Bryce

iTrader: (24)

Joe, was your reply deleted? It was of the funny.

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

No, I just moved it over to the Random Pictures thread.

Also,Very funny.

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

Holy ****.

I finally remember the addictive nature of online gaming.

It's been close to 15 years since I've accidentally found myself ****-deep in the middle of a deathmatch and noticed that it was 1am.

TF2, baby. (Yeah, I know. I'm way behind the times...)

Gryff

iTrader: (6)

Lol, I know that feeling. its an addicting game! Especially when you finally find a server where everyone isnt ragefacing everytime they die, cause lets face it, you die a lot in that game, even if you are good at it.

Yeah, I dont really play enough either to be great at it, but enough that I would consider myself better than average. Ive been at the top of the end game leaderboard enough times that im happy with it.

Thats what I really love about the game though, When my friends and I play together we chat through steam or team speak, or vent. that way we dont have to push a button to talk to each other. By doing that we talk and laugh, but when things get gritty, we work really well as a team to do what needs to be done.

Scrappy Jack

iTrader: (2)

This Portal game... It's only very loosely connected to Half-Life 2?

EO2K

iTrader: (37)

http://www.thinkwithportals.com/music.php

Free Portal2 soundtrack download!

y8s

iTrader: (8)

kind of physically if you consider they came on the same disk for the PS3

Gryff

iTrader: (6)

If your a half life 2 nut then you will catch the tie in. they are very loosely tied in through the storyline.

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

Yes, and in a way that requires only meta-humor and in-jokes rather than any serious cross-functional interaction.

Essentially, both Portal and Half-Life take place within the same in-game universe, roughly in parallel with one another.

Within Portal 1, we find that prior to the GLaDOS incident, Aperture Science was in direct competition with Black Mesa for at least one government contract (namely, a commercial / military grade fuel line de-icer) and it is suggested that there is a long history of previous competition between these two companies, possibly dating as far back as the original Shower Curtain Contracts.

Within Portal 2, the pre-recorded dialogue of the late Cave Johnson (founder of Aperture) suggests that for many years prior to the events of Portal 1, Aperture found itself losing both market-share and prestige to Black Mesa, resulting in Aperture's eventual bankruptcy around the time of Johnson's death. It is not clear (to me, anyway) how Aperture rebounded from this financial condition and was able to continue work on either GLaDOS or the ASHPD.

Gryff

iTrader: (6)

^ joe got it right on.

Spoiler for those who havent played. Although its sort of a tie between portal 1 and portal 2.

http://www.thinkwithportals.com/comic/#1

Joe, I dont know how aperture science rebounded back up either, but I would say that they were doing much better for awhile before Chell came into things.

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

When exactly did Chell "come into things"?

When we first encountered her in Portal 1, she had apparently been in stasis for some time, several scenes in Portal 2 (the intro, the surprise, etc) seems to confirm that long-duration storage of human subjects in suspension is common practice.

But then GLaDOS starts dropping hints which suggest that the Chell we encountered in the original game might not have even been the original Chell. For instance, the dialogue redirects for "subject name" and "subject hometown" both fail and return default values when GLaDOS is taunting you early in the first game. And GLaDOS later admits to having a copy of your consciousness stored for backup purposes which she then deletes, ostensibly as an act of revenge. Could it be that by the time you make it to the end of the first game, Chell has already been duplicated into countless new bodies (eg: every time you die, you download)?

Events in Portal 2 make this seem plausible. Specifically, the Caroline epiphany.

How long HAD Chell been around prior to the GLaDOS incident? Was she a victim of Bring Your Daughter To Work Day? We have anecdotal evidence that the use of "captive" test subjects was a relatively recent innovation (it would seem that up until at least Johnson's death, the company tested on non-captive, part-time subjects; astronauts and war heroes originally, later homeless vagrants paid $60 each, and finally company employees for whom testing was "voluntary" but clearly not full-time.)


Warning: the message which you just read contained spoilers. If you did not want to read them, please time-travel backwards five minutes and warn your past self to skip over this message.

Gryff

iTrader: (6)

Read the link I posted above. its a comic made by valve, its set between and during both portals following ratman. Based on reading that comic. my hypothesis is that there is in fact only one chell, she was a volunteer or perhaps an employee. But I feel like she was a volunteer based on that comic. (infact, the comic mentions volunteer)

As far as the "chell deleted" comment made by GLaDOS, I think that those shouldnt be taken heavily. I am willing to bet that it is just one of many taunts that GLaDOS uses to try and break chells determination.

Concerning default values... I have no explanation...

I also believe that there are holes in the story. Respawning for example, makes the game playable. I dont think it has anything to do with the plot though because everything happens again, ie GLaDOS' dialogue mid level will still play as if you havent heard it. And when they originally made portal, there was no plan for a sequel. Because of that, stuff like "Chell deleted" doesnt really add up.

EDIT: The comic also mentions clones. so maybe the clones were also killed off. I guess that would mention the download when you die.

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

I read it when it was released. One fact to keep in mind is that it was quite clearly the ramblings of a deranged lunatic, who exhibited strong delusional tendencies. For instance, he heard the companion cube speaking to him, and regardless of what GLaDOS has to say on that topic, if the cubes could speak, why did they never speak to Chell?

In all likelihood, the author of the comic was Ratman himself.


I think we have to accept Portal 2 as part of the continuity of Portal 1, based on the large amount of retconning.

For instance (and take this for what it's worth), developer interviews have stated that the original game concept called for the Party Associate to follow Chell through the second half of P1, and finally catch up to her at the end. Early testing indicated that while this made for a very happy engine from the point of view of the Party Associate, it made for an unsatisfying end for the player.


I just tossed out the "download when you die" thing as a lark, but I don't discount the idea that Chell, in every form that we have seen her, may be a clone. And while GLaDOS may have been lying about deleting the backup copy of her, it's not at all unlikely that she did in fact possess a backup copy of Chell. This would be no different conceptually from possessing a "copy" of Caroline, and GLaDOS had no reason at all to lie about deleting that in P2.

Why would GLaDOS have even mentioned it if a backup copy (and the ability to do something useful with it) didn't exist? There are so many other ways that she could taunt Chell which would have been more in line with her usual repertoire. If it was a lie, it's kind of a departure from her norm.



Still, regardless of how many Chells there have been, where did she come from? Anecdotal evidence (both from the comic and from signage in the the later-era Aperture Classic test chambers) suggests that "volunteers" for testing were, by the later stages of the program, being drawn exclusively from the ranks of Aperture employees. Does this explain why GLaDOS seems to have some specific preoccupation with Chell even prior to her escape?


(And is there some reason why I am spending so much time hyper-analyzing the backstory of a videogame?)

Gryff

iTrader: (6)

This is very true.

No clue, but I am as well.

You bring up some very valid points.
I see what you are saying about the degredation of volunteers from astronauts, to volunteers, to employees. Evidenced in P1 and the more modern locations within P2, there is no mention within backstage areas of volunteering.

So...
Perhaps all aperture employees were cloned? And these clones are used exclusively as test subjects. By following that logic, It would explain where chell came from (her actual self passed away with all of the other employees) This would also explain why at the end of the co-op, you find access to other clones???

I think that GLaDOS may not necessarily have a preoccupation with chell, but more so that she becomes increasingly frustrated with chell as she manages to make it further than any other subject. I'm kinda iffy on this though, seeing as its been forever since I played P1.

OR, it may very well be that she does have a preoccupation with chell, due to some correlation between these two characters as the development of GLaDOS progressed. ie, programmer, something of the sort.

y8s

iTrader: (8)

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

I earn Sandvich!

Gryff

iTrader: (6)

Sandvich is amazing! IMHO the key to heavy is knowing how to use it right!

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

[heavy] Put bullet in enemy. Is easy! Many bullet! [/heavy]

So far, I've only been playing the Payload maps. For offensive work, Heavy is definitely my favorite character in these. Make sure you've got a rear-facing Pyro to act as a spy lookout, and then just get beside the cart and never let up off the trigger. Snipers can be a problem, but my aim and response time are getting better with them. A side-to-side weave from behind the cart gives me about a 50% success rate in taking them down before they can get to me- higher if there's a second Heavy on cart duty as well. (Some of those Snipers are amazingly good.)


On defense, I'm undecided. So far, DemoMan has been my best character there. Most of the maps have good cover along most of the cart's route, so just mine the tracks, hang back and wait, blow 'em when BLU approaches, mine the tracks again, rinse, repeat. I've been practicing as Sniper a little bit as well. Not very proficient yet (it took me a while to realize that the rifle's power increases with time spent on scope) but I've made a few kills.


The one thing I really suck at right now is quickly switching to a melee weapon when some damned Pyro jumps out of the sky at me. I've gotta figure out if I can map the side buttons on my mouse to switch between weapons 1 and 3.


It's funny. I graduated from college about 13 years ago, and as many people do, I find myself sometimes wistfully longing for certain things from that era. One of the coolest things about being in college in the mid to late 90s was that multiplayer FPS gaming had just been invented, and what better environment for it? Not via the Internet, of course (we were connected, at a mere 4800 baud) but on local LANs running IPX/SPX. We had our entire dorm floor (admittedly, only about a dozen rooms) wired with coax 10 meg ethernet (10b2) and we used to go all night long with Doom 2, ROTT, Hexen, Quake, etc. And after I graduated, I pretty much got out of gaming altogether.

TF2 really takes me back to those days. Granted, it was kind of cool when you knew everyone you were playing with and "chat" consisted of just shouting out the open door into the hallway (we eventually ran some additional two-pair cable in parallel with the coax to create bridge lines via telephone) but still, I'm really impressed that the fundamental elements which were so revolutionary back in 1995 are very much alive today.

Gryff

iTrader: (6)

I was talking about the sandvich. If you use it properly, it can be a real life saver! If I have a medic with me, I can use it to heal my medic, since he cant really heal himself very easily. I can also step back from the line of action for a sec and heal some health and immediately resume killing ****. Dont get me wrong though, Heavy isnt terribly hard. But if you do know how to use the sandvich, it helps alot!

Payload IHMO are the best maps. The point of conflict between the two teams is always changing, making strategies, sniper locale, engineer posts. all constantly changing aspects.

I snuck onto your server thru MT steam group and played a bit.
Not gonna lie, you weren't half bad with demo or heavy! Demo is someone I can and never will be able to play properly, there is just something about him that makes him unplayable to me...

Dunno if you know or not, but your scroll wheel will switch weapons. its fast as heck, but sometimes you scroll a bit too far and get the wrong weapon.

Whats funny is that even with todays chat, I still do that! Some things never change I suppose.

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

Well, it was supposed to be a joke, actually. You have to read it in the voice of Heavy, and remember that he has a rather simplistic view of battlefield strategy. Maybe it was only funny to me. (That happens sometimes. Like when I built that nativity scene out of dead squirrels in front of the local Catholic school as a kid.)


This is the sort of area where I need to improve. Still not very good at quickly task-switching. (eg: realize Medic is getting raped, step back, switch to Sandvich, drop Sandvich, switch back to Sasha, resume killing people.)

That sort of thing is hard to do while halfway through a tunnel or while trying to take out a pair of sentrys, for instance. This game is shocking fast-paced compared to the old FPSs I remember.


I'm growing fond of DemoMan as a defensive character on the Payload maps. He requires patience to operate effectively, and in cases where your teammates have driven BLU back away from the cart, it's tempting to rush forward and assist in the front-line assault. I've seen some folks who can do this effectively, but my skill level with the grenade launcher is way too poor to be effective in front-line combat. For now, I'm most effective with him just laying stickys at key choke points and lying in wait.

Actually, there is one front-line area where DemoMan excels. There are a couple of places where you find yourself at a low elevation and the enemy is directly above you at a higher elevation (eg, a rooftop). DemoMan is quite effective at getting right up against the wall and lobbing grenades up onto the enemy from a position of relative safety.

Shoot me a message the next time we're online together. What name do you go by there?


Yeah, I got that. I'm finding it easier (eg: faster and more reliable) to use the number keys.



I went out an bought a headset yesterday. Very helpful addition.