[HN Gopher] Portal 2: Desolation is giving the classic puzzle ga...
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Portal 2: Desolation is giving the classic puzzle game a graphics
overhaul
Author : sandebert
Score : 125 points
Date : 2022-03-27 14:30 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.pcgamer.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.pcgamer.com)
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Sounds great.
|
| Can't help but notice the lack of any concrete data in their
| press, though. I have no idea if I'll be able to play it on my
| computer.
| thot_experiment wrote:
| If anyone needs a fix of Portal related content and hasn't yet
| played Portal: Prelude I can't recommend it highly enough. It's
| been a while (10+ years, oof I'm old now) since I've played it so
| take my gushing with a grain of salt, but I recall it being well
| written, not enough to rival Portal, but perhaps enough to rival
| Portal 2. The puzzles however were the most fun of any portal
| based game I'd ever played.
| willis936 wrote:
| It really pushed the tools in terms of puzzle challenges. It
| threw out a lot of soft rules and let players expand their
| reasoning. I remember some puzzles requiring the player to fly
| through a complex series of portals that would look like
| complete chaos from a 3rd person perspective observer.
| l-p wrote:
| My lame claim to fame.
|
| I was the one who suggested making it a prequel and have
| scientists watching you and from behind the windows (tough I'm
| pretty sure Nyko forgot by the time he completed the mod). Odd
| seeing this mentioned here.
|
| I still have a toe in the Source modding community and I'm
| watching Desolation with great interest. An absurd amount of
| effort went into this, augmenting the engine, the editor,
| inflicting vgui upon themselves...
|
| Source is _not_ a flexible and cooperative engine, lots of
| hardcoded stuff, necessary workarounds, complicated workflows,
| but there's still a modding and mapping community and my only
| wish is for our Lord and Savior Gabe Newell to release the
| sources of Source (1), GoldSrc, and the tooling around them. So
| much could be done. I should mail him, iosource needs to
| happen.
| willis936 wrote:
| Does source support any sort of hardware-accelerated
| raytracing? I don't think there have been any other graphics
| advancements of the caliber of hardware RT since Portal 2
| came out.
| l-p wrote:
| No.
|
| The biggest improvement Source saw was in Source 2 with
| PBR. There's mention of raytracing in Source 2 [1] but I
| don't think anything was released.
|
| [1]: https://github.com/SteamDatabase/GameTracking-
| Artifact-Beta/...
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| That is ambitious! I wish them the best of luck.
| hkt wrote:
| There is some extraordinary work that goes on in the modding
| community. A personal favourite in a similar vein is Portal
| Reloaded:
|
| https://store.steampowered.com/app/1255980/Portal_Reloaded/
|
| Portal, also with time travel. The puzzles are _excellent_ and
| the environments are gorgeous. I remain dumbfounded that efforts
| like these come from people who are volunteering their time.
| geocrasher wrote:
| I came here to point out Portal Reloaded. It's the most mind
| bending game I've ever played!
| fartcannon wrote:
| Valve is great. Especially in comparison to some other game
| companies. Were this a Nintendo project, the devs would risk at
| best a Cease and Desist. The vibe I get from Nintendo is that
| they would probably flog their fan-game devs if they could
| legally get away with it.
|
| Let's see if Bethesda, under Microsoft, maintains their support
| of mods.
| 7speter wrote:
| My head canon says that Valve allows fans of its ips to come
| out with these sorts of graphical remasters (theres also black
| mesa) because they are pretty preoccupied with steam.
| rockemsockem wrote:
| I think it's more than that. Surely having a money printing
| machine like steam makes it easier to ignore stuff like this,
| but you also have to remember that Counter Strike was a fan-
| made mod in the beginning and now it's one of the most played
| games on the planet and Valve produces it itself now. There's
| got to be a baked in appreciation for how letting fans do
| these sorts of things can directly boost their profits.
| Bjartr wrote:
| > that Counter Strike was a fan-made mod in the beginning
| and now it's one of the most played games on the planet and
| Valve produces it itself now.
|
| As were DOTA and Team Fortress! Taking well loved mods and
| giving them some AAA shine has been a rather successful
| strategy for Valve.
| rasz wrote:
| Man Im getting old, all I could hear in the attached Video was
| "We made it slower because our modern >$1K GPUs can run it, sucks
| to be you".
|
| "no baked lights, reducing compile time from hours to minutes"
|
| Logic error, my brain hurts. If they managed to optimize lighting
| subsystem to make it run at realtime speed then Light compile
| time could also take minutes. Why trying to sell it as some kind
| of speed optimization?
| prezjordan wrote:
| For what it's worth, the Portal 2 community maps (available to
| download and play within the game itself!) are really good. Each
| week there are about 3-4 new really fantastic puzzles to play,
| and of course there's a healthy back catalog.
| dmr_92 wrote:
| https://www.thinking.withportals.com/ was (is?) the big
| community for this. I was part of it around the time Valve
| released their easy map editor (the "perpetual testing
| initiative")---more than a decade ago now. I had the pleasure
| of testing the editor before its release. It was an exciting
| time!
|
| Sadly that editor was geared towards single-player maps,
| whereas my interest was always in the coop ones. If you'll
| forgive the shameless plug,
| https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=89692...
| was my favourite to make. I put a lot of time into that, but
| sadly I lost the hard drive with the map's source files some
| years ago. It's done quite well on the workshop---which always
| surprises me. I had very little idea about level design or what
| constitutes a fun puzzle. Beginner's luck, maybe?
|
| It was a lot of fun/pain/curiosity to work with and fight
| Valve's hammer editor. I remember thinking "this feels like a
| tool designed to make half-life maps". I can still remember
| tying brushes to func_detail entities so that they wouldn't
| contribute visleaves. Good times!
|
| While I'm at it: I'd recommend the "sendificator" series:
| https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/?id=29165303...
| . These introduce a new puzzle element entirely contained
| within the map file. I'm guessing it must use some kind of lua
| script to implement it, since it's entirely contained in the
| map.
| matthewfcarlson wrote:
| My only complaint is that I can't put my email in to get updates.
| boastful_inaba wrote:
| Maybe just follow their Twitter account
| (https://twitter.com/desolation_mod) or Youtube account
| (https://www.youtube.com/embersparkgames) ?
| mdaniel wrote:
| I've never used it, but there's a Follow button on their linked
| site: https://www.moddb.com/mods/desolation and there's an RSS
| feed for news updates:
| https://rss.moddb.com/mods/desolation/articles/feed/rss.xml
| pram wrote:
| One of my favorite gaming moments ever is the transition from the
| old test shafts back into the enrichment center (which leads to
| the finale)
|
| The area is like a bunch of platforms supported by gigantic
| springs. It made me stop and appreciate how mysterious,
| thoughtful, and interesting the entire environment was. I really
| just wanted to explore more of the depths after experiencing it.
| Jasper_ wrote:
| "Act 3" of Portal 2 is perhaps surprising only by how short it
| is! I think it sticks in people's heads as the largest part of
| Portal 2, but it's only 8 levels (2 intro levels, 2 for Blue
| Gel puzzles, 1 transition, 2 for Orange Gel, 1 finale). By
| comparison, the wrecked facility afterwards with Wheatley is
| almost double, at _15_ levels.
|
| sp_a3_03 (the intro to the underground area) and sp_a3_end (the
| climb you mention, with the new facility hoisted on top of the
| springs) remain some of my favorite examples of excellent level
| design in video games.
|
| If you're curious, you can see the level here if you want to
| study how it works in a bit more detail
| https://noclip.website/#Portal2/sp_a3_end;ShareData=AY[=[9qH...
| Fabricio20 wrote:
| Wow, this tool is incredibly well made, you can even interact
| with map triggers, how had I not found about it sooner?
| Thanks for sharing!
| jl6 wrote:
| My Portal 2 moment was thinking that the game was almost over
| at the point of falling down into the salt mine, only to
| discover this entirely unknown, enormous whole other
| environment.
| LichenStone wrote:
| Personally I never really like graphical overhaul mods that do
| more than just add subtle technical improvements to what's
| already there. The art direction is usually such an important
| part of a game that doing things like changing colours, shadows,
| and textures always seems to lose something that made the
| original coherent and unique.
|
| The official remasters of Halo 1 and 2 are good examples of how
| not to do it, Halo CE Anniversary edition in particular is truly
| horrid. Initially I was quite warm to Halo 2's treatment, but on
| a subsequent replay I felt that the new graphics took something
| away from the composition of many of the scenes.
|
| Games' graphics and level design are designed for a specific
| level of graphical fidelity at that time in history. Going back
| to things and adding more greebling everywhere and making the
| shadows fancier won't necessarily improve the game, signposting
| is a subtle art and it's easy reduce clarity with additive
| changes.
|
| Doing graphics overhauls and remasters right, without corrupting
| the original art direction is really really tough. Most of the
| time it tends to go wrong, hopefully Desolation turns out great.
| tempodox wrote:
| Portal 2 is one of my favorite games ever, but it's missing a
| 64-bit upgrade.
| jordanpg wrote:
| Upgrading to Catalina has nearly knocked me out of the gaming
| scene altogether.
|
| It might be enough to ensure that my next purchase is a PC,
| despite finding Windows loathsome.
| lukifer wrote:
| Given the Herculean efforts (and superb results) of Rosetta
| and Rosetta 2, I'm still appalled that Apple couldn't have
| found a way to keep running 32 bit apps, even at a
| performance hit through some level of emulation or
| containerization.
|
| In addition to countless classic games being dead in the
| water, my Mom was completely blindsided by the change,
| suddenly losing access to several old-but-trusted
| productivity apps, and she had to scramble to find
| replacements. I don't recall there even being a generic
| warning during the upgrade process, let alone "the following
| apps will no longer function: [...]; do you wish to proceed?"
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| Also give a try to Mel in the same vein, minus the graphic engine
| swap.
| ahelwer wrote:
| Recently tried replaying portal 2. The graphics aged just fine
| over the past decade; unfortunately the same is not true of the
| writing and humor. Has a very reddit-circa-2010 vibe. I guess
| comedy is one of the more difficult fields in which to create a
| real classic, because of changing social mores but also because
| most humor relies on novelty. Few video game memes have been
| beaten to a more thorough pulp than "the cake is a lie",
| companion cube, etc.
| pxx wrote:
| Isn't this sort of like saying that Shakespeare's works are bad
| because they're full of cliches?? The game in question is the
| _origin_ of said memes.
| ahelwer wrote:
| If your humor relies on novelty and the novelty is gone, the
| humor is gone. It is different with story structures. It
| isn't just those examples, though. Play the game or watch a
| video of the intro sequence and see for yourself. It's just a
| lot of "snark" type humor that was prominent at the time.
| majewsky wrote:
| The trope you are looking for is called "Seinfeld is
| Unfunny": https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Seinfel
| dIsUnfunn...
| smoldesu wrote:
| This is really cool! Not to detract from how awesome it is that
| Valve lets fans do this to their games without fear of legal
| repurcussions, but I've always been impressed by how little Valve
| games require visual overhauls. Even Half Life is stylized in
| such a way that it really doesn't _need_ any changes, with it 's
| bright cartoony color palette and angular space-age laboratory
| designs. I recently played through Black Mesa, and while it
| really is an accomplishment (completely remaking an entire game
| in a new engine is no small feat), it only made me more excited
| to go back to the original and remember how well it still holds
| up.
|
| Half Life 2 and (to a lesser extent) Portal are in much the same
| boat. HL2 is a very gritty, filthy game that uses it's detail to
| expand on the story. By comparison, Portal is more sterile and
| mysterious with it's white plaster walls surrounding you on all
| sides, evoking feelings of solitary confinement or an insane
| asylum. In either case, their art direction utterly _carries_ the
| visuals of these games, and neither one feels particularly
| outdated (though Portal could probably use some better lighting).
| Compared to the other mid-2000s games that came out alongside it,
| these two titles still feel comparatively fresh.
|
| What else is there to even say? Team Fortress 2 is a modern
| classic, and probably has the most "timeless" art style of their
| entire catalog. Dota 2, albeit not my cup of tea, also recognizes
| the merits of having a strong visual presence. Portal 2 might
| have the strongest art direction of them all, contrasting the
| perfectly and meticulously arranged design of dozens of test
| chambers with the ramshackle, decomposing internals of a
| forgotten facility. I'm sure there's still some improvements to
| be made, but even today I think Portal 2 holds up marvelously.
| kawsper wrote:
| I can really recommend playing through Half Life 2 Lost Coast
| with the Developer Commentary enabled.
| pjerem wrote:
| I relaunched Portal 2 recently (on the Steam Deck) and the game
| is as gorgeous as it used to be. It could be a game released
| today and nobody would notice anything. And this game can run
| on any nowadays potato.
| thot_experiment wrote:
| I don't disagree. I will say that I deeply wish Valve enforced
| the guidelines more fiercely with the community created items.
| The original games (I mostly play DotA 2, but some TF2 as well)
| were essentially aesthetically perfect and I really wish there
| was a way for me to turn cosmetics off entirely.
|
| In particular, this document is a fucking masterclass, I've
| learned more about making good visual choices from that FAQ
| than I have from any other single resource. I just wish it were
| law, not just guidelines.
|
| [Dota 2 Workshop - Character Art Guide](https://help.steampower
| ed.com/en/faqs/view/0688-7692-4D5A-19...)
|
| P.S. Don't play DotA 2, but it's also the deepest multiplayer
| game ever made, except maybe Go, and I'll be playing it till
| the day I die.
| ss108 wrote:
| Recent Dota 2 quitter checking-in
| smoldesu wrote:
| I bet you could make a killing on Etsy selling MOBA
| abstinence coins a-la Alcoholics Anonymous sobriety chips.
| There's a nice sizable market of League of Legends players
| who could probably use one.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| It's not a remake, it's a sequel of sort.
| Datenstrom wrote:
| Tangentially, my main game for almost the past year has been
| Splitgate which is heavily inspired by Portal (and Halo). If you
| like portal and arena shooters it is definitely worth a try.
|
| At the top competitive level especially having Portals in a FPS
| makes for interesting, intense, and fast paced games. It also
| makes camping essentially impossible.
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