l doubt it. Portals are too expensive to work in a Half-life environment.

oh god

So....

Episode 1...

Pretty fun.

I took out all but one. I used a portal to pick up the one on the right (right from when you walk into the room) and drop it on another. I did the same thing for the far right one. Then I dropped the camera through a portal onto the far left one.

Thanks, but that didn't work. I ended up submitting a query-thing to Steam... hopefully I'll get a useful response soon. I wanna play.

i was thinking the same... would be awesome
when i saw that Aperture Science logo on the Borialis.. i was like omg valve is awesome lol

But the power! It's too great! Didn't black mesa teach you ANYTHING?

I finished EP2 today and beat portal yesterday. Great games, can't wait for the next ones.

Both EP2 and Portal spoilers: From the new stuff on ApetureScience.com which you get to with the login information in the above spoilers, it looks like the only real noteworthy products they made are the portal gun and GLaDOS. Which makes one wonder what's on the ship you see near the end of the game which has Aperture's name plastered all over it. However the "History" is so absurd I'm going to disregard it and go with the powerpoint in Portal which places them as a true competitor to Black Mesa. I also wonder where the Portal heroine will fit in, or if you'll even see her again (my gut instinct tells me no; plus Aperture is likely in the continental US if they were competing for DoD contracts, and HL2 takes place in Eastern Europe, EP3 in the Arctic.

The "curious" node is great too... I thought the "cake" node was some "factual" node but "cake" makes more sense. It says more than what anyone's posted, like "Where are you going? Are you coming back for me?" if you drop it, also it says "Do you smell something burning?" when you hold it over the incinerator. It also says "Hello" "Hi" and "Hey, you're the lady from the test chamber!"

It's almost a shame the main AI talks at the same time, they both say such great things and it's impossible to make everything out.

My favorite game line from Portal: Two plus two is fffff-ffff-ffff-fffff-10. IN BASE 4. I'M FINE.



Liar, you MURDERED HIM

I'm not sure what you mean, but Portal definitely takes place in the same world as Half Life, so I'd say there's a good chance Gordon will get his hands on the portal gun.

especially considering that in a slideshow you see later in the game, it says that aperture is "Actively competing with Black Mesa for DOD contracts"

And this:

Go ahead and leave me.
I think I prefer to stay inside.
Maybe you'll find someone else
to help you.
Maybe Black Mesa...
THAT WAS A JOKE. [HA HA] FAT CHANCE.

That song was amazing! I really would have liked to find out what happens to you at the end though.

I really love how good a job Valve is doing wrapping it all up.
Episode 3 is probably gonna be the end. Antartica seems a nice location for an epic with... Gman? Or perhaps some super combine over master? Breen in a pod?

Let me rephrase that slightly: 'computationally expensive.'

A garrys mod..mod added them in. Seemed to work fine.

Even sucked a few combine through.

Did you go through the commentary? The system that they've set up is pretty ingenious, and not that bad as far as computations go. Given a year or more until the release of Ep3, I'm sure they can tweak it some more to be more efficient. Also, by the time Ep3 comes out, quad cores should be pretty prevalent, or at least dual core processors. With a little work on multithreading, and advancements in video hardware, it's quite reasonable to expect the portal gun to be used in the Half Life 2 universe.

I don't think that Ep3 will use the portal gun. There are just too many things that can break when using it I think. Especially if Gordon were allowed to have it in outdoor areas. I think that we'll see a sequel to Portal that will be a bit longer, and take place around the same time as Ep3, tying the two together.

I believe Valve said Ep3 would be the final chapter in the Half Life saga, but who knows? They may end Gordon's story, but follow the portal girl, or Barney, or Adrian Shepherd or something.

Also, there are rumors floating around of a Weighted Companion Cube Plushie. Supposedly some of the steam forum members emailed Gabe about it, and he's responded that Valve will do it. If they do, I want one. Hopefully they'll restock headcrab hats too.

I'm so looking forward to the SDK update. I want to design some portal maps.

Right.. Sheperd. I would really like to play as him. Maybe flesh out the rebellion a little.
Oh and who else noticed Barneys absense? A bit unnerving...

Also, think of all the extra work the portal gun would mean for episode 3 designers. They'd have to flag every single surface in the game as either portal-friendly or not. And you've probably noticed there are a helluva lot more surfaces in Half-life than portal.

Oh hell, they've got me. I'd actually buy a cube plushie. Good kak you have no idea how NOT me that is. I never buy into stupid stat like that.

No, they'd only have to a flag a shader for any portal compatible textures. Maybe even sets of textures, depending on how HL2 handles materials and if they wanted to expand it. I don't know how HL2 handles material sounds, but they could probably even just use whatever flag determines the walking sound for concrete and allow all those textures to have portals put on them.

It's also not that computationally expensive. Remember Prey? They worked fine in there.

Okay, true. But portal uses what, like 5 different textures? Half-life 2 is a little different. Plus, half-life 2 uses a ton of "gates" to keep the players in certain areas while events are happening. Portals and gates don't mix nicely.

yeah.. he left on a train at the end of ep1 but no one even mentions him or seems concerned about his abscence in ep2

I got to the boss last night.. but after 4am and trying a couple times to get the 3rd orb/eye whatever it is.. I gave up.. I'll get it tonight.

Nifty tip: you can get all the orbs without flinging.

It's just a waste of time when you don't have to.

I read on steam(or maybe it was planethalflife) they are talking about putting the portal gun in EP3

I think portal should have had mirror surfaces for the portal gun. That is, you have to bounce the portal gun shot off of something to a different wall elsewhere.

Cool, kirby. You just invented a whole new play mechanic.

There are several ways you could look at the area you're banking the portal shot to: you could place a portal near a corner and look through the portal, or there could be some impassable glass that lets you see the surface you need to bank the shot to. Good idea.

I've also thought of some ideas: more than two portals would be cool in some cases..

also being able to set up portal turrets (like the one you grab the gun from)..

And of course, for limited areas, shooting portals through portals. You can actually come up with some pretty insane puzzles doing that, but it would have to be in a limited area because that breaks the rest of the game. I've seen some insane, mind-bending puzzles in custom maps for Narbacular drop that required that mechanic.

You can shoot portals through portals if you're quick enough. I skipped half of the levels my first run through this way.

Do you mean while you're kind of standing "half-in and half-out" of a portal? It always shoves me out of the portal when I do that and generally screws stuff up..

Yeah. What you do is come out a little, shoot and push back as you're shooting.

Haha, cool..

The damn song has been stuck in my head all day.

This was a triumph.
I'm making a note here:
HUGE SUCCESS

It's been stuck in my head for DAYS.

It's hard to overstate
my satisfaction.
Aperture Science
We do what we must
because we can.
For the good of all of us.
Except the ones who are dead.

the cake is a lie

Except there IS a cake you see before/after the credits... so the cake really wasn't a lie!



Funny, Portal has plenty of gates and they work fine. For my example, gate #1: You can't leave your cell until exposition finishes. Of course you'd want an example that uses the portal gun... well there's not many, since Portal really doesn't have many what Valve calls "vistas" or any other reason to stop. But there's nothing to stop a simple door from keeping you from the other side of it.

Still, I'd prefer to see the portal gun in a Portal sequel rather than a HL2 game. HL2 already has it's signature gun.



IIRC, I'm fairly certain EP3 will be the last EPISODIC HL2. Valve had already planned, back when they released HL2 and started work on episodic content, to make HL3 using the Source engine.

HL2EP2: About the ship in the arctic; the dev commentary about it specifically states that Aperture Science deals in portal technology, which likely means whatever is on board is then portal-related. I'm thinking it's not like the portal gun, more like something closer to the portal as in "portal storm" or the superportal seen in EP2, or maybe the portal used in HL1 to get you to Xen. However it must be something more, since Kleiner is convinced it can be used to fight the Combine.

I loved portal! I just played it from start to finish in 1 sitting

The song at the end was the icing on the cake

Well Eli did say that the borialis disapeared along with some of the drydock so maybe its some kind of super portal, Also the Gman is one hell of a creepy SOB now, of he knew Eli back before HL1, then how the hell did he get his creepy time bending/mind influencing powers?

yeah i got the orange box today, beat portal and episode 2. both are

the end of episode 2 is hard with all those striders and hunters