Portal

From Valve Developer Community

On July 13th, 2006 at EA's Summer press event, Gabe Newell announced that a game tentatively titled "Portal" was in production, and that it was due for release alongside Half-Life 2: Episode Two and Team Fortress 2 before the end of the year.

The game is described as a first-person shooter set in the Half-Life universe where you use an "Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device to create dimensional doorways." [1] (http://uk.gamespot.com/xbox360/action/halflife2episode2/news.html?sid=6154006) The game operates as a puzzle-based shooter, allowing you to create portals that link to one another on any flat and large enough surface.

The gameplay is similar to Narbacular Drop (http://www.nuclearmonkeysoftware.com/narbaculardrop.html) by Nuclear Monkey Software (http://www.nuclearmonkeysoftware.com), an indie game that won the IGF 2006 Student Showcase. Members of the development team who created the game were hired by Valve in 2005.

Table of contents

1 Tidbits 1.1 Calendar 1.2 Cave Johnson's Notes 1.3 Exclusive 2 See also 3 External links

Tidbits

Calendar

Cave Johnson's Notes

• 1953 - Aperture Science begins operations as a manufacturer of shower curtains. Early product line provides a very low-tech portal between the inside and outside of your shower. Very little science is actually involved. The name is chosen to make the curtains appear more hygienic.
• 1956 - Eisenhower administration awards Aperture a contract to provide shower curtains to all branches of the military except the Navy.
• 1957 - 1975 - Mostly shower curtains.
• 1978 - Aperture Founder and CEO, Cave Johnson, is exposed to mercury while secretly developing a dangerous mercury-injected rubber sheeting from which he plans to manufacture seven deadly shower curtains to be given as gifts to each member of the House Naval Appropriations committee.
• 1979 - Both of Cave Johnson's kidneys fail. Brain damaged, dying, and incapable of being convinced that time is not now flowing backwards, Johnson lays out a three tiered R&D program. The results, he says, will 'guarantee the continued success of Aperture Science far into the fast-approaching distant past.'
• Tier 1: The Heimlich Counter-Maneuver - A reliable technique for interrupting the life-saving Heimlich Maneuver.
• Tier 2: The Take-A-Wish Foundation - A charitable organization that will purchase wishes from the parents of terminally ill children and redistribute them to wish-deprived but otherwise healthy adults.
• Tier 3: 'Some kind of rip in the fabric of space... That would... Well, it'd be like, I don't know, something that would help with the shower curtains I guess. I haven't worked this idea out as much as the wish-taking one.
• 1981 - Diligent Aperture engineers complete the Heimlich Counter-Maneuver and Take-A-Wish Foundation initiatives. The company announces products related to the research in a lavish, televised ceremony. These products become immediately wildly unpopular. After a string of very public choking and despondent sick child disasters, senior company officials are summoned before a Senate investigative committee. During these proceedings, an engineer mentions that some progress has been made on Tier 3, the 'man-sized ad hoc quantum tunnel through physical space with possible applications as a shower curtain.' The committee is quickly permanently recessed, and Aperture is granted an open-ended contract to secretly continue research on the 'Portal' and Heimlich Counter-Maneuver projects.
• 1981-1985 - Work progresses on the 'Portal' project. Several high ranking Fatah personnel choke to death on lamb chunks despite the intervention of their bodyguards.
• 1986 - Word reaches Aperture management that another defense contractor called Black Mesa is working on a similar portal technology. In response to this news, Aperture begins developing the Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System (GLaDOS), an artificially intelligent research assistant and disk operating system.
• 1996 - After a decade spent bringing the disk operating parts of GLaDOS to a state of more or less basic functionality, work begins on the Genetic Lifeform component.
• Several Years Later - The untested AI is activated for the first time as one of the planned activities on Aperture's first annual bring-your-daughter-to-work day.
• In many ways, the initial test goes well...

Exclusive

Other than GLaDOS's cake ingredient core sphere and the ApertureScience website, Portal gives no trace of any men.

• "Did you know you can donate one or all of your vital organs to the Aperture Science self esteem fund for girls? It's true!"
• "The Girls of Aperture Science"
• "Oh hey, you're the lady from the test! Hi!"
• "Well done! Remember: The Aperture Science Bring Your Daughter to Work Day is the perfect time to have her tested."

See also

• Portal Level Creation
• Portal user content

External links

• Wikipedia:Portal (video game)
• EA Summer Showcase trailer: FileFront.com (http://files.filefront.com/Portal+OrientationTrailer1/;5272106;;/fileinfo.html), GameSpot (http://www.gamespot.com/pages/video_player/popup.php?sid=6154227&pid=932149)
• http://www.aperturescience.com/
• ThinkingWithPortals.com (http://www.thinkingwithportals.com/)