Opposing Force: Displacer Cannon

[Lanthanide]

Does anyone else remember that Opposing Force featured a portable portal device called the Displacer Cannon? It worked a little differently, but it shows that Black Mesa had this sort of technology too.

I'm not sure if OpFor is strictly canon or not though, but interesting to ponder.


Here's a link to a gameguide about it: http://www.gamespot.com/gamespot/guides/oppose_gg/p4_08.html

 

[Somefool]

Seeing as how Aperture Science was competing against Black Mesa, it wouldn't be a surprise that Black Mesa have their own little portable portal maker. Too bad Black Mesa went a little out of hand with their portal making devices, I mean the damn thing also turned traveling into a BFG-type weapon.

Might be a bit scary to have a single weapon capable of traveling anywhere on a world and warping to different worlds at the same time.

Wouldn't that be nice if the Combine got their hands on both and started to do galactic size invasions.

 

[Sloth]

The only thing to think of is that you can only travel to Xen because there is an Array set up there.

 

[ríomhaire]

Does anyone else remember that Opposing Force featured a portable portal device called the Displacer Cannon? It worked a little differently, but it shows that Black Mesa had this sort of technology too.

I figured that the gigantic impossible-to-miss teleporter that you spend 5 minutes in in Half-Life one sort of showed that Black Mesa had this sort of technology too.

 

[Lanthanide]

I figured that the gigantic impossible-to-miss teleporter that you spend 5 minutes in in Half-Life one sort of showed that Black Mesa had this sort of technology too.

Well duh. I thought it was pretty obvious I was talking about hand-held portable portal technology.

I guess not.

 

[ríomhaire]

The displacer is really nothing like the portal gun except for the fact that it transports you. The portal gun is much more efficent and doesn't seem require a minutre nuclear reactor to function. It also creates doorways in space to other parts of the same universe. The displacer sends a portal that will teleport one thing to and from Xen and only lasts a moment, also sending out a huge shockwave which is a tremendos waste of energy.

 

[Crash Happy]

Yeah but I don't think we can rely on it. In HL1 the device and power levels required were huge and that's actually continued into HL2. Portal is different since they have apparently used different theories and ended up with what appears to be a purely local teleport device whereas BM's was able to cross dimensions/universe's or similar.

 

[Psychanalysis05%]

As awesomely useful as teh portal Gun is, Black Mesa still won by creting interdimensional portals... they just kinda miscalculated and the shit really hit the fan.

Well, I say miscalculated, the GMan could have been wholly responsible for all of it.

That gruff-voiced jerk.

 

[Qhartb]

As awesomely useful as teh portal Gun is, Black Mesa still won by creting interdimensional portals... they just kinda miscalculated and the shit really hit the fan.

Except in the Half-life universe, interdimensional portals are actually easier that local portals. That's a plot point in Half-life 2. The Combine can come from another universe, but once they're here, they travel by foot, car, train, etc. The slightly more advanced Black Mesa tech uses Xen as a "slingshot," essentially going there and back but not stopping along the way. Aperture seem to be worlds beyond either the Combine or Black Mesa when in teleportation tech.

Makes you wonder if Aperture found Xen (or any other universe), too, or if they just had a completely different approach than the Combine or Black Mesa.

 

[Psychanalysis05%]

Makes you wonder if Aperture found Xen (or any other universe), too, or if they just had a completely different approach than the Combine or Black Mesa.

I'm going to go with the second one.

 

[ríomhaire]

Except in the Half-life universe, interdimensional portals are actually easier that local portals. That's a plot point in Half-life 2. The Combine can come from another universe, but once they're here, they travel by foot, car, train, etc. The slightly more advanced Black Mesa tech uses Xen as a "slingshot," essentially going there and back but not stopping along the way. Aperture seem to be worlds beyond either the Combine or Black Mesa when in teleportation tech.

Makes you wonder if Aperture found Xen (or any other universe), too, or if they just had a completely different approach than the Combine or Black Mesa.

I think that the Apeture approach is completly different to the Black Mesa approach and slightly connected to the Combine. The Black Mesa teleporters rely entirly on Xen and the AS and Combine ones have nothing to do with it. I think the latter two both use dark energy in some way or another (guess). The Combine portals just stretch holes in dimentional weak-points and are pretty shit, but the AS ones just create a wormhole in the same universe, having nothing to do with Xen or any other universe.

 

[AJ Rimmer]

Black Mesa wins. Cross-dimensional teleportation as well as local teleportation > Make a portal that leads to the other end of the room, saving you about 20 seconds of walking. I mean, technologically the Portal gun wins cause it actually seriously ****s with how the basics of the world works, whereas teleportation is actually possible, just way beyond us irl. But practically the Portal gun isn't as useful as BMRF Teleport. You have to already see where you want to go for instance.

 

[ríomhaire]

You can't really compare one device to a technology. The portal gun is far more useful than the displacer. Although Aperture Science don't have cross-dimetnional teleportation, their local teleportation appears to be much more efficient. It is true that you'd actually need to bring an AS portal device to the destination before you could open up the connecting portal, but once you have two portal devices in two placed you can make an easily sustainable portal between them. Black Mesa's is better for instantly getting anywhere, but needs much more power.