Portal 2

Portal 2's creation suite is coming to the PC and Mac this May. To celebrate, here's a trailer, starring JK "Cave Johnson" Simmons himself.

Action & reaction. Angles and speed. Momentum and inertia. Pinball is a game of physics. So is Portal. And that's what makes this homemade Aperture Science pinball table so great.

Reddit user iliveon built the working table with friends and says the goal is to get a pinball stuck in each portal. It's clearly a labor of love and could only be improved by having GLADoS making fun of you as you played.

via Reddit

Valve will release free Portal 2 downloadable content titled "Perpetual Testing Initiative" for PC and Mac on May 8, the publisher said today.

Valve says you'll be able to "easily create, share, and play Portal 2 puzzles" with the new DLC, which lets you publish maps directly to Steam. Other players will be able to browse, vote, and download user-created maps to play in their own versions of the game.

For more on the upcoming level editor, check out our earlier coverage.

Reader Alex went skydiving the other day, and aside from taking his good self, packed an inflatable Portal turret to go with him.

Both then proceeded to jump out of a perfectly good aircraft at 13,000 feet.

Alex says that, thanks to air pressure, the turret was actually really tough to keep hold of, and it was only when they got to around 7000 feet that it deflated enough for him to only have to worry about not dying, instead of not dying and losing a Portal turret at 13,000 feet.

Here are two people I chased at PAX East. Their costumes aren't perfect, but their cosplay concept is. They are the puppeteers of the two spindly robots from Portal 2.

Do they have a panel loose or an eye covered the wrong way?

I don't care. They're awesome.

The Portal games have been beautiful, haven't they? The first one presented a simple, clean aesthetic that worked as a great backdrop to the clever gameplay and snarky humor of Chell's battle of wits against GLaDOS. Then, last year, Portal 2 took Aperture Science's glistening white test chambers and destroyed them, letting players roam through the innards of Cave Johnson's company. And lo, it was glorious.

Now, everyone can see how Valve executed this big visual shift in Dark Horse's upcoming The Art of Portal 2. Announced tonight at the Emerald City Comic-Con, the 184-page hardcover book will feature concept art and completed vision, along with character sketches and commentary from writers, artists and other developers.

It's out on October 31st and no price has been announced yet. But, based on the scintillating art above—click the Expand button to enlarge—I'm going to say that The Art of Portal 2 will be worth whatever the price tag is. It's got pictures of space. Spaaaace!

Late last night one David Grossman shared with me a different sort of laser singing. Instead of using the pitch of the laser to replicate sound the way DePrisco did with the fiber laser, Grossman transformed his 250 watt CO2 laser into a working speaker.

David explains: "In essence, the laser is firing at a fixed repetition rate - there's around 30k pulses hitting the material every second. Each of those pulses disrupts the material, and has an associated flash of light and plume of ejected material, which pushes air outwards, making a sound.

"The circuit that's driving the laser pulsing is using the audio signal to vary the energy of each of those pulses.
As such, each plume is ejecting a different amount of material, which is also pushing air differently, causing different sounds."

To put it simply, the music is being played by tiny explosions.

As I prepared to write up Grossman's video, I got another email, this time from the original laser Portal engineer.

Chris DePrisco was dropping me a line to let me know he had followed up on the :Still Alive" video with a two-track fiber laser version of "Want You Gone". Using his single laser he recorded two tracks and spliced them together into one slightly-off but still incredible impressive video.

I couldn't decide which to post, so I posted them both. That I live in a world where such decisions are necessary pleases me to no end.

Portal 2: Want You Gone - Played with Fiber Laser

Portal 2's 'Want You Gone' Played by CO2 Laser [YouTube]

Aperture: Lab Ratt is a fan film based on the Portal universe. And, as you'll see five seconds into this trailer, it's looking very professional.

Proper music, proper outfits, an expensive camera, good lighting...yes, it's looking lovely.

If it helps sell you on the quality behind this flick, it's being made by the same crew who put together last year's charming Aperture Science documentary.

This one, though, looks a lot more serious.

Oh, and bonus: the site of the production team also sells Aperture Science ID cards.

British artist Pinali sets our hearts aflutter with this animated take on Portal's Chell (in her Portal 2 outfit).

I keep thinking, if I watch it long enough, the "camera" will pan across and just follow her as she starts shooting the place up.

Portall [Pinalinet]

Revealed during ThinkGeek's 2012 CES spectacular, the Inflatable Portal 2 Sentry Turret has all the great features of the real thing, except it doesn't talk, light up, sing, or fire off a ridiculous number of bullets. It will, however, float in a swimming pool, so take that, realism!

From the official product description:

Drastic times call for drastic measures, friends of Science. Aperture Science had to make some cutbacks to the production line when OSHA shut down the main plant. Something about air quality or lead paint in the water pipes. Silly, really. That's what waivers are for. Anyhoo, we can't get you any real, bullet-firing turrets, but we did manage to hijack a pool float factory long enough to make a bunch of these inflatable ones

Now how much would you pay? $24.99? I sure hope so, because that's how much it costs. I'm sure ThinkGeek will let you pay more if your heart is set on it.

Portal 2 Life-Size Inflatable Sentry Turret [ThinkGeek]