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Examining Portal's Teleportation Code

Posted by Soulskill on from the wall-to-wall-coverage dept.

Gamasutra is running a story deconstructing the mechanics of Portal's teleportation programming. They present a snippet of Portal's code and a downloadable demo. They ran another article in this series earlier this year with an analysis Mario Galaxy's unique take on physics. We've discussed the development of Portal in the past. "Teleport mechanics in video games are nothing new. Puzzles from the original Gauntlet were memorable -- and more than likely, that wasn't the first game to use teleportation as a gameplay mechanic. The difference between Portal and all those that came before it is that Portal's teleportation acts as a frictionless tube between point A and point B. Physics are still hard at work inside the frictionless tube. Instead of simply repositioning an object from point A to point B, the player enters point A with full velocity and exits point B with the same speed, but moving in a new direction." Update: 8/26 at 19:37 by SS: Dan notes that the code was not directly from Portal; it was written to approximate Portal's physics.

8 of 278 comments (clear)

  1. Frictionless tube? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Your mom has a frictionless tube.

    First post?

    1. Re:Frictionless tube? by Chris+Burke · · Score: 5, Funny

      For friction to be present, the object being inserted into the tube must be large enough to touch the sides. That must be your problem.

      --

      The enemies of Democracy are
  2. But... by i.r.id10t · · Score: 5, Funny

    But... can they telefrag?

    I just love the sound of 2 bodies trying to occupy the same space at the same time in the morning... or afternoon... or evening...

    --
    Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
  3. Too verbose by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    >>Physics are still hard at work inside the frictionless tube. Instead of simply repositioning an object from point A to point B, the player enters point A with full velocity and exits point B with the same speed, but moving in a new direction."

    Should be "Speedy thing goes in; speedy thing comes out."

    1. Re:Too verbose by elrous0 · · Score: 5, Funny

      My ex-girlfriend used to use that exact phrase all the time.

      --
      SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
  4. Re:WTF by kestasjk · · Score: 5, Funny

    It didn't answer the main question for me: How does the code which accelerates players downwards work?

    It must be using some kind of vector mathematics for mapping acceleration onto velocity, and velocity onto position, but I'll be damned if I can figure out how they expressed that in an algorithm.

    --
    // MD_Update(&m,buf,j);
  5. Re:Ahoy, GlaDOS! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    The grits are a lie :(

  6. Re:Next step? by saboola · · Score: 5, Funny

    I'm not a portal porter
    I'm a portal porter's son
    And i'm only porting portal
    Till the portal porter comes