SUMMARY

Second published map on the Steam Workshop. Like Relay, this is a fairly small and compact map. The solution is easy to execute but can take some thinking and experimentation to get the penny to drop. Unlike Relay, however, I feel that this puzzle’s design is leaps and miles better. This map includes some custom community content to bring the fidelity up (though Portal 2 holds up extremely well in today’s world too) and some dialogue to flavor the level.

THE PROCESS

The initial concept of this level took some time to figure out. It was initially inspired by the paradoxical concept of “bootstrapping.” For those unfamiliar, (and I will explain this in the context of Portal 2) this concept involves an action or solution that creates a self-sustaining loop.

HOW IT WORKS

A simple example of this concept can be demonstrated in the following scenario: imagine a chamber with a weighted button, a tractor beam (i.e. excursion funnel), and a cube. Below is a visualization of the chamber, and yes, it’s a perfect diagram.

As shown on the diagram, the player and the cube are on a high ledge in the perfect position to drop the cube. On the lower ground are two portal-able surfaces with both portals placed. Above the blue portal is the excursion funnel and above the orange portal is the weighted button. When the weighted button is activated, the funnel and the exit door will also be activated.

By dropping the cube down and allowing it to gain speed, it will shoot out of the orange portal and hit the weighted button for a short amount of time. Once this happens, the funnel activates and the portals will carry the funnel so that it continues to keep the cube on the button, thus the exit remains open. At this point, this action is self-sustaining and infinitely loops. Though, if something changes, this entire setup can fall apart, such as the cube being reset or the player’s portals closing.

ON AN IDEA

With this idea in mind, I wanted to create a puzzle that was loosely based on that concept. I feel that this concept is particularly great at creating that “ah-ha” moment for the player as it’s not particularly heavily guided. All elements are presented in a manner of figuring out how to properly use them and the order of which you execute the solution.

I do my prototyping in the in-game editor that was released with the PTI update, as it is incredibly fast to test and iterate on the idea without locking myself into anything, as I feel the the Hammer editor is incredibly rigid to work with. There’s not much to say about this process, the prototype was created from the “giant pit in the middle sectioned off with two fizzlers”, which I thought would be a good starting point for the base concept since it would heavily limit where the player can be and go at any given time.

Once the prototype has been built and I was satisfied with it, it went through some tiny playtesting with some of my friends. They weren’t Portal fanatics or anything so they’re kinda just your average person playing a video game. Once that was complete, it was off to Hammer to build the final look of the chamber. That took about a few days of several hours of work and it was ready to go.

MY THOUGHTS, AND SOME HIGHLIGHTS

Overall I’m pretty satisfied with how this project turned out. It took around a month of on and off work to get it done. I really like the visual style I’ve employed in this chamber, and bits of dialogue helps anchor the level in the universe as if it were a part of a campaign.

The visual style of the chamber is somewhat of a hybrid between the Wheatley style (with big open, clean but destroyed chambers), Behind-the-Scenes with the large vistas that exist beyond the chamber, and Art Therapy with dialogue and setting. Originally it was supposed to have Wheatley as the central core rather than GLaDOS, but I could not get PotatOS to show up on the portal gun (it was a really strange issue), so I just gave up on it. If you use noclip in the final level to phase between the walls, you can still see a Wheatley monitor as part of the original chamber, it just never gets activated.

While creating the chamber, I knew I wanted a large vista overhead the entire chamber with exposed panels and whatnot. I am a big fan and sucker for large, epic, dynamic shadows. I took that idea and placed a light that created some really nice details on the floor. However, I knew I could push it further, so I added some vacuum tubes that had cubes and objects flying through it to really take advantage of the dynamic lighting and it resulted in complete eye candy.

There were some differences between the final product and the prototype I made in the PTI editor. Most notably, I added a button at the vertical wall strip to help facilitate usage of the light bridge and placing the portal in the correct position. It does look a bit awkward, I’ll admit, but I didn’t want the light bridge just being an element with one particular use.

In a perfect world, I would’ve found additional uses for the laser receptacles as well but I didn’t want to convolute the solution and make it too open-ended. Plus, since my prototype had already been done and I had already spent some work on Hammer, I didn’t want to risk creating more issues and unintended solutions by attempting to be more intricate with the elements.

CONCLUSION

All in all, after the “fiasco” that was Relay, I feel that this is a much better level that can sit in the Steam Workshop to gather dust. The visual style is to my liking and I’m proud of the lighting, I’m happy with the injection of humorous dialogue, and the puzzle design itself is leaps and bounds better than whatever Relay was. I think my only gripe that’s just a small inconvenience is adding too much dialogue at the end, when the player completes the chamber. I made the dialogue hold up the exit elevator and if you just run straight down to the exit it takes about 10 seconds for the elevator to arrive since it’s waiting for the dialogue to finish. It’s a minor thing, but when I’m mostly happy with the final result, the only thing you can do is nitpick.