User:Boebi/History

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Please note that on this page spoilers may occur.
Please note that it is possible that wrong things are stated here.

Speculations will be written in "Italic text"

History

On this page I'll be trying to put together a history of the Half Life universe.


This is a personal page on my own namespace. If you have anything to add or you managed to find something I didn't, please post on the talk page. Thanks!

Coming soon

I'll work on this in the next few days, thank you for your patience.

Aperture science .com

On the Aperture science website, you can find some interesting stuff.

  • 1953 Aperture science begins operations as 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 wich he plans to manufacture 7 deadly 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 distand past.'
Tier1: The Heimlich Counter-Maneuver - A riliable technique for interrupting the life-saving Heimlich Maneuver.
Tier2: The Take-A-Wish Foundaition - A charitable organization that will purchase wishes from parents of terminally ill children and redistribute them to wish-deprived but otherwise healthy adults.
Tier3: '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 engineer complete the Heimlich Counter-Maneuver and Take-A-Wish Foundation initiatives. The company announces products related to the resrarch in a lavish, televised ceremony. These products become immidiatly wildly unpopular. After a string of very public choking and despondent sick child disasters, senior company officials are summoned before a Senate investigative comittee. During these proceedings, and engineer mentions that some progress has been made on Tier 3, the 'man-sized ad hoc quantum tunnel trough physical space with possible applications as a shower curtain.' The comittee is quickly permantly recessed, and Aperture is granted an open-ended contract to secretly continue on the 'Portal' and Heimlich Counter-Maneuver projects.
  • 1981-1985 Work progresses on the 'Portal' project. Several high ranking Fatah personell 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), and artificially intelligent research assistand and disk operating system.
  • 1996 After a decade spent, they bring the disk operating parts of GLaDOS to a state or more or less basic functionality, work begins on the Genetic Lifeform component.

Several years later - The untested AI is activated to 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...

After that

I have not yet completed Portal, because it keeps crashing. I boot my game, and when I see the LOADING screen it crashes, if you know how to solve this pleas tell me on the discussion page! Everything from now is what I heard that happened.

GLaDOS released a neurotoxin gas, killing everyone in Aperture. "GLaDOS didn't kill the daughters, so they can be tested, like Chell."
To prevent GLaDOS spreading more gas, enineers put in a morality chip.
Chell passes all the tests and kills GLaDOS.
"This caused a massive chain reaction to occur, opening a Super Portal, where all kinds of objects are being teleported trough to random places. This is how the borealis got lost."

Before Half-Life

1995 The combines invade the home world of the Nihilanth, the leader of the Vortigaunts. They fight, and flee from planet to planet, untill they come on Xen.
The Combine attempt to hybridize the dominant species of the planet (In Xen's case, the Vortigaunts) with their own technology to create a "Super soldier" that is adapted to Xen's environment and uses powerful Combine technology.( Doug Lombardi stated that the combine did NOT invade Xen, read here: Combine)
In the meantime Gordon Freeman is studying for his doctorate in MIT, and Eli Vance and Dr.Kleiner are doing research on using Portal technology.
The combines trace down the Nihilanth, and come to Xen, where both races discover a portal to earth. The Nihilanth, looking at it as a rescue, and the combine thinking about another opportunity, both use the portal to go to earth.
How the Xen world discovered a passage to Earth is uknown to me, but the dimensional rift caused by the resonance cascade attracted the Combine to Earth. The combine contact the Administrator of Black Mesa, Wallace Green, and promise him new technology, and space travels to other planets, to help humanity. Green, who really thinks the combine want to help humanity, takes the bait, and the combine prepare to invade earth.

Half-Life

2000 Wallace Breen, under supervision by the Combine Overlords, triggers a resonance cascade within the Anomalous Materials sector of the Black Mesa complex, by selecting a specific test sample to be used. His selection of this hazardous material is masked by a system crash.
The G-man, a misterious figure, tries to prevent the resonance cascade, but fails.
The Portal created then, lets the combine send in their initial forces, to prepare their big invasion, while the Nihilanth race thinks it is their escape route.
Ofcourse other Xen races, as headcrabs and antlions, go to earth aswell along with the others.
The G-man, still trying to prevent the big combine invasion, send in US soldiers. Black Mesa becomes one big mess of different fighting races and technology.
But theres 1 man the G-man is interested in, Gordon Freeman, a newly assigned scientist in the Anomalous materials lab, shows exceptional skill in dealing with Xen beings and U.S. troops. He was very impressed when Gordon went to Xen and defeated the Nihilanth.
But before that, Gordon triggered, uknowingly, the launch of the Lambda satellite, the only last thing the combines needed. With the satelite operational, they can start the portal storms, opening portals all over the world.
Black Mesa is destroyed in a nuclear explosion, and Gordon survives.
The G-man gives Gordon 2 choices, die or work for him. Gordon choses to work for the G-man and is put into stasis, a slow-time-warp so the G-man can pull Gordon out anytime he needs him.

How to use aperture science.com

Go to the site, and say "LOGIN"
User: CJOHNSON
Pass: TIER3
Then say "NOTES"
Also see the work AndrewNeo has made on that website: http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/User:AndrewNeo/Analyzing_ApertureScience.com