Portal

Way back in December 2009, when this humble intern was an even humbler college sophomore with no job who was sinking scores of hours into Dragon Age: Origins, we reported on a guy who goes by DemonStrate beating Portal in a touch over 10 minutes. While that seemed astounding at the time, the record has since been smashed to pieces by SourceRuns, demolishing GLaDOS in just 8:31. That's a good minute and a half faster than DemonStrate, and 53 seconds faster than their own previous record-breaking run. See the video for yourself below.



"To be SDA legal we have done our run without using scripts/cheats/hacks for any portion of the run," the speed demons posted on YouTube. "This run first started after the discovery of a new glitch, which snowballed into a whirlwind of discoveries of new tricks, skips, and glitches. We started running chambers in April, took a brief hiatus, and then resumed work in late June. The bulk of the run was completed in about 2 weeks time."

This is a picture of a panel that, on Friday, will be bolted onto the Japanese HTV-3 resupply craft and hurled into space. The craft will ferry supplies to the International Space Station and launch a little bit of Portal 2 into the cosmos. A post on the Portal 2 blog spotted by VG247 mentions that an anonymous NASA tech managed to burn the tiny picture of Wheatley space core onto one of the craft's panels. "Please note that when we mentioned an "anonymous tech at NASA" we weren't kidding: NASA in no way officially endorses secretly laser-engraving characters from Portal onto their spacecraft," say Valve.

On which note, if you happen to be a NASA engineer with access to a laser-engraving machine, and you just happen to accidentally burn the PCG logo onto a panel and then send it into space then I'd like to say that we'd absolutely keep it a secret, and definitely wouldn't post it everywhere on the site and then look at it and burst out cheering every day forever. JUST SAYING.

Now, because space is brilliant, here's a video that Tom spotted over the weekend made up of pictures snapped from the International Space Station in low Earth orbit. Prepare to have the tingly awe receptors in your frontal lobe tickled ... NOW.

View from the ISS at Night from Knate Myers on Vimeo.

Update: Thanks to those who have pointed out that it's the space core. The Internet Error Police will be here shortly to perform a routine disintegration. My last request is for someone to laser-etch "I should have written SPACE COOOORE" onto my tombstone, and then fire it into space.

Remember the prototype for a Portal 2 Lego set that we mentioned a few weeks back? It was submitted on Lego Cuusoo, a site that hosts idea pitches for future commercial sets. If an idea gains enough followers it's forwarded to a "review stage" where giant Lego men poke it to see if the idea's viable, and then gradually rotate a huge, C shaped fist to deliver a clumsy thumbs-up or thumbs-down on the project.

Portal Lego has now reached that stage! Will it succeed? Who knows. It's impossible to know what's going on behind those fixed ever-smiling faces. It's out of our hands now, but we can still look at pictures of the prototypes, which are probably the cutest thing on the internet right now. Take a look.

UPDATE: Rabbit Island is in fact the cutest thing on the internet right now, but Portal Lego takes a close second place.

Speaking to Eurogamer, Portal 1 lead designer Kim Swift has explained that there are a couple of bumps in Valve's otherwise-flat management structure.

"They have management, there's the board of directors of the company, there's Gabe Newell" she explains. "Those guys at the top of the company definitely have opinions on how things should be run."

It's a slightly different picture to the one described in the Valve Employee Handbook, which a few weeks ago gave us a rare glimpse into the workings of the famously private developer - but it's doubtful that Swift's claims will surprise many people.

Her statements moderate Valve's own depiction of itself in a way that makes a lot of sense. "There are definitely people behind the scenes making decisions for the company" she says. "To me, that's normal."

What she says doesn't necessarily contradict Gabe Newell's recent interview with Bloomberg Businessweek, where he explained that Valve describe their employees as individual and group contributors rather than managers and employees. A flat system still provides room for people to exert influence, and it's no surprise that this is apparently the case at Valve.

Swift is currently working on dimension-shifting first-person puzzler Quantum Conundrum at Airtight Games, and she stresses that she parted from Valve on good terms. "I still have a great relationship with those guys."

Check out Tom's Quantum Conundrum preview for more on Kim Swift's next game.

The Portal 2 puzzle creator will let players make their own test chambers without having to dive into Valve's complex level creation tools. We got a chance to catch up with Chet Faliszeck and Erik Johnson at GDC for a chat about Valve's plans for the user friendly level editor. "I believe they’re beta testing it right now," said Erik Johnson. "When the puzzle maker comes out, you will have a lot of content, that’s for sure."

Valve announced their plans for the Puzzle Creator on the Portal 2 site last year, where they released the first couple of screenshots. It looks very similar to the animated diagrams of the first Portal trailers, released way back in 2007. Much, much friendlier than Valve's Hammer editor.

Valve are expecting a rush of new maps when the new tools are released. October's Portal 2 post mentioned that Valve were also planning "a community site to host all of these player-created puzzles." The recently released Steam Workshop can do just that, presumably players will be able to use the Workshop to show off their levels and vote on their favourites.

"Correct," said Erik. We can expect to see Steam Workshop support appearing in other Valve games, too. "You’ll see the Steam Workshop coming from there, then to Left 4 Dead and then we’re going to keep using it," Chet Faliszeck added. "It’s not just for the modders, it’s for the players. It’s a super easy way to consume the creations of other people that are just really hard to do otherwise."

There's no release date for the new tools yet, but if it's in beta testing, it can't be too far off.

Not all of Valve's discarded ideas are great, the binned competitive multiplayer mode for Portal 2 is one such example, but some of them are. The video above is from a Valve talk at GDC in which they discussed many of the ideas that never made it into the full game. This scene was originally Portal 2's opening.

There were many more great ideas left on the drawing board. In fact, the whole game was set to pan out very differently. Eurogamer sat in on the conference, and describe out Wheatley was originally supposed to stay dead when Glados crushes him near the beginning. Rather than being a persistent companion, he was merely the first in a series of personality spheres you'd meet as you travelled through Aperture's labs. Other spheres included a paranoid AI and one that Valve's Eric Wolpaw calls "The Morgan Freeman sphere."

Players were originally supposed to find the Morgan Freeman sphere sat on a lonely stand in the middle of an empty room. "He'd been sitting on that little pedestal for a few centuries, and he was just incredibly, incredibly wise" said Wolpaw. "But only about the 20 by 20 space that he was in."

"As soon as you dragged him 22 feet out of the room, his mind was blown and he was pretty much useless. Although as the game progressed, he eventually got his feet under him and started delivering some homespun wisdom that all related back to this 20 by 20 space." Valve discarded the extra orbs when they found that players didn't bond to them as well as Wheatley, the first sphere went on to become an integral part of Portal 2's plot.

Valve were also planning to have several endings scattered throughout the campaign. "We had these parts throughout the game where Chell would die and that would be the end and we'd play a song, and if you wanted to you could just quit there." Wolpaw told the audience. "We had one that was like two minutes into the game, and if you died there, there was a song that was just about reviewing those first two minutes."

They also had a few other ideas. The next bit contains spoilers for the end of Portal 2, in case you haven't played it yet.

Initially, there was a scene part way through the game in which you'd catch a glimpse of the moon. To trigger an early death you could portal up there to "asphyxiate while listening to a sad song about the moon." Valve eventually dropped the multiple endings because they felt as though they didn't have enough good ideas, but the moon went on to become Portal 2's memorable finale. According to Wolpaw, it was the "perfect mix of being totally awesome and completely stupid." It's hard to disagree.

Valve's Chet Faliszek and Eric Wolpaw conducted a Portal 2 postmortem at GDC last night. The writers talked candidly about alternate endings and the difficulties of following up on their critically acclaimed first game. Chet also mentioned that, at some point in development, the team experimented with competitive Portal 2 multiplayer modes.

Chet also mentioned that they sucked. "We also tried a competitive multiplayer mode which we put together over the space of a month or two," he revealed. "It was a mix of the old Amiga game Speedball and Portal, except with none of the good parts of either of those two. The game was super chaotic and no fun, so the only good news about this part was that we cut it pretty quickly."

Speedball 2 was a competitive, violent, and featured an incredible soundtrack, and I love the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device as much as the next man. That said, I can imagine this combo resulting in a confusing mess of nonsense. Valve made attempts to satisfy more competitive gamers by including leaderboards and a challenge mode in some later DLC.

Writing a regular column about free games has been one of the most transformative jobs I've ever taken. Buried away in the depths of the internet are some remarkable things, and being able to unearth them, then share them with a huge number of like-minded people, is always an absolute pleasure.

It's also changed the way I think about games, changed the way I write about games, and even inspired me to make games. All this from spending one day a week playing mostly amateur creations then scrawling down some words about what I made of them.



I've played some fantastic games while preparing these columns. Nous, a fascinatingly dark abstract shooter that poses as a personality-evaluating AI, was one of the more intriguing ones. It's a game that spins an unnerving story through its only character, who flits worryingly between help and harm. It's immaculately presented, and alternately amusing and sinister. A real gem.



Or how about Wonderputt? It's a crazy golf game among the most delightful freebies I've ever seen. It presents an ever-changing landscape, a world that morphs around you as you progress through its 18 holes, and one of the most fabulously animated things. It only lasts about 15 minutes, but I spent that time with my face fixed into a grin.

For absolutely no pennies, you can experience things unlike anything else in our medium. Take Terry Cavanagh's At a Distance, a co-op game that asks two players to sit on a local network, exploring an abstract maze, making changes to each other's versions of the world as they work to solve its ultimate puzzle. Haunting and abstract, it's a fascinating look at how we can work together within games in new and exciting ways.

The Snowfield, too, is an experimental game. In it, you explore a harrowing wartorn environment, a place where the snow continues to fall and haunting sounds emit from its farer reaches. Soldiers who are still standing walk among the dead bodies, crying. It's not polished, but it's utterly affecting.



And, more recently, Unmanned's split-screen dialogue-choosing and mundane-task-completion contrasted stunningly with the more hard-hitting elements of its storyline. Its central character is often unpleasant - a liar and a cheat and a racist, if you let him be - but the questions it asks you as a player go far beyond those that are a part of the game itself.

Then there's been the bigger games. Portal was free for a while (it's currently just £7). World of Warcraft got a stripped-back free-to-play version. Team Fortress 2 went almost entirely free as it continued to expand, and Bungie's Marathon trilogy turned up without charge. That even the major studios occasionally give us something for nothing is a lovely thing: it might often be a smart business decision, advertising other titles or enticing in new players, but it still presents us with opportunities to try out some truly special releases without stretching our wallets.

Perhaps most importantly to me, I've spent time delving into the Adventure Game Studio community. AGS is a free-to-use game engine that's powered a number of commercial games, such as Time Gentlemen, Please! and Gemini Rue, but it's also the tech behind a huge number of free releases created as projects of passion. Being astonished by the quality of Keys of a Gamespace, Egress and Donna: Avenger of Blood inspired me to make my own game - Masked - in AGS. And I'm currently working on an even bigger project that utilises it.



I've revisited older games and I continue to find new ones. Spelunky is still, I genuinely believe, one of the best games available on PC - a free roguelike platformer with an stupidly ruleset and a fascinating environment to explore and destroy. Digital: A Love Story is an indie adventure set in the late 1980s, and sees your teenage character embark on a touching journey of discovery. And the terrifying but brilliant Dwarf Fortress recently got an enormous update.

This week, Flatland: Fallen Angle turned up with the best name in the world and a minimalist, noir-esque vibe. It's a game in which you play as a triangle on the run in a two-dimensional city. (Its 'Appreciation Version', which functions on a pay-what-you-like model, recently fell foul of PayMate - who cancelled and refunded all orders without notice, deciding only to inform the developers afterwards that they don't work with games because 'teenagers steal their parents' credit cards to buy them'.) Meanwhile, Russian Subway Dogs sees your canine character scurrying around the underground picking up scraps of food, fighting with other dogs, and - most importantly, of course - exploding bottles of vodka.

This is my last free games column for PC Gamer, but those fantastic free games won't stop coming, and I'm sure PC Gamer will continue to write about them.



Recently, I interviewed some developers as part of a feature I was writing. I wanted to find out why, when they are clearly such talented designers, artists and programmers, they persist in giving away their creations and asking for no money in return. Some of them worked full-time in the games industry and made their freebies on the side. For others, it was just a hobby. But one thread ran through every one of their answers: games are awesome, we love making them, and we want as many people as possible to benefit from that.

In what can often be a cynical industry, these developers are quite remarkable people. Long may their fabulous work continue.

Thanks for reading, folks.

We've seen some impressive fan-made Portal guns in the past, but they've been rare, costly one-off projects. Valve are giving us the chance to get hold of our own Aperture Science Handheld Portal Devices without having to burn ourselves horribly putting together an injection mould. Joystiq mention that, at Valve's request, toy manufacturers, NECA have put together a life-sized Portal gun. It'll hit the shops this summer with a $130 price tag attached.

There will be lights and those lights will change colour, but will it make the "pwung" noise? There's only one way to find out, and that's to buy at least five. Perhaps ten. Maybe more. More. MORE.

NECA will also be releasing a line of Left 4 Dead, Team Fortress 2 and Half-Life action figures, a few of which were shown off at the NYC Toy Fair. The Team Fortress 2 wiki has a snap of the new figures, you'll find that below along with a few shots of that Portal gun. Baggsy the Heavy.

Quantum Conundrum is being developed by Portal creator Kim Swift. It's a first person puzzler in which you play a twelve your old boy lost in his mad scientist uncle's underground laboratory. It's full of safes, switches, lava and vast gaps with no bridges. This would be a serious problem but for the fact that you can switch between five dimensions, each of which affects matter differently. By switching between world on the fly, otherwise immovable objects like safes can be tossed, stacked and even surfed to make it past the mad machines and laserbeams that every mad scientist installs in their homes as standard. It's all demonstrated perfectly in the walkthrough video above from Gametrailers, spotted on RPS. It's out early this year, and looks rather good, don't you think?