Underground (Portal 2)

This Portal 2 aesthetic theme is shown in the old, condemned Aperture shafts, far below the newer parts of Aperture Laboratories. It is characterized by darkness, decay, and simple practicality. Chambers are built with unfinished plywood and metal scaffolding. The giant background is composed of excavated bedrock, concrete, and enrichment spheres.

Level transitions take place in metal frame elevators between enrichment spheres.

In-Depth

Abandoned

This theme features a complete change in the environment. It is a cold and dark place, with mold, water, and broken walls forming the terrain. Each test if contained inside a huge Enrichment sphere and Pre-Recorded messages are played in the test chamber to comment on the player's doings. Not everything in in the Old Aperture world is contained within these spheres, however all tests are. It is important you remember that the people who operated these parts are long gone or dead. This means no one is maintaining the already unstable structures, and thus the buildings seem severely damaged.

Aperture Laboratories started building their facility from a deep salt-mine up. In laymen's terms, the more you elevate the further you travel in time seeing newer devices and how Aperture had come to be. As the player advances through each test chamber, the tests become more destroyed; characterized by the broken spheres' shell and destroyed buildings within the spheres.

The most obvious test element to use in this theme are gels, and that's pretty much the only testing element you'll see in the official campaign. However, gels being awesome isn't the only way to keep your test subject amazed; try finding more test elements to use. For example, in the Mobility Gels co-op course GLaDOS helps the bots solve the tests by inserting newer test elements, via robotic arms, into the testing spheres. It is important to make it obvious these test elements were not present in the initial construction of your test and is merely a device to enhance the testing experience. However, you can add test elements who seem to be early prototypes of test elements featured in the newer parts of the facility. These can and should be very simple constructed; good examples would be Aerial Faith Plates, rotating surfaces, etc.
Also, due to the enormous size of the Enrichment Spheres, combined with the interesting momentum dynamics the gels add, this theme is great for making momentum puzzles; if you've got wasted space at the end of your map, add a giant gel fling ending at the elevator.

Noticable Elements

Janitor Bob. This is the man who used to keep Aperture's testing tracks running back at its heydays, not in the form of science, but rather in maintenance. Janitor Bob knows nothing about science, but with a bunch of needles and some duct tape he can fix almost anything. So when you think how best things should look in your map, think how Janitor Bob did it.
But Bob is now long gone and no one was there to take care of the spheres. Dilapidated buildings and structures inside huge Enrichment Spheres are the most common view the player sees during the official campaign. There are numerous reminders of Janitor Bob's work, though. Dangling cables, marks on the walls, the old-aperture specific testing elements, etc.

Cables

Miscellaneous dynamic elements. First off, we have cables; though they don't sound like much, these can sway and bob, especially if there's a shake or if they're attached at one end to a moving object. These do have a reason for being there; as power cables. Subsequently, I would only recommend using them as these, for example, if a button on a platform is a long way away from it's affected test element and using indicator lights would look messy. I can think of one other use for ropes, but I'll cover that in a moment. For now, I'm just going to get straight on with it and tell you how to make cables. First, create a move_rope entity at one end of the circuit, and set its next keyframe to whatever you want. Set its slack to 32, subdivision to 16, breakable to whatever you want (if yes, then set collide with world to yes as well) and rope material to either cable or cable_lit.

Next, create a keyframe_rope on the other end of the circuit, and name it whatever you set as the next keyframe for the move_rope. That's it, done; now just mess around with the key values for slack and stuff until it looks right; every time you click apply, the Hammer view should update so you don't have to compile each time to see what looks right. To make them shake at any point, create an env_shake as usual and tick it's Ropes flag. You could use this with a VERY low shake (make sure to disable the don't shake view flag as well) to make the cables constantly bobble, adding some life to them.

I mentioned before that I could think of one other use for cables, and that is this; to hold things up. Remember that level in the campaign where you had to paint the box to break the glass cage it was in? Well, the box was suspended by cables. I can't remember if the cage swung at all as a physics object, but I'm going to teach you how to make one that does. Combined with some key values for the force required to break the cables, you could make some interesting puzzles out of this. First, create your cage in mid-air out of brushes (no props or other entities, brush or point, yet). Now, tie them all to a func_physbox. You may wish to mess around with the settings so as to make it consistent. Name the physbox. Now, add any other entities to be part of the cage, such as window frames, and parent them to the physbox. Now, set up the cables, going upwards from the cage. Parent the move_ropes to the physbox also. Now, we're going to add an entity that will actually constrain the cage by the ropes; meet your new buddy, phys_lengthconstraint. Create one at the origin of each move_rope, and set all their key values as follows:

Name: rope_N_constraint (n is a number from one to the number of ropes you have) Entity 1: physbox_name Entity 2: name of corresponding move_rope Constraint system manager: rope_constraint Force limit: 9999999 (I chose this because a., it's high enough to be invincible and b., it's the number the announcer says at the beginning of the campaign. ) Torque limit: 9999999 Additional length: 32 Attached object 2 point: whatever the origin of the corresponding keyframe_rope is (you may have to open your vmf file up in Notepad and search for it to find this)

Leave all other key values as they are.

Now, create a phys_constraintsystem and call it rope_constraint. This ensures that there is no unexplainable jiggling. Now, compile and you're done! Portal above the cage and stand on it, or push against it on the floor, and you'll see that it moves. I did some further research and found that Valve do use physics for their hanging cage, but they only use one entity; this method, though much more time consuming, is much more realistic.

Elements

• Enrichment sphere
• Underground elevator
• Sliding doors
• Concrete
• Plywood
• Graffiti
• Offices
• Metal Beams

1953

• Big, may have 2 test chambers in one map.
• Repulsion Gel
• Water
• Catwalks as transition to the next test
• Portal surfaces are put in necessary places
• Direct Lighing
• Fully Constructed Enrichment Sphere

1971

• Big
• Propusion Gel
• Repulsion Gel
• Mold on walls
• Gel pipes
• Enrichment Sphere is damaged
• Walls fell off

1980

• Conversion Gel
• Repulsion Gel
• Propusion Gel
• Gel Pipes leaking
• Enrichment Sphere is strongly damaged
• Walls fell off

See also

• http://forums.thinkingwithportals.com/downloads.php?view=detail&df_id=464 - Old Aperture style Aerial Faith Plates

---

The Aesthetics of Portal 2

← Behind the Scenes

Clean →