The Off-Topic Thread

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Arachnaphob
412 Posts
Posted Sep 28, 2014
Replied 26 days later
Is it just me or has TWP been really inactive lately?
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CamBen
973 Posts
Posted Sep 29, 2014
Replied 18 hours later

Arachnaphob wrote:
Is it just me or has TWP been really inactive lately?

It has. Plus the site has been going down constantly for me.

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User
630 Posts
Posted Sep 29, 2014
Replied 2 hours later

Arachnaphob wrote:
Is it just me or has TWP been really inactive lately?

Same here, but me too, im still mapping but rarely visiting twp.

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quaternary
171 Posts
Posted Sep 29, 2014
Replied 8 hours later
So if Portal was on a boat would it be thinking with portholes?
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tile
380 Posts
Posted Sep 30, 2014
Replied 22 hours later
TWP is definetely not very active, and probably dying. But it makes perfects sense; cause we are now about the same distance from portal 2's initial release as portal 2 was from portal 1. Portal 2 is old enough now that very few people are still hardcore fans of it; and the developer community is also dying because of the same thing, but also because source 2 is rolling around the corner. I've spent so much time with source, and now it feels like it was all wasted time. but that doesnt bother me...i've now realized that i dont actually like video game design as much as i thought. Now that portal is dying off finally, i am now shifting my interest to else where... and thank goodness. the game was so much of an obsession for me that it used to be all i ever thought about ever. Now that it is going away, i can shift my focus to what i really, actually enjoy. Creating artwork. And the best part; is that if i get good enough at it, i can actually make money off of it, unlike source development, which is obviously going to die VERY soon due to source 2. Frankly; i think that all the source developers now have 2 possible futures: developing a new interest and skill for their future, or simply become hardcore fans of something else to waste their time on.
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Ciirulean
40 Posts
Posted Sep 30, 2014
Replied 2 hours later
I edit my posts too much.
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Lpfreaky90
2,842 Posts
Posted Oct 01, 2014
Replied 2 hours later
Yeah, twp being down a lot isn't really helping
But yea, as expected the hype for portal 2 has slowed down a bit, but as the popularity of portal 2 mods on greenlight show, there's still a lot of dedicated fans of the series.
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Gemarakup
1,183 Posts
Posted Oct 01, 2014
Replied 9 hours later
Since Portal 2 has PTI, you don't really see a lot of valuable maps from people as much as you might find in CS:GO, and the kind of game it is makes it not have many content updates, which means that Portal 2 now depends on mods and properly made Hammer maps to keep it going. Also, I find that unlike other games, Portal 2 is for puzzle solving, and that means that once you solve it, you need a new map and it goes on, and you hardly replay maps. In games like TF2 though, you just play many times in the same map, and it has updates for it's maps, weapons and stuff like that, so the game is kept interesting.
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reepblue
894 Posts
Posted Oct 01, 2014
Replied 13 hours later

yishbarr wrote:
Since Portal 2 has PTI, you don't really see a lot of valuable maps from people as much as you might find in CS:GO, and the kind of game it is makes it not have many content updates, which means that Portal 2 now depends on mods and properly made Hammer maps to keep it going. Also, I find that unlike other games, Portal 2 is for puzzle solving, and that means that once you solve it, you need a new map and it goes on, and you hardly replay maps. In games like TF2 though, you just play many times in the same map, and it has updates for it's maps, weapons and stuff like that, so the game is kept interesting.

I agree, to a point.

Although it was a smart move by Valve to release a map editor for Portal 2, I feel like it had more of a negative effect on the community then a positive one. You have people making puzzles in PTI, then questioning why/how people do cool things like lighting, new elements, or other stuff. I've been apart of this community for 6 years now, and I hate to be the one who breaks the ice here, but The Portal community is mostly seen as retarded by others because of PTI content creators and those god-awful "mods".

The reason why we get all the "bad eggs" is because Portal is a good game to introduce people to video game design. It at its core has a basic design, a repetitive entry and exit to each map and in Portal 2, all of the elements are coded into their respected entities. the map can look mediocre, but if the idea is there, it's surely to be respected. Portal is where I started, and I'm sure it's where most of you did too.

I feel that stuff started to go down hill after Portal: Prelude. Ever since then, I felt like people have been focusing on full projects then maps that can be done in a week or two. you know, you don't have to make a mod to have a new everything, Dilapidation (I think it was called) Blue Portals, and Logic Portals from 2008 were mappacks. Yes, with Blue Portals I turned it into a mod but that was because I felt it was easier to install on the Users part. Before that, I do recall a lot of awesome maps with new ideas and principles.

So yeah, that's the scoop, Most people here are doing PTI stuff, or full "mods" that they don't want to share much of because its "TOP SECRET!". all these factors plus the point from yishbarr about Portal maps only being played once (or a handful of times) makes a lacking, and dragging community. I'll try to show more of Alive & Kicking before Colossal kills me, and I also have Vectronic that I'm sure most people here will be interested in.

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iWork925
1,080 Posts
Posted Oct 02, 2014
Replied 1 hour later

reepblue wrote:
(Deep meaningful stuff...)

Still, if someone sees a Portal 2 mod/mappack on the Steam Store, they pretty much know what to expect; Just an adventure puzzle they can sit down and enjoy. Because of this I don't think Portal/2 fandom will ever really die.

However, this sites owner's inability or unwillingness to action server problems will be the final nail in the coffin for this community and its a shame.

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Dafflewoctor
415 Posts
Posted Oct 02, 2014
Replied 7 minutes later

iWork925 wrote:
Still, if someone sees a Portal 2 mod/mappack on the Steam Store, they pretty much know what to expect; Just an adventure puzzle they can sit down and enjoy.

cough Does not apply to Thinking with Time Machine cough

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iWork925
1,080 Posts
Posted Oct 02, 2014
Replied 7 hours later

Dr.Toaster Waffles wrote:
iWork925 wrote:

Still, if someone sees a Portal 2 mod/mappack on the Steam Store, they pretty much know what to expect; Just an adventure puzzle they can sit down and enjoy.

cough Does not apply to Thinking with Time Machine cough

How so? Is it not, at its core, a puzzle adventure?

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tile
380 Posts
Posted Oct 02, 2014
Replied 5 hours later
he meant the "sit down and enjoy" part....
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Dafflewoctor
415 Posts
Posted Oct 02, 2014
Replied 2 hours later

iWork925 wrote:
How so? Is it not, at its core, a puzzle adventure?

In its core, maybe. In its execution, no.

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iWork925
1,080 Posts
Posted Oct 02, 2014
Replied 4 hours later

tile wrote:
he meant the "sit down and enjoy" part....

Ha

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Arachnaphob
412 Posts
Posted Oct 21, 2014
Replied 18 days later
Apparently Portal 2 has no mods. (what the [heck] is going on here?)
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tile
380 Posts
Posted Oct 21, 2014
Replied 18 hours later
look at the giant console tabs at the top of the page. moddb probably glitched and moved you from PC to X360, wii, or something else.
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Another Bad Pun
516 Posts
Posted Oct 21, 2014
Replied 3 hours later
Let's learn about game development!
nkHF2sBzovA

jk

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Arachnaphob
412 Posts
Posted Oct 22, 2014
Replied 2 hours later

Another Bad Pun wrote:
Let's learn about game development!

Expect a dubstep remix in a week.

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Arachnaphob
412 Posts
Posted Oct 25, 2014
Replied 3 days later
(sorry for double post here but I think this is pretty interesting)
I was playing around with some synth presets from Native Insrtuments' Absynth, when I came across a familiar sound. After about a minute, it clicked. I went and turned down the first oscillator, and found it was the weird beat from Love as a Construct. If you want to listen I've attached a ZIP with the MP3. If you have absynth, the preset is named Key Angler 1. Also, just in case you don't know which song I'm talking about, take this: (it starts at about 0:13)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFSwT7Xvpj0
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