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Ars Technica

Ars wrote:Portal 2 is official, first image inside
By Andrew Webster |

Valve has been teasing something Portal-related all week, starting with some mysterious updates followed by a brand new ending for the game. And if all of this led you to believe that the puzzle-based shooter would be getting a sequel, well, you'd be right.

The news was revealed via Game Informer, which will be featuring the game on its next cover. No real details have been revealed, although the game will be a "full-fledged, standalone sequel," as opposed to the original, which came packaged with The Orange Box. We should have plenty of good information when the magazine hits newsstands though, as it features a full 12-page spread on the game.

For now, we can do little but speculate, and revel in the glorious cover image.

Yay! Fucking love that game . Now all we need is for episode 3 to be finally announced..

Side note one of the best Cover images I've seen in a long time. Also the extended trailer features of course.
Spoiler

Mr Bean wrote:Side note one of the best Cover images I've seen in a long time. Also the extended trailer features of course.
Spoiler

The familiar you end up laying outside Aperture Sciences main gates but the extend trailer features a extra 15 seconds worth of you hearing a robot like voice saying "Thank you for assuming the party position" and then being slowly dragged off backwards away from the gates

Thats not a trailer. Its from Portal. They edited the ending of the original. If you play back through Portal, that is what will happen.

Trailer was the wrong word. The original ending cinematic is the correct term.

I'm really hoping Ep. 3 will be released with (or at least at the same time as) Portal 2. The ending of Ep. 2 (won't spoil it here for anyone who hasn't played it) definiately implied that Gordon could be weilding the portal gun in Ep. 3.

Braedley wrote:I'm really hoping Ep. 3 will be released with (or at least at the same time as) Portal 2. The ending of Ep. 2 (won't spoil it here for anyone who hasn't played it) definiately implied that Gordon could be weilding the portal gun in Ep. 3.

Unlikely. Episode 3 is the new Duke Nukem Forever.

Alyeska wrote:

Mr Bean wrote:Side note one of the best Cover images I've seen in a long time. Also the extended trailer features of course.
Spoiler

The familiar you end up laying outside Aperture Sciences main gates but the extend trailer features a extra 15 seconds worth of you hearing a robot like voice saying "Thank you for assuming the party position" and then being slowly dragged off backwards away from the gates

Thats not a trailer. Its from Portal. They edited the ending of the original. If you play back through Portal, that is what will happen.

How do I see this (in game)? When I played through (several times) I always got the "land outside the gates -> credits" sequence. Is there some special edition version of Portal out there?

Braedley wrote:I'm really hoping Ep. 3 will be released with (or at least at the same time as) Portal 2. The ending of Ep. 2 (won't spoil it here for anyone who hasn't played it) definiately implied that Gordon could be weilding the portal gun in Ep. 3.

Remember when episodic content was going to mean more frequent releases?

It got patched a few days ago.

Darmalus wrote:How do I see this (in game)? When I played through (several times) I always got the "land outside the gates -> credits" sequence. Is there some special edition version of Portal out there?

Start a new game of portal at the last test chamber and Portal from there. Loading a saved game didn't work for me.

Save games on the last level wont work, no. You'll need to play through again or jump to the last map or whatever.

This is only on the PC, and only if you have Steam auto-updating Portal.

My saved game worked.

Yessssss!

But I, too, want Ep. 3 to come with it. I also echo Stark's hilarious observation about episodic gaming. I'd be expecting HL3 by the time Ep. 3 comes out.

I just clicked New Game but started in the very last chapter, saw the new ending. Its not very different.

As for Episode 3, GMAFB,R. Half Life 2's engine is fucking ancient and its time Valve made a new damn HL game with a new damn engine.

Source is doing just fine. Half-Life 2 still looks very good. And Left 4 Dead shows what they can do. They are continually upgrading the engine.

Come on people, they may as well change the title to Gordon Freeman Forever. I don't know if I even want episode 3 anymore, I don't know how much longer they can get the undead corpse of the source engine to dance around like that, and to be perfectly honest I'd like some changes to the way Half Life is played, not just more levels for it.

Its been two and a half years, and suddenly people are mentioning Duke Nukem and calling the engine a "corpse".

Alyeska wrote:Its been two and a half years, and suddenly people are mentioning Duke Nukem and calling the engine a "corpse".

Well over two years and we haven't had much more than concept art put out. Most games at least show off some gameplay footage by now.

Vympel wrote:As for Episode 3, GMAFB,R. Half Life 2's engine is fucking ancient and its time Valve made a new damn HL game with a new damn engine.

Yeah, Firefox is fucking ancient as well, why is everyone using this browser that was written in 2004? Linux hasn't been rewritten from scratch since 1996, oh noes, how awful!

'Rewrite from scratch' has been largely discredited for application software, why do you think it is still vital in gaming? It is perfectly possible to incrementally replace every component of a game engine, given a sensible initial design. It didn't make sense when graphics technology was advancing at a ridiculous pace, but since about 2005 (DirectX 9) the basic APIs have been fairly stable even though the compute power continues to scale.

AFAIK, the major problem with the Source engine isn't the core engine technology, it's the toolset. That doesn't require a rewrite of the whole platform to fix, it just requires some investment in tools rather than shiny.

As for HL2E3, yeah, definitely some of the DNF vibe there.

Starglider wrote:'Rewrite from scratch' has been largely discredited for application software, why do you think it is still vital in gaming? It is perfectly possible to incrementally replace every component of a game engine, given a sensible initial design. It didn't make sense when graphics technology was advancing at a ridiculous pace, but since about 2005 (DirectX 9) the basic APIs have been fairly stable even though the compute power continues to scale.

AFAIK, the major problem with the Source engine isn't the core engine technology, it's the toolset. That doesn't require a rewrite of the whole platform to fix, it just requires some investment in tools rather than shiny.

But, but, but don't you know, that if you don't create a whole new engine, then it's just a "mod"? How could you possibly expect people to pay for mods??

Vympel wrote:Half Life 2's engine is fucking ancient and its time Valve made a new damn HL game with a new damn engine.

I have to ask, what is the things that justify the need for a new game engine? Is it because of the graphics? Is it because of the game physics?

Uraniun235 wrote:But, but, but don't you know, that if you don't create a whole new engine, then it's just a "mod"? How could you possibly expect people to pay for mods??

Yes, it's probably a failure on the part of Valve's marketing department, not to stick a (more) prominent version number on the engine to placate Internet trolls. Worked for Unreal Engine 3 after all! Or could it be that people who actually make multi-million dollar engine licensing decisions don't give a shit about arbitrary version numbers?

Alyeska wrote:Its been two and a half years, and suddenly people are mentioning Duke Nukem and calling the engine a "corpse".

Yeah, two and a half years with out so much as a word about it, and it's supposed to be an episodic game. The idea is to take less time with your development cycle, not more, since the game is only going to be 3-5 hour long, and the engine + major assets have already been constructed. Also, I've been playing games on the Source Engine since 2004. Even when Ep 2 came out it was starting to get a little bit long in the tooth. Yes, it's seen upgrades, but 6 years is a loooong time for an engine. They've added a few effects and optimized a thing here and there. It's really depressing that their tech has stagnated to the point that they are only building things that run on the 360 and (occasionally, if the stars are aligned correctly) PS3. This isn't restricted to valve, of course; I can't recall a PC game since Crysis that has pushed the platform. There would be a few, but they're a dying breed.

AFAIK, the major problem with the Source engine isn't the core engine technology, it's the toolset. That doesn't require a rewrite of the whole platform to fix, it just requires some investment in tools rather than shiny.

If that's all that's required then fine, but it's bizarre that when I play Left 4 Dead 2 on my friend's 2000 dollar uber PC and it only looking marginally better than the PC I haven't upgrade since 2007. All the source-engine games have a "look" about them, character models in particular. Perhaps all of the modders and developers (only really valve and turtle rock that do major work on the engine) are just doing the same art style or something, but they haven't improved drastically since HL2 came out, and they've been blown away by a lot of stuff, even on consoles.

adam_grif wrote:It's really depressing that their tech has stagnated to the point that they are only building things that run on the 360 and (occasionally, if the stars are aligned correctly) PS3. This isn't restricted to valve, of course; I can't recall a PC game since Crysis that has pushed the platform. There would be a few, but they're a dying breed.

Don't you know, all the hip popular informed people are saying how good graphics are bad, and that the whole industry should agree to stagnate for 5 years at a time. At least, when they're not saying that everything was better in 2D anyway.

If that's all that's required then fine, but it's bizarre that when I play Left 4 Dead 2 on my friend's 2000 dollar uber PC and it only looking marginally better than the PC I haven't upgrade since 2007. All the source-engine games have a "look" about them, character models in particular.

Probably the shaders. The reason is fundamentally the same as why World of Warcraft looks fairly crap; the developers target the mainstream and don't think sinking more money into graphics bling for high-end users would be repaid by a corresponding increase in sales. Valve and Blizzard can get away with that because anything they release automatically gets massive publicity, and no-one is buying their games for the graphics. Unknown studios often use screenshot eye candy (only available on systems that a very few hardcore gamers have) to get press coverage, or to pump sales when their gameplay is utterly mediocre.

Anyway, this isn't an inherent technical issue that can only be solved by a ground-up engine rewrite, it's a policy decision by the company management.

Don't you know, all the hip popular informed people are saying how good graphics are bad, and that the whole industry should agree to stagnate for 5 years at a time. At least, when they're not saying that everything was better in 2D anyway.

I still vividly remember the choruses of "Gameplay > Graphics" from people when the Wii specs were leaked, as though gameplay and good graphics are somehow mutually exclusive. Games like Half Life / 2, Doom, Uncharted, Ocarina of Time were fucking amazing visually when they came out, in addition to being completely awesome.

Instead of a gameplay over graphics renaissance, we got all the high profile devs abandoning ship (or rather, continuing to stay off the ship they abandoned in 1994) or putting out shovelware.

Probably the shaders. The reason is fundamentally the same as why World of Warcraft looks fairly crap;

WoW looks crap because it's an MMO released more than 5 years ago. Even MMO's released today look like ass. But as long as they ring the bell that is leveling up every now and again, they'll continue to drool like good little dogs.

Anyway, this isn't an inherent technical issue that can only be solved by a ground-up engine rewrite, it's a policy decision by the company management.

I feel like an old man reminicing about the good old days when you had to buy a new PC every 3 years or you'd be rooted trying to play anything modern. But boy did new games visually wow me frequently.