Portal posts

It took much longer than previously announced but today Valve revealed that they have added support via Steam for the Novint Falcon PC game controller to all of the games in Valve's Orange Box collection. That includes Half-Life 2: Episodes 1 and 2 along with Portal and Team Fortress 2 (the original Half-Life 2 already supports the Falcon controller via a patch from Novint).

The controller allows gamers to "feel" effects like weapon fire recoil, the weight of holding objects like barrels and even feel textures in the game world. Valve has promised that they will add Falcon support to their other games including Left 4 Dead.

Artificial intelligence, or AI, is a concept that science fiction has examined for decades. In general, the idea is to create by hand a machine that's intelligent enough to think on its own, at a level equal to or better than humans. Frequently used as the villain of the piece, our culture has spun numerous cautionary tales around the idea of the AI that overthrows the world and enslaves humanity.

My thinking is that if we want to avoid such a fate, the first place we need to start keeping a close eye on is in our games.

If you like bragging about how much you have "achieved" while playing games, Steam has just set up something for you to show others that, yes, you unlocked that cool achievement in Left 4 Dead while most others players have not. This also applies to any game that uses Steam achievements.

You can check out the full list of games that currently have Steam achievements which include Portal, Team Fortress 2, World of Goo, Zeno Clash, Unreal Tournament III, Braid, Empire: Total War and many others. In fact the newly released Plants Vs. Zombies just added 12 Steam achievements. Signing up to the Steam community will let you see the percentage of players who have acquired each achievement within all of those titles.

The Gang Garrison 2 team, otherwise known as Faucet, has been continually updating their demake of Valve's Team Fortress 2. It's even caught notice of the official Team Fortress 2 team, and apparently they love it. We can't blame them, though, as where Gang Garrison 2 was fun before, it's simply phenomenal now. Killcams, a new gamemode, new abilities for the Healer and Overweight, new server functions, and an overhauled interface greatly improve upon Gang Garrison 2.

Along with this update came the news that Faucet was expanding to do other Valve demakes! Done in the same pixel style, they are remaking Portal (as Gateway), Left 4 Dead (as Rite 2 Live), and Garry's Mod (as Larry's Mod). Much like the original Gang Garrison 2, these demakes are open-source, and if you want to help with graphics, code or level design, just drop by the Gang Garrison forums for more information! You can also play the latest builds of the other Faucet demakes by following the links above.

Valve Software has put their own games on sale this weekend as part of their regular weekly price cuts on Steam. This time the developer has put their Orange Box collection of games for sale for a nice reduction in price.

Just in case you haven't bought the games in the set, The Orange Box contains Half-Life 2 plus the first two downloadable episodes (and when will we hear about Episode 3, Valve). It also has the multiplayer shooter Team Fortress 2 (which Valve continues to add new content to on a regular basis) and the acclaimed puzzle shooter Portal. All of those games can be yours for just $9.99 this weekend only which is a 66 percent discount from The Orange Box's regular price.

One of the more interesting game culture stories in 2009 was the saga of Harrison Krix who made a (non-working) replica of the gun from Portal for his girlfriend to use in a cosplay costume. The amount of detail that went into the creation of the replica generated a ton of Internet interest, including from Portal's developer Valve who asked Kris to make a second replica for them.

Now Kris has created an equally detailed replica of yet another game-related device: the ADAM Syringe used by the Little Sisters in 2K Boston's classic action game BioShock. Our sister site Joystiq has a chat with Kris who talks about his efforts into game replica building. His next project: a full Big Daddy costume from BioShock. We can't wait to see it.

Version 1.1.5 of Portal: Prelude is now available. The new version includes 115 bug fixes since the initial release of the mod, and some of the grammar, difficulty, and voices have also been fixed. WARNING: Save games from previous versions will not be compatible with v1.15, however progress at unlocked chapter points will be preserved.

Portal: Prelude is a user made mod for Portal with a story that takes place before the events of the game Portal. It is not to be confused with the official prequel that Valve is currently working on. Go to www.portalprelude.com for more information.
Download Portal: Prelude v1.1.5 (792 MB)

A couple of weeks ago we reported on a man who had created a very impressive real-life replica of the gun depicted in Valve's unique puzzle-shooter Portal. Now our sister site GameDaily has posted a feature article where the creator goes into more detail on how the gun was made.

The article has a gallery of over 100 images showing how the Portal replica gun was made by its creator Harrison Krix. Originally made for his girlfriend Emily Keith (pictured here) to add to a Portal-based cosplay costume, the pictures of the gun have generated a ton of attention. In fact, Krix is making another Portal gun replica for the Valve team.

If you ever wanted to really create inter-dimential portals to do cool transportation tricks...well, keep dreaming. We live in the real world and not the world that Valve created for its 2007 short but memorable puzzle shooter Portal. However, at least one person gets to have a real (non-working) replica of the game's Portal gun.

The image you see above comes from a Flickr account from "emilyskeith" who states that her boyfriend made the gun replica for her costume. It has working lights and looks cool but sadly does not do physics or portal effects. Ah, maybe one day we will be able to work around that whole science-thing.

[Via Joystiq]

Earlier today we reported that a former Half-Life 2 mod turned commerical product called Garry's Mod had generated over $3 million in sales just by being on Valve's Steam service. Today Gamasutra has an article that reveals how many games Valve itself has sold. There's a big catch, however. The numbers are only for retail sales of Valve's products. They don't include the number of units sold from the Steam service.

Valve has always kept specifc numbers related to its Steam service to itself but there have been hints that those numbers are considerable. Even Valve's own CEO Gabe Newell has said he expects Steam sales of its games to surpass retail sales numbers.

So while these figures don't really give the whole picture here are Valve's own numbers on the retail sales of its games so far. The numbers do not include Valve's just released zombie co-op shooter Left 4 Dead. They also, for some unknown reason, don't include sales of the stand alone version of Day of Defeat which Activision released in 2005. Finally they don't include the retail sales of the PC versions of Team Fortress 2, Portal and Half-Life 2: Episode 2 which were released as separate products several months after the release of The Orange Box.

Half-Life: 9.3 million units
Half-Life Opposing Force: 1.1 million units
Half-Life Blue Shift: 800,000 units
Counter-Strike: 4.2 million units
Counter-Strike Condition Zero: 2.9 million units
Counter-Strike Source: 2.1 million units
Half-Life 2: 6.5 million units
Half-Life 2 Episode 1: 1.4 million units
The Orange Box: 3 million units