Portal 2

Portal 2

73 ratings
Layers of Cognition
   
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Layers of Cognition

Description
PLEASE READ

Hard map for experienced players, which utilizes the portal gun ON/OFF concept and every BEEmod field once. In order to solve the map, you have to know their properties and how they interact. You can check the overview table in the map pictures.

Difficulty: 8/10
No execution skills required.

Unexpected information:
Angled lasers through wall portals are part of the solution.

List of unintended things:
  • cube climbing (usually it's a legit move, but not needed or intended in this map)
  • jumping (space bar) is not needed either

List of obviously unintended things:
  • glitches
  • speedrun techniques (bhop, strafing etc.)
  • cube tossing with wild mouse movements
  • walking on deactivated field/fizzler emitters
  • mid-air shots

Additional item information:
- the white ceiling and floor surface have portal magnets with fixed orientation. Narrow ceiling and floor surfaces have to be shot while standing in-line with them
- the floating platform in the top area has a button which controls the portal gun (similar to a yellow button) and the white field
- the white field remains deactivated for at least one second
- the lift has no connection and oscillates all the time. If you get stuck, wait a few seconds. If your solution requires you or a cube to get jammed between lift and the floor (or a field), you're doing something wrong. EVEN WORSE:

A jammed cube can lose its collision, resulting in undesirable behavior,
such as the cube no longer activating buttons properly.
Avoid that by all costs.

- the return path triggers a full reset of your progress
- the bottom relay deactivates the entire death fizzler
- cube shielding (holding a cube in front of you) towards the turret is not intended. The turret is super strong. As long as it is alive, the marked area under the purple field means instant death. Burning it doesn't require a tight angle. Aiming at the legs recommended, but a background mechanic will ensure that it gets killed even if you're aiming between its legs.
- the absolute fizzler's timer is long enough to shoot different portals through and also long enough for the player/cube to pass. It's too short to get the "lift portal" and get back again.
- the timer of the green field's button is long enough to get 1 (!) cube on top by holding it above your head. No ninja stuff.

Known issues:
- when the player stands in front of a portal and looks through, the visuals might be incorrect. Don't worry, it doesn't affect the gameplay.
- in some rare cases a cube can slip through the green field while traversing the room. That's not intended and results from weird collisions of the green field. The best way to prevent it is to look straight up while holding and walking with it. Also make sure that the cube is REALLY over the green field after you pressed its button and put it up. Just let it sit for a moment before you start walking around.
- due to self-inflicted actions (unintended tossing for example) the player can get stuck in the solid fields. If so, use noclip to get free.
- apart from that, too much noclipping isn't recommend. You could accidently hit some invisible triggers or background mechanics that smoothen your experience. Use at your own risk.
- depending on your settings and setup, the visual appearance of fields (especially the absolute fizzler), grating, text boxes etc. can differ. Nothing of it will affects the gameplay. Created and tested with the highest graphic settings, 8x anti-aliasing, 1920 x 1080 resolution, subtitles off and BEEmod installed

Useful things:
  • use the command "host_timescale 1.5" (or other values) for reducing walking times
  • F6 / F7 recommended
  • you can use the mouse wheel for better aiming
  • feel free to adjust the music and/or sound effects in the options menu

Huge thanks to Libbybapa for playesting, technical help, advice and incessant support.
I also have to thank Nobody No-One and Haru for playtesting the previous iteration, as well as Leo and Mystical Λce for technical help.

Music: Placid by Mevious

Trivia: The map is a remake of my map "Layers of Fatality", which was a remake of my older map "Layers of Consciousness" (2018). In 2020 there was also a third different, non-public iteration of the map. The current overhaul embodies the true final version. Most main ideas from the original map are sill present.

Feedback and playthrough videos are welcome. Feel free to ask for hints.
Have fun!
48 Comments
mentallentil 15 Jul @ 11:35pm 
Brilliant puzzle, favourited. The sequences after sacrificing the second laser cube stumped me the most: in particular, the subtlety in gaining then immediately losing the floor portal. I also really liked the uses of the absolute fizzler, it's the one I expected least from at first glance.

My solution was even more convoluted than I thought it would be, so I'm relatively confident it's intended, but just to be sure — intended solution?
Dark Rozen 12 Jun @ 5:32pm 
Very fun and loooong map. Very enjoyable and funny item reuse.
Cisberg3.6,Calculatrice 9 Feb @ 6:26am 
Even when I wasn't making progress and not being entirely familiar with many of these elements, this was still fun to play.
Narkodes  [author] 5 Sep, 2024 @ 3:42am 
@SpKi: Great video, everything intended. I also enjoyed the cube behavior in the last part :teddyscared: Thank you a lot for your feedback and effort, such a pleasure to watch!
SpKi 31 Aug, 2024 @ 7:20am 
I feel like I should leave a comment here. This is one of the best Portal 2 maps on the workshop without a doubt. Here's my commentated blind run (starts at 9:50): https://youtu.be/Qw5O4TCfdns

The blind run video was intended as a disguised "normal Celeste video" on my YT, where after the Celeste gameplay it would cut to me playing this map. It was meant to be a silly joke, but the quality of this puzzle overshadowed everything so much that I honestly forgot I was doing that bit by the end of it ;p Everything else I wanted to say is in the video.
Narkodes  [author] 22 Aug, 2023 @ 4:59am 
@skosh: The same could be said about the laser angle. Yes, the map uses them at one point, but I also would only incorporate an easy to understand one and not a tight one that requires two cube to reflect and bend the laser like that. However, I can see that this might not be entirely obvious. I have to congratulate for finding that exploit. I'm sooo surprised it was possible and even allowed to finish the map afterwards. I'm glad you still had fun! Maybe I should edit the description a bit :) 2/2
Narkodes  [author] 22 Aug, 2023 @ 4:59am 
@skosh: Thank you very much for the nice feedback.
Indeed, your solution then deviates very much from the intended and unfortunately skips important parts of the solution. The "don't jump" thing was not so much meant as a strict rule, but as an easy way for the player to check if you are doing something wrong. Grabbing the cube on the green field from below (needs jumping) and VERY cumbersome, fiddly jumping and movement to aim it & would never be intended in a map of mine, because I strive for an easy execution. 1/2
skosh 2 Aug, 2023 @ 4:54pm 
Wow! Incredible map. I felt pretty good about completing this until I watched Iapicidas' video and saw that I did not follow the script. Darn that "no jump" rule! Oddly, I never considered the portal by the lifesaver door as part of the puzzle. The portal symbol next to the arrow looked like a lifesaver when I first glanced at it and I ignored it thinking it was part of the recovery path. Still, I had a lot of fun with this while still retaining my sanity. I would never have figured out that complex sequence after the turret kill. Anyway, here is my unintended run. I deviate from the script at time 17.00 ... https://youtu.be/gXEhnWHdvfc
Narkodes  [author] 6 Jan, 2023 @ 9:27am 
@Nobody No-One: Thank you for your comments and the fav! I'm very glad you came back to it and liked it. Your help on the unreleased 2020 version was a good thought-provoking impulse to guide the map in an even better direction. At least that's what I think/hope. IMO the temporary cube and all the turret stuff etc. was worth adding. Quite ironic that the very first iteration from 2017/18 was the first map of mine that you played. Terrible in all regards, but funny that some ideas like the last cube respawn or the early cube swapping sequences were already implemented back then. And yep, the intended solution is long, even without those 1-2 moves that can be played differently. Most of them have something to do with the way the player brings all 3 cubes back to the top. Nothing too special, but would have been in tone with the general map structure. Anyway, I think that's fine. Thanks for playing!
Nobody No-One 24 Dec, 2022 @ 10:22pm 
I was happy to see that my solution was move-for-move the same as 可砸's. I know there is some potential for variation at some points, but I was worried I had done a ton of unnecessary moves, and I'm glad to see the solution really is as convoluted as I experienced.