Portal 2 Puzzle Creator : How to Make a Good Test Chamber

This instructable will show you how the guidelines on how to make a good test chamber using Portal 's Puzzle Creator.

Portal 2

Beemod 2.4 (this is optional, but i will use it in this instructable)

If you are building a test chamber, it is useful to have a set theme that you would like to achieve.

In this example, i have chosen to introduce the player to the Pneumatic Diversity Vent.

If you use BEE 2.4, then this makes the test designing process faster, as it takes longer to modify your item palette (having to exit Portal 2, modify your palette, re-launch Portal 2, re-open your test) meaning that you will find that keeping a set theme takes overall less time than constantly swapping items.

Whilst designing your test, there may be faults in the chamber that you may not have noticed whilst designing it that can only be experienced whilst playing it. If you were going to send this chamber into the Steam Workshop, then people playing the chamber will experience these problems, so it is best to eliminate them before sharing the chamber.

Here are some strange things that i have encountered that created a problem in one of my tests...

- You can press buttons and pick up items through laser fields and grating

- Turrets can still damage you from some points of a Hard Light Bridge

- Pneumatic Diversity Vents do weird thing to turrets, even when deactivated

If you use BEEmod, most of the extra items tend to have some strange behaviour, more so than the pre-implemented items. Some of these mechanics can be useful, but initially, they tend to ruin test chambers a bit.

After you have created the main structure of the puzzle, add some extra parts. for my example chamber, i decided to add a crusher (or 'Mashy Spike Plate' as Wheatley would call them) at the beginning, crushing some turrets immediately, making use of the trigger element.

REMEMBER: don't forget to playtest the chamber after adding an extra element, you need to actually test the puzzle to see if it works or not. The problem with adding extra parts is that sometimes they might not work well with the main principle of the test!

You should now have a complete test chamber! If there is anything else needed, it is easy to implement it thanks to Portal 2's editor.

Enjoy!