My friend and I would like to mod portal to allow for additional abilities that are not present in the game in order to create somewhat of a total conversion. However, when you go to "create a mod" in the source sdk, it only allows you to mod HL2, start a mod from scratch, or do source code only. Is there any way to mod portal?

Thanks,
Ross

Remmiz wrote:
Hate to break it to ya, but I highly doubt they will ever release the source code for Portal. CS/DoD source code has never been leaked so I highly doubt Portal ever will.

I'm fairly certain it will be included in the next SDK Base update. DOD and CS don't provide any game mechanic that could not be reproduced, whereas Portal introduces the, well, Portals. MrTwoVideoCards I'm sure will be able to dig up an interview or something in the HL Coders mailing list where they've said they're going to include the code in the SDK Base.

youll find that gabe newell himself says yes!

but thats from 2006... so who knows

You can create a mod for Portal. That's what I did for GLaMS-DOS. But editing the source code is still unknown to me, so I won't say it's not possible, as some videos on YouTube may prove opposite.

"GameInfo"
{
   // This is what shows up in the 'Third Party Games' area of the Steam games list.
   game                  "Logic Portals"
   type                   singleplayer_only
   "icon"          "icon"
   "developer"       "Hurricaaane"
   "developer_url"    "http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=Hurricaaane"

   FileSystem
   {
      SteamAppId            400    // GCF for Source SDK Base
      ToolsAppId            211      // Tools will load this (ie: source SDK caches) to get things like materials\debug, materials\editor, etc.
      
      //
      // The code that loads this file automatically does a few things here:
      //
      // 1. For each "Game" search path, it adds a "GameBin" path, in <dir>\bin
      // 2. For each "Game" search path, it adds another "Game" path in front of it with _<langage> at the end.
      //    For example: c:\hl2\cstrike on a french machine would get a c:\hl2\cstrike_french path added to it.
      // 3. For the first "Game" search path, it adds a search path called "MOD".
      // 4. For the first "Game" search path, it adds a search path called "DEFAULT_WRITE_PATH".
      //

      //
      // Search paths are relative to the base directory, which is where hl2.exe is found.
      //
      // |gameinfo_path| points at the directory where gameinfo.txt is.
      // We always want to mount that directory relative to gameinfo.txt, so
      // people can mount stuff in c:\mymod, and the main game resources are in
      // someplace like c:\program files\valve\steam\steamapps\half-life 2.
      //
      SearchPaths
      {
         Game            |gameinfo_path|.
         Game            portal
         Game            hl2
      }
   }
}

Hurricaaane wrote:
You can create a mod for Portal. That's what I did for GLaMS-DOS. But editing the source code is still unknown to me, so I won't say it's not possible, as some videos on YouTube may prove opposite.

That's not modding my friend

Remmiz wrote:
That's not modding my friend

Didn't say I was modding. I only said that you can create a portal-based third party mod, even if you don't code.

Remmiz wrote:
You can do that for anything...it doesn't really accomplish anything except add unnecessary icons in the Steam games listing...

I need it for GLaMS-DOS. I need to make new scenes (scene.image), new surface proerties, new NPC sounds, new gamesounds, override Half-Life 2 and Portal original files and models, and that thoughout many maps.
BSPZIPPING every file into each map, each file being duplicate in every map making the filesize grow a lot, is out of the question. And plus, I need scenes. As far as I know, I can't make new scenes with their own subtitles without making a new mod, even with BSPZIPPING.

Hurricaaane wrote:
I need it for GLaMS-DOS. I need to make new scenes (scene.image), new surface proerties, new NPC sounds, new gamesounds, override Half-Life 2 and Portal original files and models, and that thoughout many maps.
BSPZIPPING every file into each map, each file being duplicate in every map making the filesize grow a lot, is out of the question. And plus, I need scenes. As far as I know, I can't make new scenes with their own subtitles without making a new mod, even with BSPZIPPING.

So just don't bspzip them into every map and keep them in their respective directories?

EDIT: Orange Box games require a .image file, no more seperate .vcds