it now, but I had yet another method of stacking the cubes, a hybrid of marKiu's and your's (solution video). I put the bottom cube by a portal in the wall, then put the other on top by reaching through the floor. I tried reaching through the wall, but I couldn't get the cube over the other one without bumping it out of the way.

I watched your solution to the final gauntlet, but I never made it through in one pass without stopping the funnel. Even though you didn't do it that way, it is easy to stop the funnel on both the way in and the way out, to give yourself plenty of time to walk through the first fizzler in each direction. Compared to the mad dash to the door of "Encode", this was a walk in the park.

Playing with a controller was never even the slightest handicap in this. I think you found the right balance of puzzle vs. execution difficulty this time. Even after a solid month of trying, I wasn't able to climb the "Big Top". I wore out the F7 key on this, but I wasn't repeating the same move over and over. I made slow progress, but I don't think I repeated any one move more than ten times.

Your best work yet, in my opinion. The Gray Lord of Difficulty reigns again. 5/5.

P.S. I tried playing this on my rebuilt PC. The new video is marginally capable of running Portal 2, but the lag is terrible. I haven't cranked the video settings down as far they go yet, but it still looks like no mouse for me.

Quote from quatrus on May 6, 2012, 6:36 pm

Wow this was still a very difficult laser puzzle. Even with the walkthroughs it was still tough to execute....
thanks for putting so much work into the map....