Community map idea: The shifting room

[LiotkSa]

This idea is too big for me, but I can't stop tginking about it.

The room will start off small, with just a few testing elements, and your goal is to reach the other end of the room (not the door). After you will reach the other end of the room, the whole room will shift, with you in it, and will now be a whole new chamber.

I believe that we could make this room, as a community, where every person create a seperate test, and then we combine in into one big shifting room, sorted by difficulty, or size.

Opinions?

[audiOtrash]

If you want to do the mathematics and logic stuff that the "hidden" chambers are not seen before they shift.?

[linefly11]

Sounds freakin awesome! haha

[zechio]

Ehh...you may want to go check out the dev commentary for the first level. They talk about some of the stuff that was required to get a chamber to re-arrange with you in it ( Well, your room. Granted, there was some extra physics simulations and such that won't be needed..), but it's quite intensive. From the sounds of things, it doesn't handle actually manipulating objects with you inside it very easily.

I haven't done anything with it yet, and I'm not saying it'll be impossible...but it may well be beyond the scope of a mod.

If you load the any of the levels that involving moving stuff, you'll see it's actually 2 levels: Before the animation, and during/after.

I would start with a proof of concept. Make a room, and split it in half. Make sure the 2 halves line up perfect, add a button on the far end. When you press the button, the 2 halves move apart, and some sections fill in the gap. If you can find a way to do this without any problems, you should be golden. However, I wouldn't start recruiting more modders, all working together...if you're just going to get to the end, and not know if you will be able to stick the rooms together.

A fantastic idea of course, but often times there's a practical reason the developers didn't do it in the first place:)

PS: What I got from the commentaries, is that you will need to create the room that is fully together. Then, when the player presses the button, you teleport them to a new room, that is actually cut in half and animates. You need to find a way to restrict the player from getting to the animated portion, then when it is done animating, teleport them to a 3rd room, that is static. If you allow the player to move, you need to find a way to know their position at the end of the animation, so that they don't visibly teleport. ( You want the teleports to be invisible. Looking the same direction, same lighting, in the same location, etc. )

Your best bet would probably be to prop up a safety fence, or drop a tube around them, then take the control away and auto-face the camera during the animation.

Good Luck!

[maddios]

Are you sure that's what happens, because that would create a lot of impossible spaces, and by Valve's own words, there is only one impossible space.

[smokes]

I thought about this too while playing around with panels in hammer.

But then again, say you wanna pack 4 rooms into '1', you need panels for walls, ceiling and floor, mathematics/logic/sound/trigger stuff for each of them, now all of that x 4... and dont forget you want puzzle elements in each of the rooms too.

i doubt this could work out any good.

on the other hand, 1 room with only the puzzle elements changing .. who knows.

[synthemesc]

sounds cool in theory but would probably be nightmare to try and actually do.

[zechio]

Are you sure that's what happens, because that would create a lot of impossible spaces, and by Valve's own words, there is only one impossible space.

I don't think they count teleporting you to different rooms as impossible spaces. They meant things like having a room, inside a sphere, where the room is bigger than the sphere. Technically it's impossible, but they fixed most of those.

This is just replicating the room, and moving you around so the room can be animated. You can load up any of the single player maps that involve moving a room you are in, no clip around, etc. and you'll find they either teleport you somewhere else inside the level, or load another level. It's just a slight of hand trick to get around game limitations.