Mar 11, 2016 - The latest update, version 1.14a, improves compatibility with modern systems. On the Windows side, the game now has native support for Windows 7 and above. Mac gamers ought to be happy, too, as the new version includes an OS X. You know, I'd buy Diablo and Diablo II all over again if Blizzard. Page 12 of 660 - Unofficial Skyrim Special Edition Patch - posted in File topics: It is a shame that they come up with a bug on the load order system with a game, which has been approved so many years now.
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Portal is a puzzle-platformvideo game developed and published by Valve Corporation. It was released in a bundle package called The Orange Box for Microsoft Windows, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 in 2007. The game has since been ported to other systems, including OS X, Linux, and Android.
Portal consists primarily of a series of puzzles that must be solved by teleporting the player's character and simple objects using 'the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device', a device that can create inter-spatial portals between two flat planes. The player-character, Chell, is challenged and taunted by an artificial intelligence named GLaDOS (Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System) to complete each puzzle in the Aperture Science Enrichment Center using the portal gun with the promise of receiving cake when all the puzzles are completed. The game's unique physics allows kinetic energy to be retained through portals, requiring creative use of portals to maneuver through the test chambers. This gameplay element is based on a similar concept from the game Narbacular Drop; many of the team members from the DigiPen Institute of Technology who worked on Narbacular Drop were hired by Valve for the creation of Portal, making it a spiritual successor to the game.
Portal was acclaimed as one of the most original games of 2007, despite criticisms of its short duration and limited story. The game received praise for its originality, unique gameplay and dark story with a humorous series of dialogue. GLaDOS, voiced by Ellen McLain in the English-language version, received acclaim for her unique characterization, and the end credits song 'Still Alive', written by Jonathan Coulton for the game, was praised for its original composition and humorous twist. Portal is often cited as one of the greatest video games of all time. Excluding Steam download sales, over four million copies of the game have been sold since its release, spawning official merchandise from Valve including plush Companion Cubes, as well as fan recreations of the cake and portal gun. A standalone version, titled Portal: Still Alive, was released on the Xbox Live Arcade service in October 2008, which added an additional 14 puzzles to the gameplay, and a sequel, Portal 2, which was released in 2011, adding several new gameplay mechanics and a cooperative multiplayer mode.[4]
Gameplay[edit]
A representation of how the (magnitude of) linear momentum is conserved through portals. By jumping into the blue portal, the character is launched out of the orange portal and onto the platform on the right.
A more advanced portal technique. The character builds up speed using two blue portals, to reach an otherwise unreachable area. The second blue portal is carefully created in mid-air, after exiting the orange portal for the first time, destroying the first blue portal in the process.
In Portal, the player controls the protagonist, Chell, from a first-person perspective as she is challenged to navigate through a series of rooms using the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device, or portal gun, under the watchful supervision of the artificial intelligence GLaDOS. The portal gun can create two distinct portal ends, orange and blue. The portals create a visual and physical connection between two different locations in three-dimensional space. Neither end is specifically an entrance or exit; all objects that travel through one portal will exit through the other. An important aspect of the game's physics is momentum redirection.[5] As moving objects pass through portals, they come through the exit portal at the same direction that the exit portal is facing and with the same speed with which they passed through the entrance portal.[6] For example, a common maneuver is to jump down to a portal on the floor and emerge through a wall, flying over a gap or another obstacle. This allows the player to launch objects or Chell over great distances, both vertically and horizontally, referred to as 'flinging' by Valve.[5] As GLaDOS puts it, 'In layman's terms: speedy thing goes in, speedy thing comes out.' If portal ends are not on parallel planes, the character passing through is reoriented to be upright with respect to gravity after leaving a portal end.
Chell and all other objects in the game that can fit into the portal ends will pass through the portal. However, a portal shot cannot pass through an open portal; it will simply deactivate or create a new portal in an offset position. Creating a portal end instantly deactivates an existing portal end of the same color. Moving objects, glass, special wall surfaces, liquids, or areas that are too small will not be able to anchor portals. Chell is sometimes provided with cubes that she can pick up and use to climb on or to hold down large buttons that open doors or activate mechanisms. Particle fields known as emancipation grills, occasionally called 'fizzlers' in the developer commentary, exist at the end of all and within some test chambers; when passed through, they will deactivate any active portals and disintegrate any object carried through. The fields also block attempts to fire portals through them.[7]
Although Chell is equipped with mechanized heel springs to prevent damage from falling,[5] she can be killed by various other hazards in the test chambers, such as turret guns, bouncing balls of energy, and toxic liquid. She can also be killed by objects falling through portals, and by a series of crushers that appear in certain levels. Unlike most action games at the time, there is no health indicator; Chell dies if she is dealt a certain amount of damage in a short time period, but returns to full health fairly quickly. Some obstacles, such as the energy balls and crushing pistons, deal fatal damage with a single blow.
GameSpot noted, in its initial review of Portal, that many solutions exist for completing each puzzle, and that the gameplay 'gets even crazier, and the diagrams shown in the trailer showed some incredibly crazy things that you can attempt'.[8] Two additional modes are unlocked upon the completion of the game that challenge the player to work out alternative methods of solving each test chamber. Challenge maps are unlocked near the halfway point and Advanced Chambers are unlocked when the game is completed.[9] In Challenge mode, levels are revisited with the added goal of completing the test chamber either with as little time, with the least number of portals, or with the fewest footsteps possible. In Advanced mode, certain levels are made more complex with the addition of more obstacles and hazards.[10][11]
Synopsis[edit]Characters[edit]
The game features two characters: the player-controlledsilent protagonist named Chell, and GLaDOS (Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System), a computer artificial intelligence that monitors and directs the player. In the English-language version, GLaDOS is voiced by Ellen McLain, though her voice has been altered to sound more artificial. The only background information presented about Chell is given by GLaDOS; the credibility of these facts, such as Chell being adopted, an orphan, and having no friends, is questionable at best, as GLaDOS is a liar by her own admission. In the 'Lab Rat' comic created by Valve to bridge the gap between Portal and Portal 2, Chell's records reveal she was ultimately rejected as a test subject for having 'too much tenacity'âthe main reason Doug Rattman, a former employee of Aperture Science, moved Chell to the top of the test queue.[12][13]
Setting[edit]
The logo for Aperture Science Laboratories
Portal takes place in the Aperture Science Laboratories Computer-Aided Enrichment CenterâAperture Science for shortâwhich is a research facility responsible for the creation of the portal gun. According to information presented in Portal 2, the location of the complex is in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Aperture Science exists in the same universe as the Half-Life series, although connections between the two franchises are limited to references.
Information about the company, developed by Valve for creating the setting of the game, is revealed during the game and via the real-world promotional website.[14] According to the Aperture Science website, Cave Johnson founded the company in 1943 for the sole purpose of making shower curtains for the U.S. military. However, after becoming mentally unstable from 'moon rock poisoning' in 1978, Johnson created a three-tier research and development plan to make his organization successful. The first two tiers, the Counter-Heimlich Maneuver (a maneuver designed to ensure choking) and the Take-A-Wish Foundation (a program to give the wishes of terminally ill children to adults in need of dreams), were commercial failures and led to an investigation of the company by the U.S. Senate. However, when the investigative committee heard of the success of the third tierâa person-sized, ad-hoc quantum tunnel through physical space, with a possible application as a shower curtainâit recessed permanently and gave Aperture Science an open-ended contract to continue its research. The development of GLaDOS, an artificially intelligent research assistant and disk-operating system, began in 1986 in response to Black Mesa's work on similar portal technology.[15] A presentation seen during gameplay reveals that GLaDOS was also included in a proposed bid for de-icing fuel lines, incorporated as a fully functional disk-operation system that is arguably alive, unlike Black Mesa's proposal, which inhibits ice, nothing more.[16] Roughly thirteen years later, work on GLaDOS was completed and the untested AI was activated during the company's first ever bring-your-daughter-to-work day in May 2000.[14] Immediately after activation, the facility was flooded with deadly neurotoxin by the AI. Events of the first Half-Life game occur shortly thereafter, presumably leaving the facility forgotten by the outside world due to apocalyptic happenings. Wolpaw, in describing the ending of Portal 2, affirmed that the Combine invasion, chronologically taking place after Half-Life and before Half-Life 2, had occurred before Portal 2's events.[17]
The areas of the Enrichment Center that Chell explores suggest that it is part of a massive research installation. At the time of events depicted in Portal, the facility seems to be long-deserted, although most of its equipment remains operational without human control.[18] During its development, Half-Life 2: Episode Two featured a chapter set on Aperture Science's icebreaker ship Borealis, but this was abandoned and removed before release.[19]
Plot[edit]
Portal's plot is revealed to the player via audio messages or 'announcements' from GLaDOS and visual elements inside rooms found in later levels. According to The Final Hours of Portal 2, the year is established to be 'somewhere in 2010'âtwelve years after Aperture Science's abandonment.
The game begins with Chell waking up from a stasis bed and hearing instructions and warnings from GLaDOS, an artificial intelligence, about the upcoming test experience. Chell then enters into distinct test chambers that introduce players to the game's mechanics, sequentially. GLaDOS's announcements serve as instructions to Chell and help the player progress through the game, but also develops the atmosphere and characterizes the AI as a person.[5] Chell is promised cake and grief counseling as her reward if she manages to complete all the test chambers.[20]
Chell proceeds through the empty Enrichment Center, with GLaDOS as her only interaction. As the player nears completion, GLaDOS's motives turn more sinister than her helpful demeanor suggests; although she is designed to appear helpful and encouraging, GLaDOS's actions and speech suggest insincerity and callous disregard for the safety and well-being of the test subjects. The test chambers become increasingly dangerous as Chell proceeds, and GLaDOS even directs Chell through a live-fire course designed for military androids as a result of 'mandatory scheduled maintenance' in the regular test chamber, as well as having some test chambers flooded with a bio-hazardous liquid. In another chamber, GLaDOS boasts about the fidelity and importance of the Weighted Companion Cube, a waist-high crate with a single large pink heart centered on each face, for helping Chell to complete the chamber. However, GLaDOS then declares that it 'unfortunately must be euthanized' in an 'emergency intelligence incinerator' before Chell can continue.[18] Some of the later chambers include automated turrets with childlike voices (also voiced by McLain) that fire at Chell, only to sympathize with her after being destroyed or disabled, such as 'I don't blame you' and 'No hard feelings'.[21][22]
After Chell completes the final test chamber, GLaDOS congratulates her and prepares her 'victory candescence', maneuvering Chell into an incinerator in an attempt to kill her. As GLaDOS assures her that 'all Aperture technologies remain safely operational up to 4,000 degrees [sic] Kelvin (3,727 °C, or 6,740 °F)', Chell escapes with the use of the portal gun and makes her way through the maintenance areas within the Enrichment Center.[23] GLaDOS becomes panicked and insists that she was only pretending to kill Chell, as part of testing. GLaDOS then asks Chell to assume the 'party escort submission position', lying face-first on the ground, so that a 'party associate' can take her to her reward, but Chell continues anyway. Throughout this section, GLaDOS still sends messages to Chell and it becomes clear that she became corrupt and had killed everyone else in the center, which is also revealed in a later comic.[12][13] Chell makes her way through the maintenance areas and empty office spaces behind the chambers, sometimes following graffiti messages which point in the right direction. These backstage areas, which are in an extremely dilapidated state, stand in stark contrast to the pristine test chambers. The graffiti includes statements such as 'the cake is a lie', and pastiches of Emily Dickinson's poem 'The Chariot', Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's 'The Reaper and the Flowers', and Emily Brontë's 'No Coward Soul Is Mine', referring to and mourning the death of the Companion Cube.[5]
GLaDOS attempts to dissuade Chell with threats of physical harm and misleading statements claiming that she is going the wrong way as Chell makes her way deeper into the maintenance areas. Eventually, Chell reaches a large chamber where GLaDOS's hardware hangs overhead. GLaDOS continues to plead with and threaten Chell, but during the exchange, a sphere falls off of GLaDOS and Chell drops it in an incinerator. GLaDOS reveals that Chell has just destroyed the morality core or her conscience, one of the multiple 'personality cores' which the Aperture Science employees allegedly installed after GLaDOS flooded the enrichment center with a deadly neurotoxin gas, and goes on to state that now there is nothing to prevent her from doing so once again. A six-minute countdown starts as Chell dislodges and incinerates more of GLaDOS' personality cores, while GLaDOS attempts to discourage her both verbally, with a series of taunts and increasingly juvenile insults, and physically by firing rockets at her. After Chell has destroyed the final personality core, a portal malfunction tears the room apart and transports everything to the surface. Chell is then seen lying outside the facility's gates amid the remains of GLaDOS. One of the final scenes is changed through a patch of the PC version that was made available a few days before Portal 2's announcement; in this retroactive continuity, Chell is dragged away from the scene by an unseen entity speaking in a robotic voice, thanking her for assuming the 'party escort submission position', revealing the entity to be a 'party associate'.[16][24]
The final scene, after a long and speedy zoom through the bowels of the facility, shows a Black Forest cake,[25] and the Weighted Companion Cube, surrounded by a mix of shelves containing dozens of apparently inactive personality cores. One by one a number of the cores begin to light up, before a robotic arm descends and extinguishes the candle on the cake, causing the room to blackout.[26] As the credits roll, GLaDOS delivers a concluding report: the song 'Still Alive', which declares the experiment to be a huge success, as well as serving to indicate to the player that GLaDOS is still alive,[27] that her 'happy' core was not disabled.
Development[edit]Concept[edit]
Portal is Valve's spiritual successor to the freeware game Narbacular Drop, the 2005 independent game released by students of the DigiPen Institute of Technology; the original Narbacular Drop team was subsequently hired by Valve.[28][29] Valve became interested in Narbacular Drop after seeing the game at DigiPen's annual career fair; Robin Walker, one of Valve's developers, saw the game at the fair and later contacted the team providing them with advice and offering to show their game at Valve's offices. After their presentation, Valve's president Gabe Newell quickly offered the entire team jobs at Valve to develop the game further.[30] Newell later commented that he was impressed with the DigiPen team as 'they had actually carried the concept through', already having included the interaction between portals and physics, completing most of the work that Valve would have had to commit on their own.[30] Certain elements have been retained from Narbacular Drop, such as the system of identifying the two unique portal endpoints with the colors orange and blue. A key difference in the signature portal mechanic between the two games however is that Portal's portal gun cannot create a portal through an existing portal unlike in Narbacular Drop. The game's original setting, of a princess trying to escape a dungeon, was dropped in favor of the Aperture Science approach.[30]Portal took approximately two years and four months to complete after the DigiPen team was brought into Valve,[31] and no more than ten people were involved with its development.[32]Portal writer Erik Wolpaw, who, along with fellow writer Chet Faliszek, was hired by Valve for the game, claimed that 'Without the constraints, Portal would not be as good a game'.[33]
For the first year of development the team focused mostly on the gameplay without any narrative structure. Playtesters found the game to be fun but asked about what these test chambers were leading towards. This prompted the team to come up with a narrative for Portal.[34] The Portal team worked with Half-Life series writer Marc Laidlaw on fitting the game into the series' plot.[35] This was done, in part, due to the limited art capabilities of the small team; instead of creating new assets for Portal, they decided to tie the game to an existing franchiseâHalf-Lifeâto allow them to reuse the Half-Life 2 art assets.[16] Wolpaw and Faliszek were put to work on the dialogue for Portal.[29] The concept of a computer AI guiding the player through experimental facilities to test the portal gun was arrived at early in the writing process.[16] They drafted early lines for the yet-named 'polite' AI with humorous situations, such as requesting the player's character to 'assume the party escort submission position', and found this style of approach to be well-suited to the game they wanted to create, ultimately leading to the creation of the GLaDOS character.[16] GLaDOS was central to the plot, as Wolpaw notes 'We designed the game to have a very clear beginning, middle, and end, and we wanted GLaDOS to go through a personality shift at each of these points.'[36] Wolpaw further describes the idea of using cake as the reward came about as 'at the beginning of the Portal development process, we sat down as a group to decide what philosopher or school of philosophy our game would be based on. That was followed by about 15 minutes of silence and then someone mentioned that a lot of people like cake.'[16][36] The cake element along with additional messages given to the player in the behind-the-scenes areas were written and drawn by Kim Swift.[37]
Design[edit]
A typical Portal test chamber, with both of the player's colored portals opened. The Weighted Companion Cube can also be seen. The clean, spartan look to the chambers was influenced by the film The Island.
The austere settings in the game came about because testers spent too much time trying to complete the puzzles using decorative but non-functional elements. As a result, the setting was minimized to make the usable aspects of the puzzle easier to spot, using the clinical feel of the setting in the film The Island as reference.[38] While there were plans for a third area, an office space, to be included after the test chambers and the maintenance areas, the team ran out of time to include it.[38] They also dropped the introduction of the Rat Man, a character who left the messages in the maintenance areas, to avoid creating too much narrative for the game,[39] though the character was developed further in a tie-in comic 'Lab Rat', that ties Portal and Portal 2's story together.[12][13] According to project lead Kim Swift, the final battle with GLaDOS went through many iterations, including having the player chased by James Bond lasers, which was partially applied to the turrets, Portal Kombat where the player would have needed to redirect rockets while avoiding turret fire, and a chase sequence following a fleeing GLaDOS. Eventually, they found that playtesters enjoyed a rather simple puzzle with a countdown timer near the end; Swift noted, 'Time pressure makes people think something is a lot more complicated than it really is', and Wolpaw admitted, 'It was really cheap to make [the neurotoxin gas]' in order to simplify the dialogue during the battle.[32]
Chell's face and body are modeled after Alésia Glidewell, an American freelance actress and voice-over artist, selected by Valve from a local modeling agency for her face and body structure.[31][40] Ellen McLain provided the voice of the antagonist GLaDOS. Erik Wolpaw noted, 'When we were still fishing around for the turret voice, Ellen did a sultry version. It didn't work for the turrets, but we liked it a lot, and so a slightly modified version of that became the model for GLaDOS's final incarnation.'[36]Mike Patton performed the growling and snarling voice of GLaDOS's final personality core, named the Anger Sphere.
The Weighted Companion Cube inspiration was from project lead Kim Swift with additional input from Wolpaw from reading some 'declassified government interrogation thing' whereby 'isolation leads subjects to begin to attach to inanimate objects';[32][36] Swift commented, 'We had a long level called Box Marathon; we wanted players to bring this box with them from the beginning to the end. But people would forget about the box, so we added dialogue, applied the heart to the cube, and continued to up the ante until people became attached to the box. Later on, we added the incineration idea. The artistic expression grew from the gameplay.'[38] Wolpaw further noted that the need to incinerate the Weighted Companion Cube came as a result of the final boss battle design; they recognized they had not introduced the idea of incineration necessary to complete the boss battle, and by training the player to do it with the Weighted Companion Cube, found the narrative 'way stronger' with its 'death'.[41] Swift noted that any similarities to psychological situations in the Milgram experiment or 2001: A Space Odyssey are happenstance.[38]
The portal gun's full name, Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device, can be abbreviated as ASHPD, which resembles a shortening of the name Adrian Shephard, the protagonist of Half-Life: Opposing Force. This similarity was noticed by fans before the game's release; as a result, the team placed a red herring in the game by having the letters of Adrian Shephard highlighted on keyboards found within the game.[38] According to Kim Swift, the cake is a Black Forest cake that she thought looked the best at the nearby Regent Bakery and Café in Redmond, Washington, and, as an Easter egg within the game, its recipe is scattered among various screens showing lines of binary code.[25][42] The Regent Bakery has stated that since the release of the game, its Black Forest cake has been one of its more popular items.[42]
Soundtrack[edit]
Most of the game's soundtrack is non-lyrical ambient music composed by Kelly Bailey and Mike Morasky, somewhat dark and mysterious to match the mood of the environments. The closing credits song, 'Still Alive', was written by Jonathan Coulton and sung by Ellen McLain (a classically trained operaticsoprano) as the GLaDOS character. A brief instrumental version of 'Still Alive' is played in an uptempo Latin style over radios in-game. Wolpaw notes that Coulton was invited to Valve a year before the release of Portal, though it was not yet clear where Coulton would contribute. 'Once Kim [Swift] and I met with him, it quickly became apparent that he had the perfect sensibility to write a song for GLaDOS.'[27][36] The use of the song over the closing credits was based on a similar concept from the game God Hand, one of Wolpaw's favorite titles.[43] The song was released as a free downloadable song for the music video gameRock Band on April 1, 2008.[44][45][46] The soundtrack for Portal was released as a part of The Orange Box Original Soundtrack[47] and includes both GLaDOS's in-game rendition and Coulton's vocal mix of 'Still Alive'.
Portal's soundtrack was released as part of a four-disc retail release, Portal 2: Songs To Test By (Collector's Edition), on October 30, 2012, featuring music from both games.[48] The game's soundtrack became available via Steam Music on September 24, 2014.[49]
Release[edit]
In January 2008, Valve released a special demo version titled Portal: The First Slice, free for any Steam user using Nvidia graphics hardware as part of a collaboration between the two companies.[50] It also comes packaged with Half-Life 2: Deathmatch, Peggle Extreme, and Half-Life 2: Lost Coast. The demo includes test chambers 00 to 10 (eleven in total). Valve has since made the demo available to all Steam users.[51]
Portal was first released as part of The Orange Box for Microsoft Windows and Xbox 360 on October 10, 2007,[52][53] and for the PlayStation 3 on December 11, 2007.[54] The Windows version of the game is also available for download separately through Valve's content delivery system, Steam,[1] and was released as a standalone retail product on April 9, 2008.[55] In addition to Portal, the Box also included Half-Life 2 and its two add-on episodes, as well as Team Fortress 2. Portal's inclusion within the Box was considered an experiment by Valve; having no idea of the success of Portal, the Box provided it a 'safety net' via means of these other games. Portal was kept to a modest length in case the game did not go over well with players.[26] Since then, a standalone version of the game was released for Microsoft Windows users.
Portal was the first Valve-developed game to be added to the OS X-compatible list of games available on the launch of the Steam client for Mac on May 12, 2010,[56] supporting Steam Play, in which players that had bought the game either on a Macintosh or Windows computer could also play it on the alternate system. As part of the promotion, Portal was offered as a free title for any Steam user during the two weeks following the Mac client's launch.[57] Within the first week of this offer, over 1.5 million copies of the game were downloaded through Steam.[58] A similar promotion was held in September 2011, near the start of a traditional school year, encouraging the use of the game as an educational tool for science and mathematics.[59][60] Valve wrote that they felt that Portal 'makes physics, math, logic, spatial reasoning, probability, and problem-solving interesting, cool, and fun', a necessary feature to draw children into learning.[61] This was tied to Digital Promise, a United States Department of Education initiative to help develop new digital tools for education, and which Valve is part of.[62]
Portal: Still Alive was announced as an exclusive Xbox Live Arcade game at the 2008 E3 convention, and was released on October 22, 2008.[63] It features the original game, 14 new challenges, and new achievements.[64] The additional content was based on levels from the map pack Portal: The Flash Version created by We Create Stuff and contains no additional story-related levels.[65] According to Valve spokesman Doug Lombardi, Microsoft had previously rejected Portal on the platform due to its large size.[66]Portal: Still Alive was well received by reviewers.[67]1UP.com's Andrew Hayward stated that, with the easier access and lower cost than paying for The Orange Box, Portal is now 'stronger than ever'.[68]IGN editor Cam Shea ranked it fifth on his top 10 list of Xbox Live Arcade games. He stated that it was debatable whether an owner of The Orange Box should purchase this, as its added levels do not add to the plot. However, he praised the quality of the new maps included in the game.[69] The game ranked 7th in a later list of top Xbox Live Arcade titles compiled by IGN's staff in September 2010.[70]
During 2014 GPU Technology Conference on March 25, 2014, Nvidia announced that they are porting Portal to their Android handheld, the Nvidia Shield.[71] The version was released on May 12, 2014.[72]
Critical reception[edit]
Portal received critical acclaim, often earning more praise than either Half-Life 2: Episode Two or Team Fortress 2, two titles also included in The Orange Box. It was praised for its unique gameplay and dark, deadpan humor.[74]Eurogamer cited that 'the way the game progresses from being a simple set of perfunctory tasks to a full-on part of the Half-Life story is absolute genius',[75] while GameSpy noted, 'What Portal lacks in length, it more than makes up for in exhilaration.'[76] The game was criticized for sparse environments, and both criticized and praised for its short length.[77] Aggregate reviews for the stand-alone PC version of Portal gave the game a 90/100 through 28 reviews on Metacritic.[73] In 2011, Valve stated that Portal had sold more than four million copies through the retail versions, including the standalone game and The Orange Box, and from the Xbox Live Arcade version.[78]
The game generated a fan following for the Weighted Companion Cube[79]âeven though the cube itself does not talk or act in the game. Fans have created plush[80] and papercraft versions of the cube and the various turrets,[81] as well as PC case mods[82] and models of the Portal cake and portal gun.[83][84][85] Jeep Barnett, a programmer for Portal, noted that players have told Valve that they had found it more emotional to incinerate the Weighted Companion Cube than to harm one of the 'Little Sisters' from BioShock.[38] Both GLaDOS and the Weighted Companion Cube were nominated for the Best New Character Award on G4, with GLaDOS winning the award for 'having lines that will be quoted by gamers for years to come.'[86][87][88]
Ben Croshaw of Zero Punctuation gave the game the only entirely positive review in the show's history, calling it 'the most fun you'll have with your PC until they invent a force-feedback codpiece'. Croshaw went on to say: 'I went in expecting a slew of interesting portal-based puzzles and that's exactly what I got, but what I wasn't expecting was some of the funniest pitch black humor I've ever heard in a game'. He states that, while the game was short, the two- to three-hour length of the game was perfect as the game did not outstay its welcome, and called the ending 'balls-tighteningly fantastic', while praising the game as 'absolutely sublime from start to finish' (adding that he would jam forks in his eyes if he ever praised a game so highly ever again).[89]
Writing for GameSetWatch in 2009, columnist Daniel Johnson pointed out similarities between Portal and Erving Goffman's essay on dramaturgy, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, which equates one's persona to the front and back stage areas of a theater.[90] The game was also made part of the required course material among other classical and contemporary works, including Goffman's work, for a freshman course 'devoted to engaging students with fundamental questions of humanity from multiple perspectives and fostering a sense of community' for Wabash College in 2010.[91][92]Portal has also been cited as a strong example of instructional scaffolding that can be adapted for more academic learning situations, as the player, through careful design of levels by Valve, is first hand-held in solving simple puzzles with many hints at the correct solution, but this support is slowly removed as the player progresses in the game, and completely removed when the player reaches the second half of the game.[93]Rock, Paper, Shotgun's Hamish Todd considered Portal as an exemplary means of game design by demonstrating a series of chambers after the player has obtained the portal gun that gently introduce the concept of flinging without any explicit instructions.[94]Portal was exhibited at the Smithsonian Art Exhibition in America from February 14 through September 30, 2012. Portal won the 'Action' section for the platform 'Modern Windows'.[95]
Awards[edit]
Portal won several awards:
Legacy[edit]
The popularity of the Weighted Companion Cube led Valve to create merchandise based on it, including fuzzy dice
The popularity of the game and of its characters led Valve to develop merchandise for Portal made available through its online Valve physical merchandise store. Some of the more popular items were the Weighted Companion Cube plush toys and fuzzy dice.[122] When first released, both were sold out in under 24 hours.[123] Other products available through the Valve store include T-shirts and Aperture Science coffee mugs and parking stickers, and merchandise relating to the phrase the cake is a lie, which has become an internet meme. Wolpaw noted they did not expect certain elements of the game to be as popular as they were, while other elements they had expected to become fads were ignored, such as a giant hoop that rolls on-screen during the final scene of the game that the team had named Hoopy.[16][124]
A modding community has developed around Portal, with users creating their own test chambers and other in-game modifications.[125][126] The group 'We Create Stuff' created an Adobe Flash version of Portal, titled Portal: The Flash Version, just prior to release of The Orange Box. This flash version was well received by the community[127] and the group have since converted it to a map pack for the published game.[128] Another mod, Portal: Prelude, is an unofficial prequel developed by an independent team of three that focuses on the pre-GLaDOS era of Aperture Science, and contains nineteen additional 'crafty and challenging' test chambers.[129][130] An ASCII version of Portal was created by Joe Larson.[131][132] An unofficial port of Portal to the iPhone using the Unity game engine was created but only consisted of a single room from the game.[133][134]Mari0 is a fan-made four-player coop mashup of the original Super Mario Bros. and Portal.[135]
Swift stated that future Portal developments would depend on the community's reactions, saying, 'We're still playing it by ear at this point, figuring out if we want to do multiplayer next, or Portal 2, or release map packs.'[10] Some rumors regarding a sequel arose due to casting calls for voice actors.[136][137] On March 10, 2010, Portal 2 was officially announced for a release late in that year;[138] the announcement was preceded by an alternate reality game based on unexpected patches made to Portal that contained cryptic messages in relation to Portal 2's announcement, including an update to the game, creating a different ending for the fate of Chell. The original game left her in a deserted car park after destroying GLaDOS, but the update involved Chell being dragged back into the facility by a 'Party Escort Bot'. Though Portal 2 was originally announced for a Q4 2010 release, the game was released on April 19, 2011.[24][139][140][141]
References[edit]Footnotes[edit]
Bibliography[edit]
External links[edit]
Retrieved from 'https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Portal_(video_game)&oldid=901640095'
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Yesterday Microsoft released security patches for 63 separately identified vulnerabilities and three new Security Advisories. Microsoft rates 12 of the security holes as âcritical,â and 8 of those are for the Edge scripting engine. Only one has an actively known exploit, discovered by Kaspersky, on 32-bit Win7 and Server 2008 systems in the Middle East.
Martin Brinkmann has his monthly summary on ghacks.net for an overview of the numbers and links. Dustin Childs picks up all the nuances in his Zero Day Initiative post. Short version: As usual, if you avoid Internet Explorer and Edge, you should be fine for now. But, again as usual, youâll have to patch eventually.
Two new Security Advisories contain some worthwhile updates:
The Servicing Stack Update spray
@PKCano reports:
There are new Servicing Stack Updates for Win10 that address the Bitlocker Device Encryption vulnerability CVE-2018-8566.
If you install the November Cumulative Updates using other than Windows Update, you will need to install the Servicing Stack Update first.
If you are using Windows Update, the SSU will be offered automatically.
Win10 v1809 Build 17763.134 KB4465646
Win10 v1803KB4465663
Win10 v1709KB4465661
Win10 v1703KB4465660 Ranking task exercises in physics pdf download 2017.
Win10 v1607KB4465659
Thereâs a German-language report of a bug in the interaction between the latest Servicing Stack Update for Server 2016, KB 4465659 and this monthâs Server 2016 cumulative update, KB 4467691. Poster Gaius Julius on the deskmodder.de forum reports (translated by deepl.com):
One of the two updates tries to write into the UEFI of the server. This works for virtual machines as well. For physical machines of the brands DELL and HP this does not work, at least if CPUs of the series Xeon E5-26 .. of the versions v1 and v2 are still installed there. On Fujitsu machines it does not work with the above Xeon CPUs of versions E5-26 .. v3 and v4.
The UEFI is totally shot up, hardware raids are torn apart etc. pp. Remotely you can't reach the boxes anymore, because the Intel management machine is also totally torn apart, if it wasn't switched off by the ADMIN for security reasons. No network adapter is detected anymore.
No confirmation on that report, as yet.
WSUS hiccups again
Thereâs a report of a persistent failure by WSUS to download this monthâs patches:
We are seeing multiple independent WSUS servers failing to download content (patches) from Microsoft for this monthâs batch. ⦠WSUS servers have been established for years and no changes on them have been made recently nor have firewalls been touched. Content downloads started and were successful for a fraction of the patches, but then halted. This started afternoon hours EST. Eventlog error 364 is seen.
1809 under the microscope
Of course, itâs much too early to install 1809, and Microsoft recommends that you wait until it gets pushed onto your machine rather than seeking it out, but if youâre feeling lucky (and donât mind risking your machine for a paltry list of new features), installation from the Media Creation Tool will bring you to build 17763.107, and the first cumulative update (that is, the latest first cumulative update) will bring you to build 17763.134. EdTittel reports on Tenforums:
I was able to transition from 17763.107 to 17763.134 by leaving the Insider Preview program (updates only flavor), restarting a couple of times, then updating to the KB that brings the PC up to 17763.134 level. All good now. All of my 1809 machines are now at 17763.134.
What concerns me the most are the sporadic, but vocal, reports of problems with the just re-released Win10 version 1809, the September-October-November 2018 Update.
If I Download Game Patch 114 Does It Also Include Patch 113 2
We already know about the acknowledged bug with filename extensions not being assignable to specific programs, a bug first publicized last week by Chris Hoffman in HowToGeek. The same problem now appears as a known bug for Win10 version 1803, as well â going back all the way to the Sept. 26 re-release of the âFourth Tuesdayâ patch for 1803.
Iâm also seeing reports of the Mapped Drive Connection to Network Share May Be Lost bug, but that oneâs not unique to 1809. Itâs been around a long time.
@NetDef reports munged video with 1809 and AutoCad:
Iâm seeing some seriously nasty things with video (current drivers) and acceleration in the â18 and â19 versions in our test bed. Thinking we might be passing on this feature update entirely and stick with 1803 for the next year. Toolbar windows that leave ghosts behind when moved. Sudden dark screens in the drawings (but the application menu UI stays intact.) Odd flickering randomly.
I havenât yet heard any loud screams of pain stemming from this monthâs Monthly Rollups and Cumulative Updates, but the day is still young.
Thx to @PKCano, @NetDef
If I Download Game Patch 114 Does It Also Include Patch 113 1
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