Reality Factory

I found a really cool gameplay mechanic and wanted to share it with everyone here. If you find a cool gameplay mechanic, please tell us about it and post it in this thread!


If you have high speed(or can watch google video/be patient for the video to load), I have a video for you. It is from half life 2 and its "portal" technology. Now if you are familiar with hint brushes and indepth game engine workings, you think, oh, its about how the engine optimizes the polygons rendered on screen right? Nope, its a full gameplay mechanic that makes me very happy to see. Nothing like it to spice up the gaming world. The player shoots "portals" onto walls and floors to move objects and solve puzzels!!! Its awesome! Once you create more than one portal, you enter one and it warps you to the other!

Here is the link to the video file.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... rtal&hl=en
Click it and the video will start to play shortly.

I think that the concept shown is amazing! I would have never thought of such a thing! Those guys at valve never stop giving do they? First the gravity gun, now the portal gun.

OMG MOG!! That is just plain awesome!! A portal gun. Just unreal.

Not unreal, Valve ; )

yes, Valve got the idea from a student project ... which you can actually download and play

http://www.fileplanet.com/161458/160000 ... ee-Game%5D

very cool concept.

I just found out the game Prey has the same portal thing. Its shown in this video.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... rtal&hl=en

EDIT: Whoops, its a mod that enables it. (edit: forgot the I to begin this next sentence) I just read the desription of the video.

Actually valve ripped this Idea from Prey in the first place the portal technology was being planned by the original Prey developers since the game (prey) was announced way back in the 90's.

But yeah I love the vid you guys should get steam @ http://www.steampowered.com the video is avalible for download in the my media section, along with loads of other game dynamic videos, and a cool short film about zombies made by valve! (steam is a program made by valve to distibute their games and other media, although you can buy games with valves steam, there are loads of free downloads !)

Fallen wrote:yes, Valve got the idea from a student project ... which you can actually download and play

That game made my head hurt.
It's just so... unreal, as Stevie said. I can't wait to see that done with HL2 engine.

The idea is just magnificent.

psYco wrote:Actually valve ripped this Idea from Prey in the first place the portal technology was being planned by the original Prey developers since the game (prey) was announced way back in the 90's.

Prey was announced about 10 years ago, before the start of Duke Nukem Forever. It soon went away. By the time it was re-announced, the NMS (Narbacular Monkey Software) team were already well under way with Nabacular Drop (the game I linked above).

Not to mention the ability to place portals is unique to ND and Valves new game Portals. Even though This Shows that in 1998 Prey did use the idea for placing portals ... but didn't ever flushed it out.

It is odd that these ideas came out at roughly the same time ... but it seems to be just that ... they came out at just about the same time.

Totally different genre's of game ... adn FPS that uses portals and a puzzle game that uses portals ... completely different feel.

Your rite the genre is completely different, Prey uses portals to add to the intence combat, (it has great multi-player) whereas valves Portals puts the actual emphisis of the game on the portals dynamics.

''Offtopic''
This may be a stupid question but does any one 'here' know the answer to the eternal question, 'What the ---- happened to Duke-Nukem Forever?' they should change the name to Duke-Nukem Never! nearly 9years delay! WTF!

psYco wrote:''Offtopic''
This may be a stupid question but does any one 'here' know the answer to the eternal question, 'What the ---- happened to Duke-Nukem Forever?' they should change the name to Duke-Nukem Never! nearly 9years delay! WTF!

Oh, don't worry! It's still on track for it's original realease date: When it's done.

WOW i just read in England PC GAMER, that Portal IS based on Carbacular Drop (is that rite??) Sorry Fallen

Any way it turns out the Carbacular Drop (or whatever its called) was demonstrated to some members of the game dev industry at the annual display the school puts on for this very purpose! Any way the guys there from valve liked it and so took it to show to our collective hero Gabe Newel who then HIRED THE THREE STUDENTS ON THE SPOT! YES YOU HEARD ME RITE WIPE THOSE TEARS AWAY, THEY ARE NOW THE LEAD LEVEL DESIGHNERS OF THE NEW VALVE GAME PORTAL(S)! ok you can cry again now... yes now the disgust turns to hate... call those lucky devs what you will they deserve it (for being so lucky!) But well I hope to one day be hired on the spot by John Carmack that'll show them!!!!!!!!!

Yes, that is the case, as proven in this interview:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... e+software