Spigot 37

Spigot 37
Formed	Jan 2008
Status	Active
Developers
Project lead	Rigor Mortis
Maps/Puzzles	Geppetto
Audio	Reverend Protocol
Models/Textures	erythros

Map Releases

Map Pack "Aftermath"

Aftermath: Training Ground, hosted by myAPERTURElabs.com - This is the first map to be released for the first map pack that Spigot 37 has collaborated on. The map is a place for players to hone their skills in preparation of the release of the rest of the map pack.

Walk through of Aftermath: Training Ground - We broke the video up by puzzles to avoid spoilers.

Information

Spigot 37 is a Portal development team working on a map pack that will cross boundaries and raise the bar on Portal puzzle difficulty, pushing the limits of even the best players of Portal, as well as expanding greatly upon the story that was merely hinted at in HL2: Episode 2 and Portal.

Our Official Forum, hosted by Portal-Forums.com

Map Pack Trailer Normal quality

Map Pack Trailer Higher quality

About Our Logo

We have had numerous questions come in about our logo. Especially "why Spigot?" and "why 37?"

Why Spigot? Well, we all really like Valve, and Spigot was the coolest sounding synonym we found.

Why 37? It's my favorite number... it's a prime number, 3 and 7 are both lucky in their own way... take your pick.

The Story

After surviving the destruction of the Aperture Science facility she was being held in, Chell quickly learned that the world had changed from what she remembered. Cities were locked down by Combine occupation forces and people feared going into public. She was untrusted by refugees she found and was hunted by the Combine who wanted the technology in her hands, so she decided to hide from the world.

Chell was able to find sufficient food and shelter using the ASHPD to get into and out of boarded up homes, stores and other businesses, but was constantly haunted by the feeling she was being watched. Everywhere she went it seemed things were hinting to her that GLaDOS was Still Alive. It even seemed that she was being led somewhere. Street lights would flash on in areas Chell knew had no power. TV's and radios played songs and shows that hinted directions to her. Basically, Chell felt like she was going crazy. Being alone for months on end could do it to anyone.

Our map pack picks up with Chell after she has discovered a building that she thinks all of these hints were pointing her towards. Is GLaDOS Still Alive....

News

December 14, 2008 With ALS behind me now, I plan on jumping headlong back into making Portal maps. Hopefully we can get some more maps out to our fans in the next month or so.

November 21, 2008

As expected, ALS has been keeping me very, very busy. I promise that we still plan on releasing these maps. We're actually seriously considering releasing everything we have completed so far to give you some more portal entertainment... but that won't be under the end of December or so.

October 13, 2008

Map number 6 is coming along nicely. There's unfortunately nothing else new right now. I will be going to Airman Leadership School (ALS) in November, so expect at least a month with no updates. (Sorry!)

September 27, 2008

All of us at Spigot 37 are glad that Aftermath: Training Ground has been met well by the Portal community. We had been planning on releasing the rest of the maps as we finish each to keep our fans happy, but it just seems wrong to do it that way when the maps all interconnect the way they do. So, instead we are ramping up our minds and computers again to try to push out the last few maps. The official map count is up to 8 now, but I have a feeling that it's going to take 10 to tell the story fully. We have 5 getting near completion now, after almost a year of work, but we're hoping to have the other five done much faster... maybe in 3 months? Well, we know that's a pipe dream, but we'll try our best to get these done quickly and with the same quality everyone expects from the Spigot 37 name.

September 14, 2008

We have officially released the first map of our map pack, which we have entitled "Aftermath: Training Ground." Look to the top of this page for the download link, and thanks to the folks at myAPERTURElabs.com for hosting the map!

September 7, 2008

Because this project is taking much longer than anticipated, I have come to the decision that we are going to release these maps as a "serial." When you reach the extent of the maps we have finished, you will receive a message of "to be continued..." and you will be dropped back to the portal menu to try again for the next ending. (Remember that we are trying for 'nonlinear' game play?) You will be able to add the next map to the Spigot37 folder in your portal/maps folder and it will seamlessly add on to the maps that we released before. Sorry about this method of releasing our map pack, but I don't know what else to do without delaying this release another year! Expect to see the first version of this in October 2008.

August 30, 2008

We decided to do a complete rebuild of one part of the third map, which is going to cause a big delay, but we feel it's worth it to improve this particular area. We are also changing a few big things on the fourth map. It looks like we will be planning on the next map coming out in about 2 months time.

August 13, 2008

Beta 4 was released last weekend with positive results. We're putting a lot of trust into our beta testers that they won't spill the beans on our story line just yet :)

July 23, 2008

We aren't far off from having half the maps in beta now. Lately it's been hard to convince myself to work on the maps, but I'm determined to finish this pack for all those people out there that crave more Portal!

June 20, 2008

The beta 2 version of the first two maps is now out, and we're nearing a beta release of the third map. Our original timeline of a completely finished map pack by September appears to be a bit optimistic... but we plan on at least having everything in beta by then! We're picking up more beta testers with each release, so don't be shy... we can really use anyone that wants to try their hand at these maps. Even though these maps are really targeted at hardcore players, we learn something new with each demo we watch and hopefully we have expanded our audience some after making changes suggested by our beta folks.

June 6, 2008

Our beta testers have proved themselves valuable by showing us their first runs through the maps. It really is amazing that if you have 4 beta testers, 4 of them will do the same things! We spoke to Jeep Barnett at Valve about this, and he said that they determined a long time ago that it's best to just release a game to one beta tester at a time. This way you get a fresh pair of eyes on the maps every time, and you can see how your changes effect them. I wish we had known this before we released those first two maps for beta! Now we will have to find more testers....

May 26, 2008

The first two maps are officially in beta. Now we can shift our focus to the third map which may take longer than the others but hopefully it will be worth it!

May 18, 2008

"Chell's Playground," our training map, is nearly completed now. We are planning to release our first two maps to our beta testers at the end of this month. The rest of the map pack is probably about 75% done functionally, but only perhaps 25% finished aesthetically. We are still shooting for Fall 2008 for our release date, but our real jobs are distracting us from this project quite a bit right now.

April 27, 2008

We have begun development on a level that will train players on how to use the ASHPD in a greater number of scenarios than what they traditionally would think it could be used for. We are considering putting this level out as a stand-alone map before our map pack is released because it's just really fun to play around in!

Also, I think it's time we start putting out more info on our storyline so you guys can have an idea of what we're really doing with this.

April 25, 2008

We just posted our first trailer, located here:

• For convenience, this trailer has been moved to the top of the page.

The maps are coming along well - we have the majority of the basic design finished, but there's a long way to go on making them look pretty. Also, we have to find a way to teach players our new puzzles without totally giving them away... after all, it is a puzzle game!

Insight

Throughout the development of our maps we have come across several problems, and for the most part we solved them or found work-arounds. We are continually learning Source specific techniques and tricks, so feel free to ask us Portal or Hammer specific questions, or share your own tricks and techniques.

• We had a flickering light (just one) in an outdoor level (3d Skybox, majority of visleafs visible all the time) that was causing a crazy jittering issue on Windows XP machines for some reason. This problem wasn't noticeable on Vista 32 or 64 bit, and it took forever for us to track it down to this light. Once we found the issue, we tried numerous times to add a flickering light back into this level in numerous different locations and never got it to work without the jitter. My guess on this? Because of the complexity of the level, the flickering light is causing a change in too many polygons and it freaks out the game. Work around? Don't use flickering lights in crazy complex levels.

• func_smokevolume is limited on size by a lot... it makes me sad that I can't make a huge level with smoky/wispy clouds rolling along far below the player.

• I want to do a section here on logic, but I think it would take forever and I would end up just confusing a lot of people. If you are trying to figure out logic for an elevator, or something crazy complex, feel free to contact us. We have done a LOT with the logic available in Source.