Portal 2

by **kugs** » 02 Mar 2010, 17:07

Update: Portal 2 is now out.

A better written summary

Lots of cool stuff with the portal update. For those who haven't followed, Portal was updated last night with a new achievement. The achievement added 26 radios that you have to take to certain places in each level to hear the transmission.

Some of the transmissions were sped up morse code, while others were encoded SSTV streams.

After a few hours of decyphering the images, a BBS was discovered. Seems the BBS login changed during the night and today allows logins with a backup account(video).

People are still working on the BBS dumps and seem to have hit a bit of a dead end for now. Lots of rumours about what this all means, but most probable(or hopefull

) is a new game. Valve are exhibiting at GDC (Game Developers Conference) next week, so expected more news will follow then.

Wiki
Steam Portal forums
Discussion:
irc.chat-solutions.org #portal
Updates
irc.chat-solutions.org #portalupdate

Edit: Also some new audio in the game files that don't appear to be in the game. Cleaned up version here. I can hear what appears to be Doc Kliener from HL - others say they can hear Barney and Alex.

Edit: The BBS is only accepting 1 in 1000+ logins (probably due to all the people trying to connect), but is still giving new images. I'll update this post when anything majorly new is found.

Update: colour and sorted database dumps.

Update: 3 new images found from the BBS. Glad OS is now version 3.11 (was 1.09 - orange box was released 10/9), pointing to an announcement on 11th March.

Update: Portal was updated with a new ending. BBS has a progress bar which has slowly been filling up since 3rd. Should be full 5th.

by **GTFO. Irritant** » 03 Mar 2010, 00:39

Very interesting stuff. However...

Portal doesn't seem to like my machine any more. Crashes before reaching the main menu after the screen goes a bit screwy.

Any ideas/same problems anyone? I'm on a Core i7, GeForce GTX280M, Win 7 Ultimate.

by **r3loaded** » 03 Mar 2010, 01:06

Yeah, I've read about this - please god, let this be an upcoming launch of Portal 2/HL2 Episode 3!!!!!

by **kugs** » 03 Mar 2010, 16:15

GTFO. Irritant wrote:Very interesting stuff. However...

Portal doesn't seem to like my machine any more. Crashes before reaching the main menu after the screen goes a bit screwy.

Any ideas/same problems anyone? I'm on a Core i7, GeForce GTX280M, Win 7 Ultimate.

Someone having same problem here.

One solution:

I have.

Add your native Windows resolution to the launch options. If your res is 1280x1024 add:

-w 1280 -h 1024

I don't know why this bug happens. Also, I added -novid to the launch options too, though I'm not sure that helps.

by **GTFO. Irritant** » 03 Mar 2010, 17:30

Thanks Kugs, that's sorted it.

by **GTFO. Irritant** » 03 Mar 2010, 23:53

Ooooh! Another sneaky Portal update has just loaded....

March 3, 2010 - Portal Update Released
Updates to Portal have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted.
Portal
Added valuable asset retrieval

by **kugs** » 04 Mar 2010, 19:01

Yep, it has a new ending, and more files which are still being analysed.
Only other major news atm is that the BBS has a progress bar which has been slowly filling up since the 3rd. Estimated time of compleation is the 5th.

by **r3loaded** » 04 Mar 2010, 19:21

Valve really are going to massive lengths with this, aren't they? The SSTV-encoded sounds, the morse code, the BBS server, even the hiding of the BBS server's phone number as an MD5 hash! (how on earth did they do the MD5 trick?)

Damn, they really like to mess with us!

by **kugs** » 05 Mar 2010, 19:03

Portal 2 announced.

The underlined letters in the announcement are the new login details to the bbs. The new data is being analysed.

Gameinformer seem to have an exclusive with Valve for Portal 2. Will be releasing info here every few days til end of month.

Gamestop has Portal 2 for pre-order. Will feature a two-player co-op mode.

by **moubmaster** » 05 Mar 2010, 21:06

Anyone who wants a quick peak, you have to wait till the very end for the new ending.

by **fraginator3000** » 06 Mar 2010, 00:02

This seems the perfect situation to post this, enjoy all you portal geeks (me included):

by **kugs** » 07 Mar 2010, 12:37

The GameInformer Portal 2 exclusive has been leaked.

by **kugs** » 12 Mar 2010, 17:26

Fake blue screen at gdc.
The hex reads 'Suspend Until EEE' (E3), which I guess is when we'll get more info.

by **GTFO. Luckyg** » 06 Apr 2010, 14:41

new screenies released

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/ar ... ?id=241619

by **GTFO. Luckyg** » 01 Jun 2010, 23:00

Dear Subject Name Here,

Aperture Science is pleased to inform you that we have partnered with Valve to announce the gala CANCELLATION of the June 14 Portal 2 event at the Regal Theater. The event will be replaced by a surprise. And even though the cancellation of the event certainly counts as a surprise, we are pleased to further announce that the cancellation of the event is not THE surprise. However, per International treaties regarding the definition of the word "surprise", of which both Aperture Science and Valve are signatories, the time, date and content of the actual surprise will only become available as you experience the surprise.

If you'd like to ask fruitless questions about the E3 Portal 2 surprise or, more fruitfully, schedule an appointment to attend a Portal 2 screening at the Valve booth during E3, please contact Valve's Special Envoy to Surprises, Doug Lombardi.

Thank you for **RECORD SCRATCH!!!**

PS: The surprising record scratch is also not the surprise.

by **GTFO. Luckyg** » 09 Jun 2010, 18:37

annnd some unsurprising bad news,

"Aperture Science, doing business as Aperture Laboratories LLC, in partnership with Valve today announced the successful completion of an ethics-review-panel-supervised release date restructuring process. Portal 2, the sequel to the ground-breaking title that earned over 30 Game of the Year awards despite missing its original ship date, is now targeted for a 2011 release.

"Representatives from both companies acknowledged that public safety concerns factored into the decision. They went on to say that even though Portal 2 will arrive slightly later than planned, all life on earth won't instantaneously stop as every molecule in your body explodes at the speed of light, which is what would happen should a rip ever appear in the fabric of Valve Time."

"'Also, the game will be even better,' they added, missing an historic opportunity to create the first product delay press release to mention that a product is being delayed to make it worse."

by **GTFO. Luckyg** » 15 Jun 2010, 22:21

by **GTFO. Coxy** » 16 Jun 2010, 00:25

Fuckin hell, what is it with the shitty consoles.

So this is just going to be on the normal source engine then?

by **GTFO. Luckyg** » 16 Jun 2010, 10:16

GTFO. Coxy wrote:Fuckin hell, what is it with the shitty consoles.

So this is just going to be on the normal source engine then?

rumours are that the game is going to be running on a new source engine, which would allow for it to be ported to PS3 easier as it uses OpenGl or something like that. This then could also link with why it was delayed.

by **moubmaster** » 16 Jun 2010, 11:38

Microsoft must be really pissed off with Valve now then. Now the port to PS3 with what could be a very large competitor (and free) to Xbox live.

by **GTFO. Luckyg** » 16 Jun 2010, 12:38

and now for some gameplay,

Youtube · by **DataStorm** » 16 Jun 2010, 13:11

moubmaster wrote:Microsoft must be really pissed off with Valve now then. Now the port to PS3 with what could be a very large competitor (and free) to Xbox live.

it was to be expected tbh. MS was very annoying to valve with the updates they wanted to put out for their games. like TF2 on the XBOX, they could not put out updates as they wanted, so Valve is now waiting till TF2 is nearly finalised.... and then put it out.

What I heard gabe say is that updates will be done and that the steam community will be available on the PS3.... well, I call that a big step. They probably will be able to play on the same servers as PC games if valve decides that its fair play vs pc gamers etc.

So I find it smart, and a move forward for console games with valve. And valve making the engine for both the PS3 and the PC... that would mean same games are on PC and PS3.... with minimal additional costs, cos it will be the same team/source code etc... reaching more platforms with the same effort.... I'd think that game developers are now looking forward to that, and maybe want to use valve's future cross platform source engine to build their own games on.

As for MS... dont think they can get valve back without offering the same to Valve... thus MS is forced probably to allow updates and different communities on their XBOX platform.... they may not choose to. But that is their loss.

I'd guess they have been negotiating with Sony bout this that they can do a full community. Dont think that Sony had much objection, given that Steam has such a big community. It will boost their sales and popularity in use (and required hard disk space in it ofc, so ppl want a later model with bigger disk in it

)

by **GTFO. Gash** » 16 Jun 2010, 15:01

id love to see a cross platform server, not sure if or how well it could be implemented though...

only game to my knowledge that has done it was Crackdown on the 360/PC...

fingers crossed though, would fuckin love to destory the console users!!!

by **Pulse** » 16 Jun 2010, 23:17

Shadowrun had PC/Xb360 cross platform gaming. aside from the game bein' an utter mess the PC gamers obviously had the upper hand in just about every situation. the vertical level design only made matters worse.

by **GTFO. Luckyg** » 24 Jul 2010, 13:00

just bumping this back up as i have just recieved in the post my portal 2 mousemat!

Youtube · by **DataStorm** » 24 Jul 2010, 14:45

watch out, no indication of WHERE your hand/mouse might end up.

by **GTFO. SiR-ROUND** » 24 Jul 2010, 21:31

I have high hopes still on getting a companion cube in 1:1 scale.

by **GTFO. kk20** » 25 Jul 2010, 21:46

I am yet to play portal 1. In fact I am yet to install portal 1.

by **GTFO. Irritant** » 19 Aug 2010, 09:11

Release date announced - 9th Feb:
http://spong.com/article/22226/Valve-Re ... lease-Date

Just before the most popular date for the next Lan...

by **GTFO. Coxy** » 19 Aug 2010, 10:56

Brilliant! Steve Merchant does the voice!

Now the game is 1000000x better already!

by **GTFO. kk20** » 19 Aug 2010, 14:55

Companion cube tastes like chocolate

by **Sepp** » 21 Aug 2010, 07:36

Funny Coop Teaser: http://www.gametrailers.com/video/exclu ... l-2/703300

by **GTFO. Loser** » 21 Aug 2010, 16:32

http://www.gametrailers.com/episode/gam ... =1&sd=1_hd

Really good interview about Portal and L4D

by **GTFO. NachoDuck** » 24 Aug 2010, 22:58

by **GTFO. Coxy** » 25 Aug 2010, 10:02

Nice one for posting the whole thing Nacho, I only saw clips of the new update in an interview.

Still really made up that Steven Merchant is doing the voiceover. For any of you who don't know who he is you need to listen to the Ricky Gervais podcast. Along with Karl Pilkinton it's one of the funniest things on the planet!

by **kugs** » 02 Sep 2010, 00:40

Quoting here in case original post is deleted. (Edit: It was about 10 minutes after posting here

)

I do not usually buy magazines, so today I saw a copy of PCGAMER and it was stated as the VALVE ISSUE with a very nice picture of the co-op robots on the front. I thought i'd buy it and give the valve parts a read. There's some very interesting stuff, so here are the scans of the valve pages. Seriously read it. I will just put here some of the main newish parts which will give you a flicker of new info but nothing really new.

This is mainly portal 2 related but it also contains 'The masterplan' of valve, which is quite interesting. Who even knew portal 2 wasn't even going to have portals?

LINKS TO THE SCANS ARE HERE.
PORTAL 2 ARTICLE
Page 1:http://s301.photobucket.com/albums/nn42/TasBlue/PC%20GAMER%20Scans/?action=view&current=Page1.jpg&mediafilter=images
Page 2:http://s301.photobucket.com/albums/nn42/TasBlue/PC%20GAMER%20Scans/?action=view&current=Page1.jpg&mediafilter=images#!oZZ12QQcurrentZZhttp%3A%2F%2Fs301.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fnn42%2FTasBlue%2FPC%2520GAMER%2520Scans%2F%3Faction%3Dview%26current%3DPage2.jpg%26%26mediafilter%3Dimages
Page 3:http://s301.photobucket.com/albums/nn42/TasBlue/PC%20GAMER%20Scans/?action=view&current=Page1.jpg&mediafilter=images#!oZZ11QQcurrentZZhttp%3A%2F%2Fs301.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fnn42%2FTasBlue%2FPC%2520GAMER%2520Scans%2F%3Faction%3Dview%26current%3DPage3.jpg%26%26mediafilter%3Dimages
Page 4:http://s301.photobucket.com/albums/nn42/TasBlue/PC%20GAMER%20Scans/?action=view&current=Page1.jpg&mediafilter=images#!oZZ10QQcurrentZZhttp%3A%2F%2Fs301.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fnn42%2FTasBlue%2FPC%2520GAMER%2520Scans%2F%3Faction%3Dview%26current%3DPage4.jpg%26%26mediafilter%3Dimages
Page 5:http://s301.photobucket.com/albums/nn42/TasBlue/PC%20GAMER%20Scans/?action=view&current=Page1.jpg&mediafilter=images#!oZZ9QQcurrentZZhttp%3A%2F%2Fs301.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fnn42%2FTasBlue%2FPC%2520GAMER%2520Scans%2F%3Faction%3Dview%26current%3DPage5.jpg%26%26mediafilter%3Dimages
Page 6:http://s301.photobucket.com/albums/nn42/TasBlue/PC%20GAMER%20Scans/?action=view&current=Page1.jpg&mediafilter=images#!oZZ8QQcurrentZZhttp%3A%2F%2Fs301.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fnn42%2FTasBlue%2FPC%2520GAMER%2520Scans%2F%3Faction%3Dview%26current%3DPage6.jpg%26%26mediafilter%3Dimages
Page 7:http://s301.photobucket.com/albums/nn42/TasBlue/PC%20GAMER%20Scans/?action=view&current=Page1.jpg&mediafilter=images#!oZZ7QQcurrentZZhttp%3A%2F%2Fs301.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fnn42%2FTasBlue%2FPC%2520GAMER%2520Scans%2F%3Faction%3Dview%26current%3DPage7.jpg%26%26mediafilter%3Dimages
VALVE'S GRAND PLAN ARTICLE
Page 8:http://s301.photobucket.com/albums/nn42/TasBlue/PC%20GAMER%20Scans/?action=view&current=Page1.jpg&mediafilter=images#!oZZ6QQcurrentZZhttp%3A%2F%2Fs301.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fnn42%2FTasBlue%2FPC%2520GAMER%2520Scans%2F%3Faction%3Dview%26current%3DPage8.jpg%26%26mediafilter%3Dimages
Page 9:http://s301.photobucket.com/albums/nn42/TasBlue/PC%20GAMER%20Scans/?action=view&current=Page1.jpg&mediafilter=images#!oZZ5QQcurrentZZhttp%3A%2F%2Fs301.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fnn42%2FTasBlue%2FPC%2520GAMER%2520Scans%2F%3Faction%3Dview%26current%3DPage9.jpg%26%26mediafilter%3Dimages
Page 10:http://s301.photobucket.com/albums/nn42/TasBlue/PC%20GAMER%20Scans/?action=view&current=Page1.jpg&mediafilter=images#!oZZ4QQcurrentZZhttp%3A%2F%2Fs301.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fnn42%2FTasBlue%2FPC%2520GAMER%2520Scans%2F%3Faction%3Dview%26current%3DPage10.jpg%26%26mediafilter%3Dimages
Page 11:http://s301.photobucket.com/albums/nn42/TasBlue/PC%20GAMER%20Scans/?action=view&current=Page1.jpg&mediafilter=images#!oZZ3QQcurrentZZhttp%3A%2F%2Fs301.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fnn42%2FTasBlue%2FPC%2520GAMER%2520Scans%2F%3Faction%3Dview%26current%3DPage11.jpg%26%26mediafilter%3Dimages
Page 12:http://s301.photobucket.com/albums/nn42/TasBlue/PC%20GAMER%20Scans/?action=view&current=Page1.jpg&mediafilter=images#!oZZ2QQcurrentZZhttp%3A%2F%2Fs301.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fnn42%2FTasBlue%2FPC%2520GAMER%2520Scans%2F%3Faction%3Dview%26current%3DPage12.jpg%26%26mediafilter%3Dimages
Page 13:http://s301.photobucket.com/albums/nn42/TasBlue/PC%20GAMER%20Scans/?action=view&current=Page1.jpg&mediafilter=images#!oZZ1QQcurrentZZhttp%3A%2F%2Fs301.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fnn42%2FTasBlue%2FPC%2520GAMER%2520Scans%2F%3Faction%3Dview%26current%3DPage13.jpg%26%26mediafilter%3Dimages

THIS IS FOR ANYONE WHO DOESN'T LIKE READING LARGE AMOUNTS OF TEXT.

It seems that in Page 2, it states that when you press the 'F' key during co-op you bring up a menu which has various taunts and animation for which you can perform. I discover that the F key brings up a sort of taunt menu. I perform the '?' emote, which puts me into third-person and gives me a perfect view of my tall, slim, turret-on-legs scratching his conical head jerkily and shrugging.. It seems that valve are trying to accomodate for those without mics, you will be able to communicate via emotes which will be quite funny and helpful.

Page 4 states that As an impartial facilitator, she says after one puzzle. Here we have proof that GLaDOS will be speaking through the co-op campaign.

Page 5 states The whole co-op campaign:GLaDOS repeatedly and unjustly rewarding one player over the other in order to drive a wedge between them. People would try to figure that out, says Erik, and they would be like,'I want these points!'They were meaningless; she was just arbitrarily assigning points. Sometimes they weren't even points. Sometimes they weren't even points, she'd give you, like, four pineapples or something. I find this quite interesting, it would be quite funny when playing with someone and GLaDOS is awarding players with psychological prizes for doing well within the test chambers.

Page 5 also states One of the most common things you need to say to each other is, put a portal here - When 'here' is a precise location in the world that's almost impossible to pinpoint in words. So you can point to where you mean, and bring up a context-sensitive menu of symbols with which to paint the world. There's one for a portal, one for just 'look' and one that triggers a three-second countdown on both of your screens to help with timing puzzles. And in case anything still isn't clear, you can hit Tab to bring up a wing-mirror type view of your friend's screen in the corner of your own.

Page 5 also states more info So when you do perish, you repsawn straight away in the same room, without any loss of progress. We wanted people to be able to make mistake,says Josh,and have that be a funny thing you both talk about. Not like, 'I hate my buddy.' INTERESTING PART HERE While it is light on plot, Erik says the co-op story does link into the singleplayer one. You'll even see the co-op bots at one point.

Page 6 states INTERESTING HERE But GLaDOS doesn't control the whole facility. In some sections, you'll be dealing with personality modules that have been separated from the mainframe and can now act on their own. There are Between two and four of these, one of which you've probably already seen in the footage from E3.

Page 6 also states INTERESTING PART HERE LOOK In that game, (TAG bit.ly/tagpaint) there's a third paint type that's sticky, allowing you to climb on walls and cieling, I asked Erik if it would be making a return. His reply? We're working on it.. So it seems they are attempting to create the paint that allows you to stick to stuff just like in TAG. Hopefully this will be in the final game. I'm sure valve can make this work.

Page 7 has a picture of the light bridge which is described as 'Solid Light' which can be redirected through portals. I love this idea of light being so strong it becomes a solid object you can interect with. I wonder what it would feel like.

I hope you found some interesting stuff from this. I haven't gone over VALVES GRAND PLAN, because that's not really portal related, it based around valves plans and ideas on the gaming industry read it if you like, it's pretty good. If you did find this useful some rep would be nice just kidding but really everyone loves rep. Have fun and roll on portal 2!