Yeah. I know. It's been months since it came out but having played the flash version recently, I went back to wondering way it could be improved. My thoughts:

• The ability to close either portal. Teleported energy balls hurt and clearing way of the portal isn't always an option what with pits etc.
• A multiplayer aspect which might involve 2 players having control of either types of holes.
• A sequel might involve portal holes independant of surfaces so they have 2 sides each and the holes position being altered with the portal gun like physics objects with gravity gun.

Discuss

1. That's the challenge.
2. That would break the levels.
3. That's the challenge.

Its actually not 'valve' that made portal. It was a small team of students at digipen who created a demo game (class project actually) called nabacular drop. Valve visited digipen and liked the game so much they hired the team as soon as they finished their education. Then the nabacular drop team made a 'mod' off of HL2 and made Portal. While they were given lots of assets to work with from the guys at valve, portal was mainly produced by the nabcular drop team working within valve. That being said, I do think valve will be expanding upon the Portal aspect a bit more (maybe in HL3 or HL2:E3) due to the overwhelming response from the community, but I think the actual game that was portal isn't going to be continued, just the game play that it designed.

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Posting And You

They're actually making a Portal 2. This was confirmed a few days ago.

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

omegaslayer said:
valve will be expanding upon the Portal aspect a bit more (maybe in HL3 or HL2:E3)

This is what's gonna happen and it'll probably be damn lame.

Lame in what way do you think?

It would require radically different (and invariably restricted) level designs than what HL1/2 has had, I dunno how you'd do large open areas when you could easily portal across them.

The bigger issue though is how the addition of the grav gun made fundamental changes to the series. The HL2 weapons were all turned into crap with limited ammo in order to encourage grav gun use. The enemies (especially the Combine) lost much of their challenge and their AI (one of the cornerstones of HL1) so that it would be easier to tag them with a radiator. Add another paradigm shift type weapon in the portal gun and who knows what'll happen.

Doesn't really matter though cause I don't seriously think they will get the portal gun in Ep3. I'm sure they'd want to, but I don't see it happening. There'd be too many fringe issues that would be very difficult if not impossible to work around. But then there's all that crap about the Portal universe in HL's and Ep3 involving going to an Aperture Science ship and... :/

And I mean, Valve has always failed to impress and be original/groundbreaking in any way shape or form. And I mean if they want to add the portal gun, but they have traditionally used open areas, I can't think of a single thing they'd do other than just give up and trash the idea, I mean.... it only makes sense right?

can you give me a link to an actual statement? All I could find was Doug saying "there will be more portal".... That doesn't necessarily mean Portal 2.... just more portal stuff..

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Posting And You

<DIV class=quote>
<DIV class=quotetitle>? quoting French Toast</DIV>
<DIV class=quotetext>And I mean, Valve has always failed to impress and be original/groundbreaking in any way shape or form. And I mean if they want to add the portal gun, but they have traditionally used open areas, I can't think of a single thing they'd do other than just give up and trash the idea, I mean.... it only makes sense right?</DIV></DIV>

Do you actually read posts or just see one thing and just go off on it? Let's run a test: How's Fortress Forever doing? Pretty well huh? Just like you said it would?

The Portal commentary talks about all the fringe issues they had to work around to get portals to work to their satisfaction. None of which involved:

-conveying what is and isn't a suitable surface for portals in a 'real world' setting that is consistent and fits HL2 theme/visuals
-allowing portal usage without making the levels even more constrained and on rails than they already are
-having enemy AI that reacts to portals, uses them against you, knows how to avoid/work around them, etc etc
-somehow correctly animating npcs so they look natural when they fall upwards through a floor and all that
-making combat work when the player can simply port enemies away from himself by just opening a portal over a chasm and then shooting the other end at enemy feet, just one of the many ways to make combat too easy/totally pointless

And if they do all that s**t and do it right, great, but it'll probably hurt the core mechanics of the game which will only become apparent when the initial awe wears off. EDIT: What's more likely to happen is, if the portal gun is in Ep3, it'll be similar to the supergravgun, in that it's in its own contained series of levels as opposed to general usage like the gravgun (which is what I am assuming when I made the last two posts and the only way to not make the portal gun a pointless gimmick)

Yak, I think he was being sarcastic.

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Signature? What signature!?

-making combat work when the player can simply port enemies away from himself by just opening a portal over a chasm and then shooting the other end at enemy feet, just one of the many ways to make combat too easy/totally pointless

This one's easy. Flying/hovering enemies.

COMBINE JET PACK SOLDIERS!!(1)

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o

? quoting French Toast
And I mean, Valve has always failed to impress and be original/groundbreaking in any way shape or form. And I mean if they want to add the portal gun, but they have traditionally used open areas, I can't think of a single thing they'd do other than just give up and trash the idea, I mean.... it only makes sense right?

Do you actually read posts or just see one thing and just go off on it? Let's run a test: How's Fortress Forever doing? Pretty well huh? Just like you said it would?
The Portal commentary talks about all the fringe issues they had to work around to get portals to work to their satisfaction. None of which involved:
-conveying what is and isn't a suitable surface for portals in a 'real world' setting that is consistent and fits HL2 theme/visuals
-allowing portal usage without making the levels even more constrained and on rails than they already are
-having enemy AI that reacts to portals, uses them against you, knows how to avoid/work around them, etc etc
-somehow correctly animating npcs so they look natural when they fall upwards through a floor and all that
-making combat work when the player can simply port enemies away from himself by just opening a portal over a chasm and then shooting the other end at enemy feet, just one of the many ways to make combat too easy/totally pointless
And if they do all that s**t and do it right, great, but it'll probably hurt the core mechanics of the game which will only become apparent when the initial awe wears off. EDIT: What's more likely to happen is, if the portal gun is in Ep3, it'll be similar to the supergravgun, in that it's in its own contained series of levels as opposed to general usage like the gravgun (which is what I am assuming when I made the last two posts and the only way to not make the portal gun a pointless gimmick)

a) The Fortress Forever comment.... don't get it.

b) You have made.... no point. Not one at all.

haha what

They're actually making a Portal 2. This was confirmed a few days ago.

Cool! Didn't know that. I heard Gabe or some higher force at Valve talk about all the things they consider to do with portals and it was mind-bending. Resizable portals where you come out smaller on the other side. Time-portals where you can jump into the past... multiplayer...

They didn't even scratch the surface of possibilities yet. Portal, for me, is the single most important project at Valve atm. Except, perhaps, HL3 (no not Episode 3, HL3).

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Why snark works.

I'm just glad valve isn't the type of developer that gets sick of their own properties.

I hate when that happens.

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

All that arguing about portals in Episode 3. What if they didn't come in the form of a portal gun. What if they made the gameplay less linear and that it had a similar structure to the Zelda games eg. you can visit the coast, Ravenholm, City 17, Nova Prospekt etc. at any time during the game to achieve goals and unlock other parts of the game and entirely new areas AND later on you have access to portal technology but it comes in the form of stationary gates dotted around the entire game map and you can teleport from one gate to another by 'dialing' it's specified number and then simply walking through.

Or what if the Borealis is full of bizarre portal experiments a la Prey? That could be awesome.

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"If you talk at all during this lesson, you have detention. Do you understand?"

• My yr11 Economics teacher

All that arguing about portals in Episode 3. What if they didn't come in the form of a portal gun. What if they made the gameplay less linear and that it had a similar structure to the Zelda games eg. you can visit the coast, Ravenholm, City 17, Nova Prospekt etc. at any time during the game to achieve goals and unlock other parts of the game and entirely new areas AND later on you have access to portal technology but it comes in the form of stationary gates dotted around the entire game map and you can teleport from one gate to another by 'dialing' it's specified number and then simply walking through.

it's the fargate!