Portal Puzzles

Hey, who here played Portal 2? If you haven't you should, it's pretty cool. Even cooler is the level editor Valve recently added to the game which makes it extremely easy to create your own puzzles, which you can then upload to the workshop, where you can browse and play other people's. Definitely check this out if you liked Portal 2 (it should have installed itself automatically), many of the puzzles here are better than the ones in the game (which didn't go far enough in my opinion).

I uploaded my first puzzle today, please give it a shot! It's not that clever and it's probably not the first time somebody thought of it, but I'm still happy with it. If your solution seemed messy or too easy, please tell me (use spoiler tags for possible solutions though), because it's really hard to playtest these things and I probably forgot something stupid.

Suspension.

And of course, if you have made or do make your own, share them here. :)

I play it sometimes. It gives me a huge headache though for some reason! :D

Another game that Valve made that I think is fun is Team Fortress 2

Make sure to check out my map when you play next. :)

I made another today. Again, there could be something massively wrong with it. But it seems okay so far... I'm rather happy with it. Tell me if you play it and beat it.

Supercollider

The level editor Valve made for Portal 2 is nice and all, but I think I'll stick with the Hammer Editor.

Gives lots more control over what you can do.

When specifically would you need it?

The level editor is amazingly well polished and efficient, they must have put a lot of work into it. If you have a specific chamber in mind you can make it in a couple of minutes... I didn't use hammer much but it's a lot more to learn and takes a lot longer. And I've never wanted to do something in the level editor and been unable.

Got any maps to share?

I only played with the level editor when it came out, but with the Hammer Editor you have infinite control over what you can do. The Portal Editor is very good at what it does, but the Hammer Editor can do it better.

But like you said, the Hammer Editor takes time to learn and for some it can take a very long time to learn everything.

I've only made two maps in the Portal Editor, which hasn't received any comments or ratings, but I'll post them later.

Good thread Xei. The new hammer tools are very exciting. Do you have some good suggestions for custom maps to check out?

Aside from my awesome maps, check out Mevious to get you started. There's a lot of poor stuff online... boring maps which are just a long and easy series of the various mechanics, maps which are just stupidly complicated with no real puzzle element, maps which are broken in basic ways, etcetera. But almost every Mevious map I've seen has been very well made. Proper, novel puzzles which are clear and simply laid out and yet with obscure, clever answers. The lifespan of the game has been vastly increased, I've been stumped 20 times more often by Mevious than in the original Portal 2, although I still think it's a shame that Valve made that game mode way too simple. Can't wait to see if you can come up with something to frustrate me. :P

Hmm... i only played the singleplayer of Portal 2 so far... maybe i should check out some maps made by players :)

I have nothing that I myself have made to contribute, but 12 Angry Tests is a very good set of tests in my opinion and I recommend it.

I played those today actually. They looked great, though I thought the first test was the only interesting one, where you stacked two laser cubes. 'Decay' also looked awesome but the tests were fairly standard and were sometimes a bit poorly designed (repeated long walks, or playing 'find the portal wall' or 'find the cube').

I have two new tests up; the first is just an improved version of the concept in my first puzzle now that I have a bit more experience (Suspension), the second should be a bit more of a challenge... it took ages to make the concept work but I finally made it nice (Intercept).

I just finished with the single player mode in Portal 2; amazing game, even better than the first. I haven't yet messed around with the level editor, though I suppose I'll take a look at it in the next few days and maybe try making a few.

Portal 2's currently going for the retarded price of £3.75 on Steam, so if you were thinking of getting it, now's a good time.

That said, everything is retarded cheap on Steam these days, due to summer sales.

Xei I'll try yours out when I get back to my room. I made a couple, they're not particularly good but I'll post them. It takes a lot of intelligence to design a good puzzle, I think. There are hundreds of ways to make one flashy, gimmicky, unnecessarily complicated, unoriginal, etc. but to make a really elegant one is respectable. (Mine are not elegant, but maybe you guys can help me out with that.)

Steam Workshop :: Magpie series 1a
Steam Workshop :: Magpie series 1b

Xei, with most of yours I found out the solution pretty quickly, but spent a lot of time trying to do the full combo of actions, which just ended up sort of frustrating, sometimes I just couldn't muster up the effort to actually complete the puzzle, since I had already figured it out.

Thanks for the input Marv, could you possibly give a (spoilered) sentence long solution for each? It's always possible that I've failed to block an unintended solution. What you're talking about was a noted problem with Intercept, although if you use the portallic walls to get about it's not really too bad; I would have had to have spent hours thinking of an alternate geometry for the room which had already taken hours to implement and it just wasn't worth the payoff to shave a few seconds off playtime. With the others, I didn't think it was that bad... they should only take 30 seconds and shouldn't require many attempts, which is pretty normal if not short for your standard puzzle. It's really impossible to redesign them to be any better, as far as I can tell.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by IndieAnthias

Xei I'll try yours out when I get back to my room. I made a couple, they're not particularly good but I'll post them. It takes a lot of intelligence to design a good puzzle, I think. There are hundreds of ways to make one flashy, gimmicky, unnecessarily complicated, unoriginal, etc. but to make a really elegant one is respectable. (Mine are not elegant, but maybe you guys can help me out with that.)

Steam Workshop :: Magpie series 1a
Steam Workshop :: Magpie series 1b

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Absolutely, I actually got a tonne of pleasure out of having an idea and then purifying it down to a simple but not too blatant implementation. It takes far longer and a lot more thought than you'd imagine.

I'll take a look at those when I've got access to a PC again, probably around Monday.

Indie; I played the levels. The first one was not bad... although I didn't really have to think about it; there didn't seem to be much of a novel puzzle element. Also I would recommend you cut down on superfluous stuff... the room with the sphere for instance didn't really add anything, and I wasn't sure what the fields on the floor were for when they performed the same function as water. Also if you put the sphere and portals in the wrong place it is easy to get stuck. The second one... to be honest just seemed to be a long list of basic stuff. And I'm afraid it seems to be pretty broken... presumably the room with the laser beacons was important but I got to the end easily without doing anything with it.

lol thanks, I should have given a sterner warning about that second one. It is rather stream-of-consciousness, isn't it. I wasn't sure if it had any shortcuts, but it doesn't really matter, it's unslavagable.

The first one, how exactly can you get stuck? There should be an escape button if it's the place I'm thinking of, the only place one could conceivably get stuck. And I did the floor like that because the water in custom levels kills my framerate, all I've got is a laptop here.

I managed to get through Suspension, I thought it was really clever, nicely done. I haven't solved your other two yet but I'll let you know when I do.

Ha, I thought that might be why the floor was so odd.

I can't remember exactly how I got stuck... I think basically I put the sphere by the exit, leaving a portal in the roof section, then went back to the roof and removed the portal by the exit. Probably there was a button I missed but I didn't think there was any way of getting the sphere back...

Really glad you liked the map, thanks. Might start making more again tonight.