Portal (PC)

Valve released a trailer of this upcoming (Q2 2007) game! IT LOOKS FRICKING AMAZING!

Does anyone know whether or not it will be a full game? Or is it going to be an add-on to Half-Life 2: Episode 2?

Trailer:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Wb7aDZeO_MQ

Interesting.

However, I wonder at what point the thing will just become dull. It might depend on how repetitive some of the methods are to the paths of the resolutions.

I actually seen that trailer ages ago! Not sure where, might have been on PC Format's cover disc. Does look interesting though, but it has the potential to send you a bit mad trying to get your head around it!

It's part of the HL2:Episode2 package (which also includes Team Fortress2).

Anyhow, last I heard it got delayed to Q4 2007 so EA can release their little "Orange Box" versions of the HL2 package for the PC/360/PS3 (which includes HL2, CS:S, HL1:Episode1/2, Portal, & TeamFortress2), and the verion 90% of us want, the "Black Box", which is essentially just HL2: Episode2 (including aforementioned two titles).

The thing I look forward too most in Portal is the mod community, something like Portal would be freakin' awesome in full fledged co-op and deathmatch if properly setup.


[EDIT] Forgot the source of my delay info.

Looks like fun. But it seems more like valve is into gimmicked gameplay as a motto. I'd love to see this as PART of a game... not the whole game.

Seems it has gravity-gun-like moves too. So at least there is that. But I wanna see a TON of great ideas like this.!

This was the talk of GDC, apparently it's a student or indie game that valve has agreed to pick up for Steam. I think it'll be cool.

Narbacular Drop was/is a wizard wheeze, so Portal should be too.

Thanks for the link Yan - quite apart from the game, the links to all the design documents etc are fantastic!

is there a way to do this in blitz3D, or are we talking insanely complex code?

I'm sure there's a way to fudge it. I remember in Dark Basic I coded something that would project a view of what you were seeing onto a quad, kind of like having a camera and monitor in the game world - and you could point the camera at the monitor, and have an infinity of pictures. BUT, there was delay to the updating of the monitor, so I'm not sure how you would do it in real time, if the portals were eg facing each other, or on top of each other etc.

I don't see why not, it's a matter of creating multiple renders and pasting them to something that looks like a rip in space. The gameplay would be easy enough ... objects that fall into one camera get transported to the other. You could also append many effects to the textures being pased on the portals to make them look trippy.

How the heck would you go about a smooth transition from one portal to the other via B3d's current collision options though?

I mean, it's easy enough to just instantly pop out the other teleportal (like Quake1), but in Portal it's a smooth seamless transition.
(even Prey wasn't seamless in it's portals)

I haven't seen it, but there are so many ways to smooth transitions that some combination of network smoothing and graphic fudging would look good. I haven't seen the game in action yet, but I'm sure it's doable.

My assumption is that it doesn't paint, or use any tricks. It just breaks the laws of physics.. I mean.. hell.. It isn't like these worlds really exist.. If you think about it right, it shouldn't be a problem at all... It is just a problem mentally.

does anyone remember how there was that bug in duke nukem, where if you turned off clipping and walked through the mirror in the toilet, you were in a whole mirrored world, that was trippy first time round. I love stuff like this.