Custom map: Sphere of Roundness!

Lobster

Lobster

The Freeman
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Just a small singleplayer sphere that needs testing, I really want to make a set of cooperative maps eventually but portal puzzles are a curious thing, its really easy to overlook an obvious gamebreaking solution that the next player spots immediately, so i figure its best to practice a bit on small releases, until I get more comfortable with it.

I have to say mapping for Portal 2 is really fun, so let me know what you think.

Screenshot: http://img837.imageshack.us/img837/7444/sphereround1.jpg

Download: http://forums.thinkingwithportals.com/downloads.php?view=detail&df_id=410 (Updated)

Check the readme for installation instructions.
 
Good map. It wasn't particularly head-scratching or tricky to work out (unlike some of the co-op ones). But that in itself is a good thing. I liked the massive leap and fly-over of the arena at the start. However it also wasn't very obvious where the exit was - rather than working towards a specific goal, it felt more like I was simply solving the "obvious" problem in front of me at the time. I think the player being able to see an exit and say to themselves "now how do I navigate this crazy landscape to get there?!" is something that Valve did really well in their maps. Probably adding spotlights to shine on the exit, and adding the disintegrater field in front of it, as per the Valve exits, will make it more obvious.

Couple of things seemed to break the normal game rules, though: when you jump up through the trapdoor into area 4, the cube on the button de-materialises, thus closing the trapdoor for you. There is the sound affect of the cube being destroyed, but this is not what we normally expect in the game world. Initially I saw the laser and the top and thought "hmm, I have to get that cube off the button and bring it up here" - but actually it was pretty straight forward getting a new cube from the dispenser.

Also, now that I think about it, I have no idea why I specifically did this, but when I was at the blue gel puddle for some reason I thought I couldn't go back into the room I just left. So I placed a portal on the cube drop area, and one of the upright horizontal one, and jumped to it using the blue gel. Except I didn't quite land on my flat portal, so I stepped through it - and was flung through the air from the horizontal one. Clearly you have some sort of accelerator for portals placed on that surface, which is cheating. However without that, I would have gone plummeting to my doom - probably serves me right for doing something dumb like that.
 
Thank you for the feedback, you are completely right that I didn't sign post the exit enough. and its true that the self-vaporizing box was a little confusing. I may change it into a timed button instead of a pressure pad but I do quite like having to use the same cube twice.

The accelerator is the same entity as the Aerial Faith plate, only without the model animation and sound effect. Valve use them a lot on long-jump surfaces as part of the portal funneling, only usually they have a set speed threshold required to activate them, (so that they don't behave the way that you described) but in that particular case I had set the threshold to zero by accident, so good find!
 
One way to fix the disintegrating cube would be to have the player jump up bit higher and hit a slanted surface that pushes them towards the laser area. That way you can still look down the hole and see the cube sitting on the button. It would make the immediate next step a bit more puzzling, because you would then be more inclined to say "how can I get that cube up here?", rather than (presently) saying "oh, well obviously I have to get a new one". So you'd just need to make the little box room with the orange gel a little longer for a greater speed boost, or possibly just lower the ceiling there.
 
I released an updated version of this one yesterday based on all the feedback I received, the main things being the spooky disappearing cube, the visibility of the exit and the lack of save points, along a variety of exploits and bugs.

- Removed the self-destruct from the first cube.
- Added a secondary hatch to the ceiling fling.
- Added more save checkpoints.
- Redesigned the cube drop to make more sense.
- Lots of tweaks to the fling funnels.
- Replaced exit elevator.
- Added various brushes and panels to avoid specific exploits.
- Fixed skin glitches on the laser catchers. (hopefully)
- Fixed and properly aligned the emancipation grills.

I also released my second portal 2 map along with it, which focuses on faith plates. I had a lot of fun making it but it is a little easy puzzle-wise, so I am going to work on something more challenging next.

Screenshot: http://img339.imageshack.us/img339/6006/2011051400001.jpg
Screenshot: http://img822.imageshack.us/img822/4694/2011051500001.jpg

Download: http://forums.thinkingwithportals.com/downloads.php?view=detail&df_id=410
 
Played both maps. Sphere of roundness doesn't seem much changed; just technical touch ups as you listed.

Faith plate map has excellent level design again, really looks like it could be a valve map - good job! You're right about there not be very much puzzly stuff in it though, it is fairly straight forward and obvious for the most part, particularly with the panels flinging you into walls. Very nice use of the world space though - which is something you pulled off in Sphere as well. I think these older style maps really suit the wide-open expanses where you can see a lot of the map at once. For newer GLaDOS levels, more constrained view lines and smaller scale maps would probably be more in keeping with Valve's designs.

One thing I'd like to see in a map if it's possible, is conversion gel + light bridges. It would be neat for example if a you needed to get a light bridge over a water pit, and drop a gob of conversion gel on it, and then make the bridge come out of itself, to act as an obstacle to prevent a cube from being flung into nothingness. I guess with conversion gel you have to be very careful how a map is made to prevent exploits/players trapping themselves.
 
Both maps were, very great fun. Had a good feel for the mechanics of it all.
 
Just gave it a whirl. Nice use of mechanics with the turbines, and good re-use of areas. Did like the use of water, although I think the ticking on the fire wasn't really needed - until the final part where the timing definitely did matter, so I guess you had to introduce the concept earlier (perhaps just on the 3rd section of fire, though, didn't need it on the first two). Not sure I really liked the recycling of Cave's speeches. Nothing was particularly tricky, a couple of spots I got stuck but more because I couldn't work out where to place a portal - I had a very good idea what I needed to do I just couldn't see where to do it. Of the 3, I think the 1st is definitely the strongest.

I think you're probably trying too hard to re-use your elements to produce a tight test experience. It's very clever and I can acknowledge that, but I don't think the execution has been particularly "fun". One of my favourite puzzles in Portal 2 was the final repulsion/propulsion gel test, where you can generally see the layout of the entire level but there's quite a bit of set up required before you can finish the level, but when you finally put all the pieces together you really feel smart. It's also possible to solve small sections of that map out of order, or get most of the things you need in place but not all of them. In your 2nd and 3rd maps it is much more like a series of linear problems that you have to solve and there's no real exploration involved - the first is similar but feels more open, even if it isn't. Level design and visuals are top-notch though, and the 3rd one is probably the best for this, with the extra props and areas that aren't specifically test related.

I guess another succinct way to say this, is that the 2nd and 3rd maps play more like Valve's training levels than they do Valve's 'challenge' levels. I think people who are playing custom maps are really wanting a 'challenge' experience, rather than a training one.

The first map in particular is not in keeping with the single player chronology - the discouragement beam was only just invented by GLaDOS in the time frame of Portal 1 (if you play GLaDOS' first test chamber, you can see the old energy pellet emitter sinking into the water to be replaced with a discouragement beam emitter), and obviously the excursion funnel didn't exist back in the 50-70's era either.
 
All fair comments. I think the reason I ended up with 2 and 3 being fairly linear, was that I focused so much on how the new features were going to work, that I never got around to actually using them in a chamber wide puzzle. I would place a firewall as a gate, and then duct tape a simplistic puzzle to the side in order to unlock it. It is something I want to plan ahead better in future maps. The cave quotes where added based on a few requests I had from people, i know it was a bit cheesy, but it was just for fun.

The case of the first map being fairly anachronistic, is mainly because I started it right after playing the coop, which had included new aperture modules (Sent underground by GlaDOS for the bots to test), I didn't feel ready to make a coop map at that point, so took some liberties with it, (I also hadn't noticed the long mechanical robot arms extending into the void above those maps, which was an important detail).

I agree with a lot of what you said though, and will definitely take it on board in the future. Thanks for the continued feedback! :)
 
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