The Gutter

During the slow teleport from Nova Prospekt Gordon ends up somwhere along the coast where the buildings are either broken down or left unfinished by whomever was there before. In one of the structures is an barely-powered combine teleport experiment. Gordon must find his suit and weapons so he can traverse the broken-down complex and power up the combine teleport and then use it, hoping that it will take him to the right place this time.
Download links:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/0iq16juhilsy3 ... o_comp.rar

Here are my thoughts again on it and I'm glad I got past the bridge to finish it this time:
- I get "node graph out of date" message
- oh we DO start in the gutter haha
- some dev textures left overs tsk tsk, mapping still looks unfinished and mediocre and underwater I can see out of the map
- now that I can't stack my way through the gate puzzle, I keep trying to jump towards it but it slams in my face every time... but did it at the 20th attempt or so!
- aww the ggun is fake! or I think it's a bug, as it disappeared and reappeared up in the tower
- could do with some music for the part after the bridge
- ok the driving bit was fkn awesome!
Overall it's very abstract, rough around the edges and clearly unfinished, but it was worth the play. Am glad the author decided to submit and hope it will be finished someday with some context to it.

Thanks for the feedback Ade, in order to finish on time there had to be a lot of smoke and mirrors present in the final submission. Some places are even lacking the smoke and mirror-part. I fully acknowledge your points about the mapping (texture and geometry) which are indeed unfinished and I apologize for the state they are in.

While the inputs & outputs were functional, I was very unsure if I should submit the map looking like it did. In the end I decided to submit it and put it up for scrutiny. I'm really glad to hear you enjoyed playing it despite it's flaws, hopefully I can make a project of turning the map less abstract during this summer.

To answer some of your points:

Ade wrote:- I get "node graph out of date" message

The only AI in the map is set to only follow waypoints so I didn't think about adding the .ain file to the submission. It shouldn't cause any problems, but I'm sorry you had to see it.

Ade wrote:- now that I can't stack my way through the gate puzzle, I keep trying to jump towards it but it slams in my face every time... but did it at the 20th attempt or so!

Glade to hear you made it! Had there been more time I would have elaborated more on that puzzle,

Highlight to read:

making more hints to break the glass and use the suit's sprint function.

Ade wrote:- aww the ggun is fake! or I think it's a bug, as it disappeared and reappeared up in the tower

Are you thinking about the gravgun

Highlight to read:

carried by the crow or up in the tower? The one on the planks/carried by the crow is indeed a prop and should be properly removed when the crow is out of sight.

Ade wrote: - could do with some music for the part after the bridge

Indeed, it could use more ambience.

The message doesn't cause any problems, just shows it's unfinished and doesn't help with immersion setting in heh
I tried breaking the glass by 'throwing' the chair and bricks at the window but no go, I think I tried swinging them, too.
The ggun bit was just different from the first playthrough and it was weird to just have it disappear in front of me. I didn't wanna detail without giving any spoilers, like you just did

Ade wrote: I tried breaking the glass by 'throwing' the chair and bricks at the window but no go, I think I tried swinging them, too.

That is very strange, the glass should break on the first object thrown at it. Goes to show how little testing I did.

Ade wrote: The ggun bit was just different from the first playthrough and it was weird to just have it disappear in front of me. I didn't wanna detail without giving any spoilers, like you just did

Hehe whoops, guess I didn't anyone would read the thread before playing. But thanks for the heads up, I'll spoiler the post for good measure.

This was the only entry left to play for me. Just gave it a go. I had to edit the gameinfo.txt to replace the appid from 220 to 420, since I don´t have hl2 installed (only ep2). This is a novice map with all what that means. It´s blocky, visually dull, undetailed, etc. If you want to take mapping seriously, I suggest you to play more maps and put more attention on their design, read a few guides, etc. We all started somewhere!

The crow stealing the gravity gun was a cool touch!

And I suggest you finish playing it because there's a fun surprise towards the end.

Thanks for taking the time to play it, Gambini. I will definitively attempt to improve my design skills through playing other peoples maps and reading guides.

First order of business now that the competition has ended is try to make it much more visually appealing, less blocky/abstract and giving it more atmosphere through props.

Agreed that the driving part stole the show: was cruising at high speed through those alleys and all of a sudden THAT pops up and it's like: 'you've got to be shitting me' while hitting the turbo and crossing fingers