Map Developement Group

[roger federer]

i like the idea of flinging, and that maybe you can fling boxes/objects not just yourself. use infinate portals to build up their momentum then make a new portal to shoot it. here is an illustration, i havent totally worked out all the possibilities, but it could be a new idea. might be hard to get people to fling the box instead of themselfs. you could definatly use this for portal golf, that sounds fun.

[Aikar]

Pandar's #2 was the 'idea' of what i was going at with my request, good way to describe it with pictures, but hopefully be even more complex than that

Id like to see it go real crazy!

==== Aikar's Full map concept =====
I just designed a CRAZY concept of non stop momentum test of quickness.

Please open the attached image before reading post, as the post describes what is shown in the image!!!

Please bear with me, ive tried to color code and label it the best i can (ms paint ftw) and ill describe what each thing means)

This map concept is going on the belief that im hoping Valve is giving map makers the ability to presetup portals on the map like they have... and mappers have the ability to use a trigger to change the current id for the portals (like the cheat code does 0-3?)

All yellow lines should be non portable walls. The brown 1 with spikes behind them is spikes that should be for letting people kill themselves easily incase they do fail at that point of map so they dont have to manually reload map. The green column is on a different 2d level of the room.

You start off in the top left corner

On start of map your group id should be 0. anytime you see a red line, its where a trigger should change your group id, and i labeled the id to change to in the purple color.

When the player starts, it should be a small square standing on, with a wall behind them and a drop off on other side, but on the wall should be a shaft going down at an angle... but you shouldnt be able to walk into this shaft. Crouching down and looking down it should be a visible portable surface (the brown circle in bottom right corner). All brown circles are meant to be 'where the player puts his portals'.
Now, this column you start on should be at a different 3d level of the room (majority of the map should be nearly 2d like) so that this 'shaft' can angle and properly 'point' to the bottom right corner surface.

The player will put one portal on that surface, then one at the bottom of the giant drop off. Once they enter this portal is when the race for perfection starts!

This puzzle should be designed to take many many tries to 'learn' it, and go through the entire puzzle without ANY mistakes in order to get to the goal (should be a triple layer cake for all this work!)

Upon exiting the portal they will then shoot 2 very fast portals onto the cieling, one to the left side one to the right. However the right is needing to be accurate to where they are going to be sent straight at. This will be a very tricky part getting yourself thrown into the portal without 'bumping' so maybe a 'guide' such as discoloration of where the portal should be maybe placed on the cieling?

When they hit the portal, they will 'fall out' of the other one they made falling straight to the floor the pink dot is on.

The floor with the pink dot SHOULD NOT be water or traps. It should be a pretty wide coverage so that the 2nd portal that they are falling out of is not required to be so accurate.

The goal is to as you fall out of the cieling portal, immediately shoot another at the floor, and right before you fall into it, shoot another portal right at the spot the green dot is.

Now, this will also be a highly accurate shot as your going to shoot up right into another portal so maybe a guide on floor here too? a Dot perhaps?

Now, as they exit the green dot they should be shot up into a premade portal.

There should be 4 premade portals on the map, 1 orange 3 blues each labeled in dark green as to which 'group ID' they should be in.

As you see, this orange one will shoot you out to the next part of the map.
Now, upon exiting the premade blue ID3 the players guns group id should change to 2 as shown with the red line. The next goal is to immediately shoot a portal onto the cieling as orange. The dark blue dot area should be an anti portal forcefield or glass so the user can see there is a blue portal already setup there. Upon hitting the orange portal they make they will fling out of the premade blue portal.

As they exit the premade blue 2, they hit another red line and the guns id should change to 1. They will then need to make a quick orange portal on the bottom floor so they exit at premade blue ID#1.

Now they need 1 more orange portal at the last brown circle to the exit.
As they go up from the blue1 they need to shoot at the slant so when they refall back into blue (they might hit there head on the cieling from the momentum, but that shouldnt knock them off alignment!)

now if they do 'miss' making a portal, this will pretty much be the only spot that 'failure' would be ok. As the way the portals are setup they would come back out of the orange they made before hitting blue1 and then fall back into it (unless they hit premade blue2 from momentum and it sends them back out and kills them! that would be fine with me , no room for failure!!!). So if they get the orange up, and fall back into blue and shoot out the new orange, they win!

===============

I know this is an insane concept. But this is the kind of crazy I would like to see. a REAL precision puzzle.

Hope this is 100% doable and someone takes up this concept to make it come live I'm sure the heights and angles of things will definitly need tweaking to make it all line up properly.

I'd like credits for the concept if you do make it (maybe a room filled with cakes that spell out aikar? that would rock!), but you can name it any thing you want. This topics suggestion is great, as i can be pretty creative with things but not have the time/resources to make it happen myself, so i hopefully will come up with more concepts for you mappers to use

any comments/suggestions/etc you may want to ask me about can contact me by means of my profile information for aim/msn and the Website Button is to my IRC network im on 24/7

[Grudge]

I can't exactly spit out my ideas cause that will ruin them when it's finally released, but it's good to see you guys up to stuff like this. ^^

Now doing someone elses puzzle that's a different story. Aikar yours looks very promising so who knows...

[Artesia]

I've been working on a map since the day portal came out.

After extensive testing on the day of release I can tell you that Pandar's number 2 idea, is... sadly, impossible as illistrated here.

Think of it this way: You transfer the downward momentum to diagonal momentum which then arcs to go to the next platform, due to gravity, the next platform can't be as high as the one before it. Due to physics you cannot gain more height then the height you fell for momentum, and the only way to get the same height is to keep it vertical, once you start putting arcs into it, gravity takes hold and brings you down after a few jumps.

I'm still undecided wether I'll release a progress of my map or not, but it has a "creative" solution to this problem.

[Artesia]

also dont forget about terminal velocity, once you've fallen far enough to reach it, any farther wont do any good.

[roger federer]

but you can get free energy with portals (i guess that's why they can't exist... Uin=Uout) as long as you can see a higher place. but i'm confused about fling trick two also.

[Nezerv]

Aikar: No harm but your mspaint concept art is quite tricky to understand. You don't think you can make it in PS or so and make it more hi-res?

Pandar: Just downloaded and checked out your ideas, very nice, all of them! I hope at least one of them gets made, I think they would be very fun.

- Nezerv

[Robinson]

Artesia wrote:

I've been working on a map since the day portal came out.

After extensive testing on the day of release I can tell you that Pandar's number 2 idea, is... sadly, impossible as illistrated here.

Think of it this way: You transfer the downward momentum to diagonal momentum which then arcs to go to the next platform, due to gravity, the next platform can't be as high as the one before it. Due to physics you cannot gain more height then the height you fell for momentum, and the only way to get the same height is to keep it vertical, once you start putting arcs into it, gravity takes hold and brings you down after a few jumps.

I'm still undecided wether I'll release a progress of my map or not, but it has a "creative" solution to this problem.

It's possible actually. I've also been thinking about physics with the game, and the conclusion is always that our laws of nature don't hold true in the Half-Life world ^^

For example, if you place a portal in the ceiling and one on the floor. You're standing on the floor. So:

E=mgh, h=0m so E=0J

You jump trough the floor portal and come out at the ceiling. Which is, say, 10 meters above the floor. So:

E=mgh
h=10m
m=75kg?
g=around10m/s2
E=7500J

Which is why a floor-ceiling portal tunnel gives you unlimited energy, thus speed (up to the air resistance).



Back to Pandar's idea. You can trough the first diagonal surface, playing a portal on ground level. In this fling you place a portal on the second diagonal surface. Once you reach the ground from last fling, you place the other portal so that you fling from the second surface. And so on.

This is actually done in small in the game I think. In the large turret ambush chamber near the end.

[paraddoxx]

Here its my IDEA (and maybe project) : http://img-up.net/img/my_mapLZiyV.PNG

[Hober]

Robinson wrote:

Which is why a floor-ceiling portal tunnel gives you unlimited energy, thus speed (up to the air resistance).

If we're discussing in-game physics, it probably bears noting that there is no air resistance as such. Terminal velocity is an arbitrarily defined constant, not the effect of friction with the air.

This can be observed by putting both portals next to each other and jumping in. You keep going in and out without ever slowing down due to air resistance.

[Robinson]

Hober wrote:

Robinson wrote:

Which is why a floor-ceiling portal tunnel gives you unlimited energy, thus speed (up to the air resistance).

If we're discussing in-game physics, it probably bears noting that there is no air resistance as such. Terminal velocity is an arbitrarily defined constant, not the effect of friction with the air.

This can be observed by putting both portals next to each other and jumping in. You keep going in and out without ever slowing down due to air resistance.

I don't know all too much about the term 'Terminal Velocity', I have a rather low degree of Physics understanding. But isn't Terminal Velocity actually the limit set by the precense of air resistance?

The Floor-Floor portal loop is a weird case, and indeed you should at some point stop with you point of gravity right inside the portal. But that's my point, I don't think Valve took the laws of nature too seriously. If they did the game would probably suffer.

[Hober]

Robinson wrote:

I have a rather low degree of Physics understanding. But isn't Terminal Velocity actually the limit set by the precense of air resistance?

Exactly. Terminal velocity is the speed at which the pull of gravity is equaled out by the force of friction of air against a falling object. Thus an object with less friction (a wad of paper) will fall faster than one with more friction (a flat sheet of paper). Skydivers can assume many different positions to increase or decrease their friction, and therefore speed.

Robinson wrote:

The Floor-Floor portal loop is a weird case, and indeed you should at some point stop with you point of gravity right inside the portal.

That assumes that the center of gravity is directly below the floor. It is instead some miles through the earth (assuming we're keeping things terrestrial), near the center of the planet. In game terms, this just means that gravity is always in the negative Z direction.

Robinson wrote:

But that's my poinI don't know all too much about the term 'Terminal Velocity',t, I don't think Valve took the laws of nature too seriously. If they did the game would probably suffer.

I'll definitely agree with this. The game is a simulation, which means that it cuts certain corners, such as having no air resistance and an arbitrarily set terminal velocity. The trick is to find those corners that were cut and use them.

[Grudge]

I can't see them taking a game that has a robot that talks to you and a portal device really realistic anyway.

[espen180]

I'm thinking of making a series of maps taking place after the official game's "time". The facility will be in a sort of "red-alert" setting, with broken equipment, red lights etc...

[y-aji]

paraddoxx wrote:

Here its my IDEA (and maybe project) : http://img-up.net/img/my_mapLZiyV.PNG

Nice, I like it. Let me know if you need any help with anything. I'd like to somehow be a part of this idea.

I would also like to suggest making little groups that work together (maybe have some neat little competetions.) In a group, you would have one puzzle designer/map critic, one primary room navigation creator, and one detail creator. Get like 3 teams of 3 going on mapsets. Maybe each group would have to make the hardest maps, or the most voted set of maps with a simple poll.

Let's say, theoretically, each team is given 1 month to make 3 well created and organized maps. To start, the puzzle creator gets to work on some map concepts, everyone votes amongst the team, picks the 3 they like the best, or merges some ideas together, then the puzzle creator gets to work on the final draft of the first map, churns it out after a few days, then shoots it out to the primary room navigation creator, then after he has gotten the basic layout made in the game, shoot it to the detail creator to insert models, doors, puzzle components, textures, etc, at which point, the puzzle creator should be about done with the second of three maps. The whole thing could definitely be done within a month (assuming other people have very little life, like myself. (man, my g/f hates me right now.)

Winners get props, and nothing more, haha.

That way, we are challenging ourselves, by challenging eachother and working together to get some really tough stuff going.

I would like to open an invitation, anyone who thinks this is a neat idea, pm me and maybe we can get some really good stuff going.