f13.net

Prey modders fight back!


Who's cooler now?  Valve's puzzle portal game, or the new and improved create-your-own-portal Multiprey madness.

That's pretty cool, although it needs some polishing, obviously. With maps designed for custom-portaling, it could be a whole load of fun, but I expect it'd horribly break the existing maps.

Also, I wonder what the framerate would be like if a whole lot of people made portals in a large, open section of the level.

Valve.  Because it's Valve.


Sorry.

I'm thinking that Valve's portal gun is a bit more interesting than whatever they were doing to open those portals there.

That's just a matter of adding a new gun model and maybe some pretty particle effects, though.  It's pretty damn impressive that they were able to do the "hard" part (player-placed portals) so quickly.

The whole "through the looking-glass" tech has been around since at least Serious Sam.  Once that programming is in the engine, all you've got to do is specify the coordinates of both ends.  Hardest part about doing it from the inside of the game is just specifying the proper depth of the portals.  What surprises me is that it's taken game designers this long to try making games out of it.

I'm not entirely sure how useful this would be in a DM environment.

And if the portal capabilities are not properly throttled, it could horribly break CTF/other-team-modes of gameplay.

I thought you played UT?  Have you never seen the havoc a translocator can do in the right hands?

That fucking translocator summoned a great amount of rage from the bowels of my soul.

Generally, I tried very hard to play on non-translocator servers...fuck that macro'ed translocator-running shit....pretty tough to shoot someone who is tangible for not even half of the time they are running around.

Thanks Samwise...I had forgotten how much I fucking hated the UT translocators. :evil:

See, I think it's perfectly valid to make an argument that being able to rip holes in space might be "cheap" and/or "overpowered"... but I don't think you can say with any credibility that it wouldn't be "useful".   :evil:

Or 'awesome' if you consider the possibilities with the gravity effects - open a portal up high in an open room to some corner with some rocket or sniper ammo. Death from above!

Well, unless you're the poor sap in the room 'below'. Then it's 'cheap'. :)

I can't even fathom how fun grenades + portals would be.

I just came back to stealth edit that into my post after thinking about an infinite waterfall of grenades.\

You win. :cry:

This is what I've been thinking.  /crazyeyes  Never played UT so I don't know about translocators... but I do know that there are shitlipped cockholsters in any MPFPS game, regardless of the map or weapons.  So, I'll be willing to try something that should change the game so completely as player-generated portals.  Grenades would make it ten times more awesome.  Bouncing AND sticky grenades would be super tasty.  I also like trip bombs.

I would love to be able to pop a portal that would intercept a rocket headed my way, sending it into _______.  Just fill in the blank with whatever, I don't care, teammates even.  Who's the unclefucker now, rocket-campers?!

I just had a vision of putting the portals side by side on the floor.  Poor Sod falls into portal A and pops up out of portal B.  I shoot him once and he falls back into portal B.  Poor Sod pops up out of portal A.  I shoot him.  He falls back into portal A.  That would be funny.

Also: Why can't I set laser-trip bombs in HL2?!  Go to hell Valve.  It's Bethesda's job to strip out gameplay in every sequel, we don't need another company doing the same.  I'm all about Prey.  Or will be when I get around to buying/playing it.

Or...you leave open an "exit portal" somewhere, perferebly in a location where if you go there, you die....

Then run around, using the "entrance portal" as a weapon, opening it up under people, causing them to fall in.

or, while being chased by someone with a rocket launcher or the like, duck around a corner, drop a portal as you run, and when they fire the rocket, open another and dodge it. the rocket ought to come right back out the first one, heading towards them, if it works right.

Ha ha can I join your club? The translocator was fucking awful. They should have made it so you can only use it once every 5 seconds or something. It's a cool idea but the abuse was absurd. I really don't think that is what they intended with it.

I can send you a copy of my newsletter, wherein I rant about the translocator, the debacle of Deus Ex 2, the atrocious hit detection of Counterstrike: Source, and um....

Well you get the idea.  :-P

EDIT: For Schild.

Christ balls, you have a newsletter?

I'm in the club, too. I was a huge UT fan, Assault mode ftw. Now that I think about it, that's probably where I got my grenade launcher skills: using the sweet sweet flak cannon.

Add in the old quake grappling hook and bf2 ziplines. The main reason I didn't buy special forces was the zip line.

if this becomes a standard in spaceage FPS games its just going to increase the learning curve on genre that is already too hard for most people. If the state of the average public counter-strike/dod server is any indication of general skill in FPS games, there is no way those retards will be able to play a game with portals. That being said...both of the videos look awesome. i might just have to go out and buy prey...

Cool though this is, I suspect it'll be about as much of a "standard" as the grappling hook, the translocator, the gravity gun, et cetera.  The only true constant in FPSes is the rocket launcher.

And the crates. Let's not forget the TTC (time to crate) rating of ALL FPSes.

You can even drop crates in BF2!

The grav gun was really meant to be a crate cannon.

I'm waiting to see someone use this as defence in a Capture the Flag game...  open portals on opposite sides of a hall, fire a rocket or two in a straight enough line and make a "rocket wall" trap.

aren't rockets pulled down by gravity?

Generally no, most are too lazy to calculate gravity effects on projectiles, excepting for grenades. Theoreticaly you could line it up, fire, then move out of the way, there are various ways of handling it, I'm curious to see what people decide.