By John Walker on October 9th, 2008 at 10:56 am.
Portal Prelude has been released. The uber-mod that everyone seems jolly excited about is officially out tomorrow, but is already ready for download. Hurrah! Except it’s one of those 24 hour preview deals with FilePlanet. So if you want it today, you’ll have to crawl through their tunnel of blades, spikes and fire, ending in a half hour wait for the download to start. Man! Anyway, rise above it: good news. We’ll offer thoughts on it soon.
Yukky FilePlanet, can’t be bothered to find my old login for there. This being a free mod, how would the RPS overlords react to mirror links?
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Don’t really see the problem with fileplanet myself, though queueing for DLs is always annoying. I guess my ungodly slow internet connection means I’m not as affected by speed limits though.
Still, this should be interesting. I only found out about it when I saw the original article Alec (I think) wrote in the “Revisit an old story” box.
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Agh, edit function has gone so I can’t edit my post.
I should have asked if it was OK to leave the .torrent link, but I’m sure it is seeing as it’s a free mod. One of the RPS crew will have to edit it if not, sorrya about that.
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I’ve played abotu half way through so far, its pretty awesome, ill play teh rest after work
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Hmm, presumably Fileplanet *paid* them for the tedious exclusivity…walking a bit of a legal tightrope there fellas, Gabe will not be pleased!
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Fileplanet gives you like a thousand bucks for exclusive stuff like that.
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Yes, you are right, sorry again for posting that link :(
Please don’t ban my ass.
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I’ve removed it just in case.
The Portal Prelude chaps state they’re not profiting from the FP deal. They say,
“PS: There’s a little misunderstanding regarding this 24h exclusivity. We’re not earning any money of this. It’s just one more step to world domination! =)”
I’ve no idea what that means.
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Exclusivity for heightened profile. Fuck file planet, i’ll get it tomorrow. In no hurry to see drooling fanboys sodomise portal with cake jokes and bad voice acting. /rage
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Yep count me out until decent servers or a torrent has it.
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This is surely what torrents were made for… fileplanet.. you suck really you do…
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I don’t know. Like I said in the first post on it, having Portal-like puzzles and Portal graphics doesn’t mean it’s Portal. I generally like mods, but most mods aren’t trying to BE it’s original game. I’ll probably try this out, but I reserve my glee.
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If there’s no GlaDOS, it’s not Portal… System Shock prelude without Shodan, anyone?
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The computer-generated voices on this are as bad as Microsoft Sam. The pronounciation of words/sentences is really off, and it’s incredibly annoying.
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Damn, this is hard. I’m stuck on room 2.
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So the Portal Prelude backlash starts even before the “official” release? Gotta love the 21st century.
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There’s always the torrent. Quick search on isohunt . com should do the trick.
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Will it come out on Steam with their mod database thingy?
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Aperture Science, what’s that? I work for World of Goo Corp. now.
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Or use IWF’s link. :-/
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Whats the big deal?
Its a 24 HOUR exclusive.
I would be happy if a mod team would earn a little money by such a completely irrelevant thing as a 24 HOUR exclusivity.
That they dont is too bad for them, but I still dont see why anyone should be annoyed by such a thing.
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What’s terrible is that I went through the haaaalf hoooour queue to download this and then the download was 403 Forbidden’d. :/
I wish they’d give a more specific answer as to why they’re funneling people toward fileplanet but oh well.
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is it tomorrow already?
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Perhaps to soften up the download traffic.
World of Goo initially had big problems with the preorder version for instance.
If only a third of the people that would download Portal Prelude tomorrow use Fileplanet it would be a huge reduction of the required traffic and management on the “real” release day.
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“I wish they’d give a more specific answer as to why they’re funneling people toward fileplanet but oh well.”
What business is it of yours as to why they’re funneling people toward Fileplanet?
Irrational hatred of Fileplanet? Wait a day.
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At a small guess, it’s probably some free advertising. Fileplanet has a lot of subscribers that might be going “oohh, exclusive. I’ll try that”.
Shame it’s shit.
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I’m grabbing it from here – no wait
http://files.filefront.com/portal+prelude+setup+100exe/;12013501;/fileinfo.htm
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@Andy, now that is a quick link.
Only one download so far from filefront… :P
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it’s on usenet too.
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Just tried it. No one (outside Valve) seems to be able to get a handle on level design for this game. If you know how to complete a puzzle, but it takes you 50 tries to hit it just right, that’s poor level design.
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“Just tried it. No one (outside Valve) seems to be able to get a handle on level design for this game. If you know how to complete a puzzle, but it takes you 50 tries to hit it just right, that’s poor level design.”
Havent played Prelude yet but I had exactly that problem with the Flash Portal mappack.
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I had a chuckle at the Portal Prelude “help” forum …
Member: I think it’s a failure on the makers part to leave so little margin for variables, especially that it’s the second level.
Administrator: Too bad for you then I think you should uninstall it, if you’re not skilled enough! (patronizing smilies omitted)
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Same her, Therlun. Well, not on most places, but there were a few places where I was stuck for quite a while. Not all of the flash maps translated very well to 3D, and some turned into a tedious reflexes meets blind luck meets quickload game.
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direct download link:
http://dl.127001.org/mods/source/portal-prelude-setup-1.0.0.exe
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Meh, I can wait.
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Can people PLEASE stop linking to torrents, or I will come around your house and set you on fire.
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Matches available online at http://www.amazon.com/Packs-NATO-Water-Windproof-Matches/dp/B000UVQ0H6/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2?ie=UTF8&s=sporting-goods&qid=1223567309&sr=8-2 !
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That did not come out how I’d planned.
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Thanks Noc I’ve ordered three!
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Meh. I had to noclip a few times before finally giving up. The margin for error is tiny. Good effort, but no fun to play.
Also- the voices are horribly half way between sounding like GLADOS, and sounding normal. Really grates on your ears – especially when they ramble on for no reason. Frustrating.
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For some reasons I can’t edit my post anymore (what happened to the 10min limit?).
Anyway – in addition: I also get the impression from reading their forums that I ducked out before the ‘good part’. If they’d made the learning curve a bit easier (yes we all know how to play Portal, but there’s a distinct difference in puzzle style between Valve and these guys) then prehaps I would have soldiered on. Ah well.
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Why aren’t people allowed to link to torrents? Is it because of this exclusivity deal the makers have with FilePlanet? In that case, you’d think linking to anything other than FilePlanet wouldn’t be allowed either.
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“Just tried it. No one (outside Valve) seems to be able to get a handle on level design for this game.”
Yet how many mods have you actually played? There are hundreds of Portal levels out there; it’s inevitable that some will appeal to your tastes.
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“Yet how many mods have you actually played? There are hundreds of Portal levels out there; it’s inevitable that some will appeal to your tastes.”
I’m sure there are a couple of custom levels out there that are utterly brilliant, but I can’t be bothered to wade through all the less than brilliant ones on my way to the promised land.
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They’re already throwing a wobbly one on that site, over insulting e-mails, apparently. It’s that thing of Hurt Indie Syndrome again, it seems. ;)
I’m going to agree with the one called Nimic on this one – I don’t see why torrents aren’t allowed if linking to mirrors is. For a file round 700Mb I’d rather use torrential technology than serverlicious tech.
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It really is a shame that they’ve thrown that wobbly, too. I certainly can understand their frustration, but that’s not the kind of PR you want on the front page just as the entire Portal-playing public descend upon your website.
Still, wobblies aside, the mod’s pretty good, if somewhat fiendish. I fear that some players will be put off by the difficulty, though – many of them will be expecting a similar difficulty curve as Valve’s original.
Many of the test chambers I’ve played so far required advanced skills (such as crouching in mid air), and one of the levels deliberately misleads the player by moving a platform that has nothing to do with the solution – a bit of a cheap shot.
Still, it’s a great effort for such a small team. I just hope their tetchiness toward criticism (however abusive) doesn’t harm their prospects.
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I just want to post the url to http://www.gameupdates.org/ again, as the last poster got this removed. They got lots of nice torrents, Im sure they DO NOT HAVE A TORRENT OF PORTAL PRELUDE… but who knows…?
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I’m quite enjoying it…
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The difficulty varies wildly from room to room – it does give the impression that it is a random series of levels cobbled together but it seems fun enough to persevere.
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Yikes. That put me off, instantly.
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Personally I’m rather enjoying it. Nowhere near Valve’s quality of course, but it’s worth enduring the annoying voices for some challenging puzzles.
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Another step in their world domination plan would be including any element of coherent design or anything worth playing.
Sorry to be ‘that negative guy’ but this mod has so much wrong with it I don’t know where to start.
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I’m surprised no one’s mentioned “Rock You Like a Hurricane” yet. I’m all for measured criticism on mods, but this was an incredibly sour note to enter the game on, an awful blurring of contexts that was, if you’ll forgive the phrase, really unprofessional.
But yeah, the level design. Barely any reeducation of the basic concepts, which would be forgivable if, y’know, the puzzles were at all intuitive. I’m through the first eight rooms, and at nearly all of them, I feel like the design is preventing me from executing what I know to be the right action. I haven’t finished it, but so far, it’s made Portal into a “game of inches” to use a sports phrase — relying on crouches, very specific portal positioning, and minor turns to advance in some puzzles.
Anyway, I wager I’ll have the chance to rant on it on our podcast tomorrow. Including the voice acting (yikes).
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But yeah, in short: it’s (so far) completely absent of the zenny subtlety in story and level design that Portal promoted.
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Yeah, my girlfriend loved Portal, but had a lot of difficulty with the ‘timed’ FPS style areas. She got the puzzles quickly, however.
That said, I don’t want jumping puzzles. They aren’t fun, and there are far better ways to do it.
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In other words, my skepticism was justified? I liked the Flash Portal Map pack, but in the end it, like this, was just one part of Portal, and not nearly as well executed as Valve’s try. Portal’s brilliance isn’t just about the puzzles.
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It’s interesting – they’ve put up a post discussing the difficulty of their mod, as a kind of reaction to a player’s e-mail.
I enjoyed this bit in their answer:
Nicolas didn’t read the e-mail he’s responding to thoroughly enough, it would seem, as it seems it’s sent by exactly the kind of player he talks about – from the original e-mail:
This is all fine and dandy, it’s a free mod, it’s all about ramping up the difficulty for the makers, apparently, it just means that I won’t be playing it.
While I was playing Portal I just never found myself thinking “these puzzles aren’t hard enough”, simply because the puzzles were only one element in an extraordinary mix, I guess.
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Can anyone tell me how to do the second part of puzzle 10, with the red fields? what do they even do?
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Why did the editing option disappear? Nevermind, I got it.
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Some of the later chambers are very clever and require logical thought to get through – which are the type of levels I enjoy most.
Chamber 10, as mentioned by Colinmarc above, is just one example – they introduced a clever “altered-gravity” puzzle. It’s at times like this that Portal: Prelude offers a glimmer of genius. It’s just a pity there are a couple of “WTF?” levels that you have to go through to get to the good stuff.
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“Some of the later chambers are very clever and require logical thought to get through – which are the type of levels I enjoy most.”
Shame I’m never going to get there.
The first room I was sat for AAAGES going “hmm, I suppose I can create a portal on the obvious wall and then _really quickly_ disable / run behind those guns, but surely that’s not the clever way to do it?”
No, it’s not. But it’s the only way.
On level 2 I was thinking “hmm, I’m missing this jump by only a little bit, consistently – surely that’s a sign that this isn’t just a _very hard_ standard momentum jump, but that there’s a more elegant solution?”
Nope, there isn’t
:/
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@frymaster: That’s the tragedy – the opening 3 levels create an immediate bad impression.
I’m glad I persevered as quite a few of the later levels are genuinely rewarding, puzzle-based fun. I can totally understand, though, that many people won’t bother. The devs kinda shot themselves in the foot by being so obtuse so early on. A great pity.
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In all fairness, Portal is just too good on too many levels. Replicating that experience is something only Valve can do (maybe: it’s possible that even they might have difficulty making a sequel with all the charm of the original).
I admire anyone who takes on that task, but it seems to me that tossing that “u need better skillz” nut shot around suggests that the modders might not have realized what a good many people loved about Portal.
And as MacBeth said early in this thread, there is no Portal without GlaDOS.
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The makers of this mod come across as patronising elitists in all the quoted correspondence and forum posts.
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Portal Prelude: Sorts The Men From The Boys… mwuhahahaha.
I’m loving this mod. It has moments when you really do just have to sit back, have a couple of tokes on your ciggie and ponder for a moment.
To be perhaps a little to honest, I think the whole lightning/precision timing argument’s a bit of a cop out (adorns flame retardant clothing) – as ever, I’m playing on my 360 pad.
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The problem with Prelude is that I know exactly what I have to do 15 seconds into the room, but due to the unforgiving design, I have to spend 15 minutes trying to execute.
There a is great game in there somewhere with a few more months of design and a ton more play testing. But in its current incarnation? No.
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“I know exactly what I have to do 15 seconds into the room, but due to the unforgiving design, I have to spend 15 minutes trying to execute ”
bah, so its not a puzzle but a timing/prescision test? thats a shitty design
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Wow. This mod. CLEARLY I’ve been spoiled from the Portal Flash Map Pack.
The problem is exactly what Y3k-Bug said– it’s really hard to execute plans properly.
But since this mod was supposed to be about things prior to Portal, I figured there had to be some interesting story or outcome, like the Flash Pack.
No.
I wasn’t really feeling the dialogue. The game was, spoilers, “hey, we’re blatantly trying to kill you, miss test subject!” to “hi, hang out with us in our lab. we’re coo’.” No, I would not be cool with a bunch of sadistic scientists who tried to kill me several times. Why are my chair tosses not hurting you? When Erik(Hey! I’m sadistic!) meets Peter(Hey! I hate my job and this is terrible!) he drops the f-bomb every sentence. Okay, mature. I did, however, laugh when Mike’s friend gave you the directions. It was absurd.
The two cutscenes in the game lasted too long…. Yes, pan left and right through the room before showing me the item! That’s a better idea than just zooming into the gun. They later even flashbacked to it. Okay, I guess… The second cutscene pointed out that the GlaDOS-shaped construct in front of me was GlaDOS, and make me look at a guy waving his arms so we wouldn’t see how they didn’t know how to animate attaching cores.
The after-credits ending felt like badly written fanfiction. I saw him during the tests but jeez…
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Downloading as we speak!
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Sounds crap to me, but I will try it later.
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Totally agree with all the previous comments on the bad level design and pin point precision needed early on. The Flash Portal Map pack was far far easier/ less infuriatingly than this. I’m thinking that the makers of PP are either inhumanely good or just sadistic, because this mod is just torture to play though, hardcore or not.
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I laughed at Thermite’s review three posts back.
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If you want a good laugh, try reading in the “Feedback & Criticisms” forum. There are some very well written, articulate negative reviews that calmly states what is wrong with this mod. And the Fanboys descend on it with righteous fury. Try to think of all the cliche responses you’d imagine a fanboy would give. Yes, all of those.
“Make a better mod”
“You’re a noob”
“YOU MADE EXAGGERATION THUS YOU LIES THUS ALL POST WRONG”
“This isn’t mean to be Portal” <- “Portal Prelude“? Right.
“Go play an FPS” <- Wait, isn’t that the main criticism of this mod, that it plays like a reflex-heavy FPS rather than a puzzle game?
Go ahead.
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I tried it for the first 5 tests or so, but quit shortly after that.
Overall I liked the puzzly parts, but the experience was kind of ruined by the difficulty itself. The solution was almost always clear if you gave it a little thought, but executing it usually required a perfect timing, performance and sometimes just plain luck. The lack on alternative, tricky solutions was kind of annoying. Like Y3k-Bug said above, 15 seconds of thinking, 15 minutes trying to do it just right.
The mod has potential, but I just found it too frustrating to be enjoyable.
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“On level 2 I was thinking “hmm, I’m missing this jump by only a little bit, consistently – surely that’s a sign that this isn’t just a _very hard_ standard momentum jump, but that there’s a more elegant solution?”
Nope, there isn’t”
But there is. First jump: put portal on the backwall, then doublefling. Second jump: put orange portal on ceiling, jump into blue portal. As you fall out of the orange portal, shoot another orange portal at your feet, then hold forward.
As long as you don’t fuck them up, they always work. Also, the reason you were missing the jumps is friction against the ceiling/wall on first/second jumps, switch up your portal placement to avoid that. Or crouch.
Same with level 1, you CAN disable the turrets, but it’s easier to just rush your way to the elevator. :D
Basically, this game DOES have alternative, tricky solutions, and if you take your time to think, their amount is staggering, certainly no less than the original Portal.
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