Quote from Vandread83 on May 22, 2011, 9:44 pm

Very nice, love the new grid and while I hate the energy ball puzzles, wasn't overpowering in them. And the tail of the energy ball doesn't travel with the ball through the portal, it noclips across the level to where the ball comes out the other side, seems kinda wierd.

Also requires you to restart portal 2 if you have it open during installation.

Quote from InertiaticESP on May 22, 2011, 10:38 pm

The turret/blue goo room was unnecessary, and what was that cube/cube-only button for? It didn't seem to do anything. To make things worse, when I walked into the room, I got blue goo on the cube which made it impossible for me to put it on the switch without opening the console and spawning a new one. Then again, did the cube do anything in the first place? I thought the solution was to [spoilers] just bounce up into the opening on the ceiling[/spoilers].

Also, on the second, super frustrating energy ball test, the ball ended up somehow bouncing up and down and it went over the barrier and to it's destination randomly, just by luck. Good thing too because I was getting frustrated with the puzzle, I think I knew the right thing to do, but my reflexes weren't good enough (it seemed like a twitch based puzzle to me).

LEVEL BREAKING BUG: After the room I described above (the second energy ball puzzle), you NEED to put a field or trigger that closes all portals after you go up the elevator. Not only did I bring the light bridge with me upstairs, but when I went back downstairs through my Portal, I couldn't re-enter the now raised elevator room, and there were crazy graphical glitches. Will post pics of what I mean.

Still, nitpicking. Amazing map. Def gonna be community spotlight, and most likely released on a map pack for consoles if you clean it up. Still, turn the custom male Glados voice louder, I thought that was a cool addition and I couldn't hear it =(.

Suggestion: Make a new antagonist character like you have, but have him appear in monitors in test chambers, and if you want the map to be super popular, have the space sphere make an appearance on the monitor with him =D.

EDIT: Totally finished with the test. Was great. Favorite sp_custom so far maybe even. Really liked the green walls. However, there were a few times where I felt like I had skipped a puzzle or two. It's cool to show, for example, a pile of weighted cubes, but when we as the players see those, we think that it means there's a cube puzzle, not to mention the switches.

If you can't see what a switch does while you're standing on it, you NEED to put the wires so that the player can tell what the switches did. It gets too frustrating/confusing otherwise.

However, the puzzles themselves were all good and made me feel smart when I solved them, and that's what Portal is all about. Considering how cinematic the whole map was, it more than makes up for the very few bugs and questionable pacing.

5/5 (would have said 4/5 but I've given maps I liked less than this a 5/5 so I'm pushing it up). Really can't wait to see more from you. Also, thanks xdiesp for recommending the map to me.

Just wanna say falling puzzle was mindblowing. PUT MONITORS IN WITH LOVESPHERE OR SOMETHING! =D

Quote from msleeper on May 22, 2011, 10:47 pm

InertiaticESP wrote:

herp derp space sphere, pander to the meme idiots.

I hope this doesn't happen tbh.

Quote from Traiden on May 23, 2011, 12:41 am

This should help all those who couldn't figure out how to play the level.

http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki ... rtal_2_Map

Quote from xdiesp on May 23, 2011, 1:21 am

I did this short demo to explain the 2nd ball puzzle, maybe someone else might be interested

http://www.mediafire.com/?w6ddl8u4zbjiee4
(extract in portal2portal2, enter map and input "playdemo 2" in the console)

Quote from Ruien on May 23, 2011, 2:39 am

I thought this map was incredibly well-done. Hall of fame material so far compared to most of the maps on here.

I personally am not much for stories; I prefer long, hard puzzles with at least 6 or 7 dependent steps. However, I picked up some phenomenal ideas from your map -- [spoiler]using portals to make a controllable kill switch; redirecting a laser back through the same portal it came through[/spoiler] -- and you definitely have a great mind for puzzle elements. Bringing back the energy ball was awesome. The green fields were great too.

The atmosphere was excellent, the chambers done in different styles. Really cool overall. Excited to see more!

Edit: @d3phext -- the graphical anomaly you see is due to the use of a linked_portal_door I think. That's usually a convenience for the map designer as some room could overlap and intersect with another in the 3-D space, and going and redesigning the entire map to leave space for some other room is not the best use of a mapper's time.

Quote from msleeper on May 23, 2011, 2:55 am

I noticed this visual glitch. It flickered in and out in a space of like 4 world units, I'm sure this isn't your doing but I don't know what's causing it.

sp_retrospective0000.jpg

I feel like the inclusion of the companion cube is meme pandering at best. Take that as you will.

I more or less agree with what has been said previously. I also had a very difficult time hearing the voice overs, which is a shame because they seemed well done. Overall I found the map very dark lighting wise, which I'm sure was a style choice, but there were quite a few times that I was in an almost entirely black area with no clue on my bearings. Most of the revisit of chamber 16 seemed unnecessary at best, and because of the map being so dark I actually missed the [spoiler]hole in the ceiling (as well as the paint pointing me towards it)[/spoiler]. In the revisit of chamber 17, I also was [spoiler]sitting at the button, trying to figure out what it did for a while before I assumed it did nothing[/spoiler]. I also don't know what the [spoiler]box button hidden in the top area was for, and in fact I got my compaion sphere stuck up there and had to reload[/spoiler]. The lack of lighting was the worst in this part too.

I do like the material blocking grid, you used that previously in Quark (I believe?), it's one of those things I was hoping made it's way into the release of Portal 2. Aside from the lighting, visually I think things were top-notch as is expected from you. It's hard to really nail the "destroyed Aperture" and you did a great job doing that. You did seem to swap in and out of themes really quickly; one minute we are in a destroyed overgrown test chamber, and the room next to it is more or less pristine.

The gameplay just didn't sell me, though. The original puzzle areas you made were interesting and challenging, and they seemed split up by the inclusion of the revisits, both which only negatively affected the flow and pacing of the map.

Quote from d3phext on May 23, 2011, 3:21 am

here's my playthrough with annotations. i noticed the same glitch in the stairs as well.

[spoiler][youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkKpNGBY5f0[/youtube][/spoiler]

^ i don't think i redirected any lasers back through the same portal anywhere. different strokes i guess.

Quote from DaMaGepy on May 23, 2011, 4:39 am

If I ignore the lots of graphical texture and floatingobject glitch (wrongly placed displacement, angled platform not touching anything, wrong alignments) the map is awesome with lots of good idea, and liked the return of the energy pellet too. Maybe the map was sometimes too dark for my taste, but overall its a decent map with a good story. The speach can be a bit louder tho