Oct 19, 2011

Valve working on Portal 2 level editor, GLaDOS possibly coming along for the ride

Portal 2

Portal's been begging for its own level-creation tool since GLaDOS first began turning frowns upside-down - physically, that is, by snapping people's necks. Fortunately, it's finally in the cards - with a pretty awesome twist, to boot.

According to an update to journalist Geoff Keighley's "The Final Hours of Portal 2" app (via Kotaku), Valve's currently putting together a "a Photoshop for test chambers" that'll allow players to create and access content without ever having to leave the game. And who will be presiding over your devious machinations? Why, the nigh-immortal master of tests herself, GLaDOS.

"The writers are even discussing the idea of adding a personality to the editor," explained Keighley. "magine what it would be like to have GLaDOS berate you every time you spell something incorrectly in Microsoft Word and you'll have a sense of where this can go."

Oct 18, 2011

Valve Tinkering With an Excellent Portal 2 Feature That Talks Back

Portal

The people who made Portal 2 want to make it easier for you to make more Portal 2, according to a new report about the making of the game's Peer Review expansion written by GTTV host Geoff Keighley.

In a free expansion to his PC, Mac and iOS behind-the-scenes article/app The Final Hours of Portal 2 that will be available today, Keighley explains that Valve people are working on "a Photoshop for test chambers," a user-friendly editing tool that would allow amateurs to easily craft new Portal 2 levels. These folks are also developing a system that would allow Portal 2 players to access the new levels from within the game, without having to go outside the game to access them. "Now maps will appear on an easy to use menu, dramatically expanding the potential audience for fan-created content—and hopefully making it available on the consoles as well."

Exciting as this might be for Portal 2 fans, the cleverest idea is that, as Keighley writes, "the writers are even discussing the idea of adding a personality to the editor... [I]magine what it would be like to have GLaDOS berate you every time you spell something incorrectly in Microsoft Word and you'll have a sense of where this can go."

Valve may have worked with Keighley on this app and given him access for this info, but they don't confirm if all this is definitely going to be released—or just is in the experimental stages.

Keighley's update shares many more details about the making of this month's Peer Review DLC and some tantalizing details about ideas considered but scuttled for the expansion. Let's just say, we could have had DLC in outerspace, if only Valve had more time and resources. Bummer!

Check out the app for more details. If you have it, look for all this and more in a bonus chapter that should be available any minute now.

The Final Hours of Portal 2 [iTunes, $2] [Steam, $2]

You can contact Stephen Totilo, the author of this post, at stephentotilo@kotaku.com. You can also find him on Twitter, Facebook, and lurking around our #tips page.

Oct 17, 2011

An Official Portal Turret Replica (That you can Snuggle With!)

Portal

This Portal 2 turret stands 14.5" tall. It's soft. It's cuddly. And it talks.

Due out in mid-December, it's an officially-licensed product available at ThinkGeek, and will go on sale for only US$30. While the plush's product listing doesn't specify which phrases the little darlings will utter, they do say the turrets will know all "the phrases all proper sentry turrets should know".

While Portal devotees are the initial targets, I can see a lucrative secondary market opening up for people who make internet videos about cats.

Plush Portal Turret [ThinkGeek, via Tomopop]

You can contact Luke Plunkett, the author of this post, at plunkett@kotaku.com. You can also find him on Twitter, Facebook, and lurking around our #tips page.

Oct 12, 2011

Valve writers talk silent protagonists and bringing the LOLs

Half-Life

As reported on Gamasutra, a bunch of Valve's writers have been taking part in a roundtable question and answer session at GDC Online.

Read on for some insight from some of the most talented writers in the industry.

Valve might be famous for its use of silent protagonists but according to Mark Laidlaw, one of the writers at Valve, it can be a restrictive on a studio's creativity: "Now that some of Valve's most popular protagonists are silent, there’s no turning back. “At this point we’re fully committed to it and taking it as far as it possibly could go.”

Eric Wolpaw, another writer at Valve, also provided some insight. Referring to Valve's hugely successful free to play game, TF2, he said: “that whole game is us desperately trying to keep our jobs."

“Comedy stuff is tougher because it’s more subjective and it’s really hard to gauge peoples’ reaction," he said. Wolpaw added that sometimes it’s a bit depressing, when people playtest a part in a game that’s supposed to be funny, and there's little reaction. “Pretty much no one that played Portal 2 cracked a smile, but testers still said the game was funny... It’s hard to tell if a joke is failing or not.”

Laidlaw was equally humble when referring to his own work: “We fail all the time, we just don’t advertise it too much...we always want to feel like we’re on the edge and challenging ourselves and growing all the time.”

What's your favourite example of writing in games? Let us know in the comments.

Oct 11, 2011

No, There is no Rape In Portal 2 (But There Were Buddy Cops)

Portal

Yesterday during a writer's roundtable at the Game Developers Conference Online, Valve's Erik Wolpaw, Marc Laidlaw, and Ted Kosmatka opened up on some of the processes - and problems - they had writing Portal 2.

First up, problems! Wolpaw says that, originally, the idea was to have the player and GLaDOS team up in a "buddy cop" situation, ala Lethal Weapon.

"We had envisioned it as this buddy cop thing, where you'd be together and you'd be bickering and it would be awesome. It honest to God did not occur to us that the buddy cop thing doesn't work if one of you is quiet. It's funny now, everybody's laughing, but it was a true moment of incredible panic for us when we realized we'd painted ourselves into a corner."

How'd they get around this? They turned lemons into Cave Johnson.

"And that's when we decided we need to give her some external thing to deal with. She has a relationship with Cave, realizes she was another person, and then there's the bird and other stuff. We run into that a lot with the silent protagonist, even at this point."

The other interesting topic revolved around a bananas theory some crackpot Portal 2 fans have that, based on a single line of unused Cave Johnson dialogue, there was intended to be some kind of scene where the Aperture boss rapes his former assistant. Um. Yeah.

"There's some piece of dialogue in there where Carolyn is saying 'No, no, no, I don't want this. I don't want this", says Wolpaw. "And there's some kind of story on the Internet that apparently people think has been verified that there was a scene where Cave Johnson was raping Carolyn, and that J.K. Simmons wouldn't read the dialogue, so that's why we don't have it [in the game]."

"Apparently these are people who never saw [prison drama] Oz. J.K. Simmons will do anything if you pay him. But that is absolutely not true. It's like they played the rest of the game and thought we wrote a rape scene in there and had that in there for a while and thought, 'Well maybe we'll ship that.' It's insane."

Writing Valve's silent protagonists [GameSpot]

You can contact Luke Plunkett, the author of this post, at plunkett@kotaku.com. You can also find him on Twitter, Facebook, and lurking around our #tips page.

Oct 10, 2011

Byte vs Brick: Week Ending Oct 7

Portal 2 - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Alec Meer)

Again! Again! It’s our theoretically regular comparison of Steam’s top ten best-selling games over the last week with the same at UK retail. Will Rage have stormed its way to the top despite the outrage and buck-passing surrounding its technically-troubled PC launch? Or will foot-to-ball have conclusively proven that an Englishman’s national sport is more important to him than pretending to be a time-lost survivor of a planet-wide apocalypse? And will retail be a mess of Sims games while Steam is a confusing muddle of pre-orders, deeply discounted returning titles and new entries? Take my hand. Where we’re going, there be tables. (more…)

Oct 6, 2011

Win Stuff

Portal 2 - the gish

Portal 2's "Peer Review" DLC is live and available everywhere, and to celebrate, some friends have decided they want to give you things.

First up is <a href=http://www.darkhorse.com/Blog/663/valve-ign-and-dark-horse-present-machinima-contest>Dark Horse</a>, who will be publishing <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Valve-Presents-Sacrifice-Steam-Powered-Stories/dp/1595828699/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1317923143&sr=8-1">"Valve Presents"</a>, a collection of comics from the Portal 2, Left 4 Dead, and Team Fortress 2 universes. Their contest? Recreate your favorite scene from any Valve comic in-game as machinima. If, like us, you not only don't possess the skill sets to do any of that, you don't possess the skill sets to know what any of the words in that last sentence meant, we've got two words for you: sock puppets. What can you win? Signed copies of "Valve Presents". Plus, the first place winner will also receive an original Michael Avon Oeming drawing. If all of this sounds like a complicated way to get a copy of a book, you can also just go to <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Valve-Presents-Sacrifice-Steam-Powered-Stories/dp/1595828699/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1317923143&sr=8-1">Amazon</a> and give them pieces of paper for one.

On <a href="http://www.jinx.com/blog_entry.aspx?id=1514">Jinx's blog</a> you can post a link to your self-created Portal 2 art and win one of ten signed Portal 2 1970s Action Movie Posters and a $150 J!NX Gift Certificate. We're going to hazard a guess that screenshots aren't art, so be prepared to do some actual work (or at least put a Photoshop filter on your screenshot).

<a href="http://steelseries.com/portal2">Steel Series</a> needs some help picking out a Portal 2 mousepad. You can help them by visiting their <a href="http://steelseries.com/portal2">site</a>. Ten random participants will get a prize package made up of Steel Series peripherals. The Grand Prize winner, also chosen at random, will win a large format "Aperture's Requiem" Portal 2 print.

So there you go. As with all third party contests, we urge you to visit the sites linked above to learn more about each contest. We have no idea what the actual rules or legal requirements are for this stuff, and assume no responsibility if you accidentally get a keyboard lodged in your forehead while making machinima.

Oct 6, 2011

Win Stuff

Portal 2 - the gish

Portal 2's "Peer Review" DLC is live and available everywhere, and to celebrate, some friends have decided they want to give you things.

First up is , who will be publishing <a href=]"Valve Presents", a collection of comics from the Portal 2, Left 4 Dead, and Team Fortress 2 universes. Their contest? Recreate your favorite scene from any Valve comic in-game as machinima. If, like us, you not only don't possess the skill sets to do any of that, you don't possess the skill sets to know what any of the words in that last sentence meant, we've got two words for you: sock puppets. What can you win? Signed copies of "Valve Presents". Plus, the first place winner will also receive an original Michael Avon Oeming drawing. If all of this sounds like a complicated way to get a copy of a book, you can also just go to Amazon and give them pieces of paper for one.

On Jinx's blog you can post a link to your self-created Portal 2 art and win one of ten signed Portal 2 1970s Action Movie Posters and a $150 J!NX Gift Certificate. We're going to hazard a guess that screenshots aren't art, so be prepared to do some actual work (or at least put a Photoshop filter on your screenshot).

Steel Series needs some help picking out a Portal 2 mousepad. You can help them by visiting their site. Ten random participants will get a prize package made up of Steel Series peripherals. The Grand Prize winner, also chosen at random, will win a large format "Aperture's Requiem" Portal 2 print.

So there you go. As with all third party contests, we urge you to visit the sites linked above to learn more about each contest. We have no idea what the actual rules or legal requirements are for this stuff, and assume no responsibility if you accidentally get a keyboard lodged in your forehead while making machinima.