Any news on portal MP code? You know, I have an idea....

[RjD]

Hello community!
Anyone knows, are there any news regarding making Portal work in multiplayer setting (Oracle did not bring satisfactory answer, only videos of Portals working in EXITE mod)?

Because, I have an idea for a cute multiplayer mod "Portal Arena", using portals A LOT (In fact, there will not be any "firearms" in it, only 6 different classes of modified portalguns).

I have most of my mod concept fleshed out by now (3 of the classes still need to be worked on, though).

In case there is slightest chance it is possible to make 12 players "think with portals" simultaneously in multiplayer, I will start recruiting team. And in case there will be significant interest in the mod, I might even start evolving it into a commercial product.

P.S.: English is not my native language. All grammar mistakes are copyrighted.

 

[Jintor]

P.S.: English is not my native language. All grammar mistakes are copyrighted.

You know, I don't particularly care about Portal MP code. I just wanted to quote this section, because if it's intentional, it's hilareous. If it's not intentional, it's still hilareous, but not quite as funny.

 

[RjD]

it is intentional. I should have used a smiley

 

[Musk]

I like the idea. Don't give up!

 

[Dekstar]

You'd have to have defenders with Portal destroyers, so people couldn't just place a portal next to the flag, and throw it through the portal.

In fact, I'd have it that you can't "carry" the flag, except with the grav gun attachment. That means you can't portal about with the flag. Also there should be fall damage so defenders can create an infinite loop portal on the flag carrier, then remove the floor portal so they just squish on the floor, dropping the flag.

 

[AciD]

Good but nowt with players blocking each other.

 

[99.vikram]

It's an excellent idea in theory, but it has major flaws any way you look at it -

* If the flag carrier can use portals, he can just use successive portals to get to his own base.

* If he doesn't have the portal gun, it's too easy to stop the flag carrier.

* There wouldn't be any confrontation at all. Players can just portal around opposing defenders.

 

[RjD]

You'd have to have defenders with Portal destroyers, so people couldn't just place a portal next to the flag, and throw it through the portal.

Well, there are two classes in my current concept that can do portal disruption. One is the "flag" carrier who has a gravgun (jolts aka GGun primary fire will disrupt a portal when they hit its colored edge). Also note that portal guns in this mod will not have Gravity gun functionality. Carrier has gravgun (capable of picking up Very Heavy Stuff), but cannot do portal stuff. Everybody else can do portals, but can not pick up the "flag".

This makes Carrier very fragile and dependent, but also very powerful (he is the only class that can directly lob something Very Heavy right into adversary's face, that is nearly the closest you get to firearms here), and getting him into enemy base (and out of it) is nearly crucial for success (some alternative strategies are also possible, but will be level-dependent and will be bloody hard to pull off)

The other portal disrupting class will be able to "disrupt" portals from long range. Though "disrupting" is not the right word, the right word is "hijack", but that is a remarkably long story.

It's an excellent idea in theory, but it has major flaws any way you look at it -

* If the flag carrier can use portals, he can just use successive portals to get to his own base.

* If he doesn't have the portal gun, it's too easy to stop the flag carrier.

* There wouldn't be any confrontation at all. Players can just portal around opposing defenders.

Hmmm... valid concerns.
However, Issue 1 & 2 can be addressed to great extent by proper level design ("flag" area should have the right amount of portal-capable surfaces, placed in the right locations, in order for escape-with-"flag" to be just hard enough)

Also, it seems to me that Issue 2 in not very much an issue - stopping someone with only portals and no "serious business firepower" seems tricky (well, there is Carrier class to throw big things around, but he is one, and big things are easily dodged)

I miss the point in issue 3 (about there being no confrontation) - probably it is my English failing. *bzzzzt*?diga con otras palabras, por favor

P.S.: Note the "" around flag. It would be damn boring to use a pole with some dirty cloth as the objective. First one to guess what item is supposed to be used instead of flag in my concept will get baked.A cake.

 

[Flie]

Just out of interest what are the classes and what do they do because this idea is pretty awesome. I thought a deathmatch game where you could drive a mech which shot giant portals would be great.

 

[Parky]

Wouldn't work. Maybe a Portal Coop, but not multiplayer CTF, action. far too many portals to even make sense.

 

[RjD]

@ Parky

You mean, too much portals to make sense gameplay-wise or rendering-wise?

 

[McCoy]

Portal MP is gonna be some fast paced shit if it happens eh?
Lemme see your greencard. NOW.

 

[RjD]

In Soviet Russia, greencards show you

 

[Mahalis]

You play Garry's Mod at all? I've made a pretty good portal gun for that, and this sounds like the sort of thing that'd make a good gamemode.

 

[Kenji]

Portals Every where wouldn't be that great I mean you walk fall through a hole pop up through another which then lands you in another could you imagine the frustration

 

[Jintor]

Congratulations, you've just described Portal! And everybody knows what an immensely fustrating game that was.

 

[Parky]

@ Parky

You mean, too much portals to make sense gameplay-wise or rendering-wise?

Gameplay wise, itd be madness.
Imagine just walking in a room and there are 8 portals across the walls. MADNESS I TELL YOU.

 

[99.vikram]

Gameplay wise, itd be madness.
Imagine just walking in a room and there are 8 portals across the walls. MADNESS I TELL YOU.

Seriously, how would a player match in/out portals? Sorry but nobody can implement this idea well short of a professional studio. (Tell Valve to make the game)

 

[RjD]

You play Garry's Mod at all? I've made a pretty good portal gun for that, and this sounds like the sort of thing that'd make a good gamemode.

Well, I poked around Garry's mod out of sheer curiosity a long time ago, and I find it totally awesome, but I lost interest in it after some time, heh, I didn't know about your portal gun for Garry's mod... Great work out there :thumbs:, your portal gun is very nice (the only thing missing is rendering player's model)

I am currently fooling around with it.

P.S.: If "Portal Arena" takes off, would you like to participate?

Seriously, how would a player match in/out portals? Sorry but nobody can implement this idea well short of a professional studio. (Tell Valve to make the game)

Um, sorry, you mean "will the current engine be able to handle more than one portal gun", i.e. is the engine capable of dealing with a situation where there is more than one player generating portal "pairs"?
Well, it is known to handle that, portals match okay (the players however, can not cross these portals. Yet.)

Help from Valve would be cool, but there is, practically, ONE severe bug to overcome for the primary concept to start working, + some modified portal behavior is needed for different classes.

I guess those two goals can be achieved with code on hands.

After that the cycle of playtesting, balancing & modifying according to user input until proper gameplay is achieved can start.

 

[RjD]

Gameplay wise, itd be madness.
Imagine just walking in a room and there are 8 portals across the walls. MADNESS I TELL YOU.

Ummm, actually, no. Learn to think in portals

But, in a mod where portals are almost the only available murder tools, such a portal-rich room would leave... quite a hint, you know.

BTW, if some room in a map gets excessively "overportalled" to the point of breaking balance, the issue should be corrected by means of adding "portal-unfriendly" surfaces to the said room.

 

[Iron_cube]

The reason why it crashes when there are multiple portals is because the engine doesn't know which exit to choose for a player trying to through, and therefore the player is either spawned twice (insta-crash) or not at all (also crash)

 

[RjD]

Now tins IS going somewhere. There is a thing called "portal linkage ID".... hmmmm.... There is also EXCiTE mod that had portal-esque "portals" in multiplay environments.

 

[RjD]

Hmmmmm. The engine can handle up to 9 portal pair links on my machine with all the portals SEEING MOST OF EACH OTHER (making them all see each other would be fairly too tricky)
Performance gets unbearably ugly after 7 portal pairs all seeing each other. After 8 it starts spamming console with odd messages. It suicides after 10 pairs seeing each other.

Will test multiplayer ASAP.

NOW I AM VERY CURIOUS.

 

[RjD]

total_channels == MAX_CHANNELS is what it floods console with before death. If render depth = 3, it can have up to 13 portal pairs in a single room, but no more. Increasing or decreasing render depth decreases stability.

Also, I have the crash dump. It is here

So, results are - you can have around 10-12 independent portal pairs right away, by (ab)using change_portalgun_linkage_id <0> console command .

Having more of portals in one room seeng most of each other causes total_channels == MAX_CHANNELS spam and CTD.

Effects of change_portalgun_linkage_id <0> on deathmatch are currently investigated. Too bad I do not have a home LAN... yet.

 

[ríomhaire]

Sounds like you'd end up with 10+ portals in the one map on an online server and the Source engine would just go OMGWTFBBQ *alspote*

 

[redruM]

The concept sounds fun, but won't it be a bit confusing in-game? I mean, the mod may turn out alright but the gameplay itself will take some getting used to.

 

[RjD]

Sounds like you'd end up with 10+ portals in the one map on an online server and the Source engine would just go OMGWTFBBQ *alspote*

Well, currently it is 12 portal pairs located in the same small pit (the cube pit in test chamber 4).

And this result was achieved with nothing more but console trickery. Besides, Oracle suggests total_channels == MAX_CHANNELS is a sound driver issue.
Quite believable, as current rig has EMU professional audio card, and its drivers are known to cause mischief when used by computer games. Gotta get myself a creative Xfi as a second audio device...

Besides, no one is going to stuff so many portals in so little space (note, in such a way that they see each other) in a real multiplayer mayhem. Everyone will be trying to stuff portals just so that the other guy ends up on the opposite part of the map, in a pit of fire.

The concept sounds fun, but won't it be a bit confusing in-game? I mean, the mod may turn out alright but the gameplay itself will take some getting used to.

Well, isn't it true that innovative gameplay always requires getting used to? Counterstrike also required some getting used to. At first. Then, addiction kicked in.

Besides, there are two character classes that the user is already familiar with (from HL2 and Portal proper), so someone new won't be totally lost.

P.S.: total_channels == MAX_CHANNELS is sound driver.
-nosound stops spam, VASTLY improves performance (29-40 fps under same stress) and allows un to 15 portal pairs.

16th pair causes CTD.

 

[Parky]

i still prefer the idea of multiplayer coop. One person fires the blue, other fires the orange, simple.

 

[Wanted Bob]

Yeah it does sound cool, if it was pulled off it would be amazing!

 

[Boogaloo]

if I have 3 sets of portal open at once it crashes my game!! and it would be hard to tell which was which. if these portals are constantly changing, imagine the dtess on the client's PC and thes erver. you would be habving 2-3FPS at best!

but if theres a way round this, I'm all for it!

 

[99.vikram]

I'll reiterate - how would a player navigate around a room with 5 or 6 portal pairs open? It would get confusing. CTF with portals won't work, and co-op would waste the potential of this mechanic. If you can come up with an entirely new team game centred around portals, that would be WIN.

 

[RjD]

99.vikram
Hm. Well, I get your point now (Or so I think).

A valid concern, however, "confusing" is subjective (For istance, I think I could handle 5+ portals pretty easily after I get to know the map a bit, if the leveldesign is proper, off course), so only playtests can show how seriously confusing such scenarios can get .

As for expected player behavior in said room... First, an experienced player in such setting will navigate a room with 5 somebody-else's portals with great care, and will leave this room ASAP.

Maybe 5+ portals set up by "somebody" might be a bit confusing (we have to actually test to see), but that is not the big deal, the big deal in this setting is that 5+ portals, in the same place, by unknown authorship, is quite dangerous, because here portals are the most common way to eliminate opposition, so the room you describe is very suspicious (There is good chance Aperture Science High Energy Pellets will enter from those portals )

Jumping into a portal set by an unknown party is a risk (Ambush, like sudden exit point change just the very moment player approaches, or just the guy with a gravgun and Heavy Object camping near that portal).

It may be a calculated risk (but this portal gives me a shortcut to enemy base!).

Also, I expect sane players to screw up their useful portal pairs after they are no longer useful to them, so the enemy can't use them.

Portal-friendly surface hogging might be an issue (keeping your portal on a spot so nobody else can set up a portal there), but with classes capable of portal elimination, this is a playtestable issue.

But, to please the players that can not think in MANY portals , there should be special game options, set by server admins. For instance, use different portal edge SFX for different teams, so "hostile" portals can be easily told from portals set by fellow team members. This, IMHO, breaks the tense mood of the game, giving it a duller dynamic, but I'm all for Democracy - let the players choose.

 

[Van Kayne]

I was thinking of Portal Multiplayer a little while ago, and came to the conclusion that player vs player would be way too complicated, unless used as a quick gimmick.

I thought that co-op would be much easier and more fun to manage, either with two players with portals (using different colored portal borders to sort out which hole went where), or with a small team (say, two to four players) all armed differently.

 

[Druckles]

I would indeed appreciate a multiplayer Portal mod/game. It would definitely create new, interesting methods of playing or co-operating together. Sure, there might be an element of confusion, but that confusion could seriously add to gameplay.

I'd give it a 'yay'

 

[99.vikram]

Co-op is simple, it would be a cop out. I'm sure there must be some competitive game style that can be made up (not CTF).

 

[RjD]

Well, I also have other ideas. I just find Portal-CTF the most challenging one.

 

[Druckles]

I don't think it'd be all the complex for players to grasp. It'd be really fun. Maybe not CTF, but even just a deathmatch.

 

[Lord Vipes]

This sounds like a good mod. how do you become a betatester?

 

[Druckles]

You sit around until it's actually produced, and then you knock on Gabe's door and ask him.

 

[redruM]

I don't think deathmatch with only portal guns would be any fun, but the only other competitive multiplayer I can think of is a time mode, where players (or teams) compete to clear a puzzle in the fastest possible time.