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E-mail: m.sinclair@gmail.com |
SHIELD
A Portal map designed in just one day. The aim was to create a unique puzzle that was different from Valve's own test chambers.
This was my first venture into mapping for a single player game. The idea of the puzzle came to me when I was first setting up the entities in the Portal SDK. I had a small room with a cube dispenser, and was juggling about 10 cubes between the portals. The idea popped into my head that it would be interesting to create a "momentum loop" (the player jumps through a portal on the ground, and comes out through a portal on the wall, with momentum (see the screenshots below)) that is used by a cube, rather than the player, which was regularly used in Valve's puzzles.
The puzzle eventually developed into housing the player behind a wall, in which they could shoot portals through. This meant that the player was not able to interact with the cube or the portals directly - a feature that I felt was very unique.
After testing the puzzle, it became clear that the cube model was not suited for the momentum loop, due to its large size, it often got stuck in the portals. I decided to change the cube to the sphere/ball model, which proved to be much more successful. The only issue was that the ball was light and bouncy, which proved to be a bit frustrating for players.
The plan is to re-make this map for Portal 2, with the possibility of co-op support. This would also address the issue with the bouncy ball, and could also expand on the puzzle's concept.
Screenshots
To install, extract to C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\[username]\portal\portal\ directory and open it from the Bonus Maps menu.