Portal 1 - need help please (spoilers obviously)

[Juggling Goth]

Just assume I'm >5 years behind everyone else in game terms. I'm playing this on the PC because my most current console is a PS2. Also I have the worst spatial awareness ever (I walk into furniture and misjudge doorways on a regular basis) and should not be allowed near any physics puzzles. Anyway...

I'm playing Portal, and I'm stuck. And I swear the game I'm playing does not match the various walkthroughs and hints sites. Was there an updated release or something? I'm in test chamber 15 (I think), where you have to fire yourself out of a raised section of wall near the ceiling with sufficient speed to get through the forcefield. In all the walkthroughs, it's a fairly easy puzzle, because the entire floor is portal-friendly. In the game I've got, the first half of the floor is portal-unfriendly, and I'm having a really hard time landing on anything useful.

As far as I can tell, I need to prepare the orange portal on the raised section; go into a side room up some stairs; jump off a small cliff into a blue portal; get fired out of the orange portal; get my bearings and change where I'm looking in mid-air; make the blue portal before I hit the floor so I naturally fall through it; get fired out of the original orange portal much faster so I actually make it through the forcefield this time. Aaargh!

The little drawings on the floor definitely suggest I need to fire the portal gun while in mid-air. Have I just hit the limiting factors of my own terrible co-ordination and stupidly unresponsive mouse, or is there an easier way to do this horrible puzzle?

Very grateful for any help.

[The_Final_Stand]

That is in fact exactly what you must do. Half the floor being unportalable isn't unique to your game, whatever you may think.

Re-aligning yourself in mid air is easier if you look through the portal as you fall through it, and as long as you place the next portal straight in front of you and near the boundary between portalable and non-portalable, you should have no trouble.

[psilontech]

Try hitting up youtube for a "Let's Play Portal" series. That usually helps and plus, it is generally pretty entertaining as well.

[Juggling Goth]

That is in fact exactly what you must do. Half the floor being unportalable isn't unique to your game, whatever you may think.

Ugh, I'm an idiot. I got my chambers mixed up. There's an earlier one where the first part looks just like it except all portal-friendly, and I was looking at the walkthrough for that one. This is what happens when you don't play for a week and forget where you were.

Thanks!


Re-aligning yourself in mid air is easier if you look through the portal as you fall through it, and as long as you place the next portal straight in front of you and near the boundary between portalable and non-portalable, you should have no trouble.

OK, I'll try it. I think there's gonna be a lot of trial and error because directions and angles and my position in relation to everything else are not my strong points.

I doubt my ability to work stuff out after I spent ages lining up portals trying to fall onto a button I just needed to press with the E key. :smallredface:

Thanks again.

[Serpentine]

I remember that one. Wait 'til you see the Advanced version - it's even harder.