Just wanted to say, thanks for playing all my maps and for commenting on every one of them! It was a pleasant surprise to find someone still playing them after a year or so of inactivity. Thanks for sticking around, and hope you had fun!

Usually I hate maps with annoying ninja timing moves, but this map had so many other excellent logic puzzles, that loved it! Thanks for a great map! My only frustration is with the Portal 2 engine which will not replace gel splats on a light bridge after an F7 restore!

Very enjoyable ! My regular way to solve 3rd room seemed unintended, I looked at the walkthrough to verify and yep, here's how I did : gel momentum between bridge area's panel and the one in front of it, I stand on the bridge : portal the bridge to the panel beside to make the bomb explode on it : I can bounce on the painted bridge rising from the panel to reach the broken fence
As you said, the intended last sequence of this room is not as good as its 1st moves, especialy because they are so nice that I was expecting something on the same line ! Everything is well measured and quite smooth, so while testing it's hard to think that this tricky solution is planned. This said, I really enjoyed the whole map, and without this step it had been a favorite. A lot of work to provide nice moves in a controled layout (and a funny first room), well done ! I'll continue browsing your workshop.

No, I like criticism, and I'm glad you left your comment. Good level design doesn't happen in a vacuum, especially when the game is about player perception and understanding of the intent of a level, in which case player feedback is invaluable. You summed up what happens when the designer fails to tell the player whether they're on the right track or not, which IMO is the main problem with that room.

I intended my comment to be funny not critical. I enjoy a challenge and thought the map was excellent, including that room. I was impressed how you got the gel to do an infinate portal fling on an angle, it was cool. The fact that the distance and the timing worked so perfectly doing it the wrong way had me stumped. I knew exactly how it was supposed to work, I just had the gel flinging in the wrong direction. I couldn't believe I didn't think to just walk through the portal instead of through the fizzler lol. You don't need to change anything, but if you want to keep people from making my mistake, you could change the button to a pedestal with a short timer and put it in the back corner. That would make it impossible to do anything other than what you intend. Your maps are clever, challenging, and have an excellent difficulty level, kudos.

Looking back on this map, that third room is a pile of design bollocks which should never have been allowed into the world in its current state. Commendations to anyone who gets through it without punching a hole through the screen.

You got me. I should know by now that the most trouble I have with this game is using portals for two things simultaniously. I was so sure in the third room that you walk through the fizzler and shoot two new portals while the gel is in the air, I couldn't think of another way. Even after I made it to the button with the gel in the air, and realized it was going in the wrong direction, at that point my brain knew I had to change something, but I was sure I did everything up to that point correctly. If only you had used glass or water or something, you could have kept the red mark off my forehead where I smacked myself after having to watch your walkthrough.

I generally prefer the challenge to be mental rather than achieving perfect timing with mouse gymnastics This was an enjoyable comination of both, but a tougher challenge for those without much experience at platforming ... or if they're stuck with a standard mouse or trackpad.

excellent!

that was flippin hard!!!

very well done, I did an unintentional for the 3rd, which was much easier for me to do with a controller, other than that, great fun. cheers

Love The Light Bridge Gel Puzzles And I Noticed That There Is Like A Glitch Or Something Keeping Me From Having Too Much Gel On A Single Bridge
Fine With Me Though

Sweet level
Never Been Good At The Jumps/Flings Though

This is a really great map imo. most if no all of the solution were pretty clever and challenging to figure out. It's pretty long but I thought every test was good.

I too had to take a break at the 3rd test. This was mostly because I had a lot of tests in my queue and was too tired to focus on the ninja-ish solution. For the last test, I found that trying to spread the gel on the hard light bridge from a distance somehow didn't work out (and I even had everything aligned well).

Surprisingly, I can think of a couple minor improvements for the final test: add a button to open the exit door, and eliminate the stairs (we can use the gel instead).

All in all, it's impressive (aside from a few textures, the sounds and soundscapes, and the timing thing); an excellent parody on what appeared to initially be just another Puzzlemaker test. Did by any chance you make this entirely in Hammer (i.e. no usage of the Puzzlemaker whatsoever)?

Heh, sorry about that. And thanks for the walkthrough, it pointed out a couple of flaws that I need to fix. (You did nearly everything as intended, except for the initial ascension in the second chamber.)

I make walkthroughs, I don't watch them :-) Your chamber fooled me perfectly ingame. Just this small chamber before I went to bed and then this madness or room. After the 3rd I had to go to sleep and retry the next day.

Solved it: http://youtu.be/6YZL7gESJQQ

Actually, there's a limit to how many blue gel splats can happen on a light bridge at the same time, which is why I had to limit how much gel could be placed on the bridge, so that the splats always happen in puzzle-critical areas. But the room should be solvable with these limitations. Sorry for your trouble. Check the walkthrough?

There seems to be a limit of gel which can be placed on light bridges which prevents me from solving the blue gel pump room.

Thanks again. I'm definitely nowhere near as 'skilled' at Hammer as you make me out to be. Once you've learned the basics, I recommend spending a lot of time exploring the links on this page . Most importantly, learn how instances work, and look at sample vmf files (or ones generated by the puzzlemaker) to get the most out of them. Overall, it's really worthwhile getting to know how to use Hammer, and even a small time investment pays off significantly. The help pages and wikis out there will give you the ability to make decent-looking maps even without a surplus of experience. Good luck, and happy mapmaking!

This really deserves much more plays.

Question: How did you become so skilled at the use of Hammer? I've tried many occasions myself, but I could never build something this elaborate. Just a simple spawn point in a basic room with terrible textures, the default cube, and a light. I know there are a massive amount of tutorials out there, along with wikis and other such things, but was there a specific series of tutorials or something you used? Or did you just spend the hours to teach yourself? I've read some of the official Valve wiki-help, but I couldn't even get the starting elevator to work. I don't know what I did wrong; I followed the instructions exactly and it just couldn't even load because of some error.

Also; I did not know you built this from scratch! I thought you built each seperate area in the puzzlemaker (hence the initial picture) and connected them and edited them from within Hammer. Bravo if you built the rest of this in Hammer. Much better than I could hope to do.

In the 2nd test, where you must bounce up between layers of bridge heights, to press a pedestal button, etc. etc. you have a very simple but enjoyable sequence where the panels and plates near the exit fall into the goo. By the exit, there is a thin lining of geometry that serves as the edge of the panel sequence / physics animation. I was just experimenting and being stupid, so I jumped through the fissler from the light bridge onto this platform to get to the exit. This was when I first experienced the plate animation, which disconnected me from the exit. Then I was stranded on this very thin piece of metal, away from the exit, the hard light bridge, and the main area. I understand the purpose of this small piece: to conceal the underside of the panels and plates that fall so that their falling remains a bit of a surprise.

Thanks a bunch for your comments. This was my first map made from scratch in Hammer (well, apart from the entrance and exit elevators) so I didn't want to be too ambitious. I'd have loved to have long catwalk sequences through the cavernous innards of Aperture between chambers, but that would have taken a lot of time for someone of my inexperience, so I focused on the tests themselves.

That said, the map originally started at test 2, and after finishing the rest of the map, I added the first chamber as an afterthought, as a reminder/introduction for newcomers. I'd have liked the transition to be less bland, but I just wanted to publish the damn map already.

By the way, could you clarify where you got trapped? I didn't think it was possible.

<favorited>

Oh, and I do appreciate the alternative solutions, especially in test 3. I watched the walkthrough afterwards, and it was nothing I had done. I'm sure many of these additional solutions were by accident, but, there were no really easy solutions. All I realized were near equally difficult in thought. In the solution to test 3 I performed, I never once extended the hard light bridge in a relevant way horizontally , only diagonally.

My few complaints would be the timing issues everyone else faced, plus a few additional cases of poor level design where the player could become trapped and forced to restart, and the transitional segement where you travel through the wall from the 1st and 2nd chambers. I REALLY like how the test seems small and short, and then the door closes on you and the lights change, followed by the wall panels revealing a secret path to the next room. In text that whole concept is great. But, the passage is very rectangular and bulky. You made great use of catwalks in other segments of the map, and if you had used some more believable path using catwalks I would take this back. Either way, fantastic job. You've made something to be proud of.

-Best Regards, Gunnar Clovis

A very well done series of tests. I can really respect work like this, its no secret you worked hard on this. You didn't have to build it from scratch in Hammer, but you did add much detail, new textures, additional entities, and even some basic extra animations. Far more than I, or the general audience, would be willing to do. I hope to one day have the dedication and skill you do.

Great map. Really challenging.

Three letters can describe this: WOW
Amazing test but the third test was hard to get the timing right. Great 1st 2nd and 4th tests though ^-^
Another test onto my favourites :D

@Ergocopter: yep, that was the part. It wasn't where I spent the most time, but it was where I had to try and fail the most. However, after watching the walkthrough, it doesn't seem that hard :D and of course if you'd change it, it would probably just end up being too easy.
I did solve another part differently than in the video, I think I overcomplicated it a little.

wow, that took me very long. Thank you for that!

would be nice if you try my new test if you got time http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=100925361

Wow, that's ... thanks a lot. Could I ask though, was it the paintbomb flinging section where you took issue with the timing? Because I'd agree with you there, but if it was a different section then you were either using an alternative method or an unnecessarily difficult one (check the walkthrough). Either way, I'd need to make some adjustments. Thanks again.

Nothing short of a masterpiece :P okay, egoboosting praises aside, this was really awesome. The only reason I wouldn't give a 10/10 is a subjective reason: I don't really like it when timing is so important in a test. There were several situations here when I knew exactly what the solution is, but had to try and fail for several minutes before achieving it.
Anyways, I loved this!