Slashdot Mirror
ASCIIpOrtal Has Been Released
maclizard writes "After much waiting, ASCIIpOrtal has now been released. Joe Larson, the man behind the game, has made sure to provide numerous mirrors so as to avoid the Slashdot effect that killed his site several months ago. An interview with Larson (part two here) is available as well."
I'm both proud in a weird way and horrified in a weird way that there exists 64-bit Linux binaries for this but no 32-bit. :P
It is by my will alone my thoughts acquire motion; it is by the juice of the coffee bean that the thoughts acquire speed
ASCIIpOrtal is a 2D platformer that has a portal gun. It shares many of the same elements as the original game, plus a few others.
Here, have a demo:
http://www.offworld.com/2009/07/day-made-mind-blown-its-portal.html
But you missed why it was important enough to warrant being a frontpage Slashdot article. It it pretty sweet, but that really shouldn't be enough to warrant a front page article. I thought the important thing was that the game is a demonstration that good games are about original gameplay ideas and not about graphics. Before ASCIIpOrtal came along, it would have been easy to argue that the game play mechanics of portal would have been impossible or at least diminished without 3D graphics; now it is much more difficult to make that argument.
If people want a link to a mirror, one for the 64 linux binaries is: http://download566.mediafire.com/b2wsmldgy9gg/yzdneznfujo/asciiportal-1.0-linux-x64.tar.gz
However, I'm getting an error, stating "Error - No map files found.
You must place all level files in a directory with the same base name.
The default should then be in \maps\maps001.txt"
I've tried renaming them, but it doesn't seem to work. And what's going on with the backslashes?
Penguins can be fascists too
I think you should look into this rather new invention, called "movies". It's got all the awesome graphics of games without that pesky gameplay to distract you!
Actually, if that demo is indicative of the game as a whole, then it makes a very good argument as to why the 3D graphics were so vital to the original portal game. The original portal is far more playable, and its 3D nature allows for far more interesting puzzles. The text game is, while an interesting exercise in what's possible with antiquated graphics, appears to be a far inferior game. Just the way it handles moving the scenery around while keeping the player upright would give me a headache in about 10 seconds.
Download Links: Hosting offsite for the first week. Just link to this page for the most up to date links.
Download Windows binaries: WHFF Solidfiles Mediafire LGShort Sharebee
Download Mac binaries (compiled by FutureStack on RGRD): WHFF Solidfiles Mediafire LGShort Sharebee
Download Linux-32bit binaries: Contact me to volunteer if you get it to work. Download Linux-64bit binaries (compiled by Kaw on RGRD): WHFF Solidfiles Mediafire
Why not just put a link to a torrent file right in the article, and save everyone some headaches? I always thought that was the real potential for BitTorrent- share large amounts of data without killing anyone's servers.
You don't need the portal for the first level at all... it's a "here's how you move and stuff" level.
the server wouldn't be /.ed if the summery had bothered to include links to the mentioned mirrors.
1984 was not supposed to be an instruction manual.