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Now You're Thinking With Portals

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the if-at-first-you-don't-succeed-you-fail dept.

Valve's got a new game in the works, and it's quite the mind-bender. Portal is a puzzle/FPS hybrid that will utilize holes in space to do the impossible. From the Ars Technica post: "That video makes my brain hurt in all the right ways. The set up and voice-over are both hilarious, and at first it seemed rudimentary to me. Then everything goes crazy and you start to realize just how much you can do with this technology. I'm looking forward to seeing fan-made videos hit the 'Net with all the insane stunts and tricks you can pull off. This seems to be one of those games that you'll have as much fun playing with the game as you do simply playing through it." This is a title definitely worth checking out for yourself.

171 comments

  1. Original... by KDR_11k · · Score: 0, Troll

    Looks to me like they saw Prey do it and wanted to do it too...

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    1. Re:Original... by satoshi1 · · Score: 1

      Agreed. When I first saw this, my mind screamed "PREY!"

    2. Re:Original... by XenoRyet · · Score: 3, Insightful
      I was going to contradict you on that point, but Tycho over at Penny-Arcade is more elloquent than I, so I'll just quote him:

      "I've heard the ideas it presents dismissed as ripping off Prey, and if there is a more ignorant statement to be made regarding these two games it has yet to be discovered. Prey's portals aren't user created. What's more, they're used in a completely different way: Prey is a first-person shooter, while Portal is clearly... something else."
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    3. Re:Original... by Phu5ion · · Score: 2, Insightful
      Looks to me like they saw Prey do it and wanted to do it too...

      Reading the description that was the first thing to pop in my mind too. But after seeing the video and some of the test they will put the player though, I think it will definately be able to set itself apart from Prey, think more puzzle and less FPS.

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    4. Re:Original... by greyghst168 · · Score: 1

      Except that in Prey, you can't manipulate where the portals are, whereas in this game, you have full control of both the entrance and exit portals.

    5. Re:Original... by RoadDoggFL · · Score: 1

      Right, because a user-created portal and a portal that's on the side of a box are just SO different.

      It'll have a more significant impact on gameplay, to be sure, but after playing Prey (ok, just the demo) this isn't as impressive.

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      "This is considered plagiarism."
    6. Re:Original... by XenoRyet · · Score: 1
      The difference is signifigant enough to put the games in compleatly different catagories.

      It's not as if Prey is the first game to have a portal mechanism either. This thread is full of examples to the contrary. However the common reaction is to think Portal is a Prey ripoff, mearly because Prey contains the most recent incartation of a vaugly simmilar concept. In reality, there isn't much basis for comparing the two games, and such comparisons would be of limited usefulness.

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    7. Re:Original... by KDR_11k · · Score: 2, Informative

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDDvrovKgeM

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    8. Re:Original... by XenoRyet · · Score: 1
      That video, while interesting, doesn't do anything to support the argument that Portal is a Prey ripoff.

      In fact, I'd say it shows quite the oposite. Prey had to be modded to include anything resembling Portal, and it's still not the same type of game mechanic.

      The idea of a portal object in a game isn't new, it predates both Prey and Portal by quite a bit. The point is that Portal cannot be properly refered to as a Prey ripoff, because it's play style and game mechanics are compleatly distinct from Prey.

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  2. A DigiPen Game by rizzuh · · Score: 5, Informative

    Portal is based on a game called Narbacular Drop that was developed by a group of seniors at the DigiPen Institute of Technology. Valve ended up contracting the entire programming team to work on Portal. It's interesting to see how a game school's relatively small-time project has become front-page news on dozens of gaming sites.

    1. Re:A DigiPen Game by The+MAZZTer · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I just played that game. It's the same general idea as Portal will use, so it's fun to play around with the physics and all before the game comes out.

      One fun thing to do is shoot a blue portal in the ceiling, a red one in the floor, and then fall though in an infinite loop thing... and then as you fall shoot a blue portal in a wall, you go flying out like in the Portal trailer. I used it to get over a lava pit (I think it might have not been the correct solution, but it was fun. :)

    2. Re:A DigiPen Game by RoadDoggFL · · Score: 1

      What I want to know is what happens to objects that go through a portal before there's an exit? In the trailer, didn't they create the exit portal before they created the portal underneath the turret and box? What if the portal was created underneath the objects before another was created on the wall? You they just sit there until they have an exit? Of course, I'm just assuming that an entrance can be used as an exit and vice versa.

      --
      "This is considered plagiarism."
    3. Re:A DigiPen Game by usrusr · · Score: 2, Informative

      there's a simple answer: input/ouput portals are not first/secondary fire, but are even/uneven "shots".

      so a situation where an "input" exists without an output does not occur.

      you should also note that the video displays traditional hl2 "grav gun" functionality too, so it's probably like this: primary: make in/out portals, secondary: grip/release with grav gun (or switched)

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    4. Re:A DigiPen Game by RoadDoggFL · · Score: 1

      Still doesn't answer what happens when you take your first shot and something goes through the created portal without a second one being created yet. I figured there'd just be a "create portal" function that links the last two rather than one-way portals (though that would be easier for herding-type scenarios), but still, does the first portal not even activate without a second one?

      --
      "This is considered plagiarism."
    5. Re:A DigiPen Game by Andrew+Kismet · · Score: 1

      Narbacular Drop solved this by having two initial portals in existence. It was a matter of relocating them.
      I suppose Portal's solution will be to have a singular Portal be just a swirling void that spits you back out immediately, or knowing Valve's sense of humor, drops you into the nearest bottomless pit with a humourous message informing you that you have "failed to take into account rudimentary portal physics."

    6. Re:A DigiPen Game by RoadDoggFL · · Score: 1

      Sounds perfect for enemies...

      --
      "This is considered plagiarism."
    7. Re:A DigiPen Game by usrusr · · Score: 1

      what makes you assume that the protals are bidirectional?

      iirc the demo even had a part showing the player running against an output portal (or _the_ output portal, since there is always just one) as if it was a brick wall. the first portal you make is the output, so there is no "portal leading nowhere".

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    8. Re:A DigiPen Game by RoadDoggFL · · Score: 2, Informative

      There is no "input" or "output" portal. At the end of the video it shows an item (a turret?) "bouncing" out of two turrets next to each other on the floor. Both as input, both as output. But a single portal acting as a brick wall makes sense.

      --
      "This is considered plagiarism."
    9. Re:A DigiPen Game by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · · Score: 1

      While unidirectional holes might be useful as a game mechanism, it's absolutely needless for the technology, which clearly showed one robot bouncing up and down, in and out two portals in the floor.

      Note that this also gets rid of the problem of whether you're placing an out or an in portal. You're just placing one of two, then you go through it to the other, end of story. Hence it doesn't matter which one you're placing, since they're the same (except for color.) You're just placing (moving) the oldest one.

      However, I'd still like independent control of red vs. blue placement. Why? I may want to go through the portal then "move the other one" several times in a row (going back and forth) without having to change one end of the portal. While you could do this by just constantly replacing the "fixed" one right where it already is, it would be nice to have optional independent control over the placement.

      Now real fun would be 3 colors, say, red, blue, and green, and you go through them in that order.

      I like some of the more devious examples from the video, where they put a portal way down and another further away, jump down, falling a bit before you hit the portal, then go through the other end, also in the floor, and conserve your momentum to go up to reach a shelf (although why you couldn't put it on the shelf I don't know, distance limit of placement maybe).

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    10. Re:A DigiPen Game by fbjon · · Score: 1

      You can do this in Narbacular Drop. There's one level, "Ladder" something, where instead of step by step going up platforms with flaming boulders rolling over them, you simply place a portal on a wall next to you and use it as a window. The other portal you place so it overlooks the next platform, and continue doing the same, except you now can continue placing the other portal looking through the first one, then use the portals when the other one has reached the top. Simply awesome.

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  3. Narbacular Drop by SB5 · · Score: 4, Informative

    This game is based off of "Narbacular Drop". The guy that made "Narbacular Drop" got hired to Valve, and went on to make this.

    Lots of people keep calling it a "Prey" ripoff, whether his idea came from "Prey" or not, its a completely different game imho.

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    1. Re:Narbacular Drop by Erioll · · Score: 1

      On the wiki article on this they mention how this game has been in development before Prey was released, and as mentioned, the guys from Narbacular Drop were HIRED to do this. So accusations of copying would be rather hard to make stick.

      And besides, I'd rather have good ideas taken wherever they may go. The danger of course is to lose the thing ABOUT the feature that made it good in the "original," but as this seems to be only enhancing the possibilities, I say "go for it Valve."

    2. Re:Narbacular Drop by charstar · · Score: 1

      Rip off or not, I was doing stuff similar to this in Decent years and years ago with the DEVIL editor. It's not a new concept at all.

    3. Re:Narbacular Drop by webrunner · · Score: 2, Interesting

      The thing people need to realise is that:
      - In Prey, portals are a new thing that level can do to the player
      - In Narbtacular Drop and Portal, portals are a new thing that the player can do to the level.

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    4. Re:Narbacular Drop by oni · · Score: 1

      oh good point! I wish I could still play descent II, but it requires the CD and my CD was scratched. That was a seriously ground-breaking game!

    5. Re:Narbacular Drop by AKAImBatman · · Score: 1
      On the wiki article on this they mention how this game has been in development before Prey was released

      Read the wiki article on Prey. It's been in development since 1995. (!) I remember the original PC Gamer spread which discussed all the cool features that portal technology would allow. As it worked out, however, the technology was a bit too complex and was shelved. A new version was later created with a different codebase and released in 2006.

      So I think that it's hard NOT to say that Portal was influenced by Prey. A total ripoff? Probably not. But definitely influenced.
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    6. Re:Narbacular Drop by Mr2001 · · Score: 2, Informative

      With the right mods, players can "do" portals to levels in Prey too.

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    7. Re:Narbacular Drop by HTH+NE1 · · Score: 1

      I've been doing it in TinyMUCKs ever since you could attach links to objects other than rooms.

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    8. Re:Narbacular Drop by webrunner · · Score: 2, Informative

      Well, it's not in question that Prey -supports- the same kind of portal stuff as Portal, the same way that the DooM 3 engine -supports- physics simulation, but it's hl2 that really made it the focus of the game and a major gameplay element through the use of the gravity gun and physics puzzles.

      Doom 3 physics:half life 2 physics::Prey portals:Portal portals

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    9. Re:Narbacular Drop by metsu · · Score: 1

      I haven't played the new prey.
      I do remember there was a circa '98 video interview showing the neat portal tech on the old prey build. the protagonist putting down portals and shooting himself through them.
      They also scrapped the whole destructible levels concept that was shown on this video.

    10. Re:Narbacular Drop by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      So I guess I can just announce some crazy technology, and then delay the game for 10 years. Anything in the interim, you know, people who actually made it, are just copying me!

      Prey had 10 years to show off their portal tech. They couldn't do it. Narbacular beat them to a release, plain and simple.

    11. Re:Narbacular Drop by AKAImBatman · · Score: 3, Informative
      Prey had 10 years to show off their portal tech. They couldn't do it.

      This is blatently incorrect. Prey DID show off their portal tech. (To just anyone and everyone they could!) What they couldn't do was make an actual game out of it. Cool tech, but it ended up being nothing more than a research project.

      Fast forward to the 21st century. Any game maker who wants to implement Portal Technology is going to study 2 examples. The first one is Descent's 360 degree engine. The second is the Prey portal technology that allowed worlds to collapse in on themselves. Once you understand how portals work (it's a bloody easy concept), creating those effects follows quite easily.

      So again, it's impossible to say that Portal and its predecessor were not influenced by Prey.
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    12. Re:Narbacular Drop by Das+Modell · · Score: 1

      I was doing portals before the first dinosaurs walked the earth. There's nothing new about this.

    13. Re:Narbacular Drop by SanityInAnarchy · · Score: 2, Informative

      The idea of portals has been around for ages. Anyone who knows anything about 3D programming should know about the differences between Portals, Octrees, BSP trees, and so on.

      In fact, if I remember right, Duke Nukem 3D was played essentially as a portal system with all the limitations of Doom. For instance, I once made a fun level which had a long ramp/tunnel that sloped downwards, but otherwise went straight to an elevator, and you bring the elevator up and you're at the top of the ramp, even though the elevator was just taking you straight up.

      Another example was a secret level which was shaped like this (warning, ASCII art):

      _______
      | ___ |
      | |_| |
      |_____|

      Yeah, my ASCII art sucks. Anyway, like that -- square/donut shaped -- only bigger. The inner room was huge, the outer hallway was narrow, and in each of the four cardinal directions, there was an open doorway between them. Only the inner room was a completely different room depending on which door you were going through.

      In other words, because of the way Duke Nukem fakes 3D, you can think of it as if the outer hallway was a spiral ramp going down, and the four versions of the inner room were actually stacked on top of each other. It functioned that way except for one thing: the hallway was not sloped, and the inner rooms actually took up the same physical space.

      Hard to explain, really.

      Then, just for fun, they added these tubes in the middle room. Each tube was an invisible teleporter (obvious if you were looking for it) that would make you appear at the top of another room -- so basically, each room had a tube that lead downwards to each of the other rooms. And it was certainly conceivable that you could have that feedback loop of falling into the same teleporter repeatedly.

      Anyway, I realize this is new and very cool, especially to put it in the hands of the user. But portal technology is not actually that new -- in fact, it's quite old, almost as old as BSP itself. It usually doesn't work well except for wholly indoor environments, but it's certainly nice with a mix of other methods, so you can use the portals for things octrees simply can't do. If they're doing it right, though, the doorways in that game are possibly nothing but portals also, meaning it should be possible to walk through a doorway into a room and suddenly find yourself falling forwards...

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    14. Re:Narbacular Drop by usrusr · · Score: 1

      this is about gameplay and not about culling methods.

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    15. Re:Narbacular Drop by Fjornir · · Score: 1

      TinyMUCK was derived from TinyMUD which also allowed this.

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    16. Re:Narbacular Drop by Vo0k · · Score: 1

      *WHOOOOSHHHH*
      (the sound the idea makes going over your head)

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    17. Re:Narbacular Drop by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · · Score: 1

      Yeah, jumping through portals in Duke Nukem 3D was pretty cool -- you could shoot your weapon through the portal too. You just couldn't see through them, which is rather neat.

      Of course, that isn't all that new, either. Serious Sam had portals you could see through, even one that rotated, and I know they weren't the first with this.

      However, a hole-shooting gun is rather a cool thing. Now that everyone sees the video and how fantastic it would be to play a game like this, it's obvious. ...in retrospect, as are a lot of things, like 1-click buy.

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    18. Re:Narbacular Drop by Mr2001 · · Score: 1
      Then, just for fun, they added these tubes in the middle room. Each tube was an invisible teleporter (obvious if you were looking for it) that would make you appear at the top of another room -- so basically, each room had a tube that lead downwards to each of the other rooms.

      This is in contrast to the Quake engine, where instead of a series of tubes, it'd be more like a big truck that you just dump something on.
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    19. Re:Narbacular Drop by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm sorry, but Portal are NOT an original idea. Heck, I had never even heard of Prey (or any other game with portals) and having Portals like this was something I always had thought was something that'd be really fun to play with.

      I have a crazy idea. What if something DIDN'T always have to be a rip-off of something else!

      Anyway, Prey's use of them is a gimmick. I found Prey boring and repetitive and I wasn't shocked that it played like Doom 3 (badly, that is).

  4. I think my brain just snapped by twistedsymphony · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Wow, I've played through Prey and the portals in that game really mess with your mind but being able to create portals at will certainly makes for some messed up stuff. Reminds me of the black circles they used to have in old cartoons were they'd just throw it in the ground or onto a wall and walk through.

    I'm curious how they plan to let you get yourself out of an infinite portal loop like a portal in the floor the drops from the ceiling back into the portal in the floor. etc. unless of course said portals are only good for X number of uses. Even still This one looks to be much cooler then the gravity gun.

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    1. Re:I think my brain just snapped by Atzanteol · · Score: 1

      I'm curious how they plan to let you get yourself out of an infinite portal loop like a portal in the floor the drops from the ceiling back into the portal in the floor.

      Looking at the video on their page it seems they'll allow it just fine. This game looks very nifty!

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    2. Re:I think my brain just snapped by Senzei · · Score: 1
      I'm curious how they plan to let you get yourself out of an infinite portal loop like a portal in the floor the drops from the ceiling back into the portal in the floor. etc. unless of course said portals are only good for X number of uses.
      If it were up to me the solution would be single-player: You can still access the menus, load from your last save. multi-player: Have a timeout period on multiple uses where you are blocked by the portal's surface instead of going through it.
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    3. Re:I think my brain just snapped by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You guys are just overthinking it. If you have a problem with infinite portals just shoot another portal somewhere else. From everything we've seen so far you can only have 2 portal holes up at a time (for 1 combined portal)

    4. Re:I think my brain just snapped by p0tat03 · · Score: 2, Informative

      From the video the solution is quite simple.

      The portal-gun looks like it will only allow 2 portals to exist at once (one leading to the other), so to break a loop you just fire your gun anywhere else, and the first portal created will disappear and be replaced by the new one.

    5. Re:I think my brain just snapped by snuf23 · · Score: 1

      "I'm curious how they plan to let you get yourself out of an infinite portal loop like a portal in the floor the drops from the ceiling back into the portal in the floor. etc."

      From the video it looks like infinite loop portals would be allowed. To get out you'd just shoot to make a new portal on the wall next to you. This would change the location of one of the two portals breaking the loop.

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    6. Re:I think my brain just snapped by WolfWithoutAClause · · Score: 1

      I'm not sure they'll let you get out of an infinite loop alive. Portals violate conservation of energy, so you end up falling faster and faster, leave the infinite loop and you're gonna go splat I think.

      --

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    7. Re:I think my brain just snapped by nuzak · · Score: 1

      > I'm curious how they plan to let you get yourself out of an infinite portal loop like a portal in the floor the drops from the ceiling back into the portal in the floor. etc.

      Simple. Fire off another portal to the side while you're falling through that loop. You'll fall through the portal one more time, then you'll pop out of the new one, hopefully away from the hole.

      What would really be a gas would be fake portals that pass light but not matter. Fire a real portal over a fake one, run through. Remove the real portal. Watch your opponent bonk into the wall. The Wile E. Coyote effect, if you will. You could even portal an oncoming train into the real-then-fake-then-real-again portal just to complete the comedy.

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    8. Re:I think my brain just snapped by whyrat · · Score: 1

      I think the voiceover covers how you get out of an infite loop:
      "If at first you don't succeed, you die."

    9. Re:I think my brain just snapped by twistedsymphony · · Score: 1

      ahh.. at work I have no speakers... I got no voice over.

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    10. Re:I think my brain just snapped by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Take a look at http://forums.3drealms.com/vb/showthread.php?t=193 35 -- supposedly a mod for Prey that adds dynamic portals.

    11. Re:I think my brain just snapped by SanityInAnarchy · · Score: 1
      Simple. Fire off another portal to the side while you're falling through that loop. You'll fall through the portal one more time, then you'll pop out of the new one, hopefully away from the hole.

      I don't think that will work, but if it were possible -- maybe right-click for portal A and left-click for portal B, make them different colors? -- then that would be an awesomely cheap way of doing insane things. For instance: I don't think the Source engine measures the speed with which you impact a wall, only the ground (while falling). Thus, you use your portal loop to store kinetic energy, then fire a portal at the wall and BOOM! You go flying across the room like you were shot out of a cannon! Or if the portal gun has limited range, and there's a clifside in front of you, just start a portal loop indoors, pick up speed, then drop a portal on the ground in front of you and you'll go flying straight up!

      Fire a real portal over a fake one, run through. Remove the real portal. Watch your opponent bonk into the wall.

      That's only fun if impact with walls can cause damage. Your opponent speeds up with a portal loop, then launches themself at your portal, only to smack into a wall.

      But that may be taking it a bit too far. I don't really see fake portals as anything but a nuscience, kind of like making a Counter-Strike spray of a terrorist firing at you.

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    12. Re:I think my brain just snapped by usrusr · · Score: 1

      i strongly assume it's "click: red -> click: blue -> click: red..." and so on.

      where one color means input and the other means output, effectively you will always have exactly one pair of portals. if the last portal you made for your loop was the output in the ceiling then "shooting" anywhere else will result in you hitting the floor where the input portal was before and if the last portal you made was the input in the floor then the next will be the output, so you will fall into the input and emerge where you last shot at at infinite-loop-falling-speed (which is probably limited, think of increased air friction). iirc they even demoed this effect in the video.

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    13. Re:I think my brain just snapped by dubonbacon · · Score: 1

      Watch the demo video (WTFD). Most the concepts (cannon shot, flying up) are shown. There's a couple of images about in the middle of the video when they illustrate some crazy things you could accomplish with portals.

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    14. Re:I think my brain just snapped by Andrew+Kismet · · Score: 1

      Make sure you watch it with it. It's extremely well-written comedy. :D

    15. Re:I think my brain just snapped by Rallion · · Score: 1
      i strongly assume it's "click: red -> click: blue -> click: red..." and so on.


      The segment of the video after the VO says "This next test is impossible" demonstrates that this is NOT the case.
    16. Re:I think my brain just snapped by Vo0k · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Create an exit portal leading up and an entrance one in the ceiling. Tricky (timing) but possible. Again law of conservation of energy is violated but in opposite direction. Or trivial if the game ignores damage of hitting the ceiling - most games cause fall damage if you actually -fall- but hitting the ceilings at huge speeds (or grabbing ladders while falling really fast or such) doesn't cause any damage. Anyway, given enough room you can do wonders about losing speed.

      More interesting would be to create an infinite loop and fill it with rockets. Lots of rockets flying in straight line continuously. Then reopen the exit portal in front of an enemy.

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    17. Re:I think my brain just snapped by ClamIAm · · Score: 1

      I'm curious how they plan to let you get yourself out of an infinite portal loop

      Ctrl-C?

    18. Re:I think my brain just snapped by Senzei · · Score: 1
      That makes sense for a single player game. In multiplayer you would need something to prevent one asshat or a team of asshats from setting something like this up.
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    19. Re:I think my brain just snapped by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · · Score: 1

      With limited in-air control, as are typical with games like this, you could work your way to the edge, although you might hit with a lot of force and kill yourself anyway.

      Indeed, if they put in limited in-air control, the physics on how to escape will fall naturally out of the design, no special programming needed.

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    20. Re:I think my brain just snapped by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · · Score: 1

      > I'm curious how they plan to let you get yourself out of an infinite portal loop

      Several possibilities have been presented -- shooting another portal somewhere else as you fall, or swimming through the air until you get to the edge and hit (assuming the portal doesn't force auto-centering.)

      I can see I'm gonna be playing this game on nightmare while you play it on "Don't hurt me, daddy".

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      (-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
    21. Re:I think my brain just snapped by Atzanteol · · Score: 1

      I saw a more graceful way of exiting in one of the videos. Just shoot an 'exit' hole at a wall. You'll then be propelled from the wall onto land ending the loop.

      --
      "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"

      - Charles Darwin
    22. Re:I think my brain just snapped by ClamIAm · · Score: 1

      Um, right.  So to summarize:

      *  <--- Joke

      o  <--- You
      -|-
      / \

    23. Re:I think my brain just snapped by WolfWithoutAClause · · Score: 1
      Create an exit portal leading up and an entrance one in the ceiling. Tricky (timing) but possible. Again law of conservation of energy is violated but in opposite direction.

      That doesn't quite work. The right thing to do would be to create two portals on the ground, fall through one and back out of the other one, then you have to make a hole in the ceiling and one in the floor in line with it and fall up it until you stop, then cancel the portals, and land.

      --

      -WolfWithoutAClause

      "Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"
  5. Meep, meep! by XxtraLarGe · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Reminds me of the ACME portable holes they used to have in the old Road Runner cartoons :-)

    --
    Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
  6. Cool! by Yuioup · · Score: 1

    Portal technology has been around for quite a while...

    It's so obvious I'm embarassed I never thought of it myself...

    Kudos for Valve for pointing out the obvious to all of us!!

    Y

    1. Re:Cool! by KIFulgore · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Kudos to Valve for taking a trip over to Digipen's career day and nabbing the whole Narbacular Drop team ;). I was a DP student when they were working on Narb, my head still hurts when I think of the difficulty level of the puzzles you can create with it. I believe in their demo they had to nerf the difficulty several times for us mere mortals.

      --
      - For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism.
  7. About time by DigitalBubblebath · · Score: 1

    Shocking really, but this technology/technique has been around for a long time and no one has been created enough to apply it as a gameplay element. Really will look forward to playing this!

    1. Re:About time by MortimerV · · Score: 1

      It's actually been done in at least one instance, but nowhere near as nice. The original Unreal had a mod called Unreal Forever which had a quantum singularity generator. If you shot the wall in two different locations, you could pass through. However, objects and shots couldn't go through it the portal, and you couldn't see through it.

      Whether it's an original idea or not, this portal implementation is definitely the most polished I've seen.

    2. Re:About time by Mr2001 · · Score: 0, Redundant

      It's kinda been done as a mod for Prey.

      --
      Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
  8. Gameplay by Tester · · Score: 4, Insightful

    its nice to see that some people are still working to improve gameplay with innovative ideas instead of just focusing on technological details (such as how exact and good looking the shadows are).

    Its all in the gameplay!

  9. One feature makes it a ripoff? by Spaceman40 · · Score: 1

    I'm with you on that one - let's count the similarities, shall we?

    Both games are 3D FPSs with portals whose names start with P.

    What about the differences?

    Prey: spirit walking, gravity manipulation, Native American protagonist, "living" level design.
    Portal: at-will portal creation, portals don't have to share horizontal/vertical orientation, "futuristic" level design.

    This isn't including the assumptions one could make about the gameplay: knowing Valve, the player character will be silent, where the Prey protagonist is extremely visible in-game. Physics puzzles will most likely be a big part of Portal, where gravity/spirit walk puzzles are the major focus of (what I've played of) Prey. Portal looks like more of a multiplayer-focused game, where Prey has a pretty complex single-player aspect.

    Ripoff or not, I think they both look like a lot of fun. That's still what's important, right?

    (Somewhat off-topic: I created Prey-type portals -- you know, the static ones? -- back in the original Unreal Tournament. Good times.)

    --
    I [may] disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
    1. Re:One feature makes it a ripoff? by Mr2001 · · Score: 1
      What about the differences?

      Prey: spirit walking, gravity manipulation, Native American protagonist, "living" level design.
      Portal: at-will portal creation, portals don't have to share horizontal/vertical orientation, "futuristic" level design.

      What do you mean "share horizontal/vertical orientation"? There are rooms in Prey where a portal takes you onto a wall in the same room, or drops you through a ceiling in another room, etc., meaning your orientation shifts as you walk through it.
      --
      Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
  10. The Middle Ground by steveo777 · · Score: 2, Funny
    Turok: Dinosaur Hunter


    Heck ya! Native american protagonist. Spirit mode. Futuristic levels. Lot's of portals. What more could you want?

    --
    This sig isn't original enough, it's time to come up with something witty...
  11. OT by Spaceman40 · · Score: 1

    My name is Adam, and I support this comment.

    --
    I [may] disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
  12. A 'Bitchin' Game by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "It's interesting to see how a game school's relatively small-time project has become front-page news on dozens of gaming sites."

    Now maybe some of the slash-bitching about the game industry will disappear.

  13. Even older than Prey... by Pfhorrest · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Bungie's Marathon series used a portals-based (though still "2.5D") engine way back in the day, and there were plenty of maps which used made use of what we called "5D space" (two different rooms occupying the same 3D space at the same time, yet not actually being the same room). I know this isn't precisely what the article is talking about, but it's still an application of portals technology for the purposes of interesting gameplay. One of the maps that shipped with the first game was even called "5D space", and was basically a maze that folded around and intersected itself. You could run around a 270-degree curve of hallway on level ground and not intersect the same bit of hallway you were travelling down before you hit the curve...

    --
    -Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
    "I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
    1. Re:Even older than Prey... by adavies42 · · Score: 1

      To add to the fun, explosions (grenades, rockets, etc.) occured in all overlapping spaces. Whether this was a bug or a feature was debatable. (Hi forrest!)

      --
      Media that can be recorded and distributed can be recorded and distributed.
      -kfg
    2. Re:Even older than Prey... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The original Descent (I and II) engine did this too, except I'm pretty sure it didn't have the problem/feature of overlapping explosions. Combine this with Descent's propensity for getting you disoriented to begin with, and things got weird very quickly.

    3. Re:Even older than Prey... by SanityInAnarchy · · Score: 1

      Duke3D also did this, and had some secret levels that demonstrated it. They used it to allow things like elevators and stairs and multi-story buildings while still being 2.5D. Even some of the normal levels that make sense in full 3D have some amazing tricks for this, but it really gets fun when you start messing with the level editor. An elevator that looks and feels like it travels vertically, but you end up a mile away horizontally? Swim across town underwater and surface in the exact same spot? All possible, and very fun to play with.

      Speaking of which, I wish the newer Duke3D source ports would work for me...

      --
      Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
    4. Re:Even older than Prey... by cgenman · · Score: 1

      You could run around a 270-degree curve of hallway on level ground and not intersect the same bit of hallway you were travelling down before you hit the curve.

      Not until you got to 360, at least...

      --
      The ______ Agenda
    5. Re:Even older than Prey... by Pfhorrest · · Score: 1

      No, you could even have a 360-degree flat loop that didn't intersect itself. And a hallway with a 270-degree bend *would* overlap itself; if you came down a real-world hall, and then it curved around 270 degrees, it would have to either dead-end when it hit the wall of it's earlier segment, or intersect that segment.

      --
      -Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
      "I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
    6. Re:Even older than Prey... by grumbel · · Score: 1

      Fun with portals, grazy gravity and stuff, hm, I think I have seen that already around back in 1993, like here and here, good to see that today first person shooters are finally catching up...

    7. Re:Even older than Prey... by Pfhorrest · · Score: 1

      Marathon is also from that era. You're just saying the same thing I am: portals trickery isn't new. But this particular new application of it is kinda neat.

      --
      -Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
      "I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
    8. Re:Even older than Prey... by cyclomedia · · Score: 1

      270 would look like this:

      -----
      |   |
      |   |
      -------->
          |
          |

      --
      If you don't risk failure you don't risk success.
  14. I'll buy it, but not for Windoze by metamatic · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Hopefully they'll make a version for some non-Microsoft platform.

    --
    GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
    1. Re:I'll buy it, but not for Windoze by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      Hopefully they'll make a version for every non-MS platform except the one you use.

    2. Re:I'll buy it, but not for Windoze by metamatic · · Score: 1

      I use almost every major non-MS platform, including Linux, OS X, GameCube, PS2, Palm and GBA.

      --
      GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
  15. Except by The+MAZZTer · · Score: 1

    That it's been in development since before the release of the Prey Demo.

    1. Re:Except by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So has Duke Nukem Forever. That doesn't mean they haven't stolen other good ideas along the way.

    2. Re:Except by mikezs · · Score: 1

      That makes no sence, they cant have come up with the name and no concept of the game. They cant have called it portal, waited for another game to come along, and then stolen the portals idea.

  16. Adventure! by anti-human+1 · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Maybe someone can get a working version of the Bridge from Adventure using a similar technique to these portals. I remember the Quake 3 attempt couldn't get it.

    I wouldn't care about all these fancy pants graphics if I had that bridge....

  17. Re:Valve, Huh? by twistedsymphony · · Score: 1

    meh I'll just wait for it to come out on a console...

    --
    Collector's Edition
  18. Limits by Kaenneth · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I wonder how many portals the source engine can handle, each portal is a new point of view to render from.

    If there was multiplayer, imagine a wall with 16 portals on it, the other side overlooking the 16 portals again... from 16 different angles...

    1. Re:Limits by Trouvist · · Score: 1

      If you look at the levels in the video, the levels/texturing was extremely simple. This means that the engine could render each view into a texture (some tricks are involved if it is nested) relatively easily. If there were 257 views (from 16 portals looking at 16 other portals), but each one was just a plain box, then rendering it would still be relatively fast on today's hardware.

    2. Re:Limits by Surt · · Score: 1

      No obvious reason for it not to be arbitrary, except for performance limitations. I'm guessing by fuzzing your view through the portal they limit the depth they need to render through the portal, but for number of portals, there's no obvious reason you can't just render scene after scene into each portal texture.

      --
      "Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
    3. Re:Limits by XMunkki · · Score: 1

      Not sure how far they've made it in their engine, but from a programmer point of view, there are SO many ways to make load lighter. Fade away the portals that are further (or are facing away) from the camera center, limit recursion, simplify shaders in each recursion and put a portal effect in front (probably after 2 portals you can render fairly small portions with very simple shaders). Plus the portal seems to be limited in size. The things that REALLY bog things down are realtime shadows and such. As far as I remember the vide, there are not that complex shadows (some simple casting ones, at tops). So basically you're using that same power to render the portals. So all in all, it's hard to see there's any inherit limit in the engine, but it is limited/simplified to run in the current hardware. And there are ways to bend the tech to work in multiplayer games well enough, though I'm not sure if they have done so or not. As a side point, personally, I've been bored with FPS games for a long time. Prey didn't seem that cool and this seems too frantic. But man do I envy the guys who made up this concept :).

    4. Re:Limits by cyclomedia · · Score: 1

      further to the other replies you might also want to buffer the portals. so when rendering a portal that looks back on itself it's only rendering it's surface texture. which is a picture of what that portal can see. This would, however, create a lag effect where each portal instance is one rendered frame behind (in time) the one in front of it (in space)

      --
      If you don't risk failure you don't risk success.
  19. Forsaken by the+grace+of+R'hllor · · Score: 1

    Hell, Forsaken (the Descent-alike) had portals too, that did odd things. Closest thing you could get to a MUD's magic maze.

    Gravity, not so much.

  20. Cool!-and obvious! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "It's so obvious I'm embarassed I never thought of it myself..."

    Good thing no one's patenting this obvious implimentation of an idea.

  21. Section Z - RIPOFF by sottitron · · Score: 1

    Okay, not really, but for some reason the portals video reminded me of Section Z. Maybe its time for a 3D update?

  22. Must have missed them. by Spaceman40 · · Score: 1

    I must have missed that: all the portals I saw were either horizontal on both ends or vertical on both ends. The general point still stands, though.

    --
    I [may] disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
    1. Re:Must have missed them. by Mr2001 · · Score: 1

      One example off the top of my head is in the demo.. right after you get off the little planet ("That was fucked up..."), there's a room with monsters crawling on the wall opposite you ("No, *this* is fucked up!"). The portal on your floor leads out onto the wall. It's around 19:05 in this video.

      --
      Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
  23. But you can go weirder! by exp(pi*sqrt(163)) · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Portal technology allows you to join arbitrary regions of space so that light travels from one to the other, So here's a room divided into 4 quadrants: +-------+
    +.A...B.+
    +.......+
    +.C...D.+
    +-------+
     Go east from A, say, and you get to B. With portal technology you can throw away D and join the south edge of B to the east edge of C. The next result: you walk 270 degrees around the room and you end up back where you started! This is essentially what physicists mean by a curved spacetime. In this case the spacetime is "piecewise" linear with all of the curvature concentrated at the center of the room. And when you join regions with portals you can potentially use any affine transform you like. For example you could have a ring corridor with the property that when you walk around it once you are half the size you were when you started. You might see yourself half size (or twice as large) if you look far enough. This is similar to the way a mathematician might build a manifold using 'charts' and 'atlases'. (A non-orientable manifold would be one where walking through a certain door reflected you, or the universe, depending on your point of view.)

    (Note, I don't mean that there are 3 rooms, A, B and C. I mean one big room with 3 regions, and maybe a thin pillar in the center. It would look like an ordinary room until you dropped some objects and started walking around it. And of course it would get very tricky to deal with someone in one of the other regions shooting at you. You'd see them in multiple directions.)

    You can even do weirder things like make portals work in spacetime...

    --
    Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
    1. Re:But you can go weirder! by Jerf · · Score: 1

      In all seriousness, that might actually help people understand some aspects of Relativity, if done correctly. (Do not, for instance, get stuck up the ass with making an "educational" videogame and take out the shooting or something.)

      And trying to understand Relativity definitely makes me want to just pick up a videogame...

    2. Re:But you can go weirder! by exp(pi*sqrt(163)) · · Score: 1
      I'm not sure it would help with most aspects of relativity.

      It might help people understand the notion of a quotient space, a topological space that is constructed by "gluing" different points together so that they are treated as the same point.

      --
      Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
    3. Re:But you can go weirder! by Jerf · · Score: 1

      My idea is that the hard part is breaking people of Euclidianism, if that is a word. It doesn't have to be actually the geometry of Relativity.

    4. Re:But you can go weirder! by SanityInAnarchy · · Score: 1

      It could also help with the idea that an orbit is really a straight line. An infinite corrodor is a good start for that. You could even let people look off to one side and see the sun, and on the other side of the sun, see the very corrodor they're in.

      --
      Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
    5. Re:But you can go weirder! by exp(pi*sqrt(163)) · · Score: 1

      Except that a real orbit is a geodesic in space*time*. But one in space might be a good start. (I think Gauss had this idea in *space* before Einstein had the idea of doing it in *spacetime*.)

      --
      Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
    6. Re:But you can go weirder! by mandos · · Score: 1

      Sounds like the maze in Zork. Mapping that was a nightmare.

      --
      Mike Scanlon
    7. Re:But you can go weirder! by suffe · · Score: 1

      Now there is a good idea. Something for HL3 with their adventure puzzle style. Do some stuff, jump in to a time portal, interact with the things you did (are doing) a minute ago in order to solve the puzzle.

      --

      Karma: 2.71828182846 (Mostly due to small, fun pills)
  24. Portal progression by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    From what I can tell (from looking at the video over and over), when you make your third portal it replaces the second one. Eg:

    Blue
    Red
    Red
    Blue
    Blue
    Red
    etc.

    When you create a new entrance or exit, it "overwrites" an old one, and the old one disappears.

    Now, from what I can tell, if you make a new entrance, you can get to it via the existing exit, basically how the system works basically, but in reverse. However, if you create this new entrance and go through it, without placing a linked exit, you're now going against the natural progression of the portal system, and something weird happens. I think I've determined the action as either
    - Being teleported to a random place in the level
    or
    - Being teleported through the "opposite face" of the existing exit, thus ending up on the other side of the wall.
    or
    - Something Else(tm)

    At least, I think that's how it works o_O It's mostly guesses, and utterly confusing. It looks great though, and I'm thoroughly looking forward to playing it.

    1. Re:Portal progression by SirTalon42 · · Score: 1

      I'm gonna guess that you just can't go through it till theres another end of the portal.

    2. Re:Portal progression by grumbel · · Score: 2, Interesting

      ### if you create this new entrance and go through it, without placing a linked exit, you're now going against the natural progression of the portal system, and something weird happens.

      Most simple solution would be to link the portal to itself, so if you go in, you come out at the exact same spot, just the other way around. Even more funny would be to make the portal like a mirror, so if you go in you come out in a world that is a mirrored version of the one you left. 'The Room' demo that was shown on GDC a while back did fun stuff like that, it had scale-portals, throw a small object through one portal and it will come out enlarged of another portal.

    3. Re:Portal progression by khellendros1984 · · Score: 1

      Narbacular Drop, upon which Portals was based, won't allow you through one portal until the second has been placed.

      --
      It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
    4. Re:Portal progression by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      "Narbacular Drop, upon which Portals was based, won't allow you through one portal until the second has been placed."

      For the first portal, I don't think this will either (it remains purple and swirly as far as I can tell), but what about the 3rd? 5th? etc (yes you can only ever place two, but if portals are made in pairs...). In the video, they're still accessible, but they appear to differ in action depending on which of the portals you go through, although these differences could be contributed to something entirely different.

      Which then leaves the question. If you make three portals to get through one part of the puzzle (like the bit in the vid with the rising and falling staircase), are you able to walk through a 4th one if you make it on a different part of the level? How does a 5th one break the pairing?

      Or, maybe they're just not made in pairs...

  25. Re:Valve, Huh? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Your loss.

  26. doubt it by JeanBaptiste · · Score: 2, Interesting

    double the development time, double the support issues for an additional one percent in sales. just isn't worth it. yeah you can re-use much of it from one platform to the next, but you also have OS specific problems with each.

    I don't know why they don't put games on boot disks, whatever OS they want to use. Would solve a lot of the problems that normal end users have with bad performance due to viruses and spyware, plus the game developers would likely use a linux based system. no compatibility issues, no install issues, no software conflict issues, seems they'd save a bunch on support

    but what do i know. (goes back to writing SQL queries)

    1. Re:doubt it by KIFulgore · · Score: 2, Informative

      Most developers use DirectX, and you can't legally distribute that on a boot disk. You could with OpenGL but most devs are getting better performance and shader support from DX now (so say some of my Digipen graphics programmer friends, who could be wrong).

      --
      - For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism.
    2. Re:doubt it by JeanBaptiste · · Score: 1

      That is all accurate, you're friends are correct...

      I think though that if you're designing a game from scratch there's no reason that OpenGL wouldn't work just fine though... like pacific storm, for example

    3. Re:doubt it by drinkypoo · · Score: 1
      double the development time, double the support issues for an additional one percent in sales

      The second part is true, but the first part is not. If supporting an additional platform doubles your development time, it had better be because you're doing a complete rewrite for each platform - which would make you an idiot.

      The situation is even sillier than that since you can use OpenGL, OpenAL, and SDL on Mac, Windows, and Linux, and if you write sufficiently portable code you'll have little work to do to get it working on all three platforms.

      It's the support issues that are the real bear. That, and the overwhelming tendency to just use DirectX.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    4. Re:doubt it by drinkypoo · · Score: 1
      Most developers use DirectX, and you can't legally distribute that on a boot disk.

      Uh, you have no idea what the fuck you're talking about. But nice try.

      The real issue is that you can't legally distribute a bootable Windows disc, and the OSes you can distribute don't support DirectX.

      Meanwhile, making a bootable linux disc is a stupid idea too, because you can't update drivers without making a new disc.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    5. Re:doubt it by Surt · · Score: 1

      Linux development tools don't hold up to VC/DirectX yet. So a linux bootdisk as the target doesn't work well. A windows bootdisk would have license issues with MS.

      And even if linux were more viable ... you'd have to ship with soooo many drivers for good performance (a boot disk that works well on all systems doesn't use the advanced 3d features of cards that games would need).

      --
      "Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
    6. Re:doubt it by kiddygrinder · · Score: 1

      nah, what they should do is just hire some other shlubs to get it to compile in linux. All of the hard work is done, you just have to switch the renderer across to openGL, switch the sound system to openAL and probably also re-write steam (Since that's where they're going with their whole business strategy.). It's nowhere near the 5 years development time to do this, mebee 6 months work absolute maximum if the guys they get to do it have done it before.

      --
      This is a joke. I am joking. Joke joke joke.
    7. Re:doubt it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "I don't know why they don't put games on boot disks..."

      So, this game requires me to spend 2 minutes rebooting (and again when I'm finished), stops my torrent running, prevents me using my IM program to set up the game with my mates or my voice chat program to communicate with them when inside it, stops me playing mp3s, requires me to input my network connection settings separately instead of doing it once for the OS, and probably needs me to somehow combine it with the graphics card drivers for my new card. Great idea.

      I don't even like it when games require the CD in the drive. Click on the icon to run is perfection, you couldn't make a better system without telepathy. And if the idea of a multi-tasking operating system somehow offends you there are always consoles.

    8. Re:doubt it by SanityInAnarchy · · Score: 1
      Linux development tools don't hold up to VC/DirectX yet.

      So if it really matters that much (you aren't just making a completely new engine), how hard is it to just, say, mod Quake 4?


      you'd have to ship with soooo many drivers for good performance (a boot disk that works well on all systems doesn't use the advanced 3d features of cards that games would need).

      Oh noes! That would be soooo hard! In fact, no one's probably ever done it before!


      Yes, I know that second project is closed. The reason has nothing to do with drivers. Booting an entire OS to play a single game takes too damned long, even if it boots right into the game. Even then, it's just entirely too easy to pirate a game distributed that way, unless they add some proprietary modules and make sure the game requires a dual-layer DVD. It's difficult or impossible to save, unless you have a way of saving online, which is why they used America's Army. And especially if you're doing that, or an MMO, you'll have to patch the game sooner or later, not to mention the rest of the OS -- this is where drivers matter -- unless you burn a whole new DVD.


      It could be done, but it would be extremely difficult, both for you and for the end-user, unless you require a Windows partition on which to save the game (making the bootability pointless) or require the end-user to answer the same stupid questions every time they boot the CD. Only other thing I can think of is configuring the CD before you burn it to know where to look on your hard drive for savegames and patches, but that makes it too easy to pirate, if you let them burn their own CDs. But if you did that, you'd have something like the Xbox 360, where you can patch games that are running off the DVD with something like unionfs and a hard drive -- thus, files which exist on the hard drive are used instead, files which don't are pulled from the CD.


      Another possibility would be to skip the CD altogether, and just install another OS to their hard drive. But you still have portability and annoyance issues -- if I already have Linux, why can't I just run it without rebooting? If I have Windows, why should I have to install Linux (even without partitioning) and reboot just to play a damned game?


      But really, drivers are such a small problem for most people trying to run Linux that it's not worth mentioning. Development tools aren't the issue either. The real issue is, no one seems to care.

      --
      Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
    9. Re:doubt it by metamatic · · Score: 1
      double the development time, double the support issues for an additional one percent in sales. just isn't worth it.

      PS2 isn't 1% in sales.

      --
      GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
    10. Re:doubt it by KDR_11k · · Score: 1

      Even DirectX based renderers can be portable, look at the Unreal Engine.

      --
      Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
    11. Re:doubt it by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      Well, renderers that support DirectX can also support OpenGL, but that's a whole additional ball of wax that I personally wouldn't bother with. All major manufacturers provide OpenGL drivers, and that's the vast majority of the market.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    12. Re:doubt it by KIFulgore · · Score: 1

      Whoa, my bad. Guess I wasn't thinking when I posted that.

      Good point about the drivers, tho I don't even try to update mine anymore. Both times I've upgraded video drivers for a GeForce 4 4200Ti recently my machine became unbootable. NVidia's website says their newest driver suite "should" work on all GeForce hardware, but they haven't tested older than GeForce 5 series. Buyer beware.

      So yeah... a bootable disk is a bad idea because I might want older drivers too.

      --
      - For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism.
  27. Bandwidth Limit Exceeded by antdude · · Score: 1

    Too bad Narbacular Drop's Web site says: Bandwidth Limit Exceeded ... :( Coral Cache didn't work well on it either. :(

    --
    Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
    1. Re:Bandwidth Limit Exceeded by Khuffie · · Score: 2, Informative

      Try this

    2. Re:Bandwidth Limit Exceeded by Khuffie · · Score: 2, Informative

      Wait, even better: just put in a fake email addie. No annoying fileplanet.

    3. Re:Bandwidth Limit Exceeded by antdude · · Score: 1

      Thanks. I was only looking for video clips and screen shots. :)

      --
      Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
    4. Re:Bandwidth Limit Exceeded by loljews · · Score: 0

      Before you listen to any more drivel by 'AntDude [slashdot.org]', take a look at who you're dealing with: http://pbx.mine.nu/antdude.jpg [pbx.mine.nu]. The abortion in the center is 'AntDude'. I won't even get into discussion about him listing his 'sex' as 'female' on his SHITTY 'blog' (aqfl.net [aqfl.net]). This faggot has nothing better to do than sit on the internet and spew worthless garbage. He's the new LostCluster [slashdot.org] when it comes to posting utterly worthless tripe. Not to mention his submitted stories! Every single one of his last 10 or so submissions have been tagged as 'lame' or 'slownewsday'. Why does taco even bother posting his shit. Maybe he gets some tiny deformed chinese cock up his taco ass in exchange for some linkspam with google ads? Do the world a favor and never reply to comments from ANTDUDE and mark him as a FOE [slashdot.org].

    5. Re:Bandwidth Limit Exceeded by loljews · · Score: 0

      Before you listen to any more drivel by 'AntDude [slashdot.org]', take a look at who you're dealing with: http://pbx.mine.nu/antdude.jpg [pbx.mine.nu] [pbx.mine.nu]. The abortion in the center is 'AntDude'. I won't even get into discussion about him listing his 'sex' as 'female' on his SHITTY 'blog' (aqfl.net [aqfl.net]). This faggot has nothing better to do than sit on the internet and spew worthless garbage. He's the new LostCluster [slashdot.org] when it comes to posting utterly worthless tripe. Not to mention his submitted stories! Every single one of his last 10 or so submissions have been tagged as 'lame' or 'slownewsday'. Why does taco even bother posting his shit. Maybe he gets some tiny deformed chinese cock up his taco ass in exchange for some linkspam with google ads? Do the world a favor and never reply to comments from ANTDUDE and mark him as a FOE [slashdot.org].

  28. Straight to video by fractalrock · · Score: 2, Informative

    Here's a link to an .mpeg so you don't have to deal with the annoying script on Gamevideo.com's page.

    1. Re:Straight to video by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ... don't have to deal with the annoying script on Gamevideo.com's page.

      Or the shittyness of youtube-like-site flash videos, I could bairly tell what was going on in the end of the video. Blah, while services like these makes stuff more accessable, it sure sucks for watching.

  29. Offtopic: Steam by ewhac · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Now why did you feel the need to tell us all?

    This is off-topic. But since you asked...

    I feel it's important to remind people that, no matter how slick the packaging or magnificent the graphics or interesting/useful the application, this piece of software comes with an enormous downside: You have to install spyware in order to play it.

    Ordinarily, that would be the end of the discussion:

    "Hey, check out these really slick animated cursors!"
    "Dude, it's spyware."
    "Hey, isn't my new screen buddy cute?"
    "Dude, it's spyware."
    "Woah, look at this uber-cool screensaver I installed!"
    "Dude, it's spyware."
    "Wow, this free solitaire program I downloaded is much prettier than the one that comes with Windows."
    "Dude, it's spyware!"

    If a vendor distributes spyware, they are correctly pilloried by the community. Yet, for some reason, Valve gets a pass. No one has been able to make the argument that distinguishes Steam from other spyware suites out there. And no, claiming that Valve is trying to develop a new revenue model doesn't cut it, because Gator and BonziBuddy and CometCursor were also trying to develop a new revenue model.

    Anti-cheat measures? A reasonable feature, but PunkBuster did the same thing with Quake3 without being a requirement.

    If I seem just a bit more strident about this than most, it's because I'm still annoyed at Valve for breaking my copy of HalfLife. I had a perfectly working copy of HalfLife -- in fact, two copies, because I'd bought a second copy bundled with Counter-Strike because I didn't feel like spending hours downloading it -- when one day Valve announces Steam. I said, "No, thank you, Steam's 'features' are not valuable to me, and certainly not worth as much as what I'll lose in personal privacy and system stability. My copy of HalfLife works just fine the way it is." I made an economic decision; I voted with my wallet. That's what everyone here says to do, right?

    Well, that wasn't good enough for Valve, who apparently threatened or bought off the GameSpy3D and All-Seeing Eye publishers into refusing to list non-Steam game servers (of which there were plenty), and shutting off the old authentication servers. In other words, they broke my copy of HalfLife to try and force me to install their spyware. I have stuck to my principles, and continue to refuse to install Steam. This means I don't get to play TFC or Counter-Strike any more, despite the fact that there's nothing, technically, wrong with the copies I own. A considerable fraction of the value in the software I bought and paid for has been destroyed.

    Valve tried to change the terms of the sale in a big fscking way long after the fact. If they did it once, there's every reason to suspect they'll do it again. Sorry, you don't get to do that, not with my machine and not with my dollars. I feel it's still important to make people aware that the cost to them may well be far greater than simply the dollars they'll part with.

    Schwab

    P.S: If anyone knows of any master servers listing non-Steam TFC and Counter-Strike servers that will work with the old WON-based versions of HalfLife, I'd appreciate knowing about it.

    --
    Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
    1. Re:Offtopic: Steam by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      If anyone knows of any master servers listing non-Steam TFC and Counter-Strike servers that will work with the old WON-based versions of HalfLife, I'd appreciate knowing about it.
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WON2
    2. Re:Offtopic: Steam by SanityInAnarchy · · Score: 3, Insightful
      In other words, they broke my copy of HalfLife to try and force me to install their spyware.

      No, they decided to stop offering the service you were used to getting for free, and replace it with a different service (also free).

      I actually like Steam, because unlike other forms of spyware or DRM (both of which are evil), Steam actually stays 100% out of my way, without significantly changing the model for my owning a game.

      Let's compare Steam to other copy protection models:

      CD Keys. Don't work, easily broken by "borrowing" a friend's key and denying access to the game's authentication servers.

      Requiring the CD to be inserted. This is either ludicrously easy to beat (create another virtual drive in Wine, change some registry values, or put a snigle file on a single Samba share in Windows) or insanely annoying, or both. In any case, it prevents backups, and it shortens the life of the original CD, assuming it works.

      Making the game a service (MMO). Great, so I pay $50 or $60 for the game, then you want me to spend $15 a month to keep playing? Not usually worth it, and only works for MMOs.

      Steam. Well, it may be a steaming pile of crap technologically (IE all over), but it means that once I pay for a game, I've paid for it. I can then play said game from any computer that I remember my Steam password on, and every time I play it, I get to download and install the software. It also automatically provides me updates in a fairly unobtrusive way (something I've never had another game do), and not only allows me to play the game without a CD, not only allows me to download any number of times, but actually provides me with a tool to back up a copy of any number of Steam games to a CD or DVD, in a way that's account neutral -- which means if my friend buys Half-Life 2, I can burn a CD of the game and give it to him, saving him from waiting for the download.

      It's even been good about asking before it sends info in. A hardware survey, for instance. Whereas these other pieces of spyware tend to collect personal info, send it in, silently eat up resources in the background with no explanation as to why, and cannot be shut off effectively.

      I mean, yes, by some definition, it's Spyware, but by the same definition, so is Windows. Your copy of Windows would be very, very broken if you didn't get your automatic updates.

      Anyway, end of rant, but I really get sick of all the hatred against Steam every time it comes up. You want an argument that distinguishes Steam from these other things? Steam actually adds value. Most spyware generally does nothing for you, steals your resources, pops up messages, and sends spam. Steam does none of these things, but lets you do things (legally!) that no other game or game platform lets you do at all.

      --
      Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
    3. Re:Offtopic: Steam by nuclearpenguins · · Score: 0, Interesting

      I own a LAN-gaming center and have to pay Valve one set fee per year, but I get every game they make over Steam on every computer at my store. It works flawlessly for me.

      --
      Anonymous Coward: "This is slashdot. Accuracy is second class citizen here, unlike King Bias."
    4. Re:Offtopic: Steam by Wormbrain · · Score: 1

      "No one has been able to make the argument that distinguishes Steam from other spyware suites out there."

      Can you explain how Steam IS spyware? For starters, spyware by its very definition is covert.

      --
      http://wormbrain.com/
  30. The Beatles did it Best by iridium_ionizer · · Score: 1

    Have you ever watched the Beatles' animated The Yellow Submarine film? There is a Sea of Holes. Anyway you should watch it, and not while smoking or licking anything because that would be bad.

    By the way, the Beatles didn't actually do the voices for their characters except for the singing because they were busy saying "screw you" to the capitalistic society that gave them the free time and wherewithal to meditate on how screwed up the capitalistic society was. Or maybe they just respected Billy West's opinion.

  31. In 'development' since 1997 by MMaestro · · Score: 1

    Seeing as Prey had been in 'development' (I use the term lightly since it was techically canned), I find it hard to believe Valve had the idea of using portals for almost a decade now and simply chose NOW to make an actual product out of it.

    1. Re:In 'development' since 1997 by Vo0k · · Score: 1

      If X is the number of polygons a game normally requires the computer to calculate to create a scene, "see through" portal requires another X polygons. A scene with n portals in view requires about (n+1)*x polygons.

      If you saw HL2, there were some serious budget cuts on the scenery - try doing some grenade jump tricks or otherwise getting into the "you're not supposed to be here" area. Where other games put full 4-wall houses, just because that's easier, where they put a bit of far landscape or place normal "gameplay area" models in the background, HL2 removes "never visible" walls, uses replacement simplified models, places 2D sprites (trees!) and cuts off right at the visible edge. Every polygon counts and still HL2 didn't have very low requirements for its launch date.
      Later games were increasing number of details, view distance etc. This costs in polygon count too. The "X" required by game was always near to maximum count the mainstream gfx cards could pull at reasonable speed.

      Now modern hardware made it possible to simplify the looks jumping maybe 5 years back in detail level (which really changes very little) and have the card to create several times more polygons than required to create one scene. Then add portals.

      --
      Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
    2. Re:In 'development' since 1997 by Zediker · · Score: 1

      what you are talking about is called pre-render scene backface culling. They purposefully remove the backfaces (sides you cannot see) so your computer doenst have to render them, thus increasing performance. All GOOD developers practice culling in some form. Its the inexperienced developers that dont do it. You can easily tell if a game doesnt implement on-the-fly backface culling if you are facing a relatively simple geometry with it filling the screen, and you start to notice performance degredation. If they did implement it, no degredation would be noticed, since all your system would be rendering is what is directly infront of you. But the performance loss comes from the game tyring to render everything you cant see.

      --
      I love to slaughter the english language.
    3. Re:In 'development' since 1997 by Vo0k · · Score: 1

      Except the game doesn't render places you actually -should- see, in case you for example put a plank against a slope and climb it, or generally enter any place that requires more effort than "usually accepted" to reach. This is not on-the-fly backface culling, it's pre-install backface culling - they were culled back in Valve and never made it to your disk, not just got removed by the software as "invisible at the moment". Look at the buildings by the dropship after the air-barrel puzzle in route canal. They are single-polygon rectangles without side walls. There are many more such examples.

      Of course this IS a good practice that increases performance. My point is: HL2 uses it to the extreme - few other games keep it that far, culling so much in development phase. But even despite this, it has high requirements. Now if you forced the GPU to render 4 scenes at once instead of one in a game like Half-Life, performance would drop to 1/4. And rendering more scenes instead of one is exactly what the portals mean.

      --
      Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
  32. OW!!!! by SanityInAnarchy · · Score: 1

    If portals work the way I think they do, you'll be accelerating if you're in that kind of a portal loop (floor to ceiling) just as if you were falling an indefinite amount of distance. Remove the portals and SPLAT! You have become a small crater.

    Of course, it would help for a floor to floor fall, as in that case, you're constantly changing direction, so you never pick up any real speed. Still, I think the real solution is the same as the solution to not blowing yourself up with a rocket launcher: Don't be a dumbass.

    --
    Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
    1. Re:OW!!!! by usrusr · · Score: 1

      falling damage is a parameter that can easily be set to 0

      i don't think a game like this would give much about physical realism, instead it would only care about making for interesting gameplay. instant-death loops are not part of that. i guess they would even implement some kind of (not too high) upper limit for falling speed, because otherwise you would quickly end up with funny temporal aliasing effects between frame rate and loop speed. this would probably be interesting for us techies but be harmful for immersion.

      --
      [i have an opinion and i am not afraid to use it]
    2. Re:OW!!!! by spyinnzus · · Score: 1

      Real life has a maximum speed at which bodies can fall: it's call air resistance. Very easily you can just have someone accelerate at 1g until they hit ~130 mph, which is the terminal velocity of a human. This is realistic and should prove harmful to a character if he hits a stationary object at this speed. Programmers could then just set a cap on falling damage (the height you have to fall to get to terminal velocity is about 500 feet, so it shouldn't be a problem in anything other than infi loop problems).

    3. Re:OW!!!! by drb_chimaera · · Score: 1

      Actually that maximum speed is called 'terminal velocity' - air resistance is just one of the factors that determines what that speed is - so higher up terminal velocity is a lot faster as the air resistance is greatly reduced - this is why the fastest freefall speed on record is of the order of 614 mph (about mach 0.9) - held by a chap called Joseph Kittenger after a jump at 108,000 feet.

    4. Re:OW!!!! by SanityInAnarchy · · Score: 1
      i don't think a game like this would give much about physical realism, instead it would only care about making for interesting gameplay.

      Well, Half-Life 2 had a Gravity Gun. This isn't much worse. Yet Half-Life 2 also had some very realistic gameplay, except where it was insanely unrealistic.

      And if you don't think instant death is interesting, you should play with AdminMod. admin_slay, or bind admin_slap to a key -- pimpslap them up 20 feet, then let them splat...

      Or stack tons of explosive barrels in a level editor, and see how far your corpse can fly...

      Point is, it would still be lots of fun, and still be interesting gameplay. Remember the staircase? Probably be a lot easier if you could just jump down and not get hurt, compared with having to time and place your portals accurately enough to land softly enough to live.

      --
      Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
  33. Mod for Prey allows this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    There is already a simple mod for the prey demo that allows this... http://forums.3drealms.com/vb/showthread.php?t=193 35 with a video demonstrations http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6727494773 800764468

  34. Backdoor in game let's you win immediately. by neo · · Score: 3, Funny

    If you just turn around and shot the wall, you can travel to the final level immediately. What a rip off.

  35. That's not a portal. by SanityInAnarchy · · Score: 3, Informative

    That's just your average teleportation device. Another example is the normal teleporters that are all over your average Quake/Doom/Unreal map. Basically, you activate it and it moves you.

    Portals are much cooler because it's not like you're looking through a portal or a teleporter -- a portal really is just a hole in the wall that happens to lead to another part of the map. You've probably played plenty of games with Portal without realizing it, because it's usually used for occlusion culling for indoor geometry.

    It basically means your game geometry is a linked list, only more complex... like hyperlinks...

    Nevermind, let me try and translate. Say you have three rooms in an L shape. If you're in the first room, looking into the second, but you can't see the entrance to the third room, then the game can skip drawing the entire third room. It can break the second room down, also -- you could have a portal in the middle of the room, so that half the room can just be ignored if it knows you can't see the portal to that half of the room.

    They also have the nifty ability to do crazy stuff like this, because the portal between two rooms is really only a pointer between them, in the literal, programming sense.

    So, this implementation may be the most polished user-modifiable portals you've seen, but you've probably seen plenty of very polished portals that you never knew were there. That, and the UT thing you mentioned isn't really portals...

    --
    Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
    1. Re:That's not a portal. by MortimerV · · Score: 1

      You may be right, that the QSG gun didn't create portals. Now that I think about it, I don't believe I could be half in one, it was either one side or the other. However, I've done some mapping so I know what you're talking about. What you describe aren't portals in the same sense. They're static objects, just like the quake teleporters you mentioned. They're not user controlled and placeable anywhere. The Unreal Forever QSG is the closest to this portal that I've seen. It's a small step from a placeable two-way teleporter to a placeable two-way portal. And I believe the only reason the QSG used a teleporter rather than a portal is engine limitations. The Unreal engine doesn't like portals that don't orient the same direction, so a portal couldn't pull off what was needed. So my point still stands, it's been done before, but not nearly so polished.

    2. Re:That's not a portal. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > Portals are much cooler because it's not like you're looking through a portal or a teleporter -- a portal really is just a hole in the wall that happens to lead to another part of the map. You've probably played plenty of games with Portal without realizing it, because it's usually used for occlusion culling for indoor geometry.

      Unreal Tournament did have these sooper dooper portals: a wall that led to another part of the map. Not a basic teleporter. You could see through it just like normal, objects went through it, but weapons that traced a ray (eg a basic gunshot, or sniper rifle) didn't go through, which sucked. You could create Escher-style weird 'gravity' effects with it if you changed the angle of the portals, and indeed people have done this.

    3. Re:That's not a portal. by SanityInAnarchy · · Score: 1
      It's a small step from a placeable two-way teleporter to a placeable two-way portal.

      No, it's not. The placable two-way teleporter is still just a teleporter -- it just has to grab anything that touches it and flip it to the other side. If your engine is that, you can try to build a portal by catching absolutely EVERYTHING -- that is, you have a camera on the other side that maps to the portal's surface, maybe it's even some fancy shader that can somehow even look right as you change perspective, and of course any object that touches it gets flipped instantaneously to the other side.

      But that's not the same as a portal. A portal means literally a doorway, as far as the game is concerned. EVERYTHING that you can do through an open doorway you can do through a portal, including being half in and half out, having explosions go through, etc. It looks like these portals have figured out how to do that sanely using gravity.

      The first step towards understanding portals is to stop thinking of them as leading to another part of the same world, the way they do in that Portals demo video. See them as leading to a whole other world. It's a bad analogy, but think of them more as frames, and less like hyperlinks. Once you fully grok the concept of portals as occlusion culling, you'll start to get why it's so easy to move from that to fully functional portals from one room to another part of the level. And from there, it's probably relatively easy to make them work for two parts of the same room, where you can see both ends of the portal and something half in each end simultaneously, or see your own head with the infinite fall. Well, it's hard, but nowhere near as hard as providing the same behavior for a game that had only teleporters, and no portals.

      But then, IANAGP (I Am Not A Graphics/Game Programmer) -- at least, not yet.

      So my point still stands, it's been done before, but not nearly so polished.

      But if I'm right, those "engine limitations" are what I'm talking about -- variations of the same thing have been done before, but that's like saying Doom was a 3D game. Quake was real 3D, Doom was not. These are likely real portals, Unreal ones probably are not, especially given what you said about shooting through them.

      --
      Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
    4. Re:That's not a portal. by MortimerV · · Score: 1
      No, it's not. The placable two-way teleporter is still just a teleporter -- it just has to grab anything that touches it and flip it to the other side. If your engine is that, you can try to build a portal by catching absolutely EVERYTHING -- that is, you have a camera on the other side that maps to the portal's surface, maybe it's even some fancy shader that can somehow even look right as you change perspective, and of course any object that touches it gets flipped instantaneously to the other side.
      I'm sorry, I was unclear in my reasoning: the concept behind a placeable two-way teleporter is very similar to a placeable two-way portal. It's much more difficult to implement the portal, but when the engine is designed around that whole concept -- as their college project was -- it's not such a big deal to program.

      Now, if you're talking about engine difficulties, it's impressive that the Source engine can handle these teleporters with apparently little effort.

      And from there, it's probably relatively easy to make them work for two parts of the same room, where you can see both ends of the portal and something half in each end simultaneously, or see your own head with the infinite fall. Well, it's hard, but nowhere near as hard as providing the same behavior for a game that had only teleporters, and no portals.
      Another problem you'll run into with looking straight through the portal on itself is the dreaded Hall of Mirrors. Older engines will stop displaying after a certain draw distance, and since the portal chain stretches beyond that distance, you start getting graphical errors. Again, impressive that the Source engine can handle it.
    5. Re:That's not a portal. by SanityInAnarchy · · Score: 1
      Older engines will stop displaying after a certain draw distance, and since the portal chain stretches beyond that distance, you start getting graphical errors.

      Seems their engine handles that the same way -- after a certain distance, the portal just becomes a solid wall.

      On another note, it's perfectly possible this doesn't work the way I wish it did, and instead works in what would appear to be the most obvious way to do it in the Source engine, which is a teleporting material (brush) and cameras. But it does look like it's done properly...

      I know Duke3D had another interesting property -- it had mirrors, but the mirrors had to have enough space on the other side of the mirror to hold everything you could see in the mirror. Probably implemented roughly the same way these portals would be...

      --
      Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
  36. For once an inovative game again by Qbertino · · Score: 1

    Now this is what I call an interesting looking game. The Portal gun also has the gravgun capabilities - did you notice?

    Nice to see Valve putting their HL2 revenue to good use instead of just milking the HL cow.

    --
    We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
  37. These portals are unphysical by pclminion · · Score: 1

    Portals like those shown in the demo couldn't exist in physical reality. They clearly violate conservation of momentum. In order to conserve momentum, they would have to be portals in spaceTIME, not just space, and that would also imply gravitational effects. So you could never create portals like this in the real world.

  38. Did NOBODY play Descent? by SynapseLapse · · Score: 2, Informative

    Descent featured the ability to create portals in game. It was used as a space save measure to fit larger levels into a rather small level cube, but there were still some interesting fan based levels created using that part of the engine.

  39. Slashdotted by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    I couldn't load the video referenced in the article, but I found this on Google Video (which I think is the same video). It looks pretty sweet.

    Link

  40. Portal for the C64 was pretty good... by wikthemighty · · Score: 1

    ...though it was more of an interactive novel than any sort of 3D game :p

    A href="http://www.lemon64.com/games/details.php?ID= 3773">http://www.lemon64.com/games/details.php?ID= 3773

    --
    "There are people who do not love their fellow human being, and I _hate_ people like that!" - Tom Lehrer
  41. Imagine a ...! by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · · Score: 1

    And now, for the FPS version of "Imagine a Beowulf cluster..."

    Imagine a Quake Done Quicker of this!

    Some guy portals a robot to get it up to speed, portals it under himself and the robot hits him and knocks him upward, and he keeps repeating that climbing a wall "he shouldn't be able to".

    --
    (-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
  42. Decent by Taulin · · Score: 1

    Decent was also another portal heavy game. Portals were a way to cull geometry easily.