Portal Message Board older than one year ago

#education Freshmen at Wabash College in Crawfordsville, Indiana this year will be required to read Gilgamesh, Aristotle's Politics, the poetry of John Donne, Shakespeare's Hamlet, and Valve's Portal. More »

We're sympathetic to the scores of diligent scholars among you whose learnings recommenced this week -- however, here's a story that's going to make you very, very jealous. Wabash College theater professor Michael Abbott recently revealed on The Brainy Gamer that the institution's booklist has a surprisingly non-bookish addition for this academic year: Portal. The game, that is -- not the novelization, if such a thing isn't too terrible to exist.

Abbott explained the course -- a required freshman seminar, mind you -- is titled "Enduring Questions," and sees students studying "classic and contemporary works from multiple disciplines" while discussing "fundamental questions of humanity." Abbott himself pitched the puzzle-platformer to his non-gaming colleagues after reading games writer Daniel Johnson's essay comparing Portal to sociologist Erving Goffman's Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. As both works focus on the conflict between "backstage machination and onstage performance," the college's board approved Portal for the course.

Of course, Abbott also decided on pitching Portal due to its accessibility, brevity and ... well, its general excellence. "In the end, I chose Portal because I thought it would make a good start," Abbott explained. "A good first impression. A lead-off hitter, if you will." We're inclined to agree.

[Thanks, Matt!]

#music We now know how to make a Justin Bieber song sound good: slow it down 800%. But what happens when Portal's Still Alive, that great video game song from Jonathan Coulton, gets the same treatment? Listen. More »

#screengrab While this crossover would make Portal's combat clumsier, you'd imagine on the flipside it'd make running around that empty old castle a breeze. By junkboy, as seen on Bytejacker. More »

#top Upcoming online game Gate has players create portals, here called "gates", to warp themselves to different areas in the game world. Hrm, that sounds familiar! More »

#art It's so simple; all you need is a mirror, some blue paint, and a love for Valve's masterpiece in virtual teleportation. More »

Our knowledge of the fast-paced, edgy world of extreme sports is limited to "standing on moving, thin slivers of wood is really difficult," though we don't need to know much more than that to appreciate the gaming-influenced video posted below.

#clips Video games, from Space Invaders to Bubble Bobble(!), invade the slopes and skate parks of Mt. Hood's High Cascade in the best video ever to combine snowboarding and Super Mario World, pool tables and Portal, chiptunes and hip-hop. More »

#clips Three-year-old Finley's hands might be too small for the mouse, but that doesn't stop him from kicking ass at both Mirror's Edge and Portal on the PC. More »

If you release it for free, they will download it. Valve has revealed that its free download of Portal, offered as part of the launch for Steam on Mac, has been anxiously grabbed by 1.5 million users. Using the power of math, that's 187,500 downloads each day for the eight days the game has been free to download -- about 7,812 downloads each hour.

If you have yet to acquire your own free copy of Portal, get on it. You've only got until May 24.

[Via USA Today]

#clips Children's choirs and soloists have worked their way through the end song of Valve's great puzzle game Portal, but this is the first rendition of seen of it played on what appears to be a classical guitar. More »

#mac Steam is now available on the Mac. Great news for people who only own a Mac, but what if you're like me, and own both? Which is faster? More »

It's not like you need any reason to rush out and grab a free download of Portal, Joystiq's 2007 game of the year, which is now also available on the Mac. We're just going to assume you already have downloaded it but are somehow unable to play it right now. As such, you'd probably like to watch a cute video about Portal in order to pass the time until you can play it. It turns out we happen to have one. Enjoy it after the break.

#weekendreader Every adventure requires an antagonist, someone or something corrupting the world you're in. It's a basic need. Yet why do so many games serve up foes whose evildoing provides more of a chore to be undone than a memorable struggle? More »

All of the radio locations in Portal Version 2, courtesy turinpt2.

Bill Cosby had that show about kids saying cute stuff for a while, but there seems to be an even more entertaining trend emerging on the internet: kids singing super awesome stuff. First, there was that chorus that sang Phoenix's "Lisztomania" and now (via GameVideos) we have the Gifford Children's Choir singing Jonathan Coulton's wonderful "Still Alive" (also known as "that song from Portal").

You can check out the video past the break, which is kinda dark but you're not really watching it for the visuals so that's okay. Seriously, for as much as we're sick of Portal memes, out of the mouth of babes comes a great version of this song. Of course, it's worth mentioning that the whole song is basically one spoiler -- so if you haven't played the game, you should probably stop reading the internet and fix your situation.

#clips The end credits of first-person shooter Portal treated players to the song "Still Alive". Wisconsin's own Gifford Children's Choir did the version of the tune. More »

You know, we always thought GLaDOS ran the Portal simulation just so she could discover the true value of friendship, but it may really have been in the name of public service. In the video after the break -- created by Freddie Wong, who you probably recognize from his ridiculous (and hilarious) Guitar Hero video -- we get a glimpse at the likely ramifications of improper Portal gun training and how a few apathetic "friends" can ruin one of the most exciting experiences ever. And here, all this time, we thought GLaDOS was the bad guy!

Note: For those of you who spot that weird frame at the end of the video -- yep, with all that gibberish -- don't bother to decipher it. It's apparently just another gag from Freddie and "friends." Yuk-yuk-yuk.

#clips Real life Bike Hero and enemy of viral marketing douchebags Freddie Wong is also the proud (unfortunate) new owner of an Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device, which currently looks a lot like a Nerf gun. More »

[Game Informer]
Today's big reveal of Portal 2 as next month's Game Informer cover did lots of us in the maniacal excitement department, but little for us in the hard facts department. But now, between Eurogamer being told by Valve that the game is heading to Xbox 360 and PC, and Game Informer's reveal that the sequel features a "two-player co-op mode [with] its own campaign [featuring] two new playable characters" (not to mention that it's set to release at "full retail price") we're ... well ... we're still kinda hurting for more news. The most important question of the moment, though: Can we have it right now? Please? We know you said this holiday, but what if we say pretty please? With cherries on top?

Source 1 - Eurogamer
Source 2 - Game Informer

#valve Officially released details on Valve's sequel to Portal were scant. Fortunately, retailer GameStop comes through with some major details, including the addition of a two-player cooperative campaign mode and all-new characters. More »

#valve Officially released details on Valve's sequel to Portal were scant. Fortunately, retailer GameStop comes through with some major details, including the addition of a two-player cooperative campaign mode and all-new characters. More »

#portal2 Today's Game Informer cover is just the latest in a year and a half's worth of Portal 2 news that has been steadily leaking about the Valve game since 2008. More »

OK, so GDC is March 11, Valve is going to be at GDC. March 11th is 3/11, which is the state of developement that GLaDOS is in. 3/11 is the day after 3/10. 3/10 is March 10th, also known also Mario day. (Mar10)
 One of  the decoded images shows two people with portal guns. this leads me to believe that Portal 2 is going to be Super Portalio Bros, where you play as Mario and Luigi and you have to use portal guns to go back to the mushroom kingdom.

My theory is correct.

 

Don't know morse code? Can't decode SSTV images? Don't worry, this latest Portal update (the second in one week) is a bit easier to understand. The finale of Valve's beloved puzzle game has been extended with about 15 seconds of new content. In it, players will be introduced to a brand new character, likely one to appear in Portal 2.

While you can go through another Portal adventure by accessing the update on Steam, we'd like to provide you an easier solution. You can watch both the original and extended endings after the break.

[Thanks, Devin!]

#valve Let the games begin. Again. Valve has whipped the Portal community into a fresh frenzy with one more update to the PC version of the first-person puzzle game. What does the the developer have in store this time? More »

Ever since Portal was updated on Steam two days ago, fans have been busy finding the hidden Morse code messages added to the game, and deciphering them to unravel what appears to be some kind of ARG.

Early messages -- in plain Morse code as well as meta-Morse code that translated to written Morse code "beeps", revealed little but what seemed like jokes and internal bootup sequences from GlaDOS. Others were revealed as SSTV-coded images, low-res pictures of random items, all bearing the Aperture Science logo. Within those, fans quickly found a numeric code that turned out to lead to a BBS (remember those?) containing a series of Aperture-related ASCII images of GlaDOS, as well as a series of messages from fictional Aperture Science founder Cave Johnson, who apparently hates both witchcraft and safety.

Steam forum users are feverishly working through all the information to solve the overarching puzzle of what this all means. At this point, being a mere sequel tease, or connecting the Portal and Half-Life universes, would be a disappointment. We already knew there was a Portal 2 on the way, and we already knew that the storylines were loosely connected. Valve hiding a complex series of clues inside an old game is far more interesting than either of those things.

Source: Boing Boing
Source: Shacknews
Source: Steam forums

#valve Yesterday, Valve issued an update to its 2007 first-person puzzle game Portal, adding exactly one new Steam achievement and 26 audio transmissions that players could listen to via in-game radios. So started an impressive puzzle. More »

Valve has released a new patch for Portal on Steam, and the patch notes say only that it has "changed radio transmission frequency to comply with federal and state spectrum management regulations." A curious note, especially since Portal, as a computer game, doesn't actually transmit anything over the radio. That got the forum train a'moving on the Steam boards, and they eventually discovered that radios have been added to each level of the game which, when carried to the correct spots in each level, will tune in a series of coded messages. Connecting to all (or any, according to some reports) of the 26 messages in the game will supposedly unlock a new hidden achievement called "Transmission Received." At least, we think so -- as of this writing, no one seems to have unlocked it yet.

Some of the messages are morse codes that range from the technical ("External data line active") to the silly ("Beep beep beep beep"), and some are encoded images of numbers and equations ("B.dA=3"), but the whole thing appears to be hinting that AI antagonist GLaDOS may have transmitted information or part of herself out of the Aperture Science facility before the first game ended. Which would probably mean that a sequel reveal is imminent. We'll stay tuned for more information -- we didn't really expect to hear from Valve at GDC next week, but a Portal 2 reveal would make our San Francisco visit that much nicer.

[Thanks, Rob!]