Sticky Business

It's been a refreshing break these past couple months, but map making has once again swung into high gear. In order to get back into the swing of things I've been taking a little retrospective at my old optical illusion coffee table books, especially Adventures with Impossible Objects by Bruno Ernst. While getting myself back into the proper mindset for this project I realized that I've overlooked something pretty interesting.

Ladies and gentlemen: Oscar Reutersvärd.

Born in 1915, Reutersvärd has often been called the "father of the impossible figure". Over the course of his career he created over 2500 paintings of impossible objects, each of them as isometric projections giving the illusion of depth. While he's often overshadowed by his more well known contemporary, one Mr. Maurits Cornelis Escher, he had a long, rich career. His most notable contribution is probably the impossible tribar, which he created in 1934. It caused a stir in the mathematical community when it first appeared, but slowly faded into obscurity. Later, in 1950 Roger Penrose accidentally reinvented the tribar and published a paper on it, only to realize later that Reutersvärd already created that particular impossible object sixteen years ago. Nevertheless, we still call it the Penrose Triangle.

Oscar and Penrose stayed in contact after their chance meeting, bouncing ideas off each other since. Then, in 1982, his home country of Sweden recognized his work with a series of stamps. Sadly they were only in print for about two years, with most copies being destroyed after a change in stamp value. Now long out of print, they're considered extremely collectable. Observe:

It's true, it really is hip to be square.

What at first glance appears to be an ordinary tribar morphs into an unprecedented eightbar. Extravagant!

Be honest, that would make one heck of a bookshelf.

REALLY Not Thinking With Portals

I'm just going to admit it; I don't like the linked_portal_door as much as I thought I would. Granted, it's pretty easy to use and the possibilities it opens up are completely insane but it's also very buggy and looks terrible at lower graphical settings.

The entity has a much shorter draw distance than I thought. From far away it looks like a bright white rectangle, completely ruining the illusion. I've looked on forums and apparently there's no solution. Either I have to use these doors in much smaller rooms or accept that people that don't have shader quality ramped up to High are going to think I'm an incompetent rube.

The map proper is almost done; all the vital testing elements are in their place and all that's left is some sprucing up to do. But honestly, I'm not happy. This minor fiasco with the world portals has left a bad taste in my mouth. Now that I know how temperamental they are I don't think I'll be working with them again. If I make another Portal map it won't have any mind-boggling geometry. A sad state of affairs to be sure.

In the meantime, here's some things from the evidence bin:



There's no point in hiding it: Frankenturrets are my favorite testing element.



Getting fancy at the Bath and Body Works.



Strangely enough, the walls were the most complicated part about building this room.

Not Really Thinking With Portals

If you're on Steam you might have seen me fiddling with the Portal 2 Authoring Tools. Yes, it's true, I've been trying to make a map for that game for the Perpetual Testing Initiative. And you know what? It's hard. It's downright unpleasant. Portal 2 maps are an entirely different kettle of broth than what I'm used to. In the Paranoia maps I did basically whatever I wanted and it would work. No one questioned why they need three batteries to open a door to ride an upside down train, they just accepted it because it's weird and they already saw weirder things just getting there.

But that's not the case in Portal. Here, everything needs a purpose, everything in the map must somehow contribute to solving the puzzle. At first I thought it was going to be easy. "It's just a simple test chamber!" I told myself, "I don't even have to decorate it (much)!"

How wrong I was...

When making a test chamber, the mapper doesn't just worry about making the test fun, but making sure it works perfectly and has an intuitive solution. As I drown in more and more plans for my own test chamber I'm starting to understand that these two concepts are more intertwined than I originally thought. As it stands, I've probably abandoned enough ideas for puzzles to make an entire mod, all in the hope that I'll divine some perfect, distilled test by churning these puzzles in my mind, stretching and pulling them into an ideal, mailable shape like some kind of proverbial taffy.

That isn't to say I haven't made some kind of progress; it is absolutely set in stone that the map is going to be a Penrose Triangle shape. That's a given.



Besides my mission to abuse the linked_portal_door entity, I've resolved not to use certain test elements and that's helped simplify planning. For example:

• Mobility Gels: After playing a few custom maps that rely on propulsion and repulsion gel, I can't help but feel like they're unnecessary and sloppy, at least in the maps I'm hoping to make. Besides, conversion gel is only good for one thing and there's basically only one kind of test one can make with the stuff.

• Thermal Discouragement Beams: As much as I love lasers I don't feel like I'm ready to tackle this testing element just yet. While it's easy to put them in a map, it's very hard to do laser-centric puzzles well. More often than not tests that rely on them turn into total snooze-fests because all the player is doing is moving Redirection Cubes around just to get the laser in just the right spot.

• Turrets: This test is all about expanding the players mind to the possibilities of non-euclidean space. Shooting their brains across the room with automated guns isn't really mind expanding...well, it is since it's flying across the room, but...well you know what I mean.

And that's about it for now. I don't have any good pictures of the map so far. One last thing: this is probably the first time I haven't decided on a good name before working on the map. I almost picked Vertigo but it was already taken. So if you have any suggestions they're welcome in the comments. Who knows, I might even reconsider Sleep Apnea.

Penrose Edge of Death

Good news everyone! One of my super-cool Internet friends, Obtusegoose stole one of my ideas.



Alright, maybe "stole" is a bit harsh. Nonetheless, I mentioned that the creation of a Penrose Triangle would be easy in Portal 2 with the use of the linked_portal_door entity. While I was hoping I would be the first one to do it. Obtusegoose beat me to the punch. So good for him, I guess. I'm not even bitter or anything.

Anywho, Hypnophobia? Entdata is currently at 115.7%. Basically, it's impossible to make any more, just to tweak what's already in the map for optimal excellence. I'm serious you guys, it's almost done, I just need to stop having anxiety attacks and actually finish it.

So what actually needs to be done? All this:

• Fix the timing at one secret spot so something's reaction to some explosions is less casual.
• Basically fix up all the AI to make it more hateful to the player in general.
• Make the super-cool ending scene.
• Cubemaps, what's weird is that I only have like two cubemaps in the whole map, but everything renders just fine, I'm going to have some cool internet friends (who don't steal from me) test it to see if they see the same nice shiny textures that I do.

And that's it! It's practically done, but I'm not going to release this thing until it's good and ready, which will probably be this month anyway.

They Think It Be Like It Is But It Don't

Today Idontknow and I tried to play the most current version of Hypnophobia in Garry's Mod. Naturally, it didn't work out for a number of reasons, but this is to be expected. We weren't able to get a server working but it's probably for the better since my lack of a graphics card would mean the game would be a horrible confused mess of psychedelic colors...



...you know, more then it already is.

Oh! That reminds me, today's lucky number is 85.3%! Whoever is sitting in Row 4, Seat 2 just won a brand-new Mark III travel machine, congratulations! It is now a distinct, but improbable possibility that the map MAY be done by the beginning of January.

MAY.

What else? Well a very nifty entity in the Portal 2 build of the Source Engine has been brought to my attention, the so called linked_portal_door. From what I've seen so far it can lead to very intriguing topography:





I am going to make an abstract map for Portal as soon as possible and it is going to be all up in this. You realize that this makes Penrose Triangle shaped maps easy? Nay, child's play? I don't even want to try and consider all the totally bizarre possibilities this opens up. It would be the map supreme. It might be the gateway to my life-long dream of being able to break people's minds from across the internet.

Imagine if you will, a map with the same aesthetics of of Insomnia, but still clearly a Portal-style test chamber, twisted beyond any clear function and host to such anomalous curvatures of space-time that the Human brain can't help but surrender to the mematic hazard it's presented with. There would be checkerboard tiles of course, and the whole map would be an amalgamation of a city, swamps and the clean, bold lines of Aperture Science. There would be vortices of brightly colored light and floating platforms in an inky black abyss. Doorways that lead to rooms that are bigger on the inside, hallways that lead back to their start while staying perfectly straight, upside down rooms, the possibilities would be endless. And there wouldn't be a single peep about lemons or cake or whatever.

And player would be forced to burn Wheatley at the end. Nice.