Anybody catch the Borealis dry dock?

msleeper wrote:
Anybody catch the Borealis dry dock?

Nope, seen some pictures though, apparently it wasn't madly exciting.

Found the testing spheres very Fallout-y. Was wondering why I couldn't get my Pip-Boy out at one point
Excellent graphics, Valve's really made an effort this time; especially on the Super 8 teaser, the visuals were stunning for Source.

Yeah I am truely shocked at how nice Source actually looks.

msleeper wrote:
Yeah I am truely shocked at how nice Source actually looks.

Although, I did notice all the load times. But they did go pretty fast. On the subject, Jeep Barnett was recently interviewed, and he stated they were mostly working on optimising the engine to work faster with more complaex shapes and calculations.They did use some sneaky bits though; at the beginning when your new relaxation chamber is being destroyed, you're not actually there, you're in a sepearate room with the same basic shapes, so you don't interfere with the physics and stuff.

I wasn't even playing it on full. Christ, can't wait to see what Episode 3 looks like

msleeper wrote:
Anybody catch the Borealis dry dock?

Yep. Anyone else finished chamber 10 in 70 seconds?

It's a bit dissapointing that there aren't advanced/challenges, but meh.

hanging_rope wrote:
It's a bit dissapointing that there aren't advanced/challenges, but meh.

I bet those will come as a patch/DLC later. Along with, god willing, more coop campaigns.

hanging_rope wrote:
msleeper wrote:

Anybody catch the Borealis dry dock?

Yep. Anyone else finished chamber 10 in 70 seconds?

It's a bit dissapointing that there aren't advanced/challenges, but meh.

Yup, tok a few tries but I got it. I never really liked the challenges myself (I never got the hang of the steps one). I prefer stuff like the acheivement just mentioned.

I just finished the coop campaign. I'm way exhausted, I'm sure I'll post more later. Overall I very much enjoyed the single player and coop experiences. Story wise, I really wish we would have heard more about the outside world, but I realize Portal is trying to distance itself from the HL universe a bit.

hanging_rope wrote:
It's a bit dissapointing that there aren't advanced/challenges, but meh.

Very disappointing I've still to try the co-op, but not having a single-player challenge mode bugs me no end. It took me longer to finish all the challenges in Portal 1 than it did to complete the story.

Meh. I'm happy that we finally have Portal 2 to play around with, but can't help but feel that I expected more. While the story was definitely longer than in Portal 1 it still felt kinda short to me :S

(Oh and hi again btw.)

A question for those of you that have already played both the single-player and the co-op stories: will playing the co-op story spoil the single-player story? I just want to know if I have to wait for my buddy to finish single-player before we embark on the co-op funs

Player1 wrote:
A question for those of you that have already played both the single-player and the co-op stories: will playing the co-op story spoil the single-player story? I just want to know if I have to wait for my buddy to finish single-player before we embark on the co-op funs

Well, there's one obvious point (GLaDOS is still there). Other than that, I think you're good to go.

Yeah, nothing is spoiled from one campaign to the other. The coop ending is interesting, to say the least.

Yeah. Finished the co-op this evening with my buddy. Good stuff! And really, the stories could be completely seperate. The only real spoiler is the fact that GLaDOS is in fact alive and not dead (if you've only played Portal 1 so far) and that is kinda hard to not get spoiled what with the game loading screen showing Cheel and GLaDOS facing off

But now I'm left with... hm... nothing really. Sure I can play the single-player again. Or even the co-op. But all in all Portal 2 has left me with less un-modded gametime than Portal 1. And that's a damn shame

On the ending with the Moon involved:

Spoilers, obviously
- Does portal beam go at the speed of light, or at an infinite speed? In the first case it would take 2.6 seconds for Chell to see the glare of the portal, and in the second case it would be 1.3 seconds, as the commentary explains.- Once the Earth is seen from the Moon, it looks kind of unrealistic with a straight shadow.- Likely just a plot element, but what is the probability of shooting a portal almost directly near an Apollo station?- With decompiling of the map, it may be possible to figure out what terrain and what Apollo station it is (if Valve didn't make it up).- Since the Moon's escape velocity is 2.38 km/s, it is obvious that Wheatley did eventually land on the moon. Further speculation on the plot?- Since Wheatley and the Space Core aren't massive enough, they couldn't possibly rotate around each other.

ASBusinessMagnet wrote:
...snip...

As to number 1, I think the portal travels at the speed of light, and valve forgot to count in the time for the light to come back.

hanging_rope wrote:
ASBusinessMagnet wrote:

...snip...

As to number 1, I think the portal travels at the speed of light, and valve forgot to count in the time for the light to come back.

Or, since Valve showcases that portals are seen on the HUD even when a wall is blocking them, the portal shows up instantaneously on the HUD.

Sooo, iirc from portal GLaDOS stands for "generic lifeform and disk operating system" but now that Portal 2 is out, I keep seeing her refered to as "genetic lifeform and disk operating system." So did they change it for that one plot point? Or did I just misunderstand from the get go?

Jomonay wrote:
msleeper wrote:

Yeah I am truely shocked at how nice Source actually looks.

Although, I did notice all the load times. But they did go pretty fast. On the subject, Jeep Barnett was recently interviewed, and he stated they were mostly working on optimising the engine to work faster with more complaex shapes and calculations.They did use some sneaky bits though; at the beginning when your new relaxation chamber is being destroyed, you're not actually there, you're in a sepearate room with the same basic shapes, so you don't interfere with the physics and stuff.

I wasn't even playing it on full. Christ, can't wait to see what Episode 3 looks like

I would love it if you know where that interview was. I was avoiding pre-release P2 articles/interviews and want to go back and read them.

I think you misunderstood what they meant by being in a 'fake' room in the opening destruction sequence. How that usually works is that you ARE in the room with all the crazy cinematic physics, but non of those physics animations (they are precompiled) have collisions. The "fake" room your are "in" refers to a set of clip brushes that overlaps the modeled, falling apart, room. It is "hidden," as they say, in another part of the map only in that the clipping brushes are somewhere else in the map so that it is easier for the designers to look at inside Hammer, but when they spawned (used) the game moves them over. That's how it's done normally, though it's possible they did it a bit different for that sequence since the container is moving and moving clipping brushes can be glitchy.

Mr. Happy wrote:
Sooo, iirc from portal GLaDOS stands for "generic lifeform and disk operating system" but now that Portal 2 is out, I keep seeing her refered to as "genetic lifeform and disk operating system." So did they change it for that one plot point? Or did I just misunderstand from the get go?

She was always genetic lifeform and disk operating system as far as I remember.

Mr. Happy wrote:
I think you misunderstood what they meant by being in a 'fake' room...

I think you are misunderstood tbh. I can't say for certain of course (and nobody will until we decompile it) but as for the feel in the character controls it does not feel like you're standing on a moving platform. Apart from scripted physics pushes that happens at set points through the ride you're controlling as if you were in fact in a (fairly) clean and static room. If all the physics movements of the container would actually get applied to the character controls you would be in for a much more bumpy ride imo.

EDIT: In fact in the commentary node he specifically states that they simply reparent the camera view to the container to get the illusion of your position.

Well there wouldn't be any reason to parent the clip brushes to the container animation, just have them on a straight path_track that doesn't bump around but roughly matches the container.

But ya, thinking about it again, maybe you are right, they could be using a seperate camera entity. Honestly that commentary node confused me a bit since it's so technical about the animation and then just glazes over the in-game setup. I figured when they said "player camera" they just meant player since it was written from an animator perspective.

A lot of these questions are answered in the commentary. Both the "fake room" during the intro, as well as the stuff about the end of the game are all discussed there.

That said, regarding the ending:

looking at you, ASBusinessMagnet
You really have to suspend disbelief, and stop looking for things to nit pick about. Do Wheatley and the Space Sphere have enough mass to orbit each other? No. Why are they doing it in the ending video then? Because it was funny. Is it remotely probably that shooting at the moon would land you near any of the Apollo landings? No. Why is that what happens? Because it was cool. Also probably to drive home the fact that you are in fact on the moon, because gamers are stupid and I'm sure some play test group didn't "get" it.