Have we really got that far?

Who said Valve worked on portal for 8 years?

I think he only meant that we now regard portals as a revolution and a cool feature while 8 years ago there were plenty of similar things and that thus the so called evolution we went trough isnt big at all.

Unreal 1 had portals too. Unreal 1 had mirror floors and surfaces that could reflect the entire level. Most features that we got today already exists years ago in one way or another but you just can use more of them and better looking ones nowadays. I guess thats the only real evolution.

That I also goes for the gravity gun of HL2. You could have made one in Unreal 1 too, or HL1, it only works better with the current hardware power.

Cool movie! But dint something called Prey just got released? Maybe it wasn't 3D Realms Prey.

It's not about the portals per se... It's about _HOW_ Valve integrates it into the game(play).

Just like every game out there can use physics... but only Valve managed to have a great interaction between player and physics by using the gravity gun.

There were portals in Quake 1. But that doesnt matter. Portals have been around in sci-fi/fantasy since forevor. Like Delaz says its not that you use portals, its HOW you use them.

Ideas are usually always way ahead of stable implmentation.

Yeah, I remember seeing the Prey stuff a good while back and it obviously looked pretty solid there. Regarding Unreal's portals then I think its sort of out of context. What makes Prey's portals impressive isnt that they're portals, but that you see whats through the portal, you didnt do that in Unreal (Or anything before Prey afaik).

Anyway, from what I've gathered Prey had a really bumpy development altogether and it wouldn't surprise me that some of the problems where connected to the portal tech.

Also interesting in that movie is the things he's talking about with dynamic enviroments. You can pretty much spell physics in his words, which I guess wasn't anything new even back then, but still pretty interesting.

I don't think those are real physics. It seems like smoke & mirrors really, scripted sequences. The guy made his little test map so obviously he knew where to shoot as he scripted a few brushes on train tracks like we've all seen in HL1 and such back in the days.

When he's going through the multiplayer map and the reporter asks about dynamically being able to shoot it all down like in that test map, all he could say was "Uh, sure, yeah sure! Look at how big these maps are as well!"...

Portals on the other hand isn't quite as advanced as real physics, but it was pretty impressive of them back in the days.

Quote from Mazy

What makes Prey's portals impressive isnt that they're portals, but that you see whats through the portal, you didnt do that in Unreal (Or anything before Prey afaik).

What? Pretty sure you could do that in Unreal. I remember looking through them and plotting when to attack, and firing rockets through them, etc. Valve bought Nuclear Monkey Software (people from DigiPen school), who made Narbacular Drop, which in turn, Portal was born. (If I'm not mistaken)

http://www.nuclearmonkeysoftware.com/

Edit: Water beat me to it

The video originally posted is pretty cool, especially for the time. When he mentioned the specs being fairly high end, that seems to be quite a while ago.

I think the most awesome technology shown was LIGHTS. Something Prey lacked. That looks awesome though, I think they should have finished that version instead of the current prey they released - that looks like it would be a lot more fun.

By the way, Unreal (as shown in the video posted) does support portals. I'm not sure about them being rotated etc. but they can be applied on flat surfaces. At the end of the game (last level) there are two - the first is when you go into the room with the final boss and it's noticable because the sound of the Iris door closing cuts off, and the other is the walkway to the escape pod. As far as I know, they can be applied to any flat surface.

Quote from MrH2o

Mazy you'r wrong about the Unreal portals (atleast if this vid is correct)http://%7boption%7d

also ... wasnt there an official ut98 1on1 dm map where you could drop down infinitly long and allways still come across your enemy ?! i was allways wondering how they did that now i know

that's the one that just teleports you from the bottom to the top, right?

One important note regarding the comment about quake having portals - a trigger volume that places your player origin at a pre-defined point is one thing, the visual bit of seeing where you're headed and making a seamless transition is another entirely.

I wonder if you could use portals as windows to spy on places rather just movement. Like throwing a portal through a vital door so you can watch that door easily. I wonder if trip mines would work if the laser goes through the portal

If they can combine this with stable netcode.... the mind boggles at the design opportunities.

Heh, I stand corrected. Could've sworn that Unreal didn't have that kind of tech, and I really dont remember that in the singleplayer or multiplayer portions of the original Unreal. Was it something they had in the engine but wasnt used until later on by the community, which would explain why I never saw it?

Anyway, I'm fairly certain the maps that came with UT didn't have this kind of stuff, otherwise I'd have noticed

/me hides

I remember playing a game, where you could shoot thru portals and the bullets would go thru. You were able to shoot yourself

Wasnt it duke3d?

if someone told me about this stuff a month ago i would have called them for bullshit quite strongly, i would have never believed that the half life engine was able to dynamically let you see into other areas of the map, let alone see players. id say its quite surprising that its part of the engine, maybe they added a whole lot of code to the engine that will let developers do even more crazy stuff with mods. Who cares if its a leap ahead or not in games.