[WIP] [WIP] Engineer 1.0.0
I really wanted to like this map. I was about 4/5 chambers in and quite enjoying the challenge. Not knowing which elements I'd need to progress, and I liked that. Its nice not having every tool you need and ONLY those tools shoved in your face saying "HERE! PUT THESE TOGETHER TO SOLVE PUZZLE!" But, I was exploring one of the chambers when I randomly fell into a pit. Why did I fall? Because it was a black pit in the middle of a black hallway with no lighting. FUCK THAT. This puzzle is basically designed for you to fuck up without knowing it and then have to restart. And no, I'm not going to go around saving it every 30 seconds just in case I fall into one of your "need to have fallen for it before" traps.
Protip: Forcing the player to replay the map != longer play time.
This map would be extremely fun and just as challenging if you just got rid of stupid shit like that.
Oh, THAT's what the cage is for... yeah, okay. xD A lot of my solution was unintended, it seems.
Thanks for the feedback everyone.
I added indicators in version 1.1.1, so that should solve the "I can't figure out what this button does" issue.
As for making it hard by not adding enough lighting, that's a problem and is now on the to-do list to fix.
Sorry! I thought I had made the pits obvious enough in 1.1.0, but I could be wrong. I can also add water (with trigger_hurt) instead so that you die when falling into it. Would that help?
Absolutely. And I'll fix it. Your post gives me a good starting point.
It'll be a few weeks before this is ready for the "Released" maps section, but thanks a lot for everyone's help so far.
If you're going to have trigger_hurt, a few autosaves would be nice. xD Just make sure nothing autosaves just before falling into a pit. That happened to me in an official Portal level...
Sounds good. Now I just have to figure out how to make autosaves 
If it wasn't totally obvious already, this is my first experience with Hammer and more-or-less my first experience in mapmaking in general.
Thanks for the reply and listening to reason 
I think more lighting will definitely help. Theres some hallways and stuff that has almost no light, and its really easy to get turned around and not be able to see where you should (or can) go. Maybe throw in a few different textures here and there, like something different for the floor and ceiling. Something with a slightly higher light level so everything doesnt seem so dark. I know its not portalable, but that black tile can wear on you when its EVERYWHERE.
I guess if you're open to suggestions it gives me more reason to play it and get farther into it and try to help you refine it.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot: The suspended glass room thats in front of the excursion funnel is fugly. I'd suggest using catwalks or at least mix up the textures a bit. I get that you want us to see whats in there, but the glass texture going every which way isnt the best choice. Of course, this is after the basic playability improvements, so feel free to disregard for now.
Haha, god no it wasn't obvious. I've never seen such difficulty in a first time map- A lot of high difficulty maps rely on tricks and glitches and it's beyond annoying, so good job having your difficulty in logic based puzzles, heh.
Oh, that was the easy part.
I sat down for an entire evening and wrote out a 2-page list of logic-based "puzzle elements", most of which I haven't seen used before in the portal series. (I only used about 6 or 7 of them total in this map.)
Then, I drew out (on paper) how all of these pieces should work together and sketched out all of the room designs.